Missing Miss Paul

We had a ritual, Miss Paul and me. Every time the either of us came back from a holiday, the other one had to be there, waiting downstairs to help with the luggage. Even if it was just a three-day vacation with a tiny luggage bag, we would find our way up through those wretched steps, laughing or complaining about spending days alone in the hostel (more often than not with her saying "tu kitna luggage leti hain re").

This time, I couldn't call her for she had already left for home before she starts a new chapter at the Newcastle University.

There's a new mat in front of her room and trust me when I say this, that room has never been this clean. While the room and its walls must be thanking their stars, the entire essence of Miss Paul has gone.

And where is it found now you ask? The very unkempt way in which she has left my room. And for once, I'm not complaining. It's found in the letter she has left for me and the weird books she has left for me because she couldn't carry them back.

She is miles away now yet is the first person to be there for me when I'm stupidly crying in my room because as luck would have it, in my two years in Hyderabad, it's maybe the first time I got fever.

I miss her when I think about those walks we took around the streets of Marredpally, talking about the phase of my life which I'm still stuck in. Now, she gives me her anecdotes over text messages.

I miss her when I turn around and see someone else sitting at her desk.

I miss her when there's no one to trouble or tease.

But I miss her the most when I come back home to an empty corridor and enter my room closing the door behind me, shutting out the room that was once hers.