Chapter 8 Nala: A Play

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.
(Ecclesiastes, 3: 1)

The cycle of an oversea student's life in UK.
I. Arrival: Summer. Not knowing one's whereabout, not even the arsehole to the earhole. Calling home everyday, or lover. Enduring, oh, appreciating the quality and the price of British food. Learning English--attention, English, not American English. Lots to read, lots to see, nothing under the sun is not novel.
II. Relocating/ed: Autumn. Beginning studying in one's institute. New accommodation, new flatmates, new classmates, new goals. Getting to know bars, pubs, parties, boys and girls, supermarkets, bargainning price goods, part-time jobs, essays, boys, girls.
III. (Up)rooted: Winter. Being alone in the flat. Seeing friends off in Heathrow. Bloody essays. Reading. Breaking-ups(statistics-supported!!!). Being alone in UK. Waking up and going to bed whilst the moon hangs up high. Being alone. Snowing, quiet white world. Being alone quietly.
IV. Re-conception: Spring. More sunshine. More colours. More time for walk. More sightseeing, more pub talks. More trains. More meeting-ups, more dancing events. More emails, more arrangements. More nights wondering what is s/he thinking. More plans. More and more people turning up as couples.
V. Realisation: Summer. Degree dissertation. Reading reading reading reading. Complaining in pubs. Playing pulls only to get oneself distracted. Couple seperated, or thinking about seperation. Recalling another place called motherland. Trying to extend UK Visa. Stucked in dissertation writing as well as relationships as well as to-be-memories as well as...

Nala is not married nor single, which distinguishes her from the herione of Henrik Ibsen's play. Her real name reminds people more of the fair provocative lady in Zola's erotic novel.
The comments I heard about her are countless, but one from my Italian flatmate is worth of writing down here: Gosh, I would be ashamed dancing with her.
She was like a fire dancing in the hall, which I didn't know when I met her for the first time. At the beginning I didn't even think she's pretty. Cute, maybe, but too much acting in her behavior. However, why did I turn Rina down when she approached, asking me if I wanted to be in a play with her? I knew that, somehow, it was Nala I wanted to be in the play with, not Rina. Which was why I didn't turn down Nala.

The plot: silly experienceless boy trying to ask a clever girl out, and the girl, while realising the helplessness of the boy, and after turning down lots of stupid proposals of his, offering the boy one simple easy way to have a date.

An eternal debate: is it life imitating art, or art imitating life? Of course the stupid play done in the first summer was totally not qualified as art, yet it rehearsed what happened in the next spring. Only this time the girl didn't help out much, or, the boy had even less intelligence then the one in the play.

The next time I talked to Nala, it was the second summer already. We met up for a good-bye coffee. For two hours we talked yet never the same as before. Nothing personal, only future plans were slightly related to. It was beyond my comprehension, although I didn't really want to understand anything about it. She agreed to meet, we met, and then we parted. It was like something that had to be done, without real cause or reason. I sent her e-card on her birthday, she returned a christmas card. Neither of us had heard from each other ever since.