Leaving

“You have gone insane, haven’t you?” She asked me from the between the curls of hair that fell on her face. 

Her irises appeared darker than before, literally like bottomless twin pools. That I could drown in and not surface from. I had doubts if I would even try to hold on to the hands of a rescuer whilst I drowned in her eyes or any other pool in general. I had begun feeling like an ascetic from the past few days.

She reiterated the question, had I gone crazy. Her words felt like wisps of air escaping her brown lips, which were otherwise tightly pursed, awaiting an affirmative answer from me. I had begun wearing sunglasses in the house to keep out the excessive day light. She pulled them out from my face and I shut my eyes into darkness.

When I opened them again, in the clear afternoon light she appeared feral. Exasperated with my muteness she stood up and began pacing up and down the room. She hadn't evolved much in the last six or seven months that I hadn't seen her. I had imagined she would be unrecognizable. But why would she even alter at all?

I told her. “You haven’t changed much. You haven’t changed at all.”

She approached my chair and placed her left palm on my right knee and sighed deeply.

“You have to move on”

“I have. I mean clearly I have”

“You have gone insane, is what you have done”

“You make it seem like I had a choice”

“Oh don’t be silly. We had talked about this. So many times, over and over again”

“Well clearly, now that you've seen the aftermath, you must conclude, I am not the one for the talking”, I said hoping she would calm down with my ridiculous retorts.

“Honestly, I don’t have time for this. I have to get back, I can’t be gone for such long. You take care and, and just get your shit together”

“Yeah sure, get my shit together I will” This was more disgusting than expected. 

“You should go.” I paused. “Because if you stayed any longer, you never know, what I might do.”

That didn't slow her gait but she turned and looked at me. “What does that even mean?”

“I’m kidding. I’m joking. You of all people should know that”

“Can we just talk for five minutes, before I leave?”

She came closer and sat on the floor, with her legs crossed, instantly persuading me to climb down from my chair.

On the floor, she held my hand in hers and began speaking in slow wisps again.

“This is the last time you’re seeing me. I am not coming back. Never again. I want you to know this.”

I stayed mum, feeling rough in my throat, having nothing to say.

She spoke again. “I want you to tell me that you know you are not going to see me again”

“You sound like you are the one that needs some convincing”

“Shut up. Do you want my husband to explain it to you, how all this works?”

The mention of him crashed me back into reality. For a stretch of the hour I had imagined she was here for my sake and my sake only.

“Say it!”

“I know, I know you’re not coming back”

“I strongly urge you get a life. Listen to me, see someone else”

“Why don’t you fix me up with one of your single friends?”

“I can’t stay involved. But there are lots of women. I am told there are some dating apps and some real nice young things. You've always been lecherous, you would know everything”

“Serious accusation alert!”

“C’mon we know each other. We don’t have to wear facades.”

I broke her off in the middle. “If we know each other, why the fuck did you even leave me? Why did you abandon me? Why did you break my heart so irreversibly?”

Before I realized, I was screaming at her. She put her hand on my mouth to quieten me I guess but nothing worked.

And the next minute she was gone.

She had vanished so neatly, it was almost as if she had never been here. That’s exactly how people go. People who have made up their minds to go, they just leave so immaculately, the one left behind often is seen trying to grab on to the air that rushed in to fill the vacuum of sudden absence.

