Finale

Find prequel here

He came in at 3:30 in the morning. In the night. Julie must have opened the door. Usually I would set an alarm for that sort of thing. To wake up and usher him in. But somehow, I hadn’t. It was a Saturday. I woke up much after 9, by that time he was up and about in the house. In the tiny balcony with pigeon nests and the potted croutons, in the living room by Julie’s recent cacti. Julie had shaken me awake when she left for work.

“He’s here bitch!”

“What? Who?”

“Oh c’mon. Your lover. Boyfriend. One night stander. Whatever you two are calling it”, she whispered.

A lot of reality sunk in. My chest felt heavy, filled with smoke, dry and sorrowful. I shut my eyes and smashed my face on the pillow, attempting to sleep for another half an hour or so.

My room was still dark, only streaks of sunlight entered through the gaps in our deep maroon curtains. I heard her walk out and shut the door close, softly. I heard her make an excuse to the person outside, probably sitting on the cane chair in the living room, which was the only place to sit in there in our minimalistic nine hundred square feet two-bedroom. Apart from the guest mattress on the floor where he most probably had slept his early morning off.

After that, probably around 10, I walked out of my room toothbrush in hand, eyes still closed. Mouth still foul. I heard him the kitchen. He was fumbling around a little bit. Probably looking for material to make tea. Those soft sounds made that heaviness in my chest return. I walked up to the kitchen threshold. He turned to look at me.

Three weeks ago we had met again. After that one day dalliance in his apartment in his city. After what four or five years of an on and off unpleasant and yet wildly tumultuous almost one-sided affair. From my one-side. Three weeks ago, he had met me to tell me, he was serious about it all. Suddenly, I was the only woman. That incident, of the telling me so, had make me irreversibly nervous with joy immediately. But sometime after all that joy had reversed.

“I don’t think we have got milk. It was my turn to get the milk, I am sure I forgot”

We didn’t have a fridge, a few months ago the old one went so bad we had to sell it and never got around to buying a new one.

“We don’t have a fridge, we buy everything once in two days, and everything goes bad”

“Let’s go buy a fridge then”

I put the brush in my mouth and half smiled at him.

“There must be milk powder, here somewhere”

I pointed to the sugar and tea packets and pulled out the sauce pan from the pile of clean utensils and went back to brushing my teeth.

I turned away from him to shut my eyes and remember what he looked like a moment ago. He was in khakis and a button down shirt. He didn’t wear a sweater or a jacket anything. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, I could see his fair hands. The sun shone on orange on his chin. Bits of beard stood on his cheeks. There was no goatee. His pants were rather lose. Or maybe they were alright. I needed to assess them again. His feet was flatter than regular people’s feet. His toes almost made him look perched, like a bird. His toe nails were clear, thick, yet clear. Unlike mine which always had tiny bits of nail paint stuck on them, weeks’ sometimes months’ old. I was wrapped in a shawl. It covered my loose onesie sleeping dress with animal prints, elephants and giraffes and rhinoceroses. I wondered what he must think about that.

I reentered the kitchen after wiping my face dry, with the face towel strung over my shoulders. The tea was boiling by then. I saw him again. He was smiling more now.

“Good morning to you”, he said smirking, as if to ensure that I was totally up.

“Same to you too”

“I leave at 4:30”

“Oh”

“My flight back is at 4:30, so I would clear your house by 2:30, is what I meant”

“Julie likes you, you can stay longer if you want”

“I like Julie too, decent girl”

“I am sure you two would make each other very happy”

“Yeah and so would her Dubai based fiancé, I should hope”

“Oh, she told you”

“Yes of course, had a nice chat with her in the morning. We talked every day and how come you never told me she’s getting married in three months”

“No, we didn’t talk every day. And I didn’t think you would like to know, too much information.”

“But I would like to know if I am getting married in three... seven months”

My mind felt hollow, the foul smell in my mouth had returned. He focused his eyes on me, while I pretended to strain the tea into the cups. I handed him over his making sure our fingers didn’t touch. I cupped mine, trying to absorb all that warmth into my ice cold fingers.

I took a sip of mine, it was milky and sweet. The way I liked my tea, the way I had told him a dozen times I liked my tea and about the severe importance of tea in my mornings and afternoons. He was still holding his cup by the handle, he hadn’t started sipping it yet. As if he was waiting for some kind of answer. A few minutes into the act, almost exhausted by the tension of waiting for my answer, he resumed being normal.

When he had told me three weeks ago that he wanted us to get married, I had told him I didn’t believe in proposals. The sounded very archaic, very Jane Austen. He had never read Jane Austen, and I was very sure a man like him liked his answers in yeses and nos. Not similes and metaphors. Definitely not quotations of great fiction. Pushed further by my continuing silence back then, he had asked me to think about it. Like seriously consider.

I had tried very hard to cover my shock and awe. My temples were hot, my hands were cold, and my heart was going wild. We were at the coffee shop just outside the airport. I had gone to see him off. Just like he had come to see me off when I had been to his place. It had been a cloudy and dull day. I had taken the day off. My phone was getting inundated with calls from work which I had to take because I was their slave. But now when I wanted the phone to ring, the bloody call never came. He was holding my hands on the table, subtly so that people wouldn’t stare at us. And he asked me again.

I rattled with my passive aggressive shit told him he didn’t have a ring. How was that even considered a proposal? Doesn’t he watch romantic comedies? The smile from his face vanished. He was angry now. I had hurt him. He had the upper hand now. The color of his eyes changed, the lengths of his breaths lengthened. His tone changed when he spoke next. This love was a constant power struggle, a tireless battle of egos.

“What kind of ring would you like?” he had asked in a bossy commanding kind of way.

“That’s beside the point.”

He hadn’t even told me that he loved me. All that had felt very weird. I, who with all her conviction knew that I loved him deeply, which was probably a serious infatuation to begin with but had rapidly turned into a serious attraction and then into love in a matter of days. I had been in love with him through days and weeks and months, even when he had vanished from my life, even when he had forgotten me for other things, I had waited for him desperately through all that. That moment I was happy too, despite being terrified and in between I felt so full with that joy, so overwhelmed that I felt I would rupture. But I didn’t know how to behave. I must have emanated very contrasting signals.

