Sweetheart

You've done well for yourself.

Who am I kidding? You were always the good kid. So this doesn't necessarily surprise me. At all. Let me take this opportunity to express, how truly happy I am for you. I know, not everything is what it seems on the surface. Let me rephrase that. Is anything ever what it seems on the surface? Don't think so. A lot in this world happens to merely keep up with appearances. 

The rosiness of lives is utterly lost in its dark and disturbing underbelly. Adulthood is difficult. Pretending to be a whole person is hard, when you've got parts of yourself flung up in the air. Not just because there are bills to be paid and jobs to be done. It's also on account of the fact that everything we are is a disturbing contradiction. You know?

We begin life believing in some things. And for quite a long stretch, we're taught, deeply and precisely, how accurately wrong we were. We waste away years, unable to grasp to simple truths, hold ironies in our little hearts that embitter us, make us so cynical that we become monstrosities within, fashioned in facades on the outside. 

I have become that. And for the sake of all that is holy, I have given up. I choose to be embittered, lost, pained, forever fighting the voids that are capturing my insides, day after day after day. And I cannot care enough to dress in facades, hence I am just my true unclothed self. I am an angry, disappointed and exhausted adult. Locked in my own chains. Muted, hearing my own screams constantly inside my fucking head. I am.

But you. Sweetheart. 

Allow me to call you that, it's been ages. When I loved you, I loved you with the passionate intensity of a nineteen year old. It feels crazy now, and also impossible, to have ever been capable of loving that way. Anyone or anything.  I am not capable of that love anymore. I hang in between thin threads of obligations.

But sorry, I was writing about you.

You've done well for yourself. Some of what appears may be a sheen. May be. But I am sure all that glitters for you, is gold from within. I hope I am not fantasizing and I truly wish you the happiness you deserve. Everyone deserves happiness, love. And why wouldn't you.

Despite everything that happened, I have always thought of you with affection. I will not lie, sometimes I've been upset. Regretful. But that's inevitable. Over the years, so many many still years, when all that has happened in our lives is just everyday, I have always remembered you with glee. The way memories fade, I am sure a few more years later, all I would remember is the glee itself and I would have erased you, involuntarily. So let me write this today.

Sweetheart.

I hope, being married to her makes you feel lucky everyday. Because that's what marriage is supposed to make one feel. Lucky. I hope you hold her hand every now and then. I know you do. I hope you smell her frizzy hair and take off her spectacles so that her vision fades a little, before you kiss her on the forehead, once in a few days. You two, so do look like the couple who would do that. 

She's an infinitely charitable woman. I know this, if not more about her. She has lot of mercy in her soul. Lot of compassion. I cannot imagine how anyone can be that way because all I feel in my soul is a certain soullessness I cannot translate into words. So I am thankful, you ended up with her. That you moved on from me and found her. Life's nice that way, isn't it.

And we shall let today be, precisely about that.

Sweetheart.

Happy Valentines' 

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.

History

Erosion of memory is an indispensable part of healing. One forgets, one gets past, one heals. When she was younger, she didn't believe she would one day be able to comfortably forget. In the angst of young and unrequited love, she strongly believed that one actually never forgot anything, only with time learned compulsively to get by. But as she grew older, it got real. It was actually possible to forget. And it wasn't necessarily an active activity. Memories faded quite automatically, passively, quietly. And before she consciously took note, many chapters of  her life had been lost. Suddenly she felt possessive about her past, however lackluster that had been. She felt unfairly dealt with, after all.

It felt so recent anyway. Once she started scraping off the surface, she counted with her fingers the number of years that had past, since. Not many. At least, not that many. But her slight wrinkles told her a different story, that she's older now. With a totally different set of  priorities. But then again, when did this happen? When did she get so old? She felt as if she would undo the Venetian blinds in her cubicle and see him on the other side. Through the glass, he felt immediate. He suddenly erupted from the past and felt so so so damn close in time and in space. Like he had jumped out of that continuum into this.

