Watch Out For What You Wish

How can I be sure of what I might want a year from now, when I seek a million different things every day? Not long ago I had the good sense to finally accept the fluidity of my thoughts and desires that refuse any stagnancy. I am also aware that getting what one wishes for doesn’t always guarantee happiness.

I grew up cursing the dust, smoke and blaring noise of vehicles; I detested the hectic buzz of cities where everyone was in a hurry and longed for the slow and meditative pace of life in the hills or a quiet village. In my relatively short life, I had already formed opinions about what is ideal and lying in a patch of sunshine and reading, dipping my feet in the silken sheet of a river at sunset, and long conversations by the glow of a kerosene lamp were prerequisites of it. I would like to mention here that the books that I read in the formative years of childhood were of the likes of Heidi (with its mountains, stern but kind-hearted grandfather, ruddy-cheeked children, goat cheese and a bed of hay), Anne of Green Gables (trees, brooks, books and conversations), My Family and Other Animals (Corfu and its glorious flora and fauna, and its quirky inhabitants) and stories of Rudyard Kipling and Ruskin Bond (with his turtles in a shallow pond, leopards and foxes in dark forests, haunted houses standing alone atop hills, old widows who had a treasure of stories to tell, deodar trees and yes again, the mountains). And then there were my father’s stories of growing up in his village where he swam in the Brahmaputra, and was surrounded by people and surroundings so idyllic that made hardships and poverty not just bearable but tackled with an optimism. I craved for such a life, surroundings that provided a premise for stories to occur.

My wish came true in late 2011 when I enrolled in the compulsory rural posting under NRHM and was sent to work in a remote village in Assam. By the end of the first month I went dizzy with excitement by the steady diet of impossibly green fields, fresh air and bluest blue skies, witnessing the simple (and slow) lives of the people who spent their mornings digging up sweet potatoes and afternoons taking long siestas. By the end of the second month I was ready to commit seppuku for the lack of excitement. Time stopped in that place and I slept off at eight every night only to be woken up at odd hours to deliver babies. The simple life got on my nerves to the extent that I could have torn apart the limbs of the next person who called up to say, “I envy your quiet sojourn“. Every time I returned home, it felt like an escape from a prison. I gulped in lungfuls of polluted air, chalked in every hour of my weekend with some activity, ate out, went shopping, surrounded myself with noisy and boisterous people, and went to bed at two in the morning. I missed the noisy, grimy, hectic city life where there was always something going on. I still crave for the quiet hills and idyllic sunsets but now I am wise enough to realize that I want a balance between the quietness and the noise. I want both, I love both. 

I fell in love when I was nineteen. But it was out of reach and in the following eight years I wished to recreate that first love in the wrong places and for the wrong reasons. I got attracted to only emotionally unavailable men or to those that didn’t have the potential to evolve into anything substantial. I created illusions of love. Was it a subconscious protective instinct? I don’t know. Love had brought out a side of me that I didn’t like-clingy, jealous, insecure and nurturing worthless hopes. That’s not how it is supposed to be, is it? Yet I convinced myself that I was wishing for romantic love. I was ecstatic when that first love walked into my life again, but everything that followed clashed with my wish. When I think hard and clear about it, I don’t really want the romantic love and all its complications and responsibilities in my life right now. Not until the right person and the reasons comes along. Then why did I wish for it? Because I mistook my need for quiet companionship as a need for love and this lack of clarity led to unnecessary anguish. But now I know better. 

I never had any definite ambition in life; I just wished for a career that brought me job satisfaction, stimulated the mind, gave something back to the people, and made me financially secure and independent. I ended up being a physician. But there were few unseen and sometimes self-induced obstacles on that path. I am happy with the career I have chosen; not many get to be a part of this noble profession and heal lives. I am just grateful that I got the opportunity and sincerely carry on my duties. But it hasn’t brought me the happiness that I had hoped it would. And I know why. I am always eager to learn and improve my skills, but it lacked that rush of passion and go-getter ambition. Instead I am passionate about writing. The irony is that I am skilled in the medical profession that doesn’t invoke in me a mad fervour, and even though all I want to do is to write I lack the talent for it. There is the clash again.

Often I get what I wish for but it doesn’t guarantee the happiness that I had imagined. So be careful about what you wish for, and devote some time to know what you really want. People change and so do their desires and wants. Always foresee that possibility when you make that next grand wish.

You’ve just read a post from ‘Dialect Of Heart’. Kindly consider leaving a comment.

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.