a

In a, the man hid within the child and the child took refuge in the man. Things came to an abrupt end six years ago for them because she couldn't take the ignorant child that showed up when he was trying hard to be her man. Back then, a had been striving for real, he did all the right things. But she couldn't do justice to his efforts because she was young. Twenty-five can be a flimsy age. And she was not as mature as she thought she was, thinking back from the current day that is. Time is a simple scale, keeping a decent record of the events in her life, but at the same time, it is immensely illusory. Time gives her ideas, and can concoct chimeras. Though she could have been a truer version of her self at that age, but she hadn't fructified that much back then. a imagined her to be as innocent as she seemed, but in her mind, she was much smarter. Sometimes when a put her in her place, she was mortified. But a leaned on her, despite all his gathered cynicism and practicality of a thirty (something) year old man. He resigned to loving her because he couldn't believe even after having lived through broken relationships for so many years, he could land someone so naive and juvenile and beautiful. a immediately grabbed her with both hands (metaphorically) and asked her to be his, in the not so subtle language of flirtation cum mild anger cum frustration cum i-am-smarter-than-thou innuendo. At twenty-five however, she thought that she was like forty-five and had no time for a. Because after shitty over geek-ed teenage years and dull college life and terrible work life, she was so done with all this. Blinded by her magnified self image, she couldn't completely understand and appreciate when a told her that she was so young, almost like a sapling and all this would fall in its place when she was a's age. Really, it would. He even held her hand and consoled her. That now what looks unbearable would feel like child's play later down the line. And that there were newer chapters of life, they could explore together, if she gave him a little space in her heart. A tiny space, is what a had asked for her. Ironical, as it may sound, her heart was empty then, except for the erogenous ideas that filled it thanks to her heavy social conditioning. And yet she wouldn't give him that tiny space. And repeatedly put him in his place. And that's when the man in a would take backstage and the child would show up. Irritated for he found no reciprocation for his feelings from her, flabbergasted at how she could let such an opportunity of love just pass her by, a thought was she that dumb after-all, contrary to his ideas of her. And she would assume that a was just flirting because he wanted to get laid. It all melted down to sex, after-all, didn't it.

But, if you can fall in love with someone post-facto, that is, a very long and abstracted post-facto, with six years between that and now, today, when she ran her fingers down those old conversations of theirs, refreshing them in her exhausted memory, she understood a from the perspective of a thirty (something) year old woman that she now is. And a makes tremendous sense. Bless him. She fell for him, post-facto. And if apologies work this late, she's sorry too. 

Ergo

All of my memory converges into one evening in the past. It was 2006. Or 2007 probably. Because 2008 would rather be too late for the events I'm going to narrate. It was a silly little evening. Nobody significant was even involved, as in physically present. But people don't have to be present in body and mind to cause effect and effectively mar an evening, a day, a life. Mostly, it's their absences that work that charm. So yes, it was an evening long long ago and I was mostly by myself. And it was then that I lost my innocence. Ergo, all my memory, if retrospectively stretched back in time, converge, then and there. 

It was January. And it was drizzling. Winter rain. I must've been eighteen. Unscathed. In love. Brimming with naivete, unbeknownst of the ways of the world, that such scales existed on which humans are weighed and chosen, and the rest rejected, I callously thought till then that love begets love. It never did. Never does. And it shouldn't either. But I was young and full of colors. Purple, magenta and violets. 

It was a grey evening we'd stepped out into. With a few friends and somebody's cousin. I was meeting somebody's cousin for the first time. He was tall, bespectacled, comfortable in a lose T shirt. Forgettable as a person, because I don't even recall him name. But he has been reluctantly stuck in this memory forever. Because he simply happened to be there. It was a huge college campus. Somebody's cousin was showing us around. Mostly from the streets, their stadiums, activity centers, auditoriums, gyms. I saw numerous, numerous boys that evening. 

I knew you were there, out there somewhere. But we're never lucky enough for coincidences. I never saw you. You never sought me out. It was a lost cause. But you were right there. Within square meters probably. It was getting duskier, cooler, darker. Slowly yellow light from the street lamps filled the streets. I looked up to see bulky deodars on both sides of the streets. Upright like our guardians. We were just a bunch of kids back then.

Within minutes the air got chilly. The power went off. It was completely dark except for the shrieks of voices. And laughter. It began to pour. We took shelter under the nearest tree. I scooted to under the nearest tree. I almost hugged it tight. I could feel its trunk on my cheeks. And shut my eyes, I wanted you so much. It was so debilitating to be so close to you and still not have you. It was precisely under that tree, that day, standing in the rain that I got my heart broken the first time. 

For a few years I imagined you were there with me under that tree. But I knew you weren't. I have concocted so many alternative memories of the same exact incident, I can't tell the real from the unreal. Probably none of this even happened. But now I am too seasoned to give away the truth so easy.

In parallel universes and in other tesseracts of time, you were probably there with me under that deodar. In a tight embrace, in galloping rain, our cheeks touching its trunk. Because that would answer just so many questions right now. 