But the truth was far from this midday hallucination. He was nowhere around. You know how actual physical raw time space work. Once someone has passed, someone had passed. They ain't coming back for good. That said, how can memories be unfair. How can they self destruct? And so easily. Feeble recollections of events haunted her, grazed on her mind and taunted her. And she couldn't remember any further, any deeper. They had been so particularly staunch about keeping no memorabilia, there was nothing to cling to. How sometimes she jumped into the traps she herself had built.

Probably this doesn't make much sense. But she couldn't understand how she could totally completely absolutely forget a man who had loved her and who she had almost loved? Subconsciously she thought of the others like him in her life, and had nightmares about them. But never anything on him. How strange. How quietly he exited, never to reappear again. So much history gradually decayed in her mind and she didn't even realize except for now.

If she undid the blinds, just now, would he still be there though. She pondered.

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. 

Proposal

{2.32 am..}

Not to bring money into the discussion, but guys who got recruited in that xyz company make x1y1z1 a year

Okay. Suddenly you make me feel poor

That wasn't the intention at all

Nevermind

{Pause. Pause. Silence. Sighs}

{2.34 am..}

Seriously, that wasn't my intention.

It's okay really. Something on my mind

What's that

How much do you make

Really?

Yes. Since we're already talking money

Mm..about x2y2z2

God you're rich

{Laughs}

There must be women lining up to marry your ass

Will you marry me, er my ass

What?

Will you marry me

What are you even asking

A simple question, I guess.

{Deep Breaths, Couple of}

{2.37 am..}

Wouldn't marry you for your money. But for the rest of you, I would. I will

Ok. Okay, good.

{Pause. Sneezes}

What just happened

I think we just got engaged

{2.39 am..}

We must get serious you know

But, who'll take care of the Baby

Your shirt always creased 

In that mild way

That only with someone

With eyes for you

Could only see

I remember, those road side stalls

Where we stood and slurped

Cold-drink-ice-cream-float

With greasy egg chicken noodles

You, applauded me

We walked into the 5 am forest

A flower stuck in my hair

Your sweet-man-gait

Broad chinned smile

When my ovaries leaped

Today, I compare

Myself with a dozen others

And look for scraps of 

Happiness

You're a rich badass, though

I don't wait for you to salvage me

Man, you stuck in my memories

In numerous parallel pasts

That didn't even happen, ouch

I write

I write to create that past

Alternate threadbare truths, 

You know.

Even-though no one reads

Relentless, I never cease

At constructing what could've been 

Covalent Bond

That afternoon, he picked me up from chemistry tuition. That day we were going to learn about the covalent bond. How ironic.

I made an excuse. Something very pretty silly. Meeting him was a consequence of a chain of careful excuses. Some at home. Some to friends. Lies made me anxious. Back then, I didn't even know how to contain anxiety. Meeting him had become synonymous to this anxiety. Love, like carbon, does rarely come in its purest form. Love often manifests itself in one form or another. Going down, this anxiety would probably be synonymous with love. And one would have to quietly and patiently unfurl this anxiety, one petal after another, like flowering a rose bud. And at the center of it, find love, untouched, unhinged.

For me, it was always the little things. His face was always neutral of any expression. It wasn't a poker face, never a poker face. Yet, devoid of joy or sorrow. He was always in his skin, contained. But when something genuinely funny happened, his taught face would break into a smile. A slight half smile, if I may. And then, that would lead to a laugh. He didn't laugh that way at jokes. At jokes, he guffawed. That guffaw was devoid of emotion too. But that slight half smile, that one's truly one of my favorite things of him. Most cherished.

The afternoon that reluctantly replaced the class of chemistry was misty. His bike made an usual sound. Probably, it always did. But this was the first time I heard it, being away from the traffic, and all. We rode into what appeared to be the country. I diligently held on to his shoulders. He did cajole me to hold on to more, but that didn't augur much in his favor. Holding on was not my preferred act then. I never assumed we were for the long run.

