To Sampriya, Love Amalia

By Isha Purohit

People often brag about their child’s first words being dada or mama, but that’s not true for a child’s first word isn’t a word, it’s a cry. It was a fact until Sampriya came along. Her first words probably were ‘I hate this college so much’.

I had the misfortune of meeting three types of people. Some people said their morning prayers, some went for a walk and some just went back to sleep. Sampriya couldn’t be categorised in either of them. She got her morning dose of prayer while chanting ‘I hate my college’, her daily exercise by working on how much and why she hated her college and regarding sleep? Well, she didn’t get any.

“I hate this college!” she had cried when I approached her, “They teach us nothing and expect us to know everything?! HOW is that fair?!”

Confused, I scratched my neck, “I meant to say that your earphones aren’t actually plugged into your phone and so… everyone here can listen to your ‘how to kill your enemies in 91 ways’ podcast.”

“GOOD,” She shouted, loud enough for everyone in the library to hear “I MEAN IT.”

That was all about my first interaction with Sampriya. Messy, chaotic, short and sleep deprived, just like her. I expected not to see her the next day, but I was wrong, for, she was there. I watched her from afar, the littlest of the things that she did fascinated me like no other.

Drinking water? Who could ever!

Scribbling angrily? You go girl!

Grinding her teeth? Enthralling!

Hotel? Trivago!

Making eye contact with me? Mesma—what now?

Okay, I didn’t expect that. I looked down, out of the fear that she had seen me, and went back to do what people usually did in a library (which was anything but studying). Not long after, Sampriya came, she said, “I am sorry.”

My jaw dropped because she could see me. “What for?” I asked.

“For taking out my anger on you, it wasn’t fair,”

I frowned, “It’s all right, we tend to do things we’re not proud of when we’re upset.”

She scoffed, “I am sorry because you were just nice and I was rude to you.”

“It’s al—”

“NO!” Sampriya stood up, “What I did was against my believes!”

I scratched my neck. I thought that was going to be my last conversation with her, after that, even someone who soiled their pants in the middle of a class and lived without changing their school, would be embarrassed. But just like that question in NEET exam, I was wrong, for, Sampriya came back again tomorrow.

“I am sorry for yesterday,” she said, “I just hate this college and this city.”

Okay, so this was happening. Sampriya could see me. It was tough to digest considering I didn’t have a gastrointestinal system. Hahaha, kidding, or am I? “Why”

Sampriya looked up; In that brief moment, when our eyes locked gazes, I understood why this was happening. My mother used to say that the best way to sneak a peek into someone’s life was through their eyes. They were the tunnel into ones. I saw something in her eyes, besides all the hate. Something I was used to seeing in myself all day long until I couldn’t anymore. Loneliness.

“Because… its filled with snakes,” she sighed, “People treat me like crap… like I don’t exist.”

Huh, so Sampriya felt invisible. Was that the reason she was able to discover me, a white coat painted green and blue by the horrors of the ocean I had drowned in? People often said opposites attract, but for me, that wasn’t the case, for, Sampriya had found me. Me, a person who had spent their whole life in the dark, who was shunned, sat on, and spat on for the duration of my stay in the library, my grave and my bane. Our frequencies matched. But that came with a problem of its own.

She was like me.

And it horrified me. For a while, our conversations went like.

“City sucks,”

“Its so hot, you should stop wearing turtlenecks.” (To that, I replied, “Didn’t they teach you body autonomy in AETCOM?”)

“Weather is awful,”

“People are awful,”

“I'm awful,”

I could listen to her talk trash about others all day long; it was called for and necessary. Out of seven billion peoples on Earth, there were bound to be a few bad apples. But when she called herself awful, that awakening something inside of me

I closed my eyes as my inner thoughts started to swirl, ripping off pieces like hungry vultures. As they tore apart my outer covering, pictures came pouring out.

Blood, books, and rope.

“You’re not awful,” I scratched my neck. I couldn’t make it about myself.

“But I am! Perhaps that is why I encounter all the bad apples.”

“SHUT UP!” I cried, “You’re not awful, you’re just going through a bad time, there is a difference. I’ll deck you woman if you say one more word. Just because awful things have been happening to you, doesn’t mean you’re awful. If at this moment you accept that you are, then you’ll learn to accept all of the things that are happening to you. And there is no coming back from that.”

