London has Stopped...

The Met Office had released a red alert predicting extreme weather. London was the hottest it has ever been. Almost 40`C, London was suddenly as hot as a cup of English Breakfast. People were advised to stay indoors, hydrated to prevent heat strokes. Yet was impossible to stay in, it felt like a furnace. If you went out, the air was too hot, as if you were sitting in front of a bonfire under the scorching summer’s sun.

For Mandri, who had grown up in a small coastal city in Sri Lanka, heat was nothing new. She enjoyed telling her British friends that there were no seasons, and it was a yearlong summer back home. She watched as her friends listened in awe, suddenly wishing they could visit the beautiful island and take a dip in its warm beaches. But this, Mandri soon discovered was different, she was not prepared for this. She had come to London just a year ago and this was her first summer and the very first heatwave. Unfortunately for her, it was the worst of all heatwaves London had ever witnessed. A postgrad student nearing the end of her studies, she was occupied with her dissertation, but the heat didn’t let her concentrate. She decided to go to the study room in her residence, a space she had avoided until now because its AC was too unbearable for her tropical sun-savvy skin. Ironically it was exactly what she was yearning for now.

Mandri started going to the study space daily. Most students in the residence had left by then. It was only the postgrad students left now and there were only a few students in the study space. Mandri noticed after a few days that it was always the same group of students in the room. With time she got used to them, and almost anticipated them. A keen observer, Mandri loved watching them in between her studies and trying to guess what each of them was studying, and what their life was like. There was a Chinese couple, always on the same table sitting on the same two chairs. The guy was designing sport shoes all day long. She enjoyed watching him, meticulously adding minuscule details to the sole of a shoe. His long straight-haired girlfriend was reading from an iPad. The table to their right had different occupants. The Japanese girl, wearing a long navy-blue linen dress, the Chinese girl who always brought two plastic bottles, one with peach iced tea and the other carrying frozen water, a large chunk of ice shaped like the bottle melting inside. Mandri smiled watching how she poured iced tea into the bottle with ice and sipped, ‘what a genius’ she told herself! And then there was an Indian guy, always dressed all black, also occupying the same table. He had a different air to him. Attractive yet enigmatic at the same time. He worked on two laptops simultaneously, always drank small red cans of coke while tapping on his scientific calculator. Mandri guessed he was studying something related to engineering or economics. Breaching her own rule of keeping her studies buddies anonymous, she named him Ayush, after a character in a TV series that she loved.

Mandri herself had her own spot. A dark amber, high-backed comfortable chair with a small table, only wide enough to keep her laptop. Although the table had no more space it was perfectly levelled with the chair and placed in the corner of the room near the glass wall that let warm sun rays seep in and gave her a panoptic view of the busy life beyond, bright red double decker buses moving noiselessly in the Blackhorse Lane, the people walking, some rushing towards the station hopeful in the morning and fatigued by the evening, others taking their dogs out on a walk, the car park to her right and its stooped old man in charge who lived in his dilapidated cream coloured caravan parked in a corner. Every morning she woke up looking forward to going to the study space, armored with her hoodie, the coffee mug filled with Dilmah Premium tea that reminded her the aromas of home. Though she didn’t know the names of her study buddies, she felt as if there was an unspoken, undeclared friendship among them. Every morning she looked forward to seeing them.

One day, the heatwave at its peak, she was walking towards the lift to go the study space. She got into the lift lost in a train of thought that she didn’t see Ayush waving, asking her to hold the elevator as he was running across the lounge. She saw him right on time to stop the elevator door from closing. He jumped in smiling and thanked her. Mandri didn’t have to ask which floor he was going, she already knew. She looked at him. As usual he had a small red can of coke, beaded bubbles of vapor still fresh on the surface. They didn’t speak, just stared silently until the elevator took them one floor up to the study space. The usual gang was there. The Chinese guy lost among his shoe designs, the Japanese girl in a long summer dress and the genius Chinese sipping peach iced tea. But Mandri felt that something had changed. Something small, almost insignificant. The deeply sensitive girl she is, Mandri couldn’t ignore that faintest feeling of joy, and she knew the reason.

The heat wave resided after a couple of days, but they all kept going to the study space. Occasionally a new member would come, but none of them lasted long nor became constant like the ‘Asian Nerds’, as Mandri called themselves. And one Tuesday, when Mandri came to the space, a little earlier than usual, she was surprised to find it empty. There was nobody, not the couple, not the Japanese and Chinese girls, not even Ayush. She was disappointed. She felt betrayed, as if they all left without telling her, deserting her. The space didn’t feel like it used to be. But she still went to her own nook and started working. After two hours, the door opened. She first noticed the red can of coke, in a sharp contrast to the black T-shirt. It was Ayush. Mandri relieved a sigh of relief seeing the familiar face, she no longer felt alone. They exchanged a brief smile. He went to the table in front of her, his usual spot, took out the two laptops, the calculator and started working. They didn’t speak a word, but Mandri knew that they both found each other’s presence a comfort, a relief.

But then he disappeared, they all did. For the next two weeks that Mandri went to the space nobody from the Asian Nerds was there. She missed them. She missed peeking at the Chinese guy’s shoe designs or watching the other Chinese girl slowly pour iced tea over the large chunk of ice, careful not to spill any. But more than anything else, she missed Ayush. She missed seeing him work while sipping coke, she missed the tingle in her heart being in the same space with him. She missed the girlish giggle she would get seeing him enter with just another can of coke. Life as Mandri had got used to, was not going to be the same again. A girl who always looked for consistency, it disturbed her.

