3am

On a rare occasion when she was awake at three am, unable to decide whether to continue reading the novel or risk sleeping off only to wake up groggy for an early class, he crept into her mind. It was not him per se, having obliterated his existence from her life years ago with a determinedness that turned out to be self-perpetuating, but flashes of a period when it was impossible to categorize what they were, friends sounded inadequate and lovers petrifying.

She knew only what he wanted her to know. He remembered things she forgot she had told him. They had never ventured beyond apparently normal conversations and genial vibes. And eight springs ago, at 3am when the two insomniac quasi-friends had stumbled onto each other online, he suggested “Let’s play a game“. She snorted, but comforted that he couldn’t have heard it asked politely “Trivia?” “Hmm. Let’s talk like lovers. It’d be so funny“, he quipped. She could sense the fake spontaneity and forced (and negligible) humour of the sentence the moment he wrote it.

They had met a year ago and after some unsuccessful and awkward flirting, he gave in to her offer of platonic boundaries. She was eighteen and socially inept, he was twenty-four and an effortless conversationalist. They were strangers whose only mode of communications were infrequent chats on Yahoo messenger and the single text message that he sent everyday that unknown to both had become as essential and routine and taken for granted as breathing. “I watched this movie last night. And I died.” “Sending you one of my favourite songs about love. Strangers in the Night by Sinatra. You might have already heard it. But I don’t care.” “There’s this book I read…” “I got a little drunk tonight and walking on the rail tracks with a few friends.”

It was just clumsy sharing of everyday moments and occasional exchange of songs or stories that he thought she might like. She found his unpretentiousness charming. It was insomnia that bonded them over books, music, childhood memories, movies, dreams and hopes, innumerable infatuations, significant  individual banks of embarrassing stories and also acted as outlets of ideas and experiences they didn’t share with their friends. They were each other’s talking diaries. At the end of the day, it felt good to talk to someone whose thoughts were on a similar wavelength and with whom there was an undeniable emotional connect. It almost felt illicit to contact each other during the day when they are supposed to be relatively occupied with college, exams, family and the real friends that crowded their lives and barely left any room for interaction.They dared to do so mostly on the pretext of small but relevant queries. An inconsequential text during the busy mornings carried the subtext I am thinking of you but it’s awkward to say so, therefore sending a  lame joke even though we both abhor them.

They cautiously skirted around the word ‘love‘, it could only create complications. Yet there it was, out in the open, he had supposedly joked about talking like lovers; but the words had expanded abruptly in the two rooms separated by a thousand miles and flung them both against the walls.

In the cover of a mocking put-down and ‘😛‘ emoticon, she had fled. He too had retreated aware of crossing some invisible boundary. After two awkward months of dwindling conversations and nervousness, they could no longer ignore love. A good year followed. Then in the cover of a flimsy excuse, he had fled. She too had retreated unaware of the void that would show up unexpectedly seven years later, on a spring day at 3am.

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In Pursuit of A Selectively Spotless Mind

I am accustomed to the despair that ensues in the aftermath of losing the people I love; a covert awareness and dread of an eventual end always runs parallel to the initial rushes of love. Yet the melancholy of knowing all the while that this too won’t last doesn’t offer any consolation. Each loss leaves its own mark; fresh invisible wounds quietly await time, the good old physician, to work its amnesic magic on them.

The first time it happened, I roamed around apathetic, gloomy and dazed for a couple of years; torturing myself with worthless hopes and analysis. The second time it was just a quick spell of anger followed by the relief of escape. The third time I was over it sooner than I would like to admit, and the ensuing guilt about this self-assumed fickleness led me to repeat to myself that of course I was still in love for an acceptable period of time (which in my mind is a minimum of two years). It bothered me how soon I had forgotten the face, the voice, the laughter and how I had felt for him, that I erected my own (and completely unrelated) idea of him, cherishing this imaginary love just because I was scared of admitting that it was a mere infatuation and never had been love. I continued to fool myself because its negligible longevity ashamed me.