It was at that moment that our relationship changed, and I dumped my therapy. I thought I would get tired of it, after all, Sampriya was a way for me to scratch my curiosity. But you can only feign ignorance for so long before it becomes a burden, if I didn’t care for Sampriya, I wouldn’t have stayed the way I did.

“Why don’t I ever get a win?” Sampriya said, “All around me, awful people are winning in life. They have friends, family, academic validation and what not. Why do they get to be so happy and I don’t?”

“That is a tough one,” I said. “At one point you want the people who wronged you to suffer, but that the same time—"

“At this point, I just want them to suffer,” she snivelled, “every time I hope for something better, something worse happens and I… I just wish I never came, and, if you say have hope, I’ll murder you.”

“Its impossible for you to murder me,” I smiled, rubbing my neck, “and the thing you need to know is that its alright not to have hope, Sampriya, but it’s not alright to give up. Luck comes in waves, sometimes the bad ones go deep and the good ones go short, you just have to get through the bad ones without giving up because a good luck wave is bound to come.”

Sampriya scoffed, “You sound like someone who has never had a bad luck wave.”

Scratching my neck, I smiled. “Sunshine all the time makes a desert.”

“And raining all the time makes a flood.”

“No, it makes a rainforest.”

I never gave Sampriya solutions. If this city was a cliff, then Sampriya was hanging by a rope at the edge of it. And I was the one holding that rope, making sure she didn’t fall. I never told her to climb, that was something she was going to figure out herself. And I knew that however long it would take, eventually she was going to stand tall on the cliff, not hanging at the side of it.

And she had to. For herself. And for me.

The worst however, was yet it come. It happened on a rainy day. The rain had left her soaked from head to toe, but I could tell she’d been crying.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“Nothing,” she lied.

I didn’t buy it, “Sampriya, what’s wrong?”

She didn’t answer.

“SAMPRIYA!” I raised my voice.

A long-drawn sigh escaped from her lips. She face me, her almond eyes battered and blue, and said, “I am done.”

“What do you mean you’re done?”

Sampriya didn’t answer. She gave me a placid smile, a smile that showered me with all of the happiness she was capable of mining, and got up.

I opened my mouth, but, for some reason, that itch in my neck, that dreaded itch had taken away my voice. I fell down on my knees as my breath fell, struggling to leave my body. No, no, no, this couldn’t be happening. Not now, not when she… she…

I had to do something, anything, but, I couldn’t. Those pictures and memories, the ones I had kept hidden deep inside leaked out, leaving me paralysed.

“I can’t do this,” was the first to come, “I give up,” was the last.

Gathering all that was left in me, I still pushed them back and chased her, chased her as she ran towards the door, but the moment my essence touched the entrance, I was blown back, creating a noise so loud that Sampriya came running.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I lied.

But Sampriya wasn’t an idiot, she knew something was off. “What are you not telling me?”

I smiled. There was no coming back. I rolled down my turtleneck, revealing my neck, broken by the noose I hanged myself from all those years ago.

I watched in silence as tears rolled down her eyes.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” She bawled. Wow, she sure looked ugly when she cry.

What did she want me to say? That I had been where she was and that I didn’t live to see the end of it? How could I have told her that the advices I gave her was something I wish someone had given me? That the library I spent years wasting my potential had become my prison?

I couldn’t say that.

“You said that I looked like someone who hadn’t seen a bad wave my whole life,” I said, “But the thing is, I have been where you are. I didn’t wait for my good wave to come and ended up being locked in here forever. I stayed with you to prepare you for this moment, when your wave takes a dip so deep that you think there is no coming back. You think leaving is the only solution, but let me tell you, it’s not. The only thing I wish was that I’d waited out the storm.”

The two of us sat sit in the library, shedding tears and exchanging silence as we waited out the storm. Sampriya’s good wave didn’t come until a few months later, when it came, it reached so high that it broke the fan I hanged myself from. Kidding, the fan broke as soon as I hanged myself, it was the weight of the fall that killed me.

In the end, it wasn’t the curiosity that kept me tethered to her, but the love I had for herself, and at one point, myself. Something I had buried in the sands of time and forgotten about. Sampriya was my salvation, my key to opening the chest of love covered in dust and cobwebs. Even though I had found it after my death, at least I found it.

I watched from afar as she came into the library one day and was unable to find me. Our frequencies didn’t match anymore. She wasn’t like me, she was different, she was Sampriya.

By Isha Purohit