An Onion

“Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.”

~Carol Ann Duffy

The Search

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.”

~Bob Marley

As good as fiction

Every day I wake up to the hope of hearing from you. And you don’t even know.

In my mind, it involves us turning over a gigantic, blank page that holds umpteen possibilities and fresh starts. I can’t think of a plausible way how it will happen though, a text message maybe or (God forbid) a phone call. There is every likelihood that the phone would be flung out of the window in nervous anticipation of hearing your voice. And if I were to run into you someday, say on an ordinary day, I would most likely flee in the opposite direction or hide behind the plastic foliage of a tall potted plant. Your presence makes me giddy and regresses my mental capabilities and instincts to that of an awkward, lovestruck adolescent. But I love that love can still create in me that clumsy, good nervousness; the sudden paralysing inability to vocalize or saying more than I had intended to; looking everywhere but at you and resorting to sneaking shy glances; the joyous somersault and quick jig that my heart performs at every memory of yours; the inevitable turning back at the sound of your name; the way my eyes search and pick, like a magpie, pieces of ‘you‘ in the crowd, that intense gaze, the familiar walk, your smile; and the inconceivable but infinitesimal possibility how every ring of the phone or doorbell could have you on the other end.

But then it all happens in my mind, doesn’t it? In the real world, I lurk in the no longer accessible fringes of your memory. I won’t ever see or hear from you. And as I don’t want anyone to misinterpret and trivialize my feelings and consider me a burden or nuisance, I won’t ever reach out for you too. Some day (hopefully soon), I will let go of this impossible love that never existed beyond the confines of my mind. I will wake up without the hope of hearing from you. And you won’t even know.

(Note: this was written nearly a decade ago and remained forever in the drafts folder. No longer relevant and is as good as fiction, hence, reposting.)

Sweet November

It always seems full of possibilities to me, the month of November, and I eagerly await its advent every year. This time certain unforeseen circumstances and a heart bereft of hope has added a dreary tinge to my beloved month. So, I called on my inner list-maker and set forth to remind myself why I love November. 

There is this brisk wind that ushers in the indigo nights in November. Cue to rummage through the old trunk and find that large, blue sweater with sleeves that overshoot the hands. And the never-ending nights hold umpteen cozy scenarios for me: get under the covers and start a marathon reading session, go down memory lane and rescue fading memories with the combined efforts of family, coffee and conversations with friends at a dimly lit cafe with misty windows, linger on a simple meal of spaghetti with garlic sauce and top it off with some red wine, and go on long drives without any destination.

Nothing feels more alive than sinking into a cold, silken sheet of water. Here public swimming pools shut down towards mid-month, but those early morning swims in November-shivering, gasping for air with each dive, awakening every single pore in the skin-has its own charm. Like a cold shower on a cold morning and cursing loud as you get dressed with shivering hands. Quirky fun.

The bleak weather can sometimes mar the enthusiasm of even the most ardent celebrators of the month. I tackle it by exposing my senses to uplifting cues. Singing along really loud to the songs of Lighthouse Family usually does the trick for me. Or else it is an evening of heart-warming Persian cinema, kinky Spanish movies, melancholic Polish films, witty British movies, dramatic Indian cinema, feel good Studio Ghibli anime or the emotionally manipulative Hollywood romantic comedies.

The joy of running a finger against the spines of books in my shelf that encase stories, entire worlds, that are yet to be explored by me! Here is my somewhat ambitious reading list for November: Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

Silent House by Orhan Pamuk
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
Toba Tek Singh and Other Stories by Saddat Hasan Manto
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

This echoes my exact thoughts throughout the entire year and I get an unexplained boost every November to rectify it. I want to do everything, try everything, risk everything. I want to banish ‘No‘ from the vocabulary for the entire month. The advent of my birthday in mid-November acts as a tangible reminder of the passing years and a ready reckoner of mortality, and catalyses the crazy impulse to try and cram a lifetime in this very month. And this utterly stupid instinct occurs every damn year.

Despite the mass commercialism of love with precocious-bodied Cupids and syrupy Hallmark cards in February, for me it will always be November that opens the doors of love. Is it some magic in the crisp air? Or is it the long nights that scream intimacy? An ordinary, hurried glance from the one you love can make you smile throughout the day. You roam around blue-nosed but with a twinkle in the eye. Midnight poets and stargazers are born. A happy anticipation hovers around every thought. Will he, does she, when we, maybe…

  Waking up to the stillness of the world bathed in the pale light of an early November morning brings forth an unparalleled joy. Spending a few moments in solitude absorbing this unhurried and quiet beauty can fade away the chaos in the mind and the sorrow in the heart, even if briefly.

The near naked trees clothed in dying autumn foliage, the flock of birds that traverse foreign skies to land on the shores of a lake and call it home for the winter, the fog that envelops everything in sight, the very sparseness of the landscape in November sets the foundation of a fresh start with the new year looming in the near horizon.

November? A steaming cup of coffee and a good book. Period.

And serendipitous moments like this.