“Let’s go and buy a ring now, we can do that”, he said sounding normal, less angry.

“You will miss your flight”

He could have said he didn’t care. I would have loved to go shopping anyway. I have never been with anyone to the airport who had missed a flight. I was very punctual and careful. Never missed a flight bus or train. This could be exciting. In that instant, had he bought me a ring I would have said yes. Back calculating from the posterity we always project ourselves into, I would like to think so. But he had said that the next time he would get me a ring definitely. For sure, without fail.

We had parted that day rather confused, me particularly in sort of a daze. Had he been planning on revealing what he did and asking what he wanted of me, he would have been relieved but I was too perturbed to even answer. My past came rolling back at me.

I had taken the bus back from the airport even though he had insisted on putting me in a cab. It was just afternoon, there was no need to take a cab, it costed thrice as much. It was a long ride in the bus, I had cried amongst strangers who appeared as if they couldn’t see me cry and wipe my tears away and then cry again and repeat.

I imagined him in his flight, quietly reading his thin travel books, not books on travel, but thin books that he bought just because they could be finished within the span of two flights, one book for every journey, half on the onward, and half on the return. I imagined him on his stop over. In strange airports, in new cities, amongst people who looked very alien. Alien air, alien water, longing for the familiarity of home. I imagined him listening to songs. Imitating singers in his soft husky whispering voice, sometimes. And I held myself back from crying. I obviously couldn’t marry him. We had been through a lot of shit. This was just not feasible.

More so because I had found out a lot more than I would like on that visit. He had swiftly converted into a man of clay from a man of dreams. His fissures were only too visible. His flaws real and within reach. His gaunt face within reach to be plundered with my kisses warned me of all the past he had been through. I warned myself to tread lightly, to tread with tremendous caution because he seemed fractious and anything I might attempt may crumble him, just. I was so frozen with restraint, I just sat that and observed him, go on and on.

He held me in his arms, and we had sex a few times but I as so much in stupor that I couldn’t break out of it. He asked me to snap out of whatever it was keeping me but I was clearly rendered unable to. He re-narrated stories from his childhood but somehow the humor from those had vanished. Unlike the first times over phone when he had narrated them and I had laughed and laughed and fallen for him, this time his telling me in person felt charmless, serious. For instance, how once he had mistakenly seen his father conducting an operation on one of his patients had battered him as a child and he couldn’t stop puking. Or how he had driven their new car with his mother to test drive the thing and they had gotten lost, finding their way out after half a day and running out of petrol. I didn’t know why I had been amused earlier but then I couldn’t just see it anymore. It was the shock of reality that went on.

In my room we had opened the bottle of wine he had brought for me, his first gift of any kind and perhaps the last too and we swigged it from paper cups and then when we were very drunk, directly from the bottle. Julie had excused herself for the entire weekend like a conscientious flat mate and we had cooked a meal together or two, before deciding to order food, Chinese, Thai, whatever I had in my whims and fancies. He entertained me, he tried. But somehow he seemed to have a shortfall. Sometimes he failed by thin margins, sometimes by large irrecoverable ones.

Probably I was too much into myself. But then I asked him about Cora, his college girlfriend. We had never brought her into our conversations. She was beyond reach, just like the few boys from my past. But now Cora had risen from the past. And he would have to spill the beans about her. It turned out Cora was not just limited to college and they had continued seeing her for a couple of years after graduating. She was vivacious and pretty, he showed me an old photo of theirs on his phone. They both looked sheepish and sleepy in their sweatshirts, almost like twins because they were both lanky, almost equally. They looked as if they were drunk with love.

“So why did you two put an end to it?”

“It was mostly the working in separate cities that did it, primarily. Also she was really into a new colleague when she had just started working”

“Oh my gosh, were you jealous?” I stressed on my surprise. Because he played as the cool chap all the time. His emotions under his control, firmly. He never broke down, barely even fumbled. But the color of his face changed on the mention of this.

“Not exactly. But she was far too ahead with him to even look back at us and regret”

“Oh you poor baby” I mocked him very sarcastically, because I was quite high.

He forced his mouth on mine and bit my lips hard and wouldn’t stop until I apologized. I was afraid it would leave a mark and I would be embarrassed to step out. But it left no such mark. I had made him sad reminding him of all that. Just to balance the scales I told him about a certain someone in my past as well. Someone I had briefly seen, over half a dozen encounters a few years ago. For a few months wherein I had been temporarily abandoned by my permanent paramour. He laughed and continued working on some more bites I would be embarrassed about the coming week.

Even with the scales assumed to have been balanced, something didn’t feel right. Upon probing further, it dawned upon me that he met Cora several times when I was even so desperately flirting with him. He justified that he was always looking for some sort of closure with her because she was his first and he always wanted to make sure there was nothing left, not even the slightest, before walking away.

I could have spilled some more truths to balance the scales on that as well. I had engaged in a friendly romance with a friend for a couple of weeks, but not to explore any untaken chances. Only merely to fill the vacuum that newly begotten youth had got me. But I believed this wouldn’t go down well, if I told him about that friend. You never know how territorial men could get. And if he was territorial, or anything of that sort, some secrets were better kept sealed.

“So where is Cora now? Are you guys keeping in touch?” I pinched him again.

“Should I? Do you want me to?” he retorted, sounding authoritative.

“I don’t want to get into your business. But you never know, if you left their some chances unexplored. What if there might be something, I wouldn’t want you to blame me years later saying that ‘Why didn’t you tell me to check with Cora one last time’ and what would I do...”

He cut me off suddenly by asking “So you intend to be with me years later”

“Haven’t I been always there? Except when you have brushed me aside me for women from the past, or other newer hotter women, or work commitments, or family affairs, or your friends, or women from the past, or newer hotter…”

I suddenly realized I was wailing. Very loudly, my throat hurt, how loudly I was crying. He held me on his lap and comforted me by pushing me into a ball but my crying wouldn’t stop. I thought I would free myself from his clasp and run, but there was nowhere to go. I gave in and couldn’t stop crying either.

“I have loved you, always. Always, through my entire fucking life. Since the day I met you. I have loved you”, I heard myself loudly confessing. All the drinking had done the trick. I couldn’t see his face because I was looking away, we were both looking in the same direction, at the walls. “But what have you done to me…”

“It’s okay, it’s gonna be okay, baby”, he whispered and smothered my neck with kisses from behind.