But one night it changed. It was past midnight; she was working in the study space in a different place. Another girl had taken her spot since morning. Mandri was uncomfortable sitting in a different table and annoyed at the new girl for stealing her spot. By then she was sure that the Asian Nerds had already left the residence because she had not caught any glimpse of them. She had befriended two new girls in the study space, a talkative Peruvian and a studious Japanese, but it was not the same. Around 1.30am Mandri decided to go to the social space in the next room to stretch her legs on the comfy red velvet divan facing the road. As she entered, she first spotted a red can of coke followed by the familiar face. She almost stopped unable to contain the joy, as if seeing a long-lost friend, but somebody she didn’t have the courage to talk to. She went straight towards the divan and tried to concentrate on her work, but her mind was elsewhere. Ayush was not alone, he was talking to a friend, another Indian. In all joy she had not noticed the friend first but only heard them speak later. After some time, the friend left, probably complaining that he was sleepy. Minutes later Ayush walked towards her and offered her a can of coke.

It surprised Mandri. “Should I take it or should I tell him I don’t drink coke?”. She didn’t want to disappoint him. Mandri politely thanked Ayush and told him that she didn’t drink Coke.

He gave a long stare at Blackhorse Lane through the glass panes. The road was animated daring the small hours of the night. Mandri followed his gaze. A red double decker 158 bus towards Chingford Mount stopped at the nearby stop, the color reminded her of the can of coke Ayush had just offered her. Mandri knew that Ayush was looking for words, she decided to break the silence.

“Indian?”

“Yh”

“Which uni?

“Imperial”

“Engineering or economics?”

“Engineering”

“Hmm I guessed it right”

Ayush looked curious.

“The two laptops and the scientific calculator”

It made him laugh, breaking the barrier he was struggling to cross.

“What’s your name?” he asked this time.

“I’d rather remain anonymous. Isn’t that mysterious”. Mandri said with a wink.

Another long silence. (“Should I have just told him my name?”)

“Listen” Ayush said, carefully picking his words, as if even an irregular breath could ruin it. “ummm can I ask you out for a coffee?”

Mandri wasn’t sure how to respond. Despite all the childishly romantic spark, despite missing him for the past two weeks, she suddenly wasn’t sure. She had never expected to see him again, let alone talk to him, and now he was asking her on a coffee date?

“I never expected you to drink anything other than coke” Mandri replied with a joke evading an answer to his question.

She asked Ayush when he was leaving and found that he stayed longer than she did. She asked him to come to the study space three days later because she was leaving by then.

He stayed back for a little longer and together they stared at the lane and the few people passing by. They tried to guess their lives, just as Mandri had guessed Ayush’s and the rest of the gang’s. She told him about the Asian Nerds, the shoe designer, the iced tea drinker, the old man from the car park and his caravan. Ayush listened, amused. He had not noticed any.

It was only later, long after Ayush had left that Mandri realized that they had not exchanged their names. It was not an unfortunate mistake, Mandri preferred it that way. She preferred that mysterious oblivion to knowledge that she didn't ask his real name. She didn’t even have to because for her, he had always been Ayush and would always be. The name Ayush had taken root and she was attached to that imagined existence and identity that she loathed reality to replace it.

Three days later, just as promised, Ayush rushed to the study space, expecting to see Mandri. He knew that she was leaving and guessed this was the last time, he would see her. Ayush wanted to tell her how much he loved to talk to her over a steaming cup of coffee and that perhaps it was time to exchange their names. But she wasn’t there. He sat on her spot, waiting impatiently until she emerged from the door, apologizing for being late. He imagined himself trying to tease her sitting on her spot knowing she hated to see it occupied. He tried to think of something funny to tell her, to make her laugh. He loved to see her laugh like a schoolgirl to his dumbest jokes. But she never arrived. Ayush waited for a couple of hours, his mind heaving with every minute that passed, until it was too heavy to hold, and he finally got up and walked towards the door. It was then he noticed it. A crisp white paper rustling on the notice board. There were many notes crammed on it. Notices, a black and white picture of a ballerina, pictures of London and a handwritten note “WE CAN DO IT!!” with a tiny green heart. He was familiar with the clippings. While studying he used to stare at this notice board, and he almost remembered them all.

But there was something else, something new, something he hadn’t seen before. He unpinned it from the board. There were three pages of some text. But it was something else that caught his eye, that shook him. It was a maple leaf, slightly losing its color. He remembered seeing them yesterday scattered on the lane, an oddity for this time of the year, as if autumn had arrived in advance. Without even reading the text on paper, he knew what the leaf meant. He held the leaf on his palm and turned it over to find a tiny M written on it. Ayush looked through the glass window. Blackhorse Lane was as animated as it has always been. A red double decker bus just left from its stop. Ayush took a few minutes to accept that she had left, without a word, without a name, without a trace but he couldn’t figure out why. He returned to her spot, the high-backed dark amber chair and started to read the story of three pages in his hand. “London has stopped”, it read.

For Ayush, as much as for Mandri, London had indeed stopped.

The comfy high backed chair in the study space where this entire story was written | July 2022

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Note: A fictitious story based on real people and real places in and around the private students' hostel in Blackhorse Lane, Walthamstow where I lived for one year during my Masters in the UK. This story was written during the endless hours spent in this study room, working on my dissertation. Every person, place and incident is real to the smallest detail, but Ayush and Mandri never spoke. They met and parted as total strangers.