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A Particular Moment

There is this particular moment in my day. A little before dawn, with orange arteries spreading through a dark blue sky. There are few particular songs that I scroll down to on my phone playlist. Some old, some new. There is this particular attire that feels like second skin. An old, faded grey t-shirt and powder blue shorts. There is a particular nook I settle into. Sitting cross-legged on the wide parapet wall of the terrace. There is a motley group of particular companions. Birds on electric wires, a cow with magnificent horns lying on the side street, few early risers. There is this particular wind. Not a breeze, but a brisk wind, that feels pleasantly cool on bare skin and untames my hair.

And there is this particular person I think about.

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The One That Escaped the ‘Drafts’ Folder

To You (yes, you),

 

I always feared that someday my little world will sprout wheels and flee when I am looking the other way. And exactly a month ago, I realized that there is nothing half so distressing in the world than having your worst fear come true. My father was diagnosed with cancer. The shock of it unsettled and scared me more than I could ever express to anyone. There was no time for sadness, anger, denial. Actions and decisions-prompt, deliberate-was the priority. The next 48 hours were the busiest I had ever been; running necessary medical investigations, researching probable hospitals for treatment, talking to oncologists, making travel arrangements, sorting out finances, applying for leave at work, haphazardly packing a slice of my life into a brown suitcase and backpack (completely unaware that I won’t be coming back for at least a year), and flying to Delhi. In an instant, an ordinary instant, the giant hand of fate scooped me up from my carefree, pampered existence and landed me with a thud with the entire responsibility of my family on me. No longer could I go on being taken care of, and banking on the security of having parents who will make everything alright. I had moments of indecisiveness and worry about whether I was making the right choices, but there wasn’t anyone I could share my anxiety with. I realized that the concern of relatives and friends will be restricted to well-meaning queries and minor tasks. Mostly, I am on my own. And will always be. This sky-rocketing of responsibility and worries about what the future held kept me up many nights, and I desperately wanted to talk to you; but that would have been preposterous and unduly imposing of me. So, I wrote you letters that never left the drafts folder. A week into the sudden upheaval in my life, my father’s treatment started and the next chaos followed.

I got a post-graduate seat in a town in Gujarat that is on the diametrically opposite corner of the country from my home. In the past, I would have been ecstatic at the opportunity to study in an institute renowned for its pathology curriculum and expertise. But torn between the desire to take care of my father and the allure of further studies in a good institute, the circumstances resembled a cruel joke. I decided to give up the seat and try again the next year, but my family and certain other people whose opinions I valued and respected repeatedly encouraged me to work out the dilemma by joining the college and monitor my father’s treatment details over phone, and if possible plan short trips to see him frequently. When I weighed my options, I realized that any further delay of a valuable academic year would have far-reaching implications on my career, finances, my plans to look after my family, and certain social obligations that come with being a female on the wrong side of her twenties. So, I had lengthy talks with my father’s doctors, taking re-assurances from them about the pace and quality of the treatment, booked travel tickets, packed my bags again and was off again after less than a week’s stay in Delhi.

The flight to Ahmedabad was frightfully early. The last thing I saw through the blur of my tears, as I entered the Terminal 3 airport, was my father and sister waving at me. I am a quick learner, and by then I had learnt not to dwell on the sickening pangs of sadness that welled up inside me at times. Soon, I was lost in the queues of fellow travelers. I sat next to an elderly NRI who watched me gingerly take a bite of the sandwich that we were served during the flight and piped up, “Don’t worry. In Gujarat, they serve only vegetarian food.” I was to realize soon enough that it in fact was an agonizing truth for even ones like me, who don’t eat meat but thrive on eggs and prawns and fish fried in mustard sauce. I reached Ahmedabad just as the sun flushed the early morning sky a mellow orange.

By then the jolly, old man had regaled me with anecdotes about his son’s perpetual confusion in amalgamating the suave yet detached lifestyle of the west and the slightly clingy yet familiar comfort of his Indian roots. His monologue didn’t cease even as we drove through Ahmedabad to the bus stand in the taxi we shared and left me with little time to soak in the sights and sounds on my first moments in Gujarat. I took a bus to Rajkot where I had some work at the university. The conversation around me was a vague, alien blur of ‘su’ and ‘che’ sounds. A lone well amidst a vast green field; languid stares of the cattle on the road; heavily wrinkled old women sitting in a huddle to soak up the sunshine; rows of giggling school girls with pig-tails, riding their bicycles were sights reminiscent of the ones I had encountered during my rural posting a year ago. Rajkot is an emerging city, with a splatter of high-rises, multiplexes, expensive cars; and yet homely and familiar to someone like me who has travelled from a similar town. By five in the evening, my work at the university was over and my shoulders drooped under the weight of the heavy backpack. But I slugged on to the nearest bus stand to catch a bus to the town that would be my home for the next few years. Having been chauffeured around town all throughout school and college, my experience of commuting on public transport is zilch apart from the occasional autorickshaw rides. As the next day was Raksha Bandhan (the enthusiasm of celebrating which is nearly comparable to Durga Puja in Assam), none of the private buses were available; and I found myself in a restless crowd of unfamiliar faces waiting for the one or two free seats in each of the public buses plying on the highway. On my left stood a hefty man with a bush for a moustache, and sitting dangerously close on my right was a cow with horns capable of tearing open a man into two neat halves without any effort. I wasn’t street-savvy enough to push my way through the crowd and hop onto any of the buses. I felt zillions of miles out of my comfort zone. I managed to get into a bus at last, paid the fare and waited for the conductor to miraculously produce my seat in the jam-packed bus. But he grinned at me, showing his paan-stained teeth, and said, “Uppa uppa”. After a few seconds of confused silence, I realized that I was supposed to hang onto the bus rail and stand all the way up to my destination, with the agonizing burden of the backpack that weighed more than all the rocks on earth (or so it seemed). I reached my destination just as it was bathed in the soft blue light of dusk. I took an auto to the nearest hotel and checked in. Having never stayed alone in a hotel, that too one with gaudy pink bed-sheets and eerily quiet at night, I was bit apprehensive and was overwhelmed about adding yet another experience to the ‘firsts’ in my life, all in the span of a day. My paranoia of the unknown made me push a heavy chair against the locked door of my hotel room. But after a refreshing shower and pushing some dinner down the gullet, sleep overpowered my fears; and as I woke up the next day and watched the bustling town through the window, my irrelevant fears dissipated.