Shortly after I must have fallen asleep. I must have passed out for two hours or more. I could feel the cramps in several parts of my body, I woke up with a jolt and sat cross legged on the bed. I must have scared the fuck out of him. He must be petrified, oh my god.

He was behaving too normally. He looked happy in fact. I had not the slightest idea what had transpired in his head. He looked up from his phone.

“It’s time, I have to call a cab to the airport”

“Is it that late?”

“No, it’s just after 3. You wanna come see me off?”

“Will you pay my return cab fare?”

He smiled and pressed his palm on my forehead. It felt cool, a shiver almost went down my limbs.

“What are we doing!? I will go wash my face and changeup” I left in a hurry.

I splashed a lot of water on my face, still the heaviness won’t go.

When I came out he must have guessed my situation. “We will get you some coffee at the airport café or something. I am sure the airport must have something nice”, he said sounding irreversibly posh.

“I’m not so sure” I said trying to bail myself out of it.

From inside the cab, the high way to the airport shone in the filtered sunlight from a cloudy sky. The monsoon had not retreated properly. The clouds wore a dirty white color and appeared ominous. It felt as if the rain was waiting.

“I think I left my umbrella at home” I said rummaging through my handbag. He appeared pensive. Almost borderline lost. “What is it?” I asked him.

“What is what?”

“What is wrong with you?” I quickly repeated “What on earth is wrong with you?” I sounded more concerned the second time.

“Nothing is wrong. Although it looks like it’s going to rain. Too bad about that umbrella”

I laughed nervously. Attempting to keep him going in the conversation. But he continued to stare out the window. Had I succeeded in completely alienating him by my nonsensical intoxicated blabber earlier.

“This is not our usual Sunday afternoon traffic. Usually there is more. Much more”

“Oh, is there?”

“Yes I mean the cab barely moves. Also, we are hardly inside the city anymore. This is practically outskirts.”

For a minute there, he retreated and looked at me. In a manner that almost felt condescending. In a way to warn me to keep away with my fake attempts at conversation. To give up trying to trivialize what had happened earlier.

I felt depressed in there. Couldn’t wait for us to reach the airport. I almost nudged the driver on the shoulder to drive faster. I looked up the cafes at the airport on my phone, to be sure that there were no good ones.

“Like I said, no good café at the airport. I think I should just come back ASAP and have my coffee at home. Julie will be back by then. I am sure I can exploit her love for me to make me a good cup that will help me with the hangover. I after all am the broken hearted one, amongst the two of us...” I giggled hopelessly.

This time he looked at me. His eyes were between anger and sympathy. A terrible intermingling of emotions that.

“I just want to retract whatever I said earlier. I do not love you. You wouldn’t have taken me seriously I am sure. These things happen when a girl drinks so much wine”. I was meted out cold silence again.

I rolled down the windows to get in some air, casually warning the driver to turn off the AC. The cool air got into my lungs and breathed back some strength into me. “I am sure, you haven’t taken me seriously.”

I touched him behind his neck, squeezing a bit of his flesh between my fingers and in a way forcing him to look at me. I could feel the dryness in my face, my eyes singed from any lack of focus, my movements still not sober.

He appeared to be deep in thought. As if taking one serious decision after another or weighing something against something else. He looked worried, for the years I had known him to be the man he is, he appeared worried. His eyebrows squeezed up dividing his forehead into lines. His eyes looked somewhat exhausted. He put his arm around me in the seat of the cab and brought me closer.

“Okay. Alright.”

“What is alright?”

“No I haven’t taken you seriously at all.”

“Good to know. Now we can get back to indulging in what we are good at”

“And what might that be?”

“You exploring chances with Cora perhaps and I writhing in self-concocted pain of heartbreak” I sank into his arms saying this. I couldn’t believe how loosely I was behaving. It was the alcohol perhaps. I chugged in some water and relapsed into his arms. I smelled his shirt, played with his collar, his buttons. I waltzed into a half sleep.

He woke me up when we drove into the airport. I went inside. He still had a lot of time, he had web checked in and everything. He found a decent coffee shop and none of my naysaying would work on him.

We sat down and shortly before getting up to leave, he asked me the question. Then he left.

For three weeks, my recently converted two sided love affair stifled me. It shouldn’t have. Why should it? Isn’t this what I had expected? Isn’t this the best that could happen? We were finally settled to see this through.

But this made me awkward and uncomfortable. Julie told me that it was going to be alright. Obviously she was enormously happy for me, for us both, as she pointed out. But there was something ashen about her expression that made me think deeper and deeper until I lost all track of what I was thinking.

He had called me to let me know that he would return through my city in a few weeks, and on the way back would like to know what I felt. The timeline made me dread. He was calm about the entire goings on. He had come out of his shell for a sometime only, probably in the cab to the airport when he had been stuck in indecision and had expressed worry on his face. But soon after he had said whatever it was he had been weighing for or against, quietly passed the ball to my court and retreated into his shell. Inert, as he always had been to the turmoil of short-lived romance.

But my angst of unrequited love had suddenly and uncontrollably transformed into anger. We might have never made it to this point. Given my chronic shyness, had he been even marginally more ignorant of me, we would have never made it to this point. And at that point I was too stoic to let any other force get the better of me. I loathed how my fates had turned thanks to a sliver of chance. And I regretted it. It was very ironical, but I was going to refuse to him.

Obviously, he might think I was just trying to play hard to get. And if he did play hard, he might eventually get to it. But till then, I was refusing to jump to any conclusions. So I didn’t answer him in the three week interval. He even went out to buy a ring apparently and asked me if there was anything specific I wanted. I didn’t budge in my indifference.

And he’s finally here. In my apartment making tea. Giving me a timeline again by when he would leave.

“Do you want to see the ring? I got it on Tuesday. I would have sent you a photo. But wanted to show in person.” At that point he held my hands and kissed me. I looked at him in the eyes and told him we could keep the ring for later.

“How was your trip?” I asked.

“Same old, same old. Except that this time I experienced every minute of it what you had been feeling for years”

He sounded honest. Distraught even. Like he had shrunk my years of suffering into a span of three weeks and undergone it all.