Penumbra

There was a time when we were all,
Gleelessly stuck in Penumbra
Between the ages, thirteen to nineteen
Or twenty-one

That teen angst, wasn't like nothing else

One particular afternoon,
I wasted sitting in the sunbeam
That trespassed through my window
In the dark, and writing a letter
On pen & paper, yes, real blue ink
And sprinkling it with rose petals
An unposted letter with that angst
About being alone and unwanted

Don't recall much else though
Literally speaking, for instance
My first sip of alcohol (cocktail - sex on the beach)
Or my first kiss
The first smoke,
But I know I had many firsts

Growing like a multi faceted organism
In so many directions
And with so less control
Nothing could begin to heal that angst
Not a box full of books,
Or nights spent drinking coffee
Or making craft

So many years of constant rebellion,
Do you recall yours?
Stuck in Penumbra, glee-less-ly
So long, so long.

Look at me, tonite

Won't you look at me tonite
With those sharp little tiny eyes of yours
Won't you glare them at me
Whimsically, as if by mistake
When our eyes meet mid air, mid way
Only to undo that mistake instantaneously
And look elsewhere with a shallow gulp of guilt

Won't you make me feel seen
Observed, wanted, needed
For what else do we need more
Than this need to be desired
Tonite, and every other night, like this one
Thirst and lust, and the feeling of being quenched.

How long has it been that I have felt this guarded and protected in the safe haven of someone's vision.
My goodness, hasn't it been long. It has.

So now, please don't look away, you.
As we run out of breaths and time
We run out of passion and even words
Just be, this way, and steal your coquettish glances from me.

Look at me as I walk in, and walk away, and stand and sit. Appear engrossed. Appear lost and fathom me in that loss.

Look at me, tonite.

Man from the Past

You've come back from the past, haven't ya?

Rather, come forward in time, if I may.

For me.

Because you seem so familiar 

Like a neat culmination of all my unrequited loves.

Everything that I've lost, back in time,

I've found in you

The very exact qualities

How can that even be

An irony of that magnitude

Whoever said, time travel wasn't possible

Particularly in matters of love

And time is just a coordinate of continuum 

The fourth axis. 

Just like x, y and zee

Time is malleable and ductile

We can clap our hands

And move forth and back in time

As we wished

2007, here I come, 2021, here I am.

Now, finally that you're here

Regret not that you are late

Possibly by a decade, if not less

Be elated, that you've found me now, better late than never 

Now, we have the wind in our hair

Music in our ears

A funny sway in our gaits

As we walk down unknown alleys, 

We have an entire evening to create memories, that couldn't be

To pay bills and die.

Stars come down to my bed
On some no moon nights
They glitter like insomniac jellyfish
And keep me awake too, and thoughtful

On Sundays, as the westbound sun
Dries my afternoon wet hair,
Clinging to my shoulders
I reluctantly give in again and think

What am I letting go, to become who I be

Which layer of me, be the true layer, like I were an onion

Every peel, and a new color. From dried and coffee brown, to orangish red and pinkish yellow, and the wheatish stem of the onion be my untamed soul.

Am I numerous persons, all at once
Or am I a process, and every day catalyses me towards my core being.

I know, it's impossible and untrue.

We are all tame, mostly, mere domestic beings, victims to carefully cultivated routines that keep us from thinking.

To pay bills and die.

But when a westbound sun, quietly dries my hair, I've gotta think.

Think on an endless loop. Think towards no conclusions. As the rest retire to siesta and my lunch awaits, getting cold.

Stranger

I, riddled in my own passive aggressive shit, still thought of him. I would be all quite fine by myself in my own peaceable cocoon. And without notice, he would come wafting into my mind. Very casually. Like the fragrance of spices cooking in a broth. And he would linger for hours. I wouldn't know what to do with those thoughts. Unrequited love works that way, and that way only. It's often a disaster. It addicts women for a lifetime. Then I would map times and spaces in my mind and try to locate where he would be. What he would be upto. And all for what? Nothing. It doesn't lead anywhere. Nowhere. I often take up this fruitless exercise and sit motionless inside my mind. 

Nuances of him would bother me further. Happy little things would now turn into dangerous memories and haunt me. He never once remembered my birthday. I would be silly enough to remind him a couple days in advance wishing he wouldn't forget it that time. But he always did. That would push any self destructive woman into further self destruction. Bouts of depression and loathing would follow. This used to be an annual event during my birthday, I recall. There was no escape. He would send across belated wishes. Even those sufficed, but not as much. That affair was not to last, we both knew. It was so skewed and one sided, it had no future at all.