The next couple of days were spent in a whirlwind of settling down in this new place- setting out early in the morning to college to compete the admission paperwork, orienting myself to the department and getting introduced to the seniors and the faculty, utilizing the hectic lunch hour to get a local phone connection and transfer bank accounts, getting scared by the tornado that is duty at the blood bank, shopping in the local bazaar, returning back to the hotel with arms laden with buckets and clothes clips, eating Gujarati thali or greasy ‘kadhai paneer’ dinners, updating myself on my father’s treatment, and drifting off into a dreamless sleep. I filled the hostel form for temporary accommodation and the warden directed me to the girl’s common room (a dormitory reserved for freshers). So, at seven in the morning of the next day, I checked out of the hotel and dragged my luggage into the first floor of the hostel I was supposed to stay for the next ten days. A boy answered it, sleepily rubbing remnants of sleep from his eyes with his knuckles and looking just as confused as I felt. Turned out that all the girls who were allotted the common room were either staying out of campus or shifted into rooms of senior residents. A frantic few phone calls later, I found a senior’s room to store my luggage and attend my classes meanwhile. The college was set up in 1955, five years before our college was built. The architecture is Gothic, with high ceilings and ragged stone walls and pigeons roosting in every possible corner you can name. The campus is huge and I still haven’t seen it all. The hospital, medical college, trauma centre, faculty quarters, the innumerable hostels, 24 hour canteens and library, wide grounds, tree-lined roads, archways; all in one campus, and not separated by a long road uphill like ours was. It is slightly shabby but nice. I like it.

The Pathology department is on the first floor of the medical college, and the long flight of stairs leading up to it has an old world charm. There are five sub-sections in it- Central Clinical Laboratory (CCL), Histopathology, Cytology, OPD and the (dreaded) Blood Bank. The intensity of duties of a pathology resident here is comparable to that of pediatrics or orthopedics residents back home, with 36 hour shifts at least once a week and 15-hour shifts on most days. My hope of it being a soft option (so that I could concentrate on writing) was brutally shattered in the first week itself. But being a creature of habit, I am used to resent things that I am secretly glad to have chosen. This academic course is one of them. The seniors were cordial and co-operative and a bunch of them went out of their way to make the hapless first year residents feel at home. I teamed up with two girls from Punjab and at midnight, after duty at the blood bank and a dinner of Marie biscuits, we shifted into a vacant room in the PG hostel for a couple of days, arranging a cot and mattress and light-bulb from seniors. We planned to live out of our suitcases till permanent quarters were allotted. Then we were in for the next shock. It was a co-ed hostel. First jolt, but we tried to mask our discomfort and awkwardness. The second jolt came at seven in the next morning when I came out of the shower cubicle to find a guy, wearing nothing but a towel and brushing his teeth on the sink in the same bathroom. As I relayed this news to my room-mates, it dawned on us why the hostel accommodation was free. It had common bathrooms, no maintenance, and lack of water in the washrooms at times of dire need. That was it. We vowed to find off-campus living quarters that very evening. And we did. Two days later, I shifted into a quaint little house, a half an hour walk away from college. There is a single room with an attached bath atop the wide terrace.

I love my room. It doesn’t contain a single piece of essential furniture. Clothes are in the suitcase, the mattress is on the floor, the groceries and toiletries are on two tiny plastic shelves, books are stacked in two high piles on the floor, clothes and bags hang on the wall hooks. The walls are bare, but thankfully the bathroom is spotlessly clean. Even with the negligible furnishings and bare possessions in my room, it feels like home every time I stride in tired late at night and flop down on my bed. Finally I am living alone; doing my own laundry, keeping stock of groceries, dusting and cleaning, and God forbid, even encountering my nemesis, cooking! I don’t own a gas stove, and am forced to experiment every dish on the electric cooker. I can eat only so much of North Indian food or Gujarati thalis at the college canteen or hostel mess on a regular basis. So, despite my non-existent cooking skills, I am experimenting, devouring and surviving on my own cooking. The joy of rice hitting my palate! I have a new found respect for the time-saving boons of the hot tiffincase; and most of all, my mother, whose cooking I miss terribly.

