Short Story: Crossroads

Iravati B. shares a story that reflects the crossroads of life, discussing how we navigate it differently with age and how it impacts our relationships.

I became friends with Gita during my second year of graduation. In college, Gita was called out all the time for being overweight. She was always referred to as the ‘mota meyeta,’ meaning ‘that fat girl’, rather than by her real name, Gita.

Since I was very shy, I had spent the first year hardly being able to make any friends. While Gita had a huge group of friends. In fact, everyone in college was Gita’s friend. To me, Gita was my first friend in college, a girl who could open up to speak about her life to anyone she got close to. Everyone in college in those days knew Gita’s crush on Kartik Kumar. The girls of our college were falling for Kartik all the time. In those days. Kartik was also into modelling and had his photos printed in some well-known glossy magazines. Kartik often came to college driving an expensive car that added to his charm. We would call him Gita’s Kartik. Despite this, when Kartik came to know of Gita’s infatuation for him, he would desperately try to avoid her at all costs. This was something that would cause Gita endless distress. 

‘Am I telling him to love me? Do I want anything from him? Nothing, I just want him to come to the college every day, that’s all, so that I can see him once,’ Gita would tell me.