We moved on after a fling of a few years. To newer people, fresher faces. But, I could never get him out of my mind. It seemed silly, the happenings of it now even felt juvenile and physical. Yet memories are unerasable. I had once called him on the night of my birthday to secretly extract my wish of being wished. He was having a party instead. He kept the phone on speaker on the table with all his friends gathered around it. And for what felt like the entire night, I eves dropped on their drunken conversations. His friends didn't know. I waited for him to say somethings about me. When you are in drunken stupor, you can hardly leash your tongue. May be he gave in in the end and said somethings. I cannot remember. 

He called me back the next morning to apologize for what he had said and asked me to ignore it entirely. He was really high on some authentic grass. Ah, grass I said. Yes, very smoked up. I told him I smoked too. A franker camaraderie developed that moment. May be I was upgraded in his eyes. I seemed deeper, more mysterious. 

But soon after that, we called it off. On my next birthday, I received a nameless package. It contained two packs of favorite brand of cigarettes. I lit one, inhaled the smoke and exhaled out all my heartache. In one long endless sigh. I would never think of him again. 

The Lightness of Being

Your feet tingle. Toes feel so light, they might just detach and take flight. In a deep drag, you think, sobriety is overrated. Why else would God have planted the opium. Words trickle into your head, you feel the whim to write on numerous subjects. You fling your arms out and let be. Another deep drag after, memories come back to you. Those that happened for real, and some that never did. The future that couldn't be. Alternate universes. Even remorse is mellowed down by nicotine. Everything feels easy. Stress melts. You wonder why you don't do this more often. It's winter. It's so hard to resist. And be sober. You remember how much you cajoled yourself not to. But you caved in. Almost imploded into yourself. In the end, it all comes down to pushing that window open, late after midnight and experimenting with your conscious. A tweak there, a twist here. The eternal lightness of being. What could go wrong. How much could be lost. And what, in the end cannot be risked. Everything has its own cost factored in. Isn't it. One moment you are the pawn. The next moment you are the empowered seductress of life. Erudite, fluent in intellect. Then again, you are a silly girl. You are everything locked up in your cocoon. The next drag tells you that. And then the next. Your chest puffs up, eyes begin to burn a little. Water a little. Your heart fills with ash. You un-clutch your hair and toss it all to one side. To rest peacefully on your shoulder.You think of the dreaming people asleep downstairs, upstairs. You feel stacked. In a building. In a chair. In a bed. One singular soul in billions. By yourself. Inconsequential. Then you look at the sky, the darkness is unfuckwithable. You think about your next poem and resign. You call it a day. You call it a night.  

Matinee

She was completely soaked in the plan. She went through it again and again. The show was at quarter to three. She had to leave at half past one. The cinema hall was more than ten kilometers away. And he was to meet her at their designated pick up place. She couldn't be late. They wouldn't miss the ice-cream before the show started. He had booked three seats for the two of them in the corner of the last row. So that he could wrap his hand around her shoulder and no one would be bothered. She had made a suitable alibi at home, she was away for back-to-back tuitions and soon after she would go to the beauty parlor. She prayed hard that nobody should find out. What else could she do but pray. What could anyone do but pray. She was a few minutes late and he had been waiting. She tied a scarf so as to hide her face and climbed on to his bike, and sat clutching his chest from behind. Like they do. In a minute, they were on the main road. The wind was unstoppable that afternoon. It shouldn't rain, how would she explain at home if she got drenched. Her head had transformed into this constant alibi manufacturing machine. It didn't. They licked their ice cream cones standing in the alley behind the hall. Her face was uncovered now, and people stared on, uninhibited. In her eyes he saw how nervous she was. In the darkness, when the film played, they held hands and even plucked kisses off each other. But her heart lay in her phone, which might ring anytime. What if they found out. Nobody called, though. In the interval, he bought more soft drinks and wafers. The cold breeze from the air conditioner, gave her the chills and she snuggled as close to him as she could. He whispered things into her ears, making her promise for a few more matinee shows like that. She whispered back, asking what if people back home found out. He whispered back saying that he had his way of taking care of things, if they did. She felt both empowered and bothered, by what he had said. Later, when the show ended, the skies opened up. The wind had stopped and the rain began to look scary. They couldn't ride back in that weather. They waited and waited for what seem like an hour and she couldn't make anymore alibis on the phone. She was at her wits end and her forehead heated up.They were both soaked under their skins. She was in tears, well almost. And he consoled her with all he had. That they were going to be just fine. 