The day starts early for me. I wake up at four-thirty and study for an hour or two. Then I brew myself some coffee and walk out into the terrace and up the rusty stairs leading up to the roof; soaking in the warm aroma of the coffee, the sunrise, the slow awakening of the town, the numerous birds of all shapes and sizes silhouetted against the orange sky, the magic wind, thoughts of what the day will bring, thoughts of home and my family and thoughts of you. It is the favorite time of my day, a quiet space to wonder about the new life and reminiscence the one that I had left behind. I can’t write though; the delightful chaos in my mind and the urge to sort it out in words has deserted me. I don’t want to linger on anything, just live from moment to moment. The herd of cows gathering in a nearby field and mooing in unison works as my alarm clock and I wake up from my stupor of thoughts and memories, and get ready for the day ahead. Sometimes I forget to tiptoe down the stairs and run into the landlady and get trapped for a good half an hour as a reluctant audience to her religious sermons and neighborhood gossip. She is a good woman, but the sort who would be blissfully unaware if her audience fell like dominoes and dropped dead at her feet.

I pack my lunch bag, try to tame my unruly hair in the miniscule mirror hanging on the wall, get dressed in less than five minutes, and walk out of home sometime before eight. The auto fares are ridiculously low here, a pittance compared to the ones we have back home, but I prefer to walk to college in the morning. I pass by a sign called ‘Department of Lighthouses’ on my way. It makes me smile; I find the solitude of lighthouses and the waves crashing all around it very romantic. I eat buttered toast and gulp down a cup of Bournvita at the college canteen for breakfast. Sometimes I have a fluffy, melt-in-the mouth omelette, and it feels like an oasis of non-vegetarian heaven in the midst of people who don’t even eat onions and garlic. I am still clueless about where to buy fish. The morning passes by in the rush of OPD or blood bank. And then comes the much looked forward to lunch hour, which can vary from two hours to half an hour. I eat my lunch in the dining section of the common room, nap for twenty minutes (in the library!), and then revise notes etc. On the days when my duty gets over at six in the evening, I explore the surrounding area. I have discovered tiny shops in nooks and corners that are treasure troves of reasonably-priced commodities. The local bazaar is teeming with vibrancy and colour. I love the energy and earnestness of the people here. I like the way people welcome outsiders into their lives so warmly. Within a week, like Barney Stinson, I had a guy for every possible chore. The only difference is that here we address them as ‘bhai’. My phonebook is peppered with a string of ‘bhais’ that includes the property broker, my landlord, the bottled water delivery guy, the milkman, the washer-man, the grocery store shopkeeper, the auto driver, the Xerox shop guy etc. I took time getting used to addressing people as bhai or ben. It sounded funny in my mouth. But now I use them with a confident and familiar drawl. I am perpetually scared that I’ll slip into my Assamese ways and address senior female residents as ba (elder sister in Assamese, but grandmother in Gujarati!)

It’s a relatively safe place for women; I don’t feel anxious to travel alone after work in an auto at midnight. We even travel to the city outskirts to watch the late night movie shows in groups of three to four girls, and it doesn’t intimidate us. There are ice cream parlours, bakeries and patisseries in every block.  A big black dog with a lazy eye sits curled up o the first floor corridor of the hospital on most days. I have become friends with most of the residents from the other departments too. I haven’t found anyone from Assam though. But it is a good place to live, and I love it here.

Ten days after my arrival, my father’s chemotherapy started and he became severely nauseous and weak. I longed to be beside him. Talking over the phone with him, hearing my new friends exasperatedly but endearingly discuss their fathers, thinking of how carefree I was just a few days ago with no greater worries than a PG seat, all of these welled up embarrassing tears in my eyes. I had to visit him anyhow, even if for a day. A good friend booked my tickets and after fifteen long hours I was next to my father. He was coping well with the treatment but the radiotherapy induced mucositis in his throat caused excessive pain while swallowing food. He kept up his hour-long jogging routine six days a week. His stamina and determination to beat the disease astounds me. I spent four days with my family, and sooner than I had wanted it, I was back to work and my new life.

And here I am now, writing you this letter, that I know I will never send and you will never read. But I love writing these long letters, as in my mind you are always near and eagerly listening to my ramblings. I think of you at small pockets of time throughout the day. When I come back home each night, dead tired, I check if you are online. I won’t ever talk to you or cause you any unease, but it delights me that you are there, only a phone call away. It’s the modern equivalent of one taking comfort that the person he/she loves can see the same night sky and the same sliver of moon on it. It is a barely visible thread of connection and of naked, innocent hope; but a connection nonetheless. I will always hold onto it. It makes me forget my worries. Just the very fact that you are out there somewhere and that I love you is enough to sustain me through many a difficult day or mishaps.

I no longer wonder though if I ever cross your mind. It is laughable. And yet-yes, yet-in the middle of a busy day, you enter my thoughts and I get an inexplicable courage that eventually things will be alright. Why is it so is beyond me. The idea of you calms me down. And how I treasure it! My love for you is no longer restricted by hopes of reciprocation, it is just there…buoyant, carrying me away from everything that is wrong in my life for a precious few moments every day, and consuming me whole.

Love,

Me

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The Way Love Should Be

(Here are a few reasons why I love the movie ‘Lootera‘ the way I do.)

