An hour and twenty minutes.

The cold made me tighten the jerkin around me involuntarily. And that's when I sensed the once-familiar, tall figure stride towards me. Within a second, before I could decide whether to flash a smile or ignore him as a mirage, he came and sat next to me. A weak 'hi' was all I could manage. I closed the book in hand. As a sudden after thought, I intentionally let the book suffer further humiliation by letting it slide down. He was quicker and retrieved it for me and flipped it to expose the cover. A slow smile spread over his face as he remarked, 'So, reading 'To kill a mocking bird' for a record 740th time, huh?' .

'Perhaps', I chuckled. He still remembers my favorite book, I thought, after all these years... 8 years is not really long, I quickly said to myself. Especially when he had known me for 15 years prior to that. Remembering the chronological details this accurately bothered me. Have i been counting the days, I asked myself...

Later when Sandya asked me how it felt to bump into an ex boyfriend after 8 years, she regretted asking me that because I could give her no conclusive reply. I didn't expect him to materialize there in a land of strangers, in a transit airport. A terrorist attack would have been less shocking.

Courtesy demanded that I ask him something so as to carry on the conversation. 'So, what have you been upto, how's your family? And what do you do now?', I asked...
'Family's great, we are expecting our first child in a couple of months. And I take it that you haven't been to India for a long while. Someone with your acumen wouldn't have missed spotting my growth there', he said.

'Congrats', I smiled and offered my arm. Of course, I didn't expect him to remain the playboy he had been back then but him saying it casually had a note of finality about it. But then, he was 29 now. He went on to ask a barrage of questions. I was extremely cautious about my answers, not revealing much. My answers were diplomatic and lacked any kind of emotion and sentiment. He probably decided that I had indeed become quieter, less flashy and altogether different in the interim years.

We had coffee together, obviously I let him pay. We spoke about his parents and siblings for I had known them pretty well. We talked of school, college and of other such rhetorical topics. Not that I was bored with the conversation. Not that I deemed it an unfortunate incident- the chance meeting. It was a moment of melancholy, I decided later.

As quickly as we had met, we had to part. If you call one hour and twenty minutes, quick. The inevitable moment arrived- we had to exchange numbers, addresses and other contact details. Of course, we did exchange cards. I fastened the backpack around my shoulders, shoved the book into one of its' deep pockets and began to leave.

I walked through the long passage, not looking back even once. I kept flipping the card between my fingers which held it... And when I knew that he was nowhere in vicinity, I threw the card into one of the bins in the airport. And began my upright stride and did not slacken until I reached my plane. Throwing that card away was probably the only sane thing I had ever
done, with regard to that issue.

And the only favor he ever did to me was never trying to contact me. To this day.