I was astonishingly young to take it by the day, but I did. We stopped for some tender coconut. After I drank all the water, I sucked in lots of air through my straw, just to ensure I hadn't wasted a drop. And that had led to that sheepish half smile of his. The hawker scraped out the soft coconut cream for him, mine had none. He teased me with it, before giving all of his to me.  He was a serious guy, and that probably made him engaging in trivial acts like these very adorable. Yes, he was adorable, whenever he gave in.

It was rather confusing, why we would go out. It didn't seem to fit. All the zigs and zags were out of place. He wasn't my quintessential type. And I wasn't anyone's type. But once we were together, these rationales seemed to matter much less.

Later, I tried very hard to take it by the day. But somewhere down the line, I forgot how to anymore. And got extremely involved. Like head over heels over head. He was quite brilliant. He would make up for the bunked classes eventually, I told myself. And help me too, probably. I swayed and twirled.

Years later, I realize, how much time erodes us. His half smile has stayed. But he has lost some hair though. And I, I have recently got my first few rounds of dark circles. I tell myself they're faint enough and it's gonna be quite alright.

The Dissappearing Act

Your classic disappearing act. Post facto, I now know that it was an orchestrated act. But in that moment, in those moments, in those bygone years, they felt like accidents. Probably, you were just busy. Too much work. Too many presentations. Too pushy a boss, may be. Or could be that you went out for a beer after work with your buddies and forgot to call. That night. The night after that. And dozens of such nights afterward. Or were you just tired, didn't want me to see your fallible self? No, that couldn't be. I was a delicately forgiving girl. The answer was simple, you just forgot. About me. 

As I turned myself inside out. You know, and such.

How could you? 

It was my fault. I never asked. I let you off easy. 

But can I now, travel back in time and sue you? For negligence. For apathy. For pulling off your treacherous disappearing act. And not once or twice. Several times, if I may. 

You held out a mirage of niceness when you appeared back again. It made me forget. But that shouldn't have been that way. 

I should've held some ground. I didn't. 

But now, when I don't even bother to think about you, I learned somewhere that disappearing on your near ones is typical drug addict behavior. You pulled it off with such panache, were you one of those?

And your drug of choice, was by no chance me, was I.

Still can't believe, you outsmarted me, so well. Man.

So much poetry for zilch.

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.

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

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. 

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. 

Self Portrait

He is an egotist. He has a suave exterior. Very gentlemanly. He carries the weight of his reputed degrees. Numerous foreign trips. His consultant like mannerisms. His erudite family as well. The elegant wife, with slender arms. Who wears sleeveless blouses. Looks nice without suffocating herself with the effort to do so. And their recent addition, a bubbly little baby girl. He is the center of all that. He seems to be a nice man. His face is somewhat chiseled. He would have felt tremendously geeky, only a couple years ago. Now he is more seasoned. He isn't outweighed by his net-worth. But he silently takes an aggregate amount of pride in himself. Now that is not bad, is it. But it is. The modest exterior, vis-a-vis a crouching ego within is no child's play. You could never guess, when he's playing you and how. He could keep you guessing, even perplexed, may be. He would shower you with attention, one day. Ignore you the next. I know this category of men, only too well. Old acquaintances. He will pamper you and at the same time, make you feel completely abandoned. He takes a long time before making you realize, this, that you cannot trust him. And also that he's not the one. Never the one. 

Second Hand Sorrow

It was the peak of summer. The sun beat down almost relentlessly. There was no sign of any rain or breeze. Skies were often clear, unabashed blue. Roads shone in endless mirages.

His grandmother fell ill, just around that time. She was old. But there is no such age beyond which one can say that a person needn't be. Anymore. So she was that way. Old, ill, under the constant care of her children and grandchildren. He was terribly attached to his grandmother. Almost all his childhood memories would have glimpses of his grandmother pickling mangoes or grinding pulses or de-husking rice or simply sitting between all her grandchildren and telling stories to ease long afternoons of summer vacations. And no wonder he missed her and was miserable to see her because everyone thought that she was too old to be now.