You’ve just read a post from ‘Dialect Of Heart’. Kindly consider leaving a comment.

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.

You’ve just read a post from ‘Dialect Of Heart’. Kindly consider leaving a comment.

That’s Exactly How It Is

Cupid driving the Lovers

Last night in a little black book, The Lover’s Discourse by Roland Barthes, I stumbled upon words that were ‘so very true’ and instances which were ‘exactly what happens’, and drugged on by this familiarity, I forgot to sleep.

Here are few passages that leaped up to me and asked, “Don’t we look familiar?”

After realizing that you love him, and meeting him thereafter for the first time: “I saw him, blushed, turned pale when our eyes met, Confusion seized my bewildered soul.” ~Racine

On the various assurances a lover tries to quell his anxiety of not knowing how the other feels, and resorts to seek answers in irrational ways like plucking the petals of a flower to the rhythm of ‘he loves me/he loves me not’ or randomly rolling a dice and saying, ‘if four, he loves me’:

“Magic consultations, secret rites and votive actions rule the lover’s life…’He loves me/he loves me not’…all or nothing…if/then. From any consultant whatever, I expect the following: ‘The person you love you as well, and will tell you so tonight.’”

On being unable to let go of the thin thread of hallucinatory desire that the love is reciprocated, but not revealed (for some obscure reason):  

“Even as he obsessively asks himself why he is not loved, the amorous subject lives in the belief that the loved object does love him but does not tell him so…The truth of the matter is that-by an exorbitant paradox-I never stop believing that I am loved. The lover hallucinates what he desires…I love you becomes you love me. One day, X receives some orchids, anonymously; he immediately hallucinate their source: they could only come from the person who loves him; and the person who loves him could only be the person he loves. It is only after a long period of investigation that he manages to dissociate the two interferences: the person who loves him is not necessarily the person he loves.”

On the massive declarations that the lover makes, while the other remains silent; and how worried the lover becomes of saying too much too soon:

“The lover’s discourse stifles the other, who finds no place for his own language beneath this massive utterance…The other is disfigured by his persistent silence, as in those terrible dreams in which a loved person shows up with the lower part of his face quite erased, without any mouth at all; and I, the one who speaks, I am too disfigured; soliloquy makes me into a monster: one huge tongue.”

Barthes dissects love/desire, or rather the feeling which the amorous subject holds for the loved being, in incisive details covering every aspect of this feeling that is the very core of our existence, yet so difficult to put in the right words. Stories tell us of lovers and the circumstances, the origin and conclusion of a particular and specific love. But Barthes brings forth the discourse of the lover, who is the archetype of all lovers. The lover in his attempt to understand it himself, tells us about love. 

Note: An OED is an essential bedside companion if you decide to take this book to bed with you.

You’ve just read a post from ‘Dialect Of Heart’. Kindly consider leaving a comment.

Something

While walking uphill on a wintry morning the cold air stabs the eyes and tracks through the throat to settle heavily on the chest; the icy gulps don’t just perpetuate but invigorate my existence; the walk is labored, but who wants to stop? That’s how love feels. Strained, punishing, deoxygenated, and so intoxicating.

It’s an orchestrated and self-permitted ruin. A lunacy that unravels in the stillness of the night, when the mind is devoid of distractions and hurtles towards the thoughts of the one it finds so adorable. Staying away is even more punishing, like trying to hold my breath underwater; I have to surface, give in, and survive.

Odd things satiate: a word, a glimpse, even a shared silence. The regular world continues to rotate and revolve, there’s no apparent change and no one knows; the same work, the same lunch, the same books, the same bed, the same socks, the same people and the same roads. The change is inside; such thoughts! They bring on despair or an unavoidable blush, they torment. They seem so alien yet so familiar.

My life is highly protected. The pieces had taken years of gathering and careful structuring; the mess is not yet tidied, the cracks are still visible; but it is the only home. This intruder can’t take that away or cause further disorder; that is out of bounds. But something makes me want to push the walls with bare hands and make room for him in this familiar and organized mess of my life.

You’ve just read a post from ‘Dialect Of Heart’. Kindly consider leaving a comment.

On February, Commercialism of Love, My Favorite Couples

On A Train 

The book I’ve been reading

rests on my knee. You sleep.
It’s beautiful out there —
fields, little lakes and winter trees
in February sunlight,
every car park a shining mosaic.
Long, radiant minutes,
your hand in my hand,
still warm, still warm.
~Wendy Cope

Yesterday I came upon this poem that brings together long journeys, a book, love and the February sun. On a dreary day tinged with the loss of a loved one, these words felt like a warm, comforting hand, reminding me of the delights of my favorite month. I love the pleasant chill in the air, the oblong patch of dappled sunshine that sneaks in and spreads over my bed every morning, the first sprouts of green on the bare branches of the tree outside my window, and the dubious yet unavoidable association of love with this month.

