Honeymoon

There was this girl, of those numerous girls I have quoted unawares. She and I met as strangers, introduced each other to each other as we struggled through our sluggish jobs, being the only two females around, kind of made us fall together. We would often lunch sitting by the window looking down at the road below, which I later found out was not a road but the top of a flyover. But that happened much later one day when I gauged the dimensions, standing alone beside our tall, really tall office building.

Once in a while she would made me eat half of her sturdy boiled egg, sliced in the middle and salted, to help me walk through my disgusting lunch. And give me that awkwardly toothy smile, grin. Almost like a loving pet would grin at you, without minding if the smile fit in picturesque or not. I don't take the trouble to describe her face, I am pretty bad at remembering faces and worse at describing them. To save me the trouble of that, I classify faces into two neat categories. Pretty and ugly. She was quite obviously the latter. In fact, to an extent that I had heard people ridiculing and bursting out laughing about how ugly she was. 

One morning, she asked me about the touristy places from around where I was from. As a practice I gurgled out the name of a certain beach town where everyone went. Everyone. Then almost in one breath, she told me. Told me that, she was going to honeymoon there. And she said that with authority, like she had he tickets in her hand. I choked, metaphorically. And I felt the same ridicule that those who laughed did. My first reflex was to ask her, If she was joking.

Because the idea of a honeymoon seemed too far fetched given what she was. Given the world we live in, the ugly are invariably denied the candy floss of romance. But I didn't ask her that. Instead I felt a stab of envy when I hugged her when she told me a few days later that she was engaged to the friend she was in love with for years. 

Months later, she put up pictures of them, playing with the waves in the certain beach town I had mentioned. Her husband was as thin as a sickle. And my friend, she looked spherical, in those pictures, fitting perfectly into the edges of the sickle as they posed with each other before the vast blue sea. She would put up pictures of them cutting cakes and putting off candles celebrating monthly anniversaries of their wedding. Some more of them and oddly baked home made cakes, on their rickety rooftop. 

People still laugh though, laugh their asses off, looking at those pictures and how funny they appear. But not I. I have been shut up for good. Love, when found, can make life so speechlessly beautiful. And when left unfound, can make it fall apart into a thousand pieces each moment.  

6 comments:

CRD said...

Very true. Love ain't shallow

Blasphemous Aesthete said...

Durgesh,
(or D, or Nandini,)


Anything that you might consider appropriate (except wildflower, for once).
I believe everything you write is true, if not your's then of those you've 'quoted unawares', from the time I started reading to you, to the time I deliberately did not because I felt sad, and then back to those times when I am reading them again.

But if being brute-fully honest is writing this, THIS post in particular, then this truth is far more beautiful than the lies we weave around the fickle seeds of illusory love.

I've been told, much by the admirers of your writing who happen to know you in person too that you don't appear the way you write here, this image and that image are sharply contrasting. And yet, I believe that this one is real, maybe more, might be less that the other one.

I loved, loved this piece, maybe because I might have done this so many times to people in my head, but that stab, was real.

Regards,
Blasphemous Aesthete

wildflower said...

Anshul,

Who dares to unravel who we really are? The person that writes or the person that is. We would rather just preserve the beauty in this ambiguous existence and BE. Thanks.

Writefully Yours said...

Honeymoon pics- Awkwardness followed my laughter and then a pinch of jealousy! Yep, Love ain't shallow coz shallow feelings aren't good enough to be a transcript worth writing, reading and re-reading...

Great comment by Anshul

Blasphemous Aesthete said...

It would be a beautiful lie to know and yet not know.
I think I'd not choose this way, before my mind's made up.

Anonymous said...

y o y u write this beautiful??!!!i m smitten :)