1. An uncluttered, unhurried, calming, fragile, persistent, volatile and passionate love-the only way love should be.

2.  There are people who can fall in love only after quiet (and careful) appraisal of becoming qualities, years of getting to know the intricacies of the life of the desired one and adequate consideration of practical matters. I am not one of them. I tend to fall in love with someone I barely know, attracted not merely by physicality or any obvious charms, but acting on an alarmingly vague, overwhelming and irrepressible instinct. It’s neither love at first sight nor a fleeting attraction, but a faint inkling of a love that is sure to come. And I secretly indulge it.

In the movie, I could relate to it when she knows she is going to fall in love with him the moment she sets her eyes on him. It engulfs her in a delightful frenzy anticipating what is to come. At first she adopts covert glances and quiet contemplation, mortified that he might know; but soon fear is overpowered by desire and she continually tries to hold his gaze. On the wrong assumption that he paints, she pesters her father to convince him to teach her painting. His lack of artistic skills is soon revealed, and she offers to be his teacher, as later, she matter-of-factly reveals to her friend “because the class has to go on.” Her shy, clumsy and painfully obvious (to him) attempts to connect with him, anyhow, because the restlessness that his absence brings about is unbearable, is endearing.

3. At a time when infinite possibilities enticed and love seemed so near, the dearest desire of her heart was to be snowbound in a cottage at the hills and write and write. “I want to write a lot of books”, she confides in him, radiant in the surety of its realization. The next year sees her snowbound in a dimly lit room in a cottage in the hills, surrounded by piles of books, a sheaf of papers on her desk, a pen in her hand, a glimpse of the near naked branches of an autumnal tree through the parted curtains, the same songs on the radio, and a fresh haul of unresolved, unexplored emotions that is always the prelude to writing a story.

Yet she is incapable of venturing beyond the first few lines, her growing despair echoing in the nib noisily scratching out sentences and the pile of crumpled paper at her feet. Something had died and she is unable to fathom it. The picture of her dearest wish, the one that she had so enthusiastically shared with him, was complete…yet what was the missing variable that incapacitated her writing? Was it hope? Was it love? Or were they but different names of what she had lost? Dreams are always interlaced with the implicit understanding that the joy of their fulfilment will include sharing it with the ones we love. The angst of loss is well-depicted.

4. That era. And the details that brings it alive on screen. The ritual of stretched-out evenings of conversations. The amorous glow of antique oil lamps. Intricate china patterns. Women who dressed up with infinite precision. Well-groomed men with sleek hair. Car rides. Poetry. Theatres. Art. Chivalry and charm. The entire household humming along to the song on the radio. Long, unhurried walks. The allure of the unsaid. Slowness. Subtlety.

5. Pampered and protected by an indulgent father who stroked her hair and told her stories that began with “once upon a time…”, her perceptions and understanding of the world were confined to that obtained from these stories and the books she read. She was undemanding and unspoilt, yet used to the complacency of easily fulfilled desires. Until he came along; unattainable, out of reach. His aloofness confused, disturbed and angered her. She simply failed to understand why he couldn’t love her immediately and just as intensely. She couldn’t bring herself to confess her love outright, and his continuous rebuffs to her every approach caused her uncontrolled agony and anger. He tells her, “Behtar hoga aap jaaiye” (You better leave),  and she replies, “Behtar hoga aap mar jaaiyen” (You better die).

6. His control vs her impulsiveness. His realism vs her dreams. His prudence vs the transparency of her every feeling. His practicality vs her protected cocoon. Why then, why did they fall in love? But then…why not?

7. She sits in his room alone, trying on his hat and jacket, his unlit cigarette dangling from her lips. It reminded me of the passage from Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake where Ashima secretly slips her foot into the shoe of the man she would end up marrying. Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence is wholly centred around this theme of the quiet thrill of being close to mementoes of love.

8. The songs. Amit Trivedi brings in an effortless grace and old world charm to them. Sawaar Loon, Zinda and Manmarziyaan grows on you, sparking off nostalgia with delicate tunes and soulful lyrics.

badal rahi hai aaj zindagi ki chaal zara,

isi bahane kyon na main bhi dil ka haal zara… …sawaar loon

9. Longing. He declines her love (and she is unaware of his reasons), but as the hour of his departure from her life approaches, the fear of never seeing him makes her knock on his door and voice her fear with an earnestness that breaks the heart. She wordlessly asks him to love her. And he does, with a tenderness that breaks the heart again.

When he leaves her cottage, she remains in bed torn between her irrepressible love and abject hatred for him. He walks on for a while but finally succumbs to the longing to be with her and returns. When he walks into her room again, just when she had thought she would never see him again, her stare is a mixture of disbelief, contempt, anger, concealed love and secret relief. It’s so hard to say, ‘don’t go. stay‘ when self-esteem, ego, past anguish and fear of indifference creeps in and paralyses us. The core of so many unsaid wishes is the joy of an unexpected (yet constantly yearned for) return, of love knocking on your door.

10. There is this scene. He sits on a canopy bed, lost in a haze of overhanging net curtains. She sits on a chair, with her feet up on his bed, lost in writing a new story. In a gaze that creates a lump of joy in the chest, he observes her writing.

Are you writing a story?

Yes.

Is there a boy in it? 