It is the month of mass commercialism and ostentatious display of love. The generalization of a single day of the year as the day of love is ridiculous. But it is difficult to avoid this young month dripping with love. It is everywhere; the romantic comedies on TV, the newspaper ads of lovers staring moonily into the horizon, the special offers for couples at restaurants, the love songs blaring everywhere including the dialer tunes, the annoying spam about love horoscopes, tiny little hearts and confetti decorating even the local supermarket, flower stalls at every corner with outrageously priced bouquets, heart-shaped food, even the foam in my cappuccino is a white heart, and the sudden trend of wearing pink or red, lead by the over-enthusiastic teenagers.

I am too old to be a part of the hoopla surrounding this Hallmark holiday. There is also the logistical deficiency of a determined lover out to woo me. The only things I look forward to are the books I had ordered a few days ago (Break of Day by Colette, Book of Disquiet by Pessoa, The Lover’s Discourse by Barthes and The Angle of Repose by Stegner); and as pathetic as it sounds, that makes my month of love, reading books about this baffling emotion. Stories intrigue me, so does love; and a good love story, preferably the real ones, is always a delight. Today I want to mention a few of stories of love whose charm had grown on me.

1. Renu and Biren

They had been in love for 44 years, including 34 years of conjugal life. They are the poster couple for ‘opposites attract‘. He is an unabashed extrovert, witty, quite popular with the women, an engaging conversationalist, adventurous, highly ambitious, brash and has uncountable friends. She is quietness personified, a loner, seeks solitude, gave up her job to set up a home, shuns socializing, is calm and composed, the stronger one, the better half, and the one who holds it all together. She liked old movies, he was hooked onto sports. Now she is a cricket enthusiast and he keeps humming Rajesh Khanna songs. They are as unconventional as they come. He is the fearless protector, but she has to hold his hand when the nurse jabs his forearm for a blood sample. She speaks few words, but he listens diligently to all of it. They support each other, no matter how many obstacles come their way. He discusses his work-related problems with her; she doesn’t comprehend them fully, but her encouragement and patient words soothe him. They made each others’ families their own, not just out of obligation, but out of love. They fell in love during a time when the caste and socio-economic divide mattered a lot when seeking parental approval for marriage. She is a Brahmin, he belongs to a scheduled caste; he had worked hard to amass a small fortune, and she had none. They eloped. She battled with a chronic illness for seven years after marriage, but he nursed her back to health. They didn’t have a child for seven years, and people tried to convince him to remarry. He stood by her. Later they became parents of two daughters. They had troubles, grave ones, but they didn’t run away from each other. They were wedded for life; their love never ran a smooth course, it tested patience, taught compromise, stuck to hope and came out triumphant. I call them Pa and Ma.

2. Angana and Gaurav

We grew up together, and she knows me inside out. My best-est friend, Angana, had an interesting run up to her twenties. She lusted after inaccessible and stereotyped uber-heroes, with bulging muscles, dimpled smile, oozing with charm; and was blissfully oblivious to the long queue of admirers and stalkers who waited for hours at strategic locations just to have a glance of her. She had a new infatuation every month and we dissected that object of affection to the very core, analyzing and re-analyzing, till his charm wore off. She got into IIMC and moved to Delhi six years ago. She had a new set of friends, most of whom belonged to Dehradun. She often heard the name ‘Gaurav’ pop up in their conversations, another Dehra dude who worked in Mumbai. She had heard so much about him, she had recklessly announced to her friends that if he was so good as they made him sound, she would end up dating him. Similar series of events and conversations were unfolding before him. He came. She saw. Love conquered. It has been a little over five years now. They are delightfully inseparable. He is an amazing person, and I am not saying it because he is going to marry the most important girl in my life someday. He is the brooding Darcy to her impish and impulsive Elizabeth.

