Love Stories I was writing at 2am

Life is a race

How does mathematical probabilities correlate with real life? There is a definite success or failure. And nothing else. Sometimes our own society looks at us with a mathematical viewpoint. If you win the race, you are a winner, and if you lost, you lost. There is no in between for average people like me. It doesn't take into consideration that some people ran because they had no other choice or that they ran because they'd rather run than be left behind. So, In between the man who didn't even try and the man who came first, there are several heartbeats like mine.

I was beginning to understand that sending resume after resume was just a waste of paper and time and it was as if the ceiling agreed, with rhythmic footsteps from the house above, that spread to my entire house like a sound effects of a B grade detective movie. I immediately went upstairs to give that person a piece of my mind.

When the door opened, my breath was knocked out of me. For I exactly knew who that person was. 

If life was a race, he came first, even if it involved pushing others back. I'd never spoken to him at school, since our kind never mingled with each other. Last I heard about him was when he got into the country's most elite college, and I'd just assumed that I'd see him in the future, in the science column of a paper, probably famous for disproving theorems or in a managerial position in a IT company and getting the highest salary package. 

So, seeing him here, in this poor part of town, in this dingy apartment, made me laugh. Karma was funny. After everything he had achieved, he and I were the same somehow, right now.

"You!" He asked me, probably recognizing me.

"Yes. Me." I said.

"What?"

"Don't walk loudly, it causes an echo downstairs. Keep it down." I said.

"Fine." He said, grumpily.

I turned to go back. 'Wait' I heard a voice. I turned back again.

"We were schoolmates, right? Can you please help me with something? Please? Very urgently required." He asked me Even though we were once classmates,. he didn't ask how I was doing, but merely wanted extract help from me.

I was not the refusing kind, so imagine my surprise when the 'help' asked was moving a really big box full of handicrafts, fans, crochets, kites and whatever to another side of the room. I wouldn't have been surprised if it was a box full of books, or a box full of medals. His entire house was littered with handicraft papers, something which I hadn't expected.

"Thank you, very much, Sharmi." He said.

My heart thumped, not because of the fact that he'd remembered my name. But due to the genuine, heartfelt way he'd conveyed it. In this clockwork world, it's rare to find someone who say things and mean it.

"No problem. What are you doing here?" I asked him.

"Oh me? I just moved here two days ago."

"But why?" I asked him. Why are you here? You should be in a five bedroom house with French windows and an infinity pool on the seventh floor, by the side of the city's best known roads.

"It's closer to where I work." He said, as if it was obvious.

For the past few years, I'd gone through a social incognito mode, so I wasn't really aware of what these people were doing. Perhaps he was doing some kind of social experiment, where in he tried to survive on a limited budget and poor accommodation.

"Oh!" I said.

"You don't seem too happy to see me." He said.

"That's because, you haven't asked how I've been doing till now, weren't we classmates?" I said.