Yes.

Is there a girl in it?

Yes.

Are they in love?

No.

Are they about to fall in love?

And he continues to whisper questions that she delights in answering. It is such a serene and palpable moment of tenderness. 

11. The subtle humour. The enactment of how Dev Anand fights ‘aise jhoolte hue’ and still manages to keep his perfectly coiffed hair intact, and the camaraderie the two friends share. The way she bullies the chauffeur to teach her how to drive. The upsurge and the quick downfall of the bravado of the caretaker at the cottage that involves an unloaded pistol. He finally reveals his name to her and they double over in laughter at the absurdity of it. She accuses him of harbouring lust and questions his intentions, and he takes one look at her dishevelled appearance, the dark shadows under her eyes, her sickly pallor, the unruly hair and replies with a straight face, “Haan, aajkal itni haseen jo lag rahi ho tum” (Obviously, you look so appealing these days). 

12. The compelling performances. Sonakshi shines and looks ethereal, and redeems herself as an actor of calibre. Ranveer exudes brilliance and works the silences well to give a subdued performance. And there is the rest of the superb cast. The indulgent father whose world revolves around his daughter. The funny friend and (literally) partner-in-crime. The brief but noteworthy cameo of Arif Zakaria. Adil Hussain enthralls, and the cop-and-robber chase makes for a captivating (sic) visual.

13. The timelessness of love overwhelmed me anew. The past brims with infinite loves-fulfilled or unrequited, doomed or persistent, told or untold, nuanced or awkward-but love all the same. The love that exists now will someday be lost in the myriad of the untold and bygone. A melancholic realization.

14. The awe-inspiring cinematography has a poetic quality about it and effortlessly bewitches us with the charms of an bygone era. The minimalistic treatment, cutting off the excesses and curbing the tendency to overplay the drama, is a welcome relief. And the thing I loved the most is that it is a Hindi movie which is not afraid of long silences and doesn’t feel the need to cram every scene with dialogues. It amplified and lingered the effect of the doomed love.

15. It’s in his gaze, the intensity of which develops the unnerving feeling that he is quietly unmasking her innermost desires. It’s in the way he loves her, flawed and hidden, yet true and persistent. It’s in his shy smiles. It’s in his effortless charm. It’s in the subdued and visibly unrestrained tenderness when he seeks redemption for the hurt he caused her. And lastly, it is in the quiet gestures of love and nurturing. It is in ‘the last leaf’.

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the sister ship of love

 

(In the poem “The Blue House“, Tomas Tranströmer brings forth the idea of a sister ship that follows the course one’s life could have taken but never did; it brims with unexplored opportunities, the places one might have travelled to, and the people one might have met, the diverse things one would have known and done then. The following words are based on that premise.)

The day you walked out to be lost in the multitude of unknown, no longer accessible, leaving behind a trail of quiet desperation and ‘what if”, I pulled you aboard the sister ship of my life.

And there we talked and talked. And we laughed and laughed. And we went places and we were home.

Here, you will look away if we ever meet; and the knowledge of this rushes in entirely new waves of sadness. So in the familiar darkness of my closed eyelids, at odd hours, I follow the journey of a lost love on this sister vessel. 2 am, when I lie awake to listen to the rain. 5:42 am, when my room glows orange in the early morning light. 2:18 pm, when I watch my reflection in the chrome of the elevator doors. 7:09 pm, when my feet are up on the couch. 11:05 pm, when I trudge along through the soporific challenge that is Proust.

There you wear black. I am always in my favourite blue and even allow my hair an admirable bounce. 11:05pm, we read Saki and chuckle; or you show me Bellatrix and Rigel in the night sky, but mostly we make up our own constellations. 7:09pm, with our feet up on the couch we tell each other the minute stories that crowd our day, and I no longer have to fight the urge to touch that adorable cowlick. There’s a word for it,you know, cafuné. 2:18pm, we study pillowy bottom lips. 5:42 am, we are in the mountains and the mist floats in through the open window. 2 am, you hear the rain with me.

And there we talk and talk. And we laugh and laugh. And we go places and we are home.

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A Moment

eyes narrowed to watch vehicle lights become yellow and red orbs, hazy, lucent, and gliding on the wet, dark sheen of the street.

cocooned in the dimly lit car; the low hum of the engine punctuates the sound of the rain falling on the roof.

window fogs up, the urge to write a name on it is irresistible.

roll it down slightly, raindrops gleefully chase each other down onto the palm.

it comes down harder, thousands of tiny ripples dance in tandem on the street.

traffic becomes sluggish, time stands still.

brisk wind, pleasant shivers, huge silvery sheets of rain, this song on the car radio

a sudden and overwhelming longing…

…you, shy haptic exchanges, a moment.

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A Hole In The Wall

At the end of the movie In the Mood for Love, the man whispers his long repressed love into a hole in the wall. I found it funny and had serious queries about his sanity. But now that I’m on the other side of the fence, the scene kills me.

I doubt that the wall crevice could really contain a decade of repressed love; and the ennui, stifled hope, scattered memories, the quiet yearning of all those wasted years. But confession to an inanimate object spares one the indignity of indifference and heaps of hurt. And sometimes that is the only solace one ends up seeking.