“If only such fast forwards were possible!” I said, trying to sound indignant.

“Do you want me to beg?”

“Won’t be such a bad idea. But I wouldn’t recommend it”

We were getting nowhere this way. I took a shower and decided we should get some brunch. Considering it was too early for lunch.

“And you can get moving to the airport from the restaurant”

He looked perplexed and confused because he was trying to hide it. I told myself there is no going back on this. If I was letting him go, this was it. This was what I was supposed to do. Push him out for good.

I kept on going about my banter about films and books and my artsy friends. About places in the city that were a must go to. Probably, he should try them out the next time he is here. He gave me blank expressions that didn’t suit him and made him appear like a completely different person, someone I couldn’t recognize. He spoke in bits about his family. His mother, his brother, their small-town house. We had ordered a lot of food. There was some that I would pack and take for Julie I told him, the rest had to be left at the table. I offered but he paid. We stood out in the shade of the parapet, he had his small trolley with him. We were stranded in mid-September heat.

He appeared weak, vulnerable. A gust of warm wind came and blew my hair astray. He sized my face up in his hands and cupped my cheeks and smiled faintly.

“For posterity”

I didn’t stop him. He had accepted my refusal. In totality with whatever repercussions it might beget.

“Since I see no point in my staying further, I think, it’s time to hail that cab”

We hugged. I squeezed the flesh behind his neck for a bit and condensed that moment to be a source of warmth for cold years to come. Then he left and never explored our chance again.

So Long

In the cab, I was getting hallucinations of Mount Fuji. Closed confines make me nauseous. I’ve got vertigo I think. Curious things happen inside my ears. But then again, Mount Fuji. Did you know there are thirty six views of Mount Fuji. I couldn’t recall more than four. Mount Fuji under the bridge. Mount Fuji as seen from the bucolic fields of Japan. Mount Fuji from in between waves. The bloody red Mount Fuji erupting, the quiet dormant volcano of centuries. Mount Fuji, like God, is omnipresent. Overlooking everything. No matter where you are, there is always a Mount Fuji behind you. Tiny or huge, nevertheless. And those nostalgically mesmerizing Ukiyo-e Japanese paintings by Hokusai. It meandered through my mind as the cabbie honked and halted in impenetrable traffic. I was so going to miss that flight, baby.   

My nausea wasn’t going to cure itself. And lemons were sparse. Minutes ago, I was telling him about my recurring bouts of yearning for raw mango slices dipped in salt and chili powder. Strange yearnings, you’ve got, he retorted. But that’s the only antidote for nausea, there is. With the onset of summer, raw mangoes come plenty in this country. This ain’t no Japan.

The mid-May sun shone relentlessly as we scrounged for a little bit of road to the airport. If I missed the flight, I would have to come back to his apartment. And that was not a feasible option after the motions we had just been through. My tongue felt funny, saliva accumulated beneath my tongue. That was it, I could puke any moment now. As one last resort, I closed my eyes tight and tried to remember the smell of cosmetic closet. It had an amalgamated smell of deodorants, body lotions, face creams, nail paint etc. I thought initially, that it was the previous tenant’s smell left behind in that closet. But then I shifted apartments and then I realized that the smell was mine. It feels backward to say that science still hasn’t found a way to preserve and carry smell, or have they. Our olfactory senses are underrated. My vomit subsided and I had two gulps of water. He could probably read the relief on my face.

My apartment otherwise stank of cigarettes. Almost perennially. A week after I had publicly proclaimed that I had quit. Just like it did the week before. I never quit, actually, I lie, for convenience. White little lies. Or because I read somewhere, that when you say it aloud, you feel scrutinized and your resolve to perform is doubled. But you double zero, it stays unchanged. Similarly, my resolve. I wanted to smoke again. I wouldn’t be able to, in the two hour flight.

I looked sidewise. Drops of perspiration on his forehead had dried up. His face nearly covered the vent of the air conditioner. I held his collar from the back of his neck and pulled him away. He smirked. A smirk suits his face. His almost pentagonal face, such a nice jawline he has, I thought. His glasses sat capriciously on his nose. Sliding down from time to time. He put them back in their place. Every time, without fail. Sometimes even before they had begun to nudge in the slightest manner. He is prone to his habits.

One cannot blame habits. He works in this city. Wakes up, goes about his ablutions. Walks fast to the train station, takes the train. Walks out, walks to his work place. Eats breakfast. Starts working. Goes about his work. Taking timely breaks in between. Eats and drinks in those. Smokes as well. When it’s time, he walks out, walks to the train station, takes the train. Takes the long lone walk to his apartment again, or hails an auto rickshaw, if he’s too tired. Eats dinner out of cans, sitting on the table, going through the morning paper and goes to bed, after two rounds of masturbation, of course. Sometimes, he skips dinner and goes for a drink. But rest of the routine remains the alike.

On most weekends, he has to work. But on some of those, he visits his aunt. She lives in the suburbs. With her borderline alcoholic husband and fourteen year old daughter. That fourteen year old cousin of his is as good as twice her age. She, apparently has a very four pronged sex life. Once rummaging through her cupboard of books, he found cigarettes, alongside a pack of condoms and an unused pregnancy kit. Kids, these days! When he told me so much about her, I told him, that if he rummages through my cupboard, he would find pretty much the same things. But she would probably have been more discreet and hidden them safe. In my case, he wouldn’t have to rummage that much.

But then I am much older. More than twice that cousin’s age. So that’s a given.

His lighthearted misogyny got to me. What is with his putting women in parenthesis. Of defining what she should be like and not otherwise. I began choosing the right words to rebuke him. Such that the idea is communicated and the man isn’t scathed much. But soon, I gave up on that idea. The traffic was relentless. The airport was still fifteen minutes away. May be I should just pick up my bag and walk.

But wait oh, I had no bag. I was there only for the day. The limited length of time of a few hours, rather. A few days ago, he had mentioned that he was planning on purchasing a washing machine. A washing machine, a big electronic purchase. A washing machine before a television or a fridge. He said he had become exhausted of washing all his white shirts. He wore white shirts only. Just like Donald Draper. Or sometimes, a few variations of white. Egg shell, cream, ivory, vanilla. Too many hues for a man, who by virtue of his gender is gifted colorblindness.