Then there is this fourth or rather the real first or an intermittent second or maybe intermittent third or the only persistent and subdued and very complex yearning over the years, something that had never dared to leave the shadows and move into the blinding light of realization until now, something intermingled with hope and the lack of it, something vulnerable yet resilient to the passage of time, something that defies closure, something that doesn’t seek acknowledgement or reciprocation and is sustained by its own intensity, something that is beyond fear and shame, something that is unknown and elusive yet eerily familiar, something that wants to be declared unabashedly yet lingers in a sacred veil of secrecy, something that is as pleasurable as it is agonizing. I don’t know what it is, but it is like a splinter that had gradually burrowed its way deep into my heart; and owing to its tenacity and sense of belonging, the pain is just a minor deterrent to my existence. I had made a choice and I have to live its consequences.

We all seek to love and be loved. We crave the intimacy of being the only witness to the other’s life and vice versa. We want a common bank of memories, adventures, conversations, joys and sorrows. We want to love someone more or as completely as we love ourselves. There are no guarantees, there is no definite destination and there are no definite routes. It can’t be engineered or chosen, it just comes to you. Some get to journey along the scenic route, the rest gets the messy and tiresome route fraught with obstacles and insecurities. I belong to the latter category and often find myself dragging my weary legs back to the starting line after encountering dead ends. I enjoy walking on my own, and prefer solitude to the cacophony of dissimilar wavelengths of thought; yet have a never-ending reservoir of hope that there is someone meant to walk alongside me in a journey that reverberates with love, laughter, the good unrest, binding similarities, alluring differences, pleasant companionship, mingled experiences and memories, new adventures, long conversations, continuous individual growth, shared intimacy, and looking out for each other.

But the fourth or real first or an intermittent second or maybe intermittent third or the only persistent and subdued and very complex yearning of many years has to find closure before I can start anew. I don’t feel any anger, apathy or agonizing hurt this time. It’s just a somewhat uncomfortable and heightened restlessness that is not much dissimilar to what I had felt all these years. Even this will end someday, but I don’t plan to wait helplessly till time erases him from my mind. I need adequate distractions till then; new stimuli and work.

Here are my list of immediate distractions till I attain the relative calm of a selectively spotless mind, and curb any further impulsiveness and hurt:

1. Indulge in the only agreeable distraction: books. Read more non-fiction, and some contemporary fiction.

2. Join that Zumba class.

3. Write more (if that is possible!).

4. Take up whatever shifts that comes my way.

5. Continue the ban of all information overload from my life, except for maybe occasional tweets.

6. Overcome my laziness and ennui and re-connect with old friends.

7. Go back to the pool.

8. Overcome my dread of the kitchen. Make a ritual of cooking (I use the term loosely) dinner at least once a week.

9. Delete a certain phone number, mails and messages. Already done!

10. Use that language learning software and dictionaries to learn elementary German. Ask my sister to be my tutor.

11. Enough of the slow life. Get out of home more. Explore.

12. Maintain an essential detachment from all the problems that crop up in my life or the ones of those dear to me, to avoid drowning in panic and sorrow.

13. Not curb the thoughts of the one I am trying to forget, because I would end up fuelling reverse psychology. Let it be.

14. Revive the fervour of watching more world cinema.

15. Nights are dangerous and insomnia encourages irrelevant hopes; try to sleep early.

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Quiet Dignity

I had allowed others to dig their heels into it, and the resultant dents still gives me nightmares. Loss of dignity by revealing one’s vulnerabilities and weaknesses to people who don’t value it, and the inability to say ‘no‘ to self can leave deep scars. There is a tendency to indulge in self-pity, blame others, and refusal to take responsibility for the consequences of one’s own decisions. But good sense eventually drifts in with the passage of time as one gathers the scattered pieces of life. The only lesson that stuck with me from the past is that absolutely nothing or no one is worth compromising my own dignity and self-respect for. It comes from being unapologetic about who I am and the choices I make, with full responsibility for their consequences. It would be sheer idiocy to give the reins of my life to those who have the ability to hurt me, and lament about it when they eventually do. Only I know what I feel and what I want in life, and that shapes my character. Others can only speculate about it, and these speculations shape reputation. I prefer the former and tend to be fiercely protective of it, shielding it from unworthy influences. 