3. Devi and Divy

She is a fellow-introvert, born and raised in a remote hill town of Assam; he is jovial by default (Fun-jabi gene), growing up in a crowded Delhi locality. She is a doctor, he is rapidly climbing the corporate ladder. She comes from a highly orthodox family, he is highly liberal. She is my best friend and he is my brother’s best friend. Eight years ago I was their Cupid at a family dinner. That night in the cover of the conveniently dim dining hall, shy glances and hesitant smiles were exchanged. She broke off an earlier loveless relationship and he was ecstatic. After the initial few awkward phone calls and umpteen emails, love blossomed. He swept her off her feet; such was the wooing! They sneaked off on covert vacations, going incommunicado for days. They had a courtship straight off the pages of a romance novel. When faced with parental opposition, she asserted her love with a conviction that I highly admired. He left for a different country; and she patiently waited the long years till she was with him again. The striking thing about their relationship is the balance they maintain in giving each other their personal spaces, without compromising on the togetherness. In a week, they would complete three wonderful years of marriage.

4. Natasha and Azhar

We had donned pale grey skirts and starched white shirts, and attended the same school in my hometown. I was in awe of her; she dabbled in karate, art and shared my passion for books. Facebook and blogging brought us together after long years of separation. I was privy to her love life through mutual friends. They met as undergrads. It caused mass palpitations in her family, sparking off strict opposition on religious grounds. The future seemed bleak; as they pursued their studies and later their respective careers in different cities, while the flame of disapproval continued to burn in the families. With a note-worthy patience, they waited it out and stood by each other for nearly a decade. Their love culminated in marriage last November.

5. Pallabi and Nayan

She taught me the art of bunking class, by sneaking me out of several math classes at Cotton College. In August 2010, she called me up to inform that she got engaged to a man she had barely known for a couple of months, being a dutiful daughter and approving a match engineered by their respective parents. I am wary of the ‘arranged marriage‘ tag. But my worries were baseless, there is no fixed time frame for love. It is an instinct. You just know it. They were married in less than six months. The baby arrived shortly after their first wedding anniversary. Everything in her life had been fast paced; marriage, baby. But she had juggled her career, home, husband, and a baby with an inspiring confidence, learning by trial and error, making adjustments, setting the foundation of her own little world. I realize that she had made the right choices. Recently during an event, I saw her smoothen a crease on his coat lapel and he looked down at her and smiled; the contentment and understanding between them became palpable.

6. Rahul and Garima

He has the innate talent of charming the women around him. Flings and flirtations surrounded him, but he always got out of them with an impish smile. She contradicts his every facet; yet ironically complements him, bringing some much needed stability to his life. They dated for nearly a decade; overcoming differences in culture and background (Assamese vs Punjabi), parental opposition, distance and long years of waiting; and finally got married four years ago. That’s my cousin and bhabhi. Their love story had all the elements of a stereotype Bollywood movie; yet their perseverance triumphed in the end. And now they are the parents of an adorable baby boy.

7. Barsha and Manash

They are two of the most wonderful people I have ever known. He had always been my favourite cousin owing to his sobriety and pleasant personality. And she complements him so well. Theirs was a match doctored by relatives; which was followed by a courtship long enough to allow love and understanding to seep in and grow roots. They had been married for seven years now, and their smiles continue to light up the room, wherever they go. My nephew is their pride and joy.

These are a few of the love stories that had endured adversities or long years of adjustments; and had taught me the value of compatibility, trust, perseverance, and even healthy compromise. There are many more stories that I had witnessed, a few of which cannot be described in mere words, gradually subduing my cynicism and cautiousness towards love. My heart is so drunk on love as I write these words, reliving and remembering these stories, re-affirming a belief that had threatened to dwindle.

Enjoy this young month; dabble in love, and soak in the sunshine.

You’ve just read a post from ‘Dialect Of Heart’. Kindly consider leaving a comment.

The Known

After years of dabbling in drama, thriving in crisis and being bored of the predictable; one tends to crave the intimacy of the known. There is an overwhelming urge to give intuition a chance. What is the simplest wish? Just the feeling of coming home. Similarities that bind, differences that intrigue.

This known is subjective. Sometimes it is intuitive; when the unknown feels known. It’s like deja vu. You know. They know. You know that they know. They know that you know that they know. Yet, who knows? Geometry goes for a toss when parallel lives serendipitously intersect. Words feel superfluous; redundant almost. But vulnerability is fiercely hidden. We submissively hand in the reins to uncertainty; and it curbs what feels known. Why this restlessness?

Souls get stirred by cryptic connections. Somewhere along the way the unrequited loses its allure. Waiting tires you. So does making things happen. You want things to happen because they are meant to happen. You want your feelings mirrored, with the same intensity.

You want to give in to cliches and be loved for who you are. You want to be vulnerable in a safe cocoon. You want to know someone inside out. You want to know where exactly you stand, and revel in that knowledge. You want