wildflower: April 2009

I have met you Before

Long long ago. Before we met. Before I fell in love. We had met before, before we met to fall in love. Too many befores. Now the story.

It was a late summer morning. I was was wondering if I should be off to a gathering of some knowns and some unknowns. I was somewhat younger and going alone to one such place, was a perceived as a risk. A risk because, what if only the unknowns turned up and the knowns didn't. What if I was trapped in a lonely chamber with people I cudn't talk to?

But nevertheless, like always in life, I took the risk. I wanted to remember some forgotten faces.

We sat there, under the shade of old neem trees. The hot air, waited. Dry leaves, hung in the air. Time was moving slow. The knowns and the unknowns hung around. Talked stuff.

And amongst those scores of unknowns, one was Him. I didn't notice him. He hadn't noticed me either. We belonged to some 'unnoticeable'-subspecies of humans. But as I faintly remember, there he was. Somewhere amidst that crowd. A voice lost in the noise. We stood beside each other for sometime. We talked to the same person, without talking to each other. I faintly remember.

We parted that late summer morning, without knowing that we had met. To meet again. To fall for what seemed inevitable then. And to benumb each other with the opulence of it. But then to break apart, forever. Like.... oh I can't find an example.

And irony is, all the time we were together, I never found the time to tell Him, that -I have met you Before-

the lights are off, there is music, soft& smooth. and there persists the smell of a dry rose in the air.

Made for Each-Other

After work I was rushing through the busy bylanes of the home-bound city. I had to meet someone. This someone and I had been meeting for a couple months then, and I was in a hurry because I didn't want him to leave and hence stand me up.

If a man and woman meeting this way is called a date, then so be it, call this a date. A Dutch date, if you know what that means.

We had consciously changed the venue from Cafe Coffee Day to this one. To something more open air. Because we wanted it to be more akin to the worlds we lived in, more noisy, more unkempt, more real.

This one was inside some sort of a park. Near the parking lot of the park. We took the table at the corner. That felt like the end of the world because beyond that the bush began that separated the coffee shop from the park. Evenings were a busy time for this place but, you know big cities, no one is concerened what you are upto is such a relief.

Bill boards flashed on my face. Traffic got more messy. But hail the metro! I reached before it got to totally dark. In the dim-lit darkness, I figured out his outline fiddling with his phone. A smile took over all the previous expressions on my face.

Had I been in his place, waiting, I would have stared out into the open. I don't know what this difference between us meant. Nevertheless I came to meet him as it was routine on friday evenings.

I reached the table and dragged my chair out. He kept looking into the phone except for a momentary glance at me. I leaned back on my chair and tossed my hair back. Breathed in deep, relaxed.

I wanted to sit like that for sometime and then get up and leave. My mouth was too tired to talk, eyes too tired to see.

Waiter came in, I ordered my coffee. And sat there trying to get over the day. He kept doing things that would be classified as the antithesis of paying attention. Weren't we just table-mates?

I felt an urge to go home, for my couch. I grabbed my purse, paid and stood up. Almost simultaneously he stood up and said " I will walk you home"
"Walk me home?"
"Hmm yah?"
"You mean till the cab? "
"Why is that a problem?"
"Not at all"

I give up when we start conversing in questions. I almost immediately agree.

~made for each other~

mygodofsmallthings ;)

coming back home every summer had become a default part of the yearly cycle. though she always wanted it to be everything else but it, nevertheless it was.

with the onset of scorching heat, she would find herself dragging the wheels of her suitcase on the dusty lane that lead home. some trees would have gained delicate new coppery leaves, and some would still be losing them; distant birds would be chattering sweet-shrill calls and she would inevitably find herself sitting on the veranda of the house whose walls had stood mute for a hundred odd years. just sitting there and waiting for it to get evening. and when it gets evening, she would wait for it to get morning. life in summer particularly felt like long waiting sequences interspersed with spells of sullen indifference.

and so like every year, she was clinking her cup on the saucer and telling herself, this is it. the sugar left an uneasy aftertaste. the one you try to scrape off your tongue by running your teeth on it.

for a certain while she wondered why nothing grew on the hill facing the house, and then took to her feet.

the earth had craked up like drought. the surviving creepers waited for the gardener's afternoon water-dash. the mild breeze filling her nostrils was dry enough to suck all the water off her lungs.

she walked barefeet, all around, in the channels that were dug out to water the plants, in the steps that housed marigold in winter, on the concrete around the banyan trunk, on the sand that has been brought to get the first storey done but had been forgotten eversince.

she walked until the dust getting into the cracks in her feet hurt and until she wet them in the water of the gardener's green hosepipe. she made mud out of it and soaked her feet in it and waited for it to dry.

later when the power went off, a darkness consumed the house. she sat by the window and stared out. and silence and darkness became the best of friends.

wildflower ;)

Realization

Last night when I was chewing a chiken leg that tasted like chocolate, I saw a man sitting on the table to my left. I could see his right eye, half of his nose, a little bit of a stubble. The sleeve of his shirt, he's folded a little, left unfolded a little. Frankly, honestly, truly, I found him appealing to the hormones. Any woman would.

His baritone voice caught me when I caught him almost scolding the waiter. Not that I encourage such rashness. But when it's somewhat crude, the attitude, one gets inclined, doesn't she? When one is bored of the sugar-sweet variety i.e..

So all this kept happening and I was chewing the legs of chocolate. Red brown, tomato brown, chocolate brown. Dreams of capturing and imprisioning Adonis and taking him home to show your friends, the catch!

On his table, whisky on the rocks. The faint golden intoxicating color of alcohol. Things he says once, he's done with. Twenty six-seven? Couldn't be less than that.

He talks business, he talks money. I talk, I giggle with my friend. Once I laugh loud enough to make him turn and look at us. Then I see his left eye and his full face. In my mind, I say, not bad. Good infact!

Then we pay up, get up & leave. I think for the man for five minutes and then my mind moves back to three days ago. To one realization, one truth, that must stand by me, for a lifetime.

What lay under a face is something I care to know nothing about. I do this being very aware that what lies under the face matters the most. Face is a facade. And I made a casual promise to me, not to get carried away by it.

What appeals to my mind, will always overrule all that appeals to the eye, to the hormones, i.e. And so be it!