Everything else that I treasure in life-family, love, work, books, travel- comes after it. My world revolves around my family and loved ones. But in my extended family, after years of revering age and being a mute observer, I stood up against few injustices; and even though it caused irreparable damage to certain ties, it brought to me a sense of relief and bolstered my sense of moral responsibility and dignity. I have even learnt to disguise my love and vulnerabilities. I would rather die than admit to the one I love that he has the ability to hurt me. I have done that in the past, and it is not a good feeling. It is tempting to tell out loud how I really feel, but then such confessions require a listener who understands it. Or else it ends up leaving a tornado of unrest that I have to rein in and quietly carry within myself for a long time. And that again is not a good feeling. As for career and work, it all comes down to doing what I love (or learning to love what I do) and carrying it out with utmost sincerity. It can be the most insignificant job in the world, but if it is done without any compromises of  integrity, it brings in a happiness and satisfaction that is hard to explain.

No matter how many skies fall, if your dignity is intact, you get the courage to go through another day.

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Smorgasbord: Ismat Chughtai, Come Here, Dead Ends

Last year I had decided to incorporate the works of eminent female authors of Indian origin into my reading list, the ones beside the predictable list of Arundhati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri and Kiran Desai that my generation identifies with. I started with the novels and memoirs of Kamala Das and Indira Goswami. I began 2013 with the short stories of Ismat Chughtai. They are unabashed, titillating, disturbing, provoking; they tell about the underbelly of conservative and orthodox households, about lost loves, about the lives of women from various nooks of the Indian society, and about the relationship dynamics in large households. In the anthology I had bought, there were stories about a dejected wife who embraces the devotion of the female servant whose rough hands massages her creamy white back and legs, and lets the servant do questionable things to her under the dark cover of a quilt every night; about a rogue Englishman, with  a glass eye, who stayed back even after India gained independence and tentatively tried to start a family with his Indian maid, under the mocking eyes of the very people he ruled; about an adolescent widow outcast from the household when the heir of the family impregnated her; about the lost years and love of two passionate individuals who never gathered the courage to confess their feelings; about the a pampered daughter-in-law plagued with the grief of serial miscarriages and the fear of her husband’s remarriage, witnessing the ease of birth of a child in a moving train; about how the craving for restless soul soured once it was possessed and tamed; about a tortured painter’s obsession with the thin line between pure innocence and veiled provocation of his subject. Ismat Chughtai is unconventional, hence unputdownable.

Love songs crowd the playlists on my phone and iPod. But the one I always return to sometime in the course of the day, is Kath Bloom’s ‘Come here‘. There is a scene in the movie ‘Before Sunrise’ when Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy are in the listening booth of a music store, and this song starts, the words of which says what remains unsaid between them, and the subtle longing in their stares, and the wondering in their hearts, and the anticipation of what is to come. The palpable thrill of the unsaid. I’ll never tire of this beautiful song.

When you take the open road towards the unknown, with nothing but naked hope, you are wary of taking more than a few hesitant steps each day. When the sun shines on you and the fog around that obscure destination clears up a little, your gypsy feet tread with joy. But sometimes you wake up to an unfamiliar and hostile terrain surrounding you. Reason tells you to turn back before it’s too late, and you stand awkwardly, helplessly, not knowing what to do. The worst nightmare is to realize that you had been walking towards a dead end. You cry not for the lost time or the lost hope; but because walking back on your now weary feet would take so much longer. 

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They Haunt Me In The Shower

Five sentences crowded in the left column of the newspaper jolted me this morning. I read about earthquakes, bombings, accidents, murders and cardiac arrests everyday; newspapers make sure we wake up to witness the end of lives in solemn obituaries or gory details or just few indifferent words. But these are snippets of wars in foreign lands or riots nearer home or a bespectacled old woman lovingly remembered by her sons and grandchildren, and even though these deaths aggrieve me, their anonymity cushions the blow and makes it only a fleeting presence in my memory.