So he needed a washing machine. I suggested some brand my parents had for years, but rarely used. In my family, all our lives, we washed our clothes with our own hands and wrung them dry in the window railings of our middle aged two bedroom apartment. But he lived alone in the city and needed fresh shirts every day. He asked me do some further research. Should it be front load or top load. Should it be automatic or semi-automatic. I compared some brands for him, but he wasn’t satisfied with the long lists and short lists. After days of perambulations, motions between yeses and noes, he decided I should come down to his city and go to the store with him so that we could pick it out together.

His father was a surgeon. His mother had pigeon like eyes and read poetry. His brother was gainfully employed whose wife had just has twins. They all lived in a different town though. He lived alone in the city where he worked. I booked my ticket, before second thoughts creeped in. I had known him for three long years, on and off. How bad could a meeting go? It would be a make or break. Okay, then so be it. I took a long look at my tickets, both to and fro and rechecked the days and timings. The AMs and the PMs. Everything was in order.

Without allowing chance for much suspicion, I met him that day at the airport. He had come to pick me up though he had said he wouldn’t be able to make it. Our eyes met uncomfortably for a moment or two. We sized each other up. I remembered that I had shaved my armpits and my legs, that very morning. They would be bristly, but not before tonight. We shook hands, mine were soft, his were firm. He was smaller than I had imagined. His shoulders stooped and his glasses made him look nerdy than your average person. A lot of regions in my body, tingled at the same time. The temperature in my temples rose, suddenly.

We picked out the washing machine within ten minutes of entering the store and the sales girl told me that I was going to like it very much. He winked at me and smiled back at her. I disapproved of people jumping conclusions. We didn’t look married to each other at all. What newly married bride would wear a man’s t shirt and have a back packed slung on her shoulders and have hair opened and spruced up like a tree. Not many.

They said they would deliver to his address within the next three hours. He asked me what I wanted to do next. Subtly indicating that he hadn’t had any rigid plans in his head and was as flexible as I would like him to be. I was agile enough to say it aloud that I wanted to see his apartment. And anyway, shouldn’t someone be there to check if it was installed alright. He nonchalantly said mentioned that he left a spare pair of keys with the security guard of his building and tipped him heavily not to rob him.

But I insisted that we ensured it was done right and in our august presence.

He kissed me as soon as we shut the door and told me that he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold himself back if we came to his apartment. With that breakage of ice behind us, I closely inspected every square feet of space that was as he made me some black tea on his hot plate. I checked the window panes, the corners behind the shelves, the bathroom, the railing in the portico, the view to the road that spiraled lazily downstairs in the near soporific pre noon traffic. There was nothing to be found. And I didn’t know what exactly I was looking for. I hadn’t finalized that yet. Was it hidden cameras, was it belongings of his ex-girlfriend or paraphernalia that his mother had left behind from her last visit.

I made myself comfortable on a corner of his bed and sat with my feet up, crossed like in yoga. The pastel color bedsheets gave themselves away easily, they deserved a wash. With rocks or something. This man sure needed a washing machine. He entered with two cups and a plateful of crackers. Don’t mind the mess, he told me. Of course I didn’t. Living alone could be taxing, for some reasons apart from the tremendous freedoms it betroths one with. Like I never split a straw. I understand how life functions when you are a single person in a one bedroom, I told him.

We discussed rents in our respective cities and security deposits to be left interest free with the landlord, deductions from it thereon etc. After being through that, we came to public transport and climate change and so on. Somewhere in between, our fingers touched, accidentally, on the bed. I confessed, I never thought I would ever get to see him. Why, he asked. Because life doesn’t work out in our favor as much as it works out in its own meandering aimless manner. Not to our specific benefit, particularly, but we see others doing relatively better, leading distinctly more happy and content lives, at least from what it appears. And when sometimes, that meandering aimless life takes one capricious turn, bents that seem to have erupted from nowhere, we find ourselves at a loss. We can’t cope with that loss, because, one, we didn’t see it coming and two, the life of others.

The life of others, I long paused after this, is a tremendous phenomenon. He told me, he was the brighter of the two children his parents had. He didn’t think so. But everyone did. His older brother wasn’t as good at school as he was, there was no reason except that despite having been constructed from the same material, from zygotes that may have been very similar, his elder brother by three years turned out to be a shy individual. And because of that shyness, possibly, he slowly vanished into himself, like gobbled himself down. And became invisible, most of the times, outside of home. He graduated in Commerce and worked as an accountant in a company office near their house. It turned out, his brother never went anywhere far from where he had begun. He had gone to school and college, both in the same town. Worked there as well. When the time seemed right, a girl was chosen for him suitable for a quiet arranged marriage. Under strands of jasmine and marigold in a podium in their backyard, they took vows and hosted over three hundred guests, none of whom was the younger brother.

The younger brother, had cleared tougher tests, went to far off schools, paid hefty fees with big fat education loans. Worked in big blue chip companies, in their big blue sky scrapers. Travelled to foreign lands, lived months of his life in hotel rooms that were serviced right and refilled with supplies, but never felt like home. In fact the night his older brother got married, he was in a similar hotel room, several time zones away because his employer wouldn’t reimburse him for a trip back home for a family function in the middle of an assignment.

He met scores of men and women from different backgrounds, his mind opened up, he was supposed to be the one who had seen more of the world. Known life better. At his age, he was richer than the average man his age, and most definitely than his older brother. Though, by genes, he was as shy, but he wasn’t withdrawn like his older brother. He went about life welcoming it. And nothing too bad ever happened.

I wondered if his older brother viewed him as the ‘others’, the way, I viewed the ‘others’ in my life of ‘others’. I was the underdog in my family. Always had been, always will be. And anyway, precisely because of that, I never thought I would see him in person. Because good things happened primarily to other people, people who weren’t me.

And now, if he stopped calling me after I went back this time, an incident which had happened to a couple of my girlfriends, I would again be the one who didn’t benefit from this entire act of taking two flights on the same day, and having my expectations stacked like an unstable stack of pastries, waiting ultimately for it to crumble and create an irreparable mess. This would be a futile chain of events. Like a life lesson learnt.

