A Note to Blah Blah Blah (Short)

A man justifies spurning a girl he had fancied, who had seemed to like him as well.

It was an afternoon in December when the sun was out, and everything seemed possible. I was dressed in black from head to toe and standing outside your college, staring fixedly at young men and women with multiple recharges and unlimited bandwidth for their dreams. You were staring fixedly at me. Our eyes met, and I immediately looked away as if I had seen something repulsive. I finished my cigarette, threw it, stubbed it out, and walked away without once looking in your direction. You must have felt bad. You may have thought that it was because of the color of your skin. That was not it. Your skin color speaks loudest to the man in me. You may have thought that it was because you were not classy enough. That would have been the biggest joke I knew, except I wouldn’t have laughed. You certainly wouldn’t have thought that it was because you were smoking. If you had thought that you wouldn’t have stared at me to begin with. You may have thought that I had not noticed you. That was not it. You were wearing a kind of pair of shorts; I think they are called hot pants. You had on a full-sleeved T-shirt of a dark color. You were the only female in a group of males. And as I passed you by, you tilted your head just ever so slightly so that you would not have to look in my direction, even though that would have been the normal thing to do in your range of conversation. I know because just as you were acutely aware of me, I was acutely aware of you. I know why you behaved the way you did. You were trying to preserve your self-respect. You and I are very similar. I mean, as much as a tiger and a leopard can look similar while taking shelter in a cave on a dark, stormy night.

I know you. You see, I once studied at that college too. I knew many girls from South _____. I know that you were trying to preserve your self-respect because I had done the same thing many a time. I am the same guy, just with better clothes and a haircut, things I gleaned from observing people like you. The music that we listen to is different; the films and TV series that we grew up with are different; we both speak the same language, but our accents are different. Even the phrases and the words we use are different.

It’s not that I couldn’t have passed myself for one of you. After all, I have done that many times before. Say I had done that. I would have worshipped the ground beneath your feet. But one day, you would have seen me for who I was, and what color would the man in me have taken then? I have seen it before with others. You see that afternoon in December, when I chose to walk away, I was saving your life. Despite what they may tell you in that college of yours, we still live in a patriarchal society, some more than others.

Perhaps, if you were five years older and had a few creases on your forehead, and the setting was different, I would have explained these things to you. Then again, perhaps then, you would have seen me coming a mile away and would have reached for the can of pepper spray in your bag. Then again, I don’t know anybody like you at that age. I don’t know what girls like you do later. Maybe you work in a company, maybe you open your own. Whatever you do, I would like to tell you to learn how to recognize your own and stick with them because you will need their support for whatever it is that you do later in life.

Things being what they are, it’s not likely that we are going to meet again, and I don’t believe in rebirth. So, I decided to write this note to you. If I could tell you one thing, I would tell you this: there are many a leopard prowling about, and all of them have a chip on their shoulder. They are wont to pass themselves as tigers in broad daylight.

Now, you are likely to be on the debating team. Why do I think that? It’s not because of how you were dressed, how you behaved, or the fact that you were smoking. Never saw the point of university debates. If you take one topic and speak in favor of it for ten minutes and then, in another debate, take the same topic and speak against it for ten minutes, where is the real you? Seems like a recipe for making leopards or worse, prey. But let me, for once, try to do just that since you can’t be here to rebut me. Maybe you would have pointed out the gaping lacunae in my argument and told me, “Dude, you are so full of shit. You say not to judge things by how they look, and yet, you are repeatedly doing exactly that. Maybe you were that extraordinary a person that you could have bridged the divide of backgrounds. Maybe you were tiger enough for the both of us. Maybe you would have told me that what I thought were spots on my back were actually stripes. That I was also a tiger, just of a different clime. Maybe that afternoon in December when the sun was out, everything had seemed possible, because for once, everything was. Maybe, that one time, when I erred on the side of caution, I just erred.

In my defense, all I can say is that I couldn’t risk things going the former way. I liked you too much for that.