He was delicate and sensitive. The phase that we were in then, I was yet to see his sentimental side. He never expressed emotion per se. He cracked jokes, I laughed a lot. And that was about it. A few times things had gotten out of hand where in emotions had come into the picture. Like I had messed up someplace and I needed someone just to talk to and not merely make jokes. Or the time he forgot to wish me on my birthday and was apologetic like a bunny. Like that. Apart from such occasions, never had he ever brought up feelings, sorrow, fears into our conversations. We had been very safe that way. Very insulated from each other.

So when he spoke about his grandmother the way he did, I felt very unprepared. Sometimes providing consolation is not one's forte. What can you do? But I genuinely felt for him and I told him everything was going to be okay. There are hospitals and doctors and everything. But deep down we both felt, this was it. I discarded that deep-down-feeling as my ingrained pessimism and told him that I truly-deeply felt his granny was going to be fine.

And I don't know how, but he got a rush from what I said. Instead of being sad, he planned to go and see her. The temperatures would make the journey impossibly hard. But I didn't have the heart to stop him. He was like a child to me and all I could do was quietly obey and execute whatever he wanted to be done.

I packed him some fruit and a few bottles of juice in his backpack. Literally squeezing his clothes and laptop for space. And saw him off at the bus stop. He didn't text me on reaching or to tell me how things were. I didn't bug him either. Space was an important thing. And suddenly I felt like an egotistic bitch. I am that way, nobody can help me.

The next day, he texted me that his 'aai' had passed away. 'Aai' is what one calls their maternal grandmother. I felt a tug in my heart. I cried and couldn't sleep at all that night. Still didn't know what to text him back.

Memories from April

It was a summery afternoon. I felt like watermelon dessert in vanilla ice cream. The kind that comes into vogue every time the season changes. Summer dictates a lot in our lives and you know how much I detest her for that. Anyway, I genuinely craved for the dessert. How neatly, 'twas served on a bowl held up on a tripod stand, as if it were the godamn chemistry lab. The watermelon cubes, de-seeded and mounted upon by three scoops of vanilla ice cream. Very geometrically symmetrical. It was perfect for the onset of summer. And that only. Later months of May and June, nothing, absolutely nothing helped. 

There was no remedy for summer, then. The cranky air cooler had a history of mood swings. It worked if it felt like. No lassi, no sugarcane juice would stand by you. The air was hot enough to give you blisters. We sat for hours inside the ATM. That was the only placed that was air conditioned. Until it too gave up one day. 

Summers gave way to very typical blossomings though. The smell of raw mangoes and the relentless nostalgia of first love, sometimes. I don't remember if I fell in love in summer. Now memories don't work that way, do they? I feel a mild loss when I look back. A mild one, yes. 

The mountains would turn grey from all the dried grass and leaves. And catch fire. It was a scary thing, the way those forest fires looked at night, up from the roof. Where I sometimes spent hours trying to forget the stifling heat in the house. As if ghosts had come back to life, or as if the fires would not be quenched and would spread to the plains and burn everything with them.

But you, in addition to getting me that glorious watermelon dessert, got me a dozen other consolations. Nothing bad was going to ever happen. You even took me boating, to take summer off my mind. To the park at one end of the city that had a lake. And that lake had huge trees across its edge where bats lived, probably. And when you paddled too close to the edges, a swarm of bats would swoop right over your head. 

How I clutched on to the sleeves of your shirt then. I panicked and couldn't find your wrist in the dark. And you told me that bats were blind. And that they can't even see me. How reassuring was that. 

Pariahs

They made an odd couple. Like other real odd couples. Very distinct from the rest of everything. It was not just because she had grown a gothic look, or because he grew a beard when no one did. Nor was it because she swayed when she walked, like her waist was afloat over her legs, or because he was a drunk. They were odd, because you could sense it around them. When you saw them move past, or when you encountered them, uncomfortably in the corridor, or just stared at them stealthily while they were sitting at the most land-locked table in the cafeteria. It was almost impossible to get to them. And they let nothing out, either. No piece of information released about how they were doing, or what was going on in-between. Leave alone how much they loved each other and related crap. Sometimes it was difficult to assume if they had sex even, there was no PDA, none at all. Like a cold ice wall stood between them, not even holding of hands. Except that you spotted them together, and knew that they were. Together. They never let anyone take any guesses. So only naturally, they became pariahs. Both of them were iconoclasts. Like they sought each other out. They had no friends outside of each other. 