But of course, I wasn’t telling him this. Did never want to bring up the topic of estrangement. Estrangement was the elephant in the room. He had known me for three years alright, after having accidentally stumbled upon on social media. But he left me intermittently in between. Without a word, he would stop calls and messages. Like one of us had died. Like one of us never existed. That would leave me high and dry. And dealing with terrible bouts of heartache. And months down the line, he would make acquaintance as if the sun rose the next day. Without an inhibition, without doubts towards what I might feel like. I envied his lack of fear of retribution but I reconciled nevertheless.

But I never did ask him what happened in the gaps he abandoned me. Did he get too busy with work? Did he get a real girlfriend? Did he have a reality check in his life because he was getting too close to me and was keeping too much at stake through half a dozen calls a day, besides score of text messages. I never asked him anything. Questions were risky. I was afraid of what he might say and my weak chested-ness to absorb that unpredictable truth. So we never brought up the elephant in the room. He never asked me if I had been seeing someone. If there was another man, if at all, besides him. But I had participated wholesomely in the kiss at the threshold earlier, I had taken long pains for this trip. This was no plaything for me, he must know. Whether he had similar feelings for me, were open to debate and a solitary mind’s tribulations.

To cut past this, I suggested eating lunch. Food was a good cause. Food was a good enough distraction. He asked me what I wanted and ordered something online. While waiting for the food, we smoked a few and had a drink. His eyes got a little red and lips swelled up. Or probably, I was hallucinating.

There were knocks on the door. The food and the washing machine came at the same time.

An hour later, all hints of the afternoon disappeared as he strung the curtains on the sole window in the room. A mild yellow light persisted somehow. Was it through the skylight up in the wall. Was it the residue of the light that still continued to filter through the light navy blue curtains. Was it light that had locked itself up from before and showed up after we made the room dark enough.
In a bout of quiet panic, I bit my nails and the skin on my fingertips. He made me another drink and gently asked me, if it was alright, if he went ahead. He was too soft to be audible, at first. When I told him I couldn’t hear him anyway, he withdrew a bit for a moment or so and after an elongated pause near my ear, asked me again.

The ceiling fan left a ghost like shadow on the roof and made a creaking noise sometimes. Like it was too tired. Looking at us sweat profusely, he told me the air conditioner was next. And asked me to look up a good one. I asked him to wait the summer out, they would come much cheaper in the off season. With this ongoing conversion in the backdrop, we conveniently unclothed each other, like it was everyday business. There was no awkwardness, but yes a plethora of endorphins in our heads. His mouth still smelt of the garlic in our lunch. His chest was hairy and his grandmother’s locket dangled from it, all the time. Sometimes, it was all I could see. The remaining light dimmed out with time. The sun must have set. For hours, I couldn’t absorb the act, even though it had been in the planning for months, almost.

I held on to time, desperately but it passed relentless. From among the gaps between our intertwined fingers in a tight fist, I saw the time on his wrist watch. I wouldn’t be able to make it to the airport, if we left any later. I went in to the bathroom to wash myself. He hugged me from behind in front of the mirror and said somethings. I was too sober for having had three drinks myself. Probably, the sex undid the effect of alcohol or vice versa. I was totally cool, with everything. I heard every word of what he said. I almost knew he wouldn’t stand by what he said. It wasn’t my pessimism or lack of adequate beauty. It was just that every little thing came with its own life span. A stretch of time beyond which it died a natural death.

And frankly, I have seen more painful departures. Couples being done apart by orthodox parents, couples being torn apart because one of them didn’t make enough money, didn’t have a job that paid enough, the color of skin, a couple of college degrees. I have seen couples being done apart by disease and death as well. So honestly, this was a better end to the whole thing. Just outgrowing, forgetting, not living up to promises, said and unsaid. Yet, I heard him out and kissed him back when need be.

It wasn’t dark still, this was the west coast, night came much later here. The bathroom had a tiny window and in that light our naked bodies revealed many truths they didn’t back in the bedroom. I took a good look and him and saved it for later. My legs grew sturdy. Outside, I got dressed with him watching me. I almost wore my top inside out. He helped me out a bit. I walked into the kitchen and squeezed an entire lemon into my mouth and drank a bottle of water.

He assured me that I didn’t smell that much and nobody would stop me from boarding the flight. We laughed at that thought. He called a cab and I unpacked my backpack. I had a few gifts for him, a pair of cufflinks I had bought for him a two years ago, when I had been deeply infatuated with the idea of the man he was. Or I imagined him to be. He appeared quite stunned to see them. And a tiny box of chocolates. Which was actually a silent retort to the number of times I had asked him for chocolates and had been stranded empty handed. High and dry. In the lovelorn months and months for which he had abandoned me for other women, or friends or foreign trips.

In all those years, this time it felt as if he was here to stay. But didn’t it always feel that way with him. Every time more convincing that the last. But he never hung around long enough to be the one and only. Always took the easy exit and I had gotten used to that behavioral pattern. Or so I would like to believe.

I licked his fingertips after he squeezed me another tablespoon of lemon juice. The aftertaste of nicotine had stayed in them. I stole a pack of cigarettes from his cupboard. And this was my return gift, I told him. We were going to quit smoking together, hell yeah, I told him. Sure why not.

The day felt like a poem. I got in the cab and he followed suit. He was coming to see me off. But why the extra trouble, there was no need for it. I would be safe, I had learnt very well how to defend myself from errant taxi drivers, random molesters, run off the mill oglers on the road and the like. I needed no man to protect me. I had a pepper spray in my bag and all the alarm apps installed in my phone. I was fully prepared. If I needed any protection at all, it would be from his lack of response for my unrequited love of years. His lack of answers to my several questions. His absence in my scores and scores of longish solitary nights. The smells and sights of that I was carrying with me which would trouble me for weeks to come. He was the dirty villain, not the bystander who would stare at me for more that his quota of allotted time, or the taxi driver who would utter a slang or three when I haggle with him regarding the negotiated fare, or the man whose hand would brush past my breasts almost as callously as it brushed past a bunch of mangoes at a fruit stall.

