It was a very cold and snowy day.
There was this tall Indian guy walking beside me. A colleague of mine that he was, I kept talking to him more of course, than to the other really short stranger who was also walking beside me. The snow was really very bad on that particular early February noon in 2010, in Columbus, Ohio, with nothing but an all-enveloping, thick white blanket engulfing our boot-covered feet as we tried to put our steps forward slowly. I was very hungry, and hence I was not so enthused to drag my feet indefinitely along with my Indian colleague in an effort to help find a single bedroom apartment for this rather reserved and short Italian stranger who had arrived in Columbus, to become another colleague in our research group. With heavy boots and thick jackets around our bodies, it was really a pain to walk even a mile which seemed like a light year. The dense whitish snowy ambience mocked cruelly at the sun trying desperately to throw a beam of extremely faint ray now and then but in vain. Our hunt for apartment was getting unsuccessful all this while, with this short stranger not willing to stay in an unfurnished apartment. He spoke very little, perhaps because he was very new to America, and perhaps he wasn’t comfortable speaking English. I whispered into the ears of my Indian colleague: “What kind of a guy is he? Hasn’t said a “thanks” yet even out of courtesy for all the shit trouble we are taking for him.” My colleague nodded his head gently.
It was another common evening in late August, 2011. I was sipping my favorite strong black coffee at Starbucks, 16th Ave & North High Street, Columbus, Ohio with the sunshine copiously flooding everything beside me. If you walk five minutes north from where I had been walking on that snowy February noon last year with my colleague and that Italian stranger, you would reach this Starbucks that I am talking about now. Sitting beside me was that short, serious-looking Italian guy, no longer a stranger now of course. This location at Starbucks has become a very common evening coffee point for him, me and also that tall Indian colleague who I walked with that snowy February noon. We three come over here whenever we can, although frequency of me and this Italian guy sitting together is slightly higher than we all three being there. Occasionally, that somewhat muscular, almost always-smiling Korean colleague of ours would also join here. This fourth guy, though not regular to Starbucks for a variety of reasons, nevertheless completed the gang of four musketeers in our research lab. “I was writing down last night, the things that I would love to do before I die”, I said. Confused that he (my only listener that evening) had been over the past few weeks, he nonetheless nodded his head in question. I told him that one of the things I would love to do was – to have the four of us, sitting exactly at this Starbucks, ten years from now, on a September evening. He gave a spontaneous scream of joy and thrill at the idea, his face showing visible signs of hopefulness and optimism. It would be one of the sweetest things in our lives, we both agreed. In the meantime, the tall Indian guy, then on vacation in Houston, gave a call to me. Probably he was missing this evening coffee gossip session.
Spending two days together in Chicago in summer 2010 was fun for the four of us. The Red roof inn, do I remember how the water leaked from the ceiling? The short guy looked odd and funny driving that huge SUV, but still he drove safe, below the speed limit, for eight hours in an otherwise six-hour drive from Chicago to Columbus. The tall Indian guy’s driving ‘expertise’ was (is) a matter of continual humor (no kidding).
Time flies by before you even know it. The personal problems, the tears, the tough times – everything swept almost all of us. Sitting on those gorgeous and sleep-inducing office chairs, or strolling along the High street back to department through the Oval (in sun, in rain, in snow and in wind), we had passed countless evenings and afternoons. Even nights. Did I forget the 2 am walk to the famous Buckeye Donuts followed by 7 am walk to Subway that same night, the four of us? Or those 30-minute walks in the summer late-nights, at 3 am, from West campus cleanroom to main campus, enjoying the cool breeze past Olentangy river or the sounds of occasionally passing cars on the Woody Hayes drive. Ventilating our grief, our unexpected personal tragedies and uncertainties, we perhaps subconsciously took strength and hopefulness in each others’ words, though knowing well that the turns of future were unchangeable. Shall I spoil the mood now by explaining the indispensability of each other in the lab work, in research efforts? The undeniably selfless help, at all times, even at the cost of sacrificing one’s sleep and money and time effortlessly?
Life changed, priorities and aspirations changed, but what did not change was the good time together we have had throughout, such as again in summer 2011 in southern California including LA, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica and their suburbs. Did I tell we had to spend four nights successively in four different motels? That’s unforgettable, for sure.
Over time, dreams were built and shattered, re-built. But the togetherness stayed the same. It has been amazing.
It was a bit cloudy on the last August day of 2011. Sunshine continued to play hide and seek intermittently. But it was nonetheless bright and warm outside. Outside the Electrical engineering department, below the sky-walk, I wished him adieu, for, I know not when we shall meet again. May be ten years from now, in that Starbucks, one September evening, along with the other two. Nobody knows for sure. He wept. My eyes stayed perfectly dry and smiling for reasons I don’t know, as I was continuously saying words of optimism like “We shall meet soon again” and so on. I felt miserable and bitter. The chair beside me at Starbucks would now lie vacant always. But I wish he gets the happiness he so truly deserves, back in his home, in Italy.
Someone had rightly said: It’s not how gorgeously you are welcomed that matters. What matters is how much you are missed when you are gone.
It was a bright and warm, early autumn day.
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