The Dung Beetle

Once when I was four or five or six. Years of age. I was a stout little girl roaming around in umbrella cut frocks. You know frocks that swelled up like an umbrella. A dung beetle stung me a bit. On my left hand or right. I don't remember which. Memory doesn't work that way. And you know that. Just that it was either hand. Probably, my right. And it swelled up like a dung beetle itself. Blew up like a balloon, my little hand. It began to smell weird. Nasty. I didn't think I would ever get my original hand back. In my little head, I was so worried. 

But, it did get better. The swelling went down. The pain went away. I must have been happy. And as usual, relief must have overshadowed my happiness. That's the way it works for me. Mostly I am so worried and then, so equally relieved that I strangely, accidently forget to be happy.

There's this kid that lives upstairs. I meet him in the elevator sometimes. When our times match. He has got plump rosy cheeks. We don't have nothing in common. But sometimes, I go up to his floor, bid him goodnight and then come down to my floor. Translucent human attachment, this. Even if I have had a bad day or good. Even if he has had a bad day or good. He stands there, with his backpack on and a smile on his face and waves me goodbye until I vanish downwards. 

His mother left them. Both him and his father. His father, whenever I see him has wry heart ache written all over his face. As if he has lost himself. Forever and ever. And nothing would cure him. His eyes are as sunken, as his son's are bright. His son, is a miracle. 

I see him chasing butterflies in the garden downstairs. To capture them for a moment between his cupped hands and then instantly release them. Colorful butterflies, dozens, flock the magnolia trees. I hope he recognises the colors. I pray that his vision opens up. And so does his mind. Everyone tells me, he is slow. What a horrible thing to say of a child. 

I am afraid, that a dung beetle might sting his tiny little hand as well. It's three decades after. Dung beetles might as well be, extinct. For all we know. It's not even the same garden or the same flowers. But I wonder. 

Paradox

You lose hope, not overnight. Not over the night. That's too sudden. In the period of a night, you cry out. And wake up swollen. Eyes burning like fire. Skin glistening sorrow. But you don't lose hope. Hope sheds itself over days. Months. At times, years. You slowly let go. Consciously, breathing, let go, like noone's watching. But you are. You believe, that way it will affect you less. Pity you and forgive. Well, does it?

Similar to the process of unloving. Unloving, keep note, is not the same as falling out of love. It's an active verb. Falling out of love is more passive an event. more real, commonplace, easier. Unloving too, doesn't happen overnight. Slow squeezing of the heart, is supposed to take time. There is no anesthesia for this one. Quite the anti-process of amnesia happens here. Instead of forgetting, one remembers. Tiny details. So much that entire events feel little before the little nothings. Unloving takes its own sour time, and mostly with no certainty of results. 

What tempts me the most is that, is there freedom beyond these? Untethered freedom, as you would put it. I don't know. And ironically, I wouldn't want to. Either. 

Losing all hope was freedom.

- Narrator. Fight Club

Pumpkin Flowers

The pumpkin flowers in the backyard, always dragged her mind there. Kitchen garden, she called that. The creeper had crawled out slow and lazy from one amongst the plateful of pumpkin seeds they had thrown away, after one of their first grocery trips here. It was an an over-ripe one. Their fridge had smelt for days afterward. And one orange morning, in the drizzling rain, he had spotted, a nice two leaved thingy, peeping out of the moist, dark soil. They hadn't had to water it, or anything. It grew wild, sprouting leaves after leaves on its own, covering all the empty space in their tiny backyard, every square inch of space left apart from where the green chillies and coriander had stood, enviously rooted. Then, one afternoon, he noticed a couple of buds, tightened bunches of petals, held together in the gay love of floral glue. After a couple days, about a dozen of them flowers, bloomed together, simultaneously, on the very same morning. From the window in their bedroom, they appeared to be sunflowers. But those were pumpkin flowers, they laughed, quietly inside their cheeks. Lips parted only mildly. With their great freedom of choice. 

Of living here, alone together. Away/ where life is not bought. Just lived. Only lived. Experienced, valued. Treasured. Not just bought. They had moved into this, months ago, abandoning their stories. Marathons they believed they were running. They had retired. Let go. And come down to live here, secluded by hills, on all sides. A river flowed by, beside the hills. Truly, it did. Does. The summer breeze made the pumpkin flowers dance. 