He was the villain, not all of those other men. He was the villain, now leaning towards the vent of the air conditioner in the cab, with my hand at the back of his neck, pulling back his collar. The air conditioner was sure the next equipment he was going to purchase. He asked me to book my tickets for the week after next or so. I pretended to be flabbergasted. He pretty sure understood the reason behind my reaction but still asked me what that meant.

I drew in my breath. Looked out the window. The highway to the airport was deserted. I was relieved he had accompanied me. The sun was now melting into the clouds tending to the western horizon. I closed my eyes, the hot evening breeze rolled in as I slid down the window on my side. I imagined a snow clad Mount Fuji, like in those paintings. Feeling a shiver almost, I looked on to his side. The sun reflected on his fair face and his chin shone in the orange light. The wind was throwing his hair haywire. I squeezed his chin and told him he damn sure knew what I meant.

If this status quo of cozy attraction was maintained for the next two weeks, I would think about coming down. For all you know, I might be the one to stop talking abruptly this time. Sans any explanation, any word. Leave alone a decent good bye. He was embarrassed, and looked away. I had never imagined conversation would ever flow this smoothly with this man. I would always, in the past, experience hiccups before talking to him, not knowing where to begin, what to say, how much to reveal and how much to conceal.

He didn’t apologize. He would have to come out of his skin to apologize. And no amount of apology anyway would heal me for the hurt caused. And yet I was there beside him. And was inching closer to booking my tickets for the next, praying like a child that he didn’t change his mind. My resolve to love him wasn’t questionable. His whim to love me even one bit, definitely was. I was slowly filling myself up with anger and simultaneously drawing myself further and further away from him.


       

A Peaceable Sunday

Moments ago I had sautéed unevenly chopped onions, tomatoes and capsicum to pour over my Sunday morning poached eggs. Sunny side up. Peeling and cutting up the garlic stubs was the troublesome rung in the rather modest recipe. I like most of my food with a hint of garlic, sometimes raw, sometimes slightly fried. And I wonder, very much why they haven’t invented a garlic peeler yet. Amongst the constellation of other kitchen appliances like hand blenders, air fryers, dough kneaders, why not a tiny garlic peeler at the corner of the kitchen counter. For people who love garlic in everything.

The eggs were to be ladled with above sautéed mixture and sprinkled sparingly with a pinch of oregano. And oh, I forgot, the whole ensemble was to be topped on top of two lightly toasted breads, such that the essence from the eggs, the oil, the salt and the spices, the soul of it, gradually trickled down into the bread, just enough to make it soft and yet somewhat crunchy at the same time. The semi raw yolk of the eggs would dangle from atop the breads and leak downward, if it felt like. It was to be eaten, with the one dainty fork from the kitchen cabinet. Generous lumps of it carved out and placed in the mouth, wide open. And chomped off in between sporadic sips of black coffee.

Eggs, had such, won’t make you hungry until late past the designated lunch time. Designated lunch time was thirty minutes past one o’clock. I wasn’t hoping to feel the need to eat before three o’clock in the afternoon. Egg yolks had plenty of cholesterol to keep the walls of my stomach from releasing their angry acids. Now that I would be at peace for a long time, I opened my laptop to write, something, just about anything.

John Lennon’s Stand by Me was playing full blast in my bedroom. The air of March was hotter than February’s. The whole entire world was gearing up for the summer, when the sun would beat down at not less than fifty degrees centigrade. I will have to line my windows with bamboo blinds  to keep the sun out. Nevertheless, this transition between seasons was pleasant. The heat gave sweat patches under arms, but was not as bad as midsummer blisters from touching the window grille. Or watching your plants die if you skipped on watering them less than thrice a day. How I had lost all my zinnia to the epidemic of drought the previous year.

The previous year had been the exact opposite of the current year though. Yes, very much the antithesis. Now I am plump from being amongst no one whereas, last year I was shrunk tiny from the ignominy of being amongst the severely unwanted. Now I while away hours, days and weeks in cherubic inaction. Last year I was running errands like an insane woman. Jumping into auto rickshaws, buses and cabs, meeting strange vendors of all kinds, ticking off things off my to do list. Now I am pampering my tongue with of all kinds of delicacies, whereas, last year I was famished in the midst of plenitude. This year, I am writing prose after poetry after prose. Last year, this time, I was drained. My depression was just about too deep to fuel my writing. This year things have taken a lethargic turn towards normalcy, and I am learning to appreciate it.

My job was mundane as ever, but I have given up on tasking myself with it. I work my nine hour shift at the office. And after that and before that, I shut myself from it. Don’t answer calls or make any. I am very prudent about not spending a minute more at work than I had to. Yes, that is another secret of my newfound mental balance. I work without the hunger for any appreciation in return, in kind or in cash. Merely go about my job, write mails, read mails, forward memos, recommend approvals, rationalize rejections and quote the right clauses from the manuals when need be. Nobody guesses there is anything wrong with me and marks anything uncommon about me. They treat me like an average colleague.

I eat lunch alone at my desk, that being an excuse not to engage over obligatory formal conversation over a meal. Fill my bottle of water from the water cooler whenever I run out of it. Stand there for however long it takes for a one liter and half bottle to fill to the brim and look down so that I don’t have to exchange awkward glances and nods. Pee when I have to, four or five times a day, sit on the toilet browsing various updates on social media. I go about my day in a very documented manner. And this has resulted in a peaceable life, give or take, a couple of outbursts per week. Or month. Outbursts in which to calm down I told myself that unhappiness was not a disease. It’s not a disease. It was being specifically caused by a lot of external factors that are catalyzing my small joys into auto destruction. I should just keep distance from such factors. And not fall easy prey. That was all.

Tried to keep a diary for the first few weeks, but I minimized writing my daily entry in it day after day and ultimately stopped. After the first month I had to throw it away along with the rest of the trash because it reminded me of failure. I just had to do that. The peaceable life also ensued that there be negativity around. All paraphernalia of failure be thrown out immediately. So the diary had been thrown out along with clothes that didn’t fit anymore.

Along with the diary and the clothes, several other items are rolled in old newspaper and thrown out from time to time. Whenever waste disposal was needed, it was called upon, deliberately. Though this was a new apartment I had moved into, I had moved into it with a lot of old stuff that were not needed anymore. Because in moments of emotional vulnerability, we retain somethings hoping that we are preserving them only as a relic. However, those memorabilia, come back to life soon in our closets and help implode whatever good is left of life.