How does the death of someone you know affect you?

I don’t mean the intimate circle of family, friends and loved ones or the innocent victims in distant, war ravaged lands. I’m writing about those in between, the people one might have known, met at some point in their lives and maybe had talked about the weather.

A good friend of mine from high school traced me through an online social network and we ended up sharing the latest gossip, reliving old memories and promises to meet soon. She used to ask the weird questions and when we were in the eight standard she made me choke on a burger when she asked out loud ‘Does pubic hair turn gray?’! She spelled it ‘trigonometry’ but pronounced it ‘trikonometry’. Her hands were never tired by the animated gestures that accompanied every sentence she spoke. Every night her mother shook her curly hair to drive out any mosquitoes before she got inside the mosquito net. Time and distance had faded her from being a close friend into the sphere of a mere acquaintance and I forgot about her in pursuing the mundane activities of my life. And one day I received a text message informing me that she had died following complications of a regular cholecystectomy! I wasn’t devastated or cried throughout the day. I envy people who can do that. I was sad, and profoundly so, but I didn’t shed a single tear. I was amazed at my own calm and strength in handling the emotional blow. Two years on, I avoid any conversation that brings her up. The grief refuses to ebb away in a gush of tears.

My pehi (paternal aunt) died two nights after I had scolded her about eating potatoes. She was a diabetic who never comprehended the seriousness of her ailment. She gulped down rosogullas in secret, as if discreetness would shield her from the ravages of diabetes. Her feet had sores which she hid in the folds of her saree. She thought it was a game her body would win as long as she plunged a syringe into her abdomen twice a day. She got hospitalized frequently, but always recovered in a few days and the family breathed a collective sigh of relief. Five years ago she didn’t even have the time to reach the hospital. She died on her bed in our ancestral home in the village. I had called up to know if she got admitted in the hospital yet and I was informed that my aunt had expired a few minutes ago. It is this phone call that will haunt me all my life; how my heart had stopped beating for a few moments and it was momentarily difficult to move my mouth to form words.

Today the newspaper told me that another life had ended and it threw up a familiar name. I sat transfixed for a few moments, then rationalized that it might be a namesake and called up few people who might help refute the newspaper claim, but the news only got confirmed. He was an acquaintance who I had worked with nearly two years ago. Through the little interaction I had with him, I knew him to be a good-hearted, calm, intelligent, unassuming, hard-working, sincere, sober and kind person with a wit that took time to get used to. He had warned us about the futility of a doctor trying to advise family members regarding health issues. He had said, “Ghar ki murgi daal barabar!” and all the interns had laughed. He had once admonished me for rushing into the NICU with my shoes on. We drank piping hot cups of tea on a winter night and talked about treatment protocol of asthma! I remember him with the ubiquitous muffler around his neck and a brown jacket. He wasn’t a friend or a close acquaintance, just someone I had known fleetingly. But I am distraught by this sudden end to a young life full of so many hopes and dreams, a life that had just started out, a life which was backed by achievements and a life so gentle. Tongues have started wagging about the cause of death, but is it necessary to know how, where, why or who drove him to the ends of despair and end his life? It’s a sad enough fact that we lost such a good person from amidst us.

The melancholy of young lives cut short by untimely deaths haunt me every moment till they merge into the subconscious only to erupt in moments of solitude. I am scared to close my eyes in the shower, for the thought of the dead haunt me in the claustrophobic, hazy cloud of steam. In morbid moments I feel guilty to be alive and breathing when someone my age, someone I had known, someone who might be more deserving of a place on this beautiful earth is no more. I am disturbed by the unpredictability and the abruptness of death, of dreams and hopes remaining unfulfilled or fading from the memories of loved ones.

Today the sky was the bluest blue and the sun had cast a golden glow and a pleasant breeze had rustled the leaves of the tree outside my window. The traffic continue to harass, new books are getting penned, movies will release this weekend, iPad5 is yet to release, fuel prices continue to rise, people will continue to fall in and out of love, the ruins of Atlantis might be discovered and Venice might sink; but the lost lives will no longer witness them. 

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