Their raw smell came wafting into their kitchen, like asking her to come pluck. Fetch them in the cane basket and put them in a jar of water on his table. But that smell, wasn't very flowery. They were like their mother pumpkin, that way. She washed the pestle, wondering if she would, like generations of wives had, grind some rice grains and spices and dip and fry, shallow fry them flowers, till just about they were fried right. 

Fluorescence

Now, the old lady lives in the forgotten mansion by herself. Parts of it they had rented out to teachers who came to teach in the little school they had started. Just for company's sake. Now that the old man is dead and gone, it's just her with her tenants. There's no jungle bounty to take care of. Guard against the wild. Years ago, when the old lady was only middle aged, she would shoo away herds of monkeys from her mango orchard with an air gun the old man no more used for hunting. The horns of the deer killed decades ago still adorns their doorway. But the orchards have vanished. Everything is a shadow of what it was. The clusters of bananas that she used to hide in sacks to keep safe until they ripened, to be sent off to daughters married off in distant cities, no more. The story seeping granddaughters never looked back. The sole singular lone son. Drunkard of a man, womaniser, once discarded by the old man for being a disgrace, must have decayed in some brothel. Or a cheap smokey bar. When the old man sat on the rickety chair, staring at the front door, there was not much conversation. But just one question, who was dying on whom. Which one of the two would last longer, asphyxiate in the dust that the termites ate off the doors. It is usually the diabetes that gets to you, or a cardiac arrest. Sometimes, they imagined passing away in sleep, but mostly it is plain loneliness. Now the old lady, in that ghost of a house cannot move around much. And cooks one meal a day, of rice and vegetables boiled in one black pot and sips as much as she can. Fighting the need to be against the whim to vanish, sitting guard on the decadence. 

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. 

Litmus

1

They stood like the stagnant rain of late August. Against the moist afternoon breeze rushing through their hair, giving them an occasional totter. Away from town, its buses and the smoke. They would quite religiously meet in the valley. Well not exactly, if you could call it that. It was a huge ditch washed clean by the monsoon. Sometimes flooded, it looked like a lake. Filled with brown water, of the color of tea. Only the beverage in the cup they shared standing on top of the ridge looked less watery. The color of that was for the thick boiled buffalo milk. Not a day went without he making a comment on the goodness of that milk, and she not laughing to it. At it. Forgetting the day, at ease, an hour at a time. As the orange sun set and the porous skies gave in, again. To another lash of night long rain. 

2

Each morning, her huge dog, that monstrous canine, demanded comforting by the pedestrians crossing the street by barking out loud from the first floor balcony and craning its neck out like it would take a leap now. It never did, but the children stopped taking that street. The ones who would earlier sneak into her garden to steal shrubs of pink table rose and pineapple from the bushes. Or a raw jackfruit or two. The canine put an end to that for good. But after that, there was no one. The barking would stop once her hoarse scream scared the animal off to a mid morning snooze. And then she would emanate from the rickety house in her off white maxi dress for summers. With a cup of tea in her hands, chewing one of her own sun dried coconut cookies. To tend to her rose bushes and to cut off the weed. Weed, you know.

-x-

Middle Berth

On the journey onward, they weren't with each other. He looked older, wore a stud in his left ear lobe. She tied her ironed hair into a messy knot, her face glowed in the sun. He hung out of the door of the railway bogie when they were moving past the valleys and each time he did that, she took a picture of him with the big camera that slung from her shoulder. They must have kissed when the tunnels came. No one could tell.

On the way back, they had only one ticket. His ticket. She travelled like an extension of his, like a limb- a hand or a leg. Always conjoint to him. He coaxed her extra luggage in, let her sit on his seat and stood by her and chatted on about whatever. Later slid beside her onto the middle berth. Together, they looked like one common mass of black. Except for his man-scarf of purple striped in white. They lay anti parallelly, and hugged each others' feet like pillows and slept. 

When the night got deeper, she took a U turn though. Now they lay against each other, she tousled his hair and talked into his ear, the one with the stud in it. Night long, most night long. Sometime after that, he must have left. Somewhere close to dawn. Gotten down at some odd station, less known. 

She covered her face with that scarf and slept the rest of the journey alone, like a log.