Good Bye

Yesterday, she was bubbling with life, visiting places, laughing, and singing. She hardly cooked. Waste of time, she said. Instead, she went out or engaged herself in long discussions. She liked to remain fit also. She jogged, swam, and walked to work, instead of taking a bus. Visiting cinemas was also part of her entertainment, she was a regular theatre-goer, and enjoyed pop as well as classical concerts. She was a picture of vigor. But today, she’s gone.

Petra, my housemate, returned to her home in Austria, the land of ‘sound of music’. And sitting in my room, writing this, I feel devoid, and this house feels soulless. The entertainer has left, and we’ll surely sink back into that world where we seldom met, except accidentally while having dinner in dining room, or while cooking in the kitchen, or sometimes, when we watched TV in the lounge instead of the privacy of our room. Petra, in her short stay, changed everything. Like bees smoked out of a hive, we came out. We gathered, laughed, and the house suddenly wasn’t a ghostly, quiet place that it used to be.

Petra is a nurse, and worked in Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead. She worked shifts, and sometimes, she got up early in the morning, or slept very late at night. When she was at home, everybody would know. A large girl, she stood 5’9, she stomped rather than walked, it was as if she had hooves, not feet.

The front door of the house always banged shut when she arrived. The lights, sometimes all of them downstairs, where the kitchen and lounge are located, would be switched on. Then, she’d marched inside the kitchen, and pots and pans would start clanging. That was typically her. She didn’t know how to do things quietly. I didn’t appreciate it initially, but when I mentioned that to her, she said sorry and laugh. Next day, she’d be back doing the same thing.

I learnt to live with that. She wasn’t staying with us for long, and the fact that, she’d always invite me to join her for dinner, made me tolerate her. We became great friends. Through her, I discovered Hampstead Heath. A park, which until now, I’d only heard of but never visited. We picnicked there, took evening strolls, watched birds, attended concerts – classical, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and also a Ronan Keating concert, which had she not beseeched me, I’d never have attended. However, despite the rain and the sludge, I enjoyed the show.

But now, the door of her room is wide open. I just got out of my room to go to loo. Swathe of sunlight is flooding the bed she used to sleep, the desk where she wrote, god knows what. The corridor, which at this time used to be dim, is bright as the light escapes from her room. But my heart is heavy. I’m missing her. This house too. I’ve never met a girl like her, chances are, I won’t also. She is special.