The Pursuit of Depression

I

I owe my existence partly to Chuck Lorre. I wanted to write this sentence for a long time on this blog. One, because I quite like the way his name sounds, like his surname itself was a story. And two, because I do. From the bottom of my stomach, I am thankful to you, Chuck Lorre. For being there, throughout. Whenever I have needed to unscrew my life, watching an episode or two of his or his kind, has seen me through. Even when there was nothing else to hold on to, he was.

So, recently I read this somewhere that dear Chuck has this tendency to fish out the singular point of contention even from a paradise. As in, he looks out for things that worry him even in the most hunky dory of situations. Far more than being a tendency, it becomes a habit, then an obsession, when you just can't stop worrying. You be constantly perturbed by phantoms you can't see and then, life screws itself irreversibly up. 

I suffer from that, yes. That's the one governing pivot about which I revolve and lose my way numerous times every day. We, Chuck and I pursue Depression. You know unlike Will Smith, who pursues quite the opposite. He is the antithesis of us.

II

On the other hand, there is the nitty gritties of love. Time bound phases in an hour when you need nothing else. When he pins your head down onto is lap, but only mildly. By shutting close the lids of your eyes with his two fingers. So that, you being the little girl you sometimes are, aren't overcome by the whim to open your eyes wide and just see. Him, his face right above yours. Holding you down that way, he drifts closer to you. You can feel the warmth of his breath growing lukewarm. The whiff of air leaving his nostrils, you can now feel on your upper lip and then he plays a bit of it upon your other lip, chin. You can feel him, milimeters away, teasing the air between your faces, but he isn't there yet. He's playing it slow, real slow. Testing your patience. Which apparently is the key to a lot of things. And you can't see a damn thing, his fingertips keep you in perfect pitch black darkness. You go crazy and part your lips to sigh. Then, exactly then. He. Seizes. You. 

The wait before that, feeling his hot exhaled air, was the Pursuit of Happyness. Yes. 

Ladies Tailor

Many rains come and go, the anguish of existence drags on. Unlike the unforeseen shower of today though. It's such a relief when you forget for a while, everything. The infinite pleasures of amnesia.

Years ago, when I was younger, there was this woman at the bent of the street. She ran a Ladies Tailor. By the name such places go. It was hell of a similar rain. The one that was never to be. The smell of dry earth rose and I waited on one of those benches they put out for girls. To sit and wait on, go through repulsive design booklets. For neck designs, for sleeve sutures on dresses you wanted manicured to fit you. Because you were only seventeen and there was an entire life ahead of you. Your skin dimpled and glowed in the summery sun. Those days, I sat on one of those benches waiting for my turn, for the queue ahead of me to dwindle and finish. It thundered and splashed outside and there was no electricity, and yet I waited for her to measure me up.

Some bitches even elbowed you to get in front of you in the line, such species that. Their menagerie continues to exist. And for their long lives, it felt like decades before the Ladies Tailor even looked at you. She was such a poker face. God knows, she had that Robert de Niro face of pitiful disgust. She would ask you to step out of your shoes and then treat you like a lifeless doll as she turned you around and strung her tape all over you. Like some wild animal she would grunt if you didn't keep your hand straight or bent your neck even a little bit. 

Inside, it felt like she ran her own slave army of tailors. Young girls and middle aged unemployed men sewing and sewing till blindness, both physical and metaphysical. Like bonded labor under her iron hand. She wore her sari like a man would, the pleats would run right in the middle across her chest. Exposing whatever was to the sides. Yet you never dared to point that out to a friend. Her deliveries were always way beyond the promised date on the receipt. And the work only about average. Nevertheless I never stopped going to her, those days. 

The delay never messed up with my life as I pondered it would. Nothing ever does, until of course it does. 

Paro

They lived in one of those dungeon like apartments. Hidden in a corner was the mattress which she unfolded in the night and slept upon. Along with her other flatmates, several women living alone together, sharing home cooked dinners of foreign vegetables. Low on fat. Paro was used to staying home all day, all afternoon as the others left for work. She had been laid off, it was 2009. Some said she had been fired, there had been a drunken affair at work. But people say such things, the whispers of the wind shan't be trusted. She was on a semi solid diet those days, to shed some belly fat. Some slurpy wheatish soup she drank two times a day and that was that. In the evenings, she left for the market an hour away, wearing the slippers and capris she had gotten from the weekend flea market and came back with bag full of beans and climbers and creepers of all kind. To be chopped and boiled and eaten with pickle as she sat beside with her bowl of soup. Her boyfriend lived in another town, they had met online. He was younger, still studying. Paro would say, since she wasn't making rent for the last few months, she would move in with her boyfriend as soon as he graduated, with a job and everything. Paro was the eldest of three daughters. Not necessarily pretty, this one. Her face was large with features defined good enough. Sleepy eyes and a nice pair of black lips. Her hair, fell till her waist. Curled in their own insane uneven manner. She would often knot them to have them in place as her heart fluttered each time she imagined the future looking at the night sky through the iron grille ringing their dungeon like balcony, and smoking. 

Apostrophe

Human beings, sometimes have this thing. They know for certain that is. Instead of swimming in the black pool of chaos. When introduced for the first time, to each other, they knew they were going straight to bed. There was no doubt about that, no negotiation. It was something that was being forced upon either, neither had any upper or lower hand. They were sitting on the exact same plane, knowing the one truth that there was. A compulsive force drawing them to each other. An understanding had notoriously crept up, where there was none. This was years ago.

It's rare, this kind of love. Without its baggage. The usual baggage you know. The whim for a marriage or the craving for a baby. All of this was absent. I praise it so, because, it was love in the most well-contained sense. Love exactly within the definition of love. No extrapolations. Or deductions and suppositions.

It's made to believe, that it was amicable. The separation. Not as messy, neither was torn apart, so it seems from the surface. No howling or smashing of phones. They both, were old enough to break free. Young enough to start afresh again. To a bystander though, it caught him by surprise. The bystander gazed on, unable to understand the chemistry, the union and the decomposition. An involved bystander, that is.

Today, they live in the city by the sea. He probably is seein' another woman. They are still friends. They must go out for coffee for the lack of better company, on some days. They must relive and feel the friction between their hearts. But there would be absolutely no will to turn back. Are they afraid, that it might be messy this time around? Or have they really fallen apart this well.

Z

Inspite of the more than a couple of times for which you have broken my heart, and for the one gigantic time, I broke yours in the end. I don't know what I would do if you suddenly walked in through that door. On the edge opposite, I sit talking to a stranger. Would I turn to face you? I would dammit. But would I freeze? Like a mummified doll. In awe of the man I had learnt to love. One can never predict, can she. Would you still have that humor, and make me ripple, the way you did, then, when we had a horizon. A time, a corner, one wish. Unlike the futility of the present. What would I do if you walked in. With your gaunt cheek bone, the ash grey sweatshirt. What would I do? Will my legs obey and stand up. Or should my eyes ignore and look away. My heart with all her fossilized pain, what would keep her put in the thoracic cavity. Would I drop her on the floor, accidentally and scream. Will I rush to the toilet and cry. Would I say hi. Or faint, yeah that would be good. I have always imagined fainting. Should you walk in through that door.