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You Come Too

I had been trying to ebb away from the shore of love. But it is just this damn month. It makes me want to read poems. Seriously.

Understand, I’ll slip quietly

Away from the noisy crowd

When I see the pale

Stars rising, blooming over the oaks.

I’ll pursue solitary pathways

Through the pale twilight meadows,

With this only one dream:

You come too.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

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Duet: On People who Gifted Me Books. On Love.

 On People Who Gifted Me Books

Only four persons gifted me books I love and thus brought upon them the misfortune of being gushed over for life by yours truly.

Ruskin Bond’s autograph

There is Mannan, my classmate from medical college, who is straight out of an Austen novel- brooding, intense and frighteningly intelligent. He was in Mussorietraining to be an IAS officer and I had asked him to try to get me Ruskin Bond’s autograph. A few months later he sent me a book autographed by an author whose stories populated my childhood. Thank you, Mannan. I really appreciate the gesture. He gifted me Dust on the Mountains by Ruskin Bond.

Reading it now

There is Shakeel, a friend from high school who writes like a dream. He is living a life I covet and admire; writing and getting paid for it. Someday I hope to read a book written by him. Our mutual friend, Snata, is an amazing writer too and I’m simply happy to know this talented duo. I received a book from him today; and it was so unexpected and it made me so happy. Shakeel, prepare to be gushed over for life that would embarrass you enough to hide behind doors and duck under tables whenever you see me. He gifted me The Black Album by Hanif Kureishi.

Mystical

The third is Amrita, who is nothing short of my soul sister. We have conjoined hearts and minds. She is a quiet person weaving her own world; and it’s a beautiful world peopled with soulful thoughts. I’m glad she invited me into her world where we can talk about books, movies, love, life, men and hills. She has gifted me a lot of books including Paulo Coelho’s The Fifth Mountain.

Heart-felt essays and poems

Then there is Priyanka, who is courage personified. She brims with intelligence, wit, confidence and a passion for writing and for making the world a better place. She has taken risks in life that I highly admire; she is vibrant and full of infectious energy. She recently got into MIT as the prestigious 2012/2013 Elizabeth Neuffer fellow and it makes me proud beyond measure. I cherish you, Priyanka. She gifted me Kora by Tenzin Tsundue.

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On Love

I write about love, but I’m not a lover. I read about love, but I don’t live it. I see love, but I am a mere observer. Even when I was in love, when I was a lover, when I thought I was loved, it was emptiness and detachment wrapped in a thin crust of passion, that was a ghost of some earlier self, and a dollop of forced interest. This detachment and ambiguity of feelings scared me and I tried to be involved; I became neurotic about it and felt re-assured when I experienced symptoms of romantic jealousy or missed someone, which gave a false sense of being in love, or capable of being in love. I am often swept off my feet, but never by a person; it’s always a singular attribute: a warm smile, owning a common set of books, very often it’s the eyes, or kindness, sharp wit, ambition, intelligence, a fancy pair of shoes, arrogance, clean nails, someone who dines with family, writes poems, well-travelled, chivalry works every time too, or sometimes it’s just a mix of serendipity and hormones.

I can’t define love anymore. I was naive once, not so long ago, in a time when everything seemed possible and there were no missing puzzle pieces. I knew it once, this love, without having to say it in words and I poured it copiously in letters and gestures. But one day it slapped me out of my reverie. Singular attributes continued to lodge in my heart instead of a whole person. Now that time has lifted the veil off the pretenses I had forced myself to believe, I wonder why I ever considered it to be love. The conversations bored me, the laughter was hollow and I longed to be alone and with a book instead. But instead I talked for hours, laughed out loud, was a finicky and clingy lover, as if the love was real! I planned strategies, I made lists of pros and cons, I observed the duel of my mind and heart, and I was scared of acknowledging that it was doomed from the start or that I was passing off a fleeting attraction as love or worse, that I was incapable of love anymore. At twenty three! I was scared of letting go lest I don’t meet anyone before I turned thirty, or forty, or fifty.Knights on white horses were a cliché even when I was just ten. The concept of ‘casual dating‘ and testing the waters is lost on me too. So I settled for the first decent person who confessed his love for me. Sad, I know.

My friends call me the ‘most romantic person ever’ and I squirm in discomfiture. I worship romance. I love to love. I crave intimacy. But on actual confrontation with it, I panic and withdraw into a shell. It baffles me. Why do I get attracted to men who I know for sure will break my heart? Why am I incapable of living the romance that exudes from every single fiber of my heart? Have you watched the scene in Annie Hall when Woody Allen is making love to Diane Keaton and she just lies there in bed, inert and passive, and her soul has an ‘out-of-body’ experience and walks around the room, lights up a smoke and reads a book? That’s exactly how I feel when I convince myself that I’m in love!