After the bountiful breakfast of eggs and bread, I checked my closet to find out if anything in there was redundant as yet. Upon a closer look, I surmised, nothing was. So I wrapped a scarf around my neck and went down to get two packets of milk. To meet my random cravings for coffee all day. Even minutes after I locked the door shut and put the key in the pockets of my trousers, John Lennon was still audible inside the elevator. Could that be grounds for eviction, I rumbled under my breath and walked into the street. The cement and dust from the construction sites nearby created a chimera of bright light and endless grey. Green and other colors were only scattered scantily on that canvas. I walked into my regular store and showed the store keeper a V shaped two finger insignia. He must by now understand I meant two milk packets. I screamed it aloud nevertheless.  

After paying and collecting the change in my pockets I turned around to a slightly familiar figure. He was at a distance. Casually leaning with his back on the compound wall of the store, one leg folded and foot rested on the wall. Freely releasing clouds of smoke from his mouth. He wore an expression of relief, his eyes must have reflected freedom bordering on dementia, if I could get a closer look. Upon seeing, he recognized me but the surprise didn’t show up aptly on his face. He has always been the understated man, always will be.

Torn apart between living my peaceable life of not meeting strangers from the past life when I ran into them and being roughly courteous, I held two packets of milk, one  in each of my hands and froze with confusion, our eyes still meeting. He gave up soon after, stamped out the stub of his cigarette after two last longish drags and after what looked like he was getting away, he was walking straight toward me. In that neat camouflage of grey cement and dust, the noise of construction machines and the hails and shouts of the dark and skinny workers, his blue shirt stood out, neatly. I transferred the packet in my right hand to my left to free it to shake his hand. He half smiled. I too half smiled, possibly. What else could I do. 

Many Mirages

I've seen you for years.
Been seeing you:
Watching over you
And now look
I am stuck with a tonne of memories
Not knowing what to do-

Remember that time
That August evening
When we stopped by a tree
For a quick smoke
And in the dark, lit the cigarette from the other side
Burnt our lips and laughed so much.

Remember the homes,
We have lived in
Middle aged clingy apartments
Our clothes drying on railings
Piled on chairs..
Heaped on the bed

And the getaways
Particularly that one-
When we passed out in the bar;
In mid afternoon
Boy, were we high!
Don't recall puking, but I know we did and a lot

Do you remember,
Conversations and walks
Comparing our tastes
Among authors and makers of cinema
Couldn't have been more divergent
But, we were both alike in being different, for sure

All these years
We have both grown older love..
Ain't nobody gonna deny that
You've grown larger in my eyes
From a boy to a man
And then you've shrunk back

You're many men. Many mirages
Probably, it's just me hallucinating.
And drugging myself unnecessarily
With your bygone memories
To squeeze out sleazy poetry
Yeah, that's how it works

But I clearly recall.
Your grey eyeballs
The li'l bald patch, you were so nightmarishly afraid of
The neat buttons on your shirt and rolled up sleeves
And how you altered conveniently
Between being many men and the One for me.

Crushed Paper

People think writing defines me. More or less. That I shall get away with life by writing. Prose poetry. About lost loves. And about the general vagaries of life. It's true, to an extent. Sort of a half truth.

Half only because I have repeatedly proved to myself that I lack the stamina for it. 

Nevertheless, when I open old closets I find neatly wrapped still unopened gifts. With notepads of hand made paper. With ornate bookmarks. The ones that have gifted them expect me to fill in their pages with an equally classy ink pen or so. Poems, may be. Some notepads have ruled pages, some are completely blank. Some have plain white rugged paper, some have fine lines and an egg shelly hue to them. Some look like straightened out crushed paper. 

People have been to places and collected such notepads as memorabilia from said places for me. I sometimes want to understand what must have been going on in their minds when they picked up these gifts for me. It's not that I have wanted earrings. But still. People come into my life and leave similarly. But they leave these notepads behind. Good old friends, college mates, admirers, paramours, if I may. 

If I went out now, looking for them all, I am pretty sure the world would have gobbled them up and in their chosen obscurity, I wouldn't find them. But a pinch of them, stays locked in those neatly wrapped gifts. Their odor intact between the sheets.

For Nina Simone. Happy Birthday. High Priestess of the Soul. 

Saturday

She's dressed in three-fourths and a T. Her hair is braided thick and knotted up into a clutch. She's twenty three. This September. Sitting before the television, she's completely focused on her plate. Like, she hasn't looked up at the screen even once. Today's Saturday, it's the weekly off from her dieting schedule. Earlier, she used to take breaks on Sundays. But with Sundays being the days of special lunches and special  dinners, she began eating more in one day than she had forgone all week. So she included Sunday into her dieting schedule and took  an off on Saturday. On Saturdays, she ate whatever she wanted. All the junk. Rest of the week, she lived mostly on salad and low fat milk. 

All she had on her plate was a bed of white rice and atop that, three curried eggs. One is good. Two is too many. Three is beyond glutton. Three egg whites, three solid yellow yolks. To be nibbled slowly, broken down with fingers and mashed into the curry of numerous flavors. And to be licked off each finger with infinite delight. That delight, should fairly encapsulate the renunciation of the upcoming week, the agony that her taste buds would go through with meal after meal of cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce. 

All this for what! Slimmer thighs. Such that those old jeans didn't embarrass her as much. For that romantic interest of hers to spare a second glance. Too many reasons. No more brooding, she told herself. 

Outside, it began to rain, an unexpected afternoon shower in May. With the thunderstorms, et al. That familiar smell arose from the soil. She rushed to the terrace. Lines and lines of her clothes, leggings and scarves hung to dry in the free summer sun were half drenched already. She had done laundry all morning. Not for this. She gathered as many as she could and piled them on the floor downstairs. And then it began raining too hard and the breeze was unreliable too. She gave up on the rest of them. Still handing abandoned.

Her next door neighbor, her aunt, screamed from her side of the balcony after the power went off. It was pitch dark. She switched off everything. Lightening was known to damage electronic devices. And obviously, her mother wouldn't be able to buy them a second television or a second air conditioner. She unplugged them all and sat on the bed, quietly continuing the remnant of her meal in the dark.