Her Birthday

"Give me the best cake that you have."

I was purchasing some groceries from the Supermarket when a familiar voice from the bakery section caught my attention. I turned at once to see my old classmate Daniel who was my best friend during my college days. I almost ran to him and surprised him.

"I can't believe its you, Arun! Its almost ten long years since we last met," Daniel said in absolute bewilderment as he turned towards me. We hugged tightly and re-winded the last ten years of our lives for each other within the next ten minutes.

"So....how is Sneha?"

After a long battle with myself I finally dared to pop the question.

"Still married to me!" Daniel said with an ear-to-ear grin.

"Wow!....that's great," I said in a desperate attempt to sound funny.

The three of us were batch mates and best friends during our college-days. Daniel was the most famous boy in our college. He had the title of 'The Hero' of the college to his credit. While I was designated as being boring, introvert and a book-worm. Our homes were close to each others and we used to traverse the same route to and from the college day after day. And that's how the friendship between two people who were poles apart from each other happened. As for Sneha, she was the dream girl of nearly every male student of the college. I had thought myself to be immune to things like crush or love till she walked into my life. It was neither her looks nor her frame that had made me fall for her. It was her benevolent soul and vivacious nature that made me fall head over heels in love with her. As I was a shy and not-so-talkative type of guy I was never ever involved with any girl till my college. But this girl....she was entirely different from all other girls that I have met till then. Her spell made me break out of my cocoon and I took a firm decision to open my heart to her before our final year exams.

As our study leave was about to begin, I made a perfect plan to propose to her. I invited her for a coffee one evening at a local restaurant. After a wait of a good one-and-a-half hours, she landed there with Daniel to break the news of their engagement to me. Needless to say that it had rendered me heart-broken, though outwardly I pretended to be on cloud nine. After completion of college, I deliberately snapped all ties with them and vanished from their lives so that I could get Sneha off my mind and mend my broken heart. But today, what those ten years have done to heal my scared soul was undone by last ten minutes.

"Today is her birthday," Daniel said gleaming with joy. "Hey, why don't you join us. She will be very happy to see you."

"I would love to," I said as I didn't wanted to meet that Sneha who was 'happily married' to Daniel, "but I have an urgent meeting today. May be some other time."

After a few futile attempts to rope me in Daniel gave up and made his way home. After he was gone, it became hard for me to rein my heart which was craving to meet Sneha. I decided to follow Daniel and see her furtively. After diving for ten minutes, Daniel's car stopped at a graveyard and he jumped out of it, taking the cake and the candles with him. I was confused for a second but then I thought - 'May be Daniel wants to celebrate Sneha's birthday at the graves of his late parents.'

Their minds were always full of such 'out-of-place' ideas that seemed too odd to others. As I was dying to see Sneha, I stealthily followed him. Daniel halted at a grave and said, "Happy B'day sweetheart!"

I eagerly looked around for Sneha thinking that she must be hiding somewhere to surprise Daniel. As Daniel knelt to place the cake on the grave and lit the candles, I read the inscription upon it -

'Sneha D'Souza'

RIP

Suddenly a gush of wind swept over the trees and blew off the candles.