I have thought about it and have come up with few half-baked theories:

a)  I have set certain standards for the man I want to fall in love with and so far I haven’t met anyone who had lived up to them. Practicality convinces me that the standards are high, and I should settle even when just a quarter of my expectations are met. I did so; but deep down I knew it wasn’t what I was looking for and it would only damage me; so I clammed up, emotionally and even physically. One called me prude; the other thought I was sexless. But I tell myself it’s just about not meeting the right person.

b)  I can’t believe that anyone can love me. I have my own set of insecurities which leads me to wonder why would a person decide to devote his time and love on me when they could do so for the millions of other girls who are prettier, can speak well, can make them laugh, can walk on high heels, have lustrous hair, independent and knows how to dance. Why would anyone love me? And this question leads on to another disturbing query, ‘Do I love myself?’ Over the years I have started liking ‘me’, even though I am not bursting with love for myself. If loving self is tough, it becomes tougher to believe that one is worthy of love. Cynicism sets in. Sometimes it takes deep roots. It’s tough to see ourselves through a lover’s eyes, which in my mind is always scanning for flaws! ‘You had been bad relationships. Once you know love, all your cynicism will go out of the window’, my friends tell me. I give them a wry smile and my eyes mock their optimism, but my heart thumps with hope.

c) I worry about the word ‘forever‘. Intolerance is rampant. Who has time for love? Or the patience to make things work. People jump from bed to bed, memories fade, and all that remains of what started as a promise of growing old together is a tattered  Hallmark card. You start cautiously; you exchange likes and dislikes, you move on to dreams and hopes, then comes the stories of childhood and secrets you don’t tell your friends. You remember anniversaries of first date and first stirrings of love, and get wooed by flowers and dizzy kisses. Then one day when you least expect it (or expected and dreaded since always), everything vanishes. And you are left wondering why you invested so much time and effort on the relationship. It disturbs you that your declarations of affection and confessions of your innermost thoughts are in the mind of a man forever lost in the crowd. You despair that you are back to square one; you have to lay a foundation again, and build block by block another relationship. Just the thought of the effort tires you. So you remain passive.

d) I am scared of infidelity. I have seen it at close quarters in people around me. I question the existence of monogamy. And it disturbs me that I have reached a stage when I feel fidelity is a blessing. I try to be nonchalant about the end of a relationship and feel liberated from a worse fate in the future. But lurking in the subconscious is a cautiousness that’s overwhelming and sometimes damaging, nipping opportunities in the bud.

e) I am selfish. I want it all. The wooing, the proclamations of love, the romance, the right amount of possessiveness, the loyalty, the opposites that attract, the similarities that bind, the conversations that are endless and effortless (Before Sunrise hangover), the adequate space, public displays of affection (not bordering on perversion), the flavor of newness, the comfort of familiarity, the intimacy of knowing looks unknown to the rest of the world, the respect, the honesty, the book-lover, the laughter, distinctively ‘I’ yet ‘We’, a team of two in this world or against this world, growing together in life (not in chronological sense), and a disarming smile is always appreciated. And yes, soulful eyes. Since re-incarnation is not an established fact and I’ve just one life to live, why compromise? So, I wait.

A cynicism has seeped into my attitude towards love that I largely attribute to certain bitter experiences. But in the past week I watched three movies, three unusual love stories that have dusted off some of the cynic crust layering my heart.

Hypnotic

The first is Wong Kar-Wai’s ‘In the Mood for Love’. This movie seduced me! It curled my toes, sent a shiver up my spine and unspeakable parts of my anatomy, and haunted my dreams for the next few nights. The simple act of passing each other on the stairs on the way to buy noodles can be orgasmic for the viewer. It told of a love that crept up unknowingly, discreetly; a love that would be illicit yet the purest form of love. Intense gazes, dark passageways, metaphorical rain when the tension brought you to the edge of explosion, a haunting melody that intensified every gesture-a bend of the neck, a touch of the earlobe, a wave of the hand. ‘It is a restless moment. She has kept her head lowered, to give him a chance to come closer. But he could not, for lack of courage. She turns and walks away.’ The agony stayed with me, I lived that tale of doomed love for two hours and a long time thereafter. It reinstated something I thought I had lost.

Subtle longing

The second is Before Sunset. Its prequel is one of my favorite movies of all time. But this movie edged ahead with a subtler love and longing that I could identify with better. It’s set in Paris over the course of an hour; two people who met just once and had spent an amazing and meaningful night in Vienna, meet again after nine years. They are still in love, but are cautious and bound by new commitments. They walk around and talk about everything under the sun. The effortless conversation portrayed in the movie is what I crave. No mushy talk, no promises, no flattering. But the love is palpable as it surfaces with every passing moment. The fragility of it all and the fierceness with which they protect it and hide it is touching. The way he looks at her, the way she looks at him, secretive yet fully aware, melted my heart.

Melt! 🙂

The third is Barfi! I don’t need to elaborate on this; by now everyone and their uncle must have watched it. It felt like a warm, fuzzy cocoon. Misty hills, the humor (Saurabh Shukla takes a nervous bow when he is caught peeing in the field by the hidden farmers), the dizzying visuals, the refreshing silence that spoke volumes, the Chaplin-esque acts, the lifted sequences (like the train scene from Fried Green Tomatoes) that blended so well and thus forgiven in an instant, the charming Barfi and the adorable Jhilmil ignited in me a love for the whole world! So this weekend I feel everything is possible and good things will happen. I put Libya and Egypt and diesel hike away for a while and basked in the mellow Barfi daze. But it’s the tender innocence of a love so giving and so enduring that rejuvenated my sense of romance.

I’ve a filmiheart!

 

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