Then one day. Suddenly. Out of the blue. He died. It was a freak bike accident, On a Sunday winter morning. The fog was so thick that you couldn't see a foot ahead. Walking felt like walking in heaven. He must have been high. Like really high to be run over that bad. Everyone took the liberty to assume. That weekend was difficult. A peek into what a hell hole we were living in, and how horrible things did happen in life. They had broken up a week ago. Something must have caused that. Nobody knew what. She had gone home to deal with all that. When she came back Monday morning, the fog was still intact. The gloom had settled down on window panes and condensed into droplets of irreconcilable grief.  Nobody knew what to tell her. Or how to even begin. 

Facade

Well, as I am too disentangled to write a story, lets make tonite the night of one liners, shall we.

• I have got very bad intentions for you. In my mind. Destructive. Very dirty, filthy intentions
• Nothing sets you as free as the absolute lack of commitment. Peals off two layers of  your skin to reveal your true colors
• You may do whatever you wanted to do with me. The question is, and the very big gigantic question is, baby, would you want keep me after that. May be not. So choose, which window are you gonna throw me out from. Huh
• I like the surreptitious noises. If sometimes, I get to hear them, I cherish and cage them in my middle ear.
• Love rain. I love rain. Not the first showers of monsoon. But the ones that never stop, once they've begun. Incessant. With continuous warnings of flood and dams crashing down. Those rains. Cannot wait for them anymore. 
•  Fuck the following things in the following order:
• Facebook
• Peer pressure
• The Tropic of Cancer
• Need for attention
• Awful beer
• Blah
• Food, is the biggest distraction. Thank God for Food. Is it illegal to marry food. Like I came back home, pretty drunk and artsy. And I had plans to scribble the hell out on this blog. But, now that I've eaten, I can hardly remember. Like I have complete amnesia of the turmoil in my head of an hour ago.
• Life has frozen, shopping is a panacea no more. Consumerism nauseates me. It makes me want to puke my lungs out. Malls suffocate me. I hate the mirrors that make you appear prettier than you could ever be. 
• I despise how the ATM machine never fails to reject my card the first time. How is that anomaly maintained every time I am in severe need for cash, I would never know.
• Back off, whenever someone sits that close to me and talks, my eyes zoom in and zoom out on them. And you keep getting larger and smaller in my eyes. That sickens me. I like to see you for how you are, for real, without your pretension. So back off, may be a little. 
• And give me my sanity back. Or never ask me why I am insane so much. 

Reason

But I don't know how I got here. Can't remember a thing. Feels like waking up in a strange bed. All hung over and head-ached. Only not that much head-ached. I am fine. Sad, but manageable. Not devastated. Disgruntled, or hopeless. Or, may be I am even hopeless. But that's okay. What can we do. I am okay you know, something I never imagined I would be, without you. Don't know how or why. Memories do come back to me, but they make me happy than sad. Like I see the lanes you walked, the places you waited at, the faces you told me about. But none of that affects me with a violent gash. I just smile. Merely, smile. Sometimes my eyes fill up. Moisten. But I look down and pretend to wipe my glasses. I miss you already, and I know this won't work. Something that didn't work the first time, will never work out. It's true because there is a reason for the not working out part. In afterthought I even see and realize and understand and accept what our reason was. Is. But then in the flush of lucky second and third chances that fate threw upon us, I forgot that very reason. For one crazy moment I felt, coincidences are an act of God. Fuck the reason. But no, the bloody reason has outlived even my affection today. Now. When I look down from a midnight window and assume what you must be up to. Sigh. Feels like a violent gash though, but only sometimes.

