A City Lost

Sameer jumped over a puddle of brown slush on the side walk, and wondered why people made such a song and dance about New York. After several winters, his enthusiasm for both snowfall and the city were waning, though he still thought that it made a pretty sight from his eleventh floor office window – the whispery whiteness somehow seemed to soften the city’s hard edge. He entered the coffee shop, a place he had frequented for a long time now and realized that he had become the quintessential Manhattan yuppie – a latte drinking liberal who had just earned an obscene amount as bonus and yet was unhappy with both the state of the universe and the state of his life. He had worked on Wall Street for more than ten years now, and while he was competent and diligent at what he did, it was never something that he had thought he’d be doing as a seventeen year old when everything still seemed possible, seemed so exhilaratingly within reach. Of late, he’d been thinking a lot about his life and his work – which had become his life – and was a little unnerved by the discovery that he wasn’t really passionate about what he did, what was worse was that he didn’t quite know what he was passionate about. He felt trapped by his own apathy. As he sipped his coffee, he could see his hand holding the Styrofoam cup move towards his lips in staccato slow motion, drugged by the ennui.

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The tiny dimly lit bookstore and café bustled with the chattering voices of strangers, the conversations of intimates, and clinking of silverware.
Sameer had decided to spend his Thursday evening here in the company of a book. Though he had been an active member of a literary club in college in India, he hadn’t read anything significant in ages. He had resolved to make his eleventh year in New York at least a little different from his last ten years.

Towards the back of the room, he heard a woman ask the sales person, “Do you have this book called A continent for the taking?” “It’s a book on Africa.” Sameer stiffened. It was a voice that he had known, a voice that he had fled – a voice that he still remembered in the occasional early morning absent-mindedness as he rolled out of bed groggy and sleepless. It was Abby.

“So, how’ve you been?”
“Good, how about you?”
They exchange pleasantries, like acquaintances.
The American way, asking, but not really expecting to be answered.
Sameer feels suddenly bereft.
He knows how the scar on the back of her knee feels like - every groove, and every ridge, knows the smell of her skin on sultry summer days.
Yet now he is neither stranger, nor friend.
Abby smiles, shuffles. She is visibly pregnant, and almost shy.
A trait that Sameer would never have associated with her.
“It was nice seeing you, and congratulations! Unfortunately, I’ve got to run.”
“Thanks. It was great seeing you too. We should catch up sometime.”
“Absolutely,” he says and places a sliver of kiss on her cheek, knowing that they never will.