A Visit To His City

1st March, the day I had visited my dearest friend's city, Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Actually, I was on a family tour to Gujarat during my vacation. I had told him, my friend, that I would be visiting his city on the last day of my tour. On Feb 28th i.e. the day before the visit, he had asked me the timings of my visit to the Siddi Saiyad Jali in Ahmedabad as we had a good and first chance to meet each other in person. Moving on, I answered him with my timings for the visit. But as the timings had become random, I mean, I was going to visit the Jali at any time between 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., it was hard to fix any particular time to meet. Also, we had to arrange our visit timing according to the closing time of the Jali and our flight timing which was at 3:50 p.m. So because of the random timing, we both became anxious but at the same time, were also excited about our first meet.

On 28th Feb, at night while lying on the bed, I was getting restless as my mind was filling up with thoughts. Only the thought of next day's meet was generating so many unusual activities in my body. There was turbulence in the blood of my heart, a hurricane of thoughts in my brain and a current of nervousness through my spine. I was going to see him for the first time after many tears and fears. How would he look? How should I dress? How would he react on seeing me? How would we feel? So many questions popped inside my brain out of over-excitement in me, no matter I knew the meet was going to be only of a few seconds as I was with my family. He had cautioned me by saying that if we met then I must look at him as an unknown person only, without being stupid at all. At both the ends, we both prayed to God to make us meet as everything was in his hands.

Next day the sun came out and the morning woke from its bed. We left for Ahmedabad early morning so that we may reach there by 10:30 a.m. at the most. We finally reached the city by 10:45 a.m. Our tour manager took us to a restaurant from where we were supposed to take a rickshaw to the Jali. 

And now the tragedy begins.......

We were standing on the footpath of the main road to get a rickshaw. I was stupidly swinging my head from left to right, my eyes scanning the place around me. There I saw a boy most of my age with another small boy of about 11 yrs. The big boy was constantly staring at me while walking on the same footpath where we all were standing. I too stupidly was staring back at him. Moreover, I was looking at every single boy passing me hoping one of them turning out to be 'him'! I studied that staring boy's facial expressions as he was looking directly into my eyes. He looked at me with doubtful expressions as if he had a doubt that he had seen me somewhere before. He came and went like a breeze. After he was out of my sight, a question came in my mind- 'Was it him?' But I was not sure because he didn't look like I had seen my friend in his dp as we had met and talked only over the phone till then. But again I had seen his dp a year ago, he may have changed a bit! But then why was he looking at me as if he was gonna pounce on me anytime to take revenge of some sin I may have committed on him. I knew my friend was a calm and composed person, he would never look at me with that sharp gaze. I was in a dilemma then! That boy's expressions said to me that it was him but his staring eyes didn't let my heart accept that it may be him. I didn't know that - should I be happy that it may be him or sad that it may not be him and if it was my dear, why on me were that staring eyes? 

Finally, we got the rickshaw and reached our destination. I was in confusion! Should I pray to God that - 'Let that boy turn out to be him' or the negative of it? After the visit, I messaged him nervously- 'Did we meet?' I was nervous that it could be him!

When I was about to leave Ahmedabad, I got his reply- 'I am sorry dear. I couldn't make it because of the random timing. I couldn't come to the Jali to meet you. I am sorry, I failed.'

Seeing his message, should I be happy that it wasn't him who stared at me sharply or should I be sad that we missed this golden chance of meeting each other!

Hence, I cried on that 1st March night!!