You are the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me. However cliched and overused that may sound. I don't care. I literally have never been happier. But now look. The reason. Keeps coming back and makes us look less worthy than another try. I just can't. 

Either Way

In the middle of some intimate act, she would often suddenly leave him panting for breath. Gasping too much to even ask that question. Why would she choose not to love him when she very well could. Loving wasn't that hard, in the first place. And loving him, the one guy who had stretched out his entire life before her, wasn't to be hard anyway. But she was too distracted, sometimes. Like in another world. Like this was not meant to be. Like she regretted the series of decisions she had taken that had brought her to him. He would often try, merely try to gather the courage to ask her, what was not right. But he was worried that question would make her introspect deeper and she would walk out, for all time. At whatever the cost be, he chose status quo, over everything else. Every other possibility of heart break.

She would often pause under the shower, while rubbing soap on her arms and stare at the mirror. Touch her wet hair and be drenched in regret. Why hadn't she done everything when she had the time and the chance to. Everything that had the possibility of companionship. And even love. The little expressions of affection, that she had forfeited, because she hadn't the intentions of making it known out of cowardice or outright laziness. Sometimes she wanted to know what courses their lives might have taken. Similarly, she wanted to loiter back to every such might've and could've and explore the mood swings of an unknown future. Instead of just sitting there and waiting, when she could have hugged a quaint promise.

The aforesaid stanzas of prose could be read in either order. May be she regretted in the shower first and then went to him, made him miserable and came back to regret in the shower again. May be she married the man, only to run away from him and regret it in the shower and then go back to him. It is like a vicious circle. The same act precedes and supersedes its counteract. What should I do with my life. Do I go either way.  

Once.

It was a winter afternoon, to the best of what memory tells me. Could've been winter or monsoon though. Or one of those days when it was just cloudy and the canopy of pine trees didn't let you see the sky. And it didn't matter if it was evening or afternoon still, the sun set at 4 pm.

Had been trying to get a cab on the way back from solitary lunch. You know how hard it is to get cab in that city. Almost impossible to find one that's going where you want to go. Almost as difficult as finding love. And then it began to hail. Yeah, you won't believe. Hail. Sheets of frozen rain hit everything on the road, all shops had their shutters down. There was no place to hide under. It was relentless. How perfectly I had forgotten my umbrella.

I almost pleaded a cabbie to take me back. He charged me thrice. Or so it sounded, I didn't have the time to calculate exactly how many times he was charging me over the usual. I got in and rolled up the glasses. My sweatshirt wouldn't suffice. Like I had gotten into that habit of stretching their sleeves to cover my palms. From the cold. I did just that, breathed in air, breathed out mist. And counted on the silence. That couldn't be broken. That had encapsulated me ever-since, I had begun craving for love. Dogmatically.

I had been hiding in my bag a neatly packed slice of cake. Chocolate fantasy. That I had coaxed myself to believe wouldn't twist and turn and spoil itself as the cab made numerous rides uphill and downhill. When I reached, the hail had stopped. It was cold still, I borrowed the umbrella from the gatekeeper and quietly walked till the stairs. There I must have paused for sometime, let myself be further disillusioned before finally tip toeing up.

I wanted to be quiet, like a sleeping child. Didn't want to be heard, didn't want to be a nuisance, or an intrusion. I knocked their door. I say their- they had begun living together past few months. Though people outside constantly talked of how much more they had been fighting after the moving in thing. Ironically, I believed in both, their firm love and the rumors that made rounds. Probably because it never mattered what I believed or felt or thought.

Put the cake on his table, I owed him one because I had lost some silly bet. Or something. And turned back to make a quick exit.

But turned back again and smiled, grinned. Seeing them together that way, huddled against each other under a blanket staring out the window, at the chaos outside having been settled. I felt peace. Love, once. I don't remember if I felt envy. Somehow, I can't remember walking out that door anymore.

From that moment till now, a lot had happened to me, with me. I haven't done much except write some 700 odd posts on this blog. Oddly enough, now..I don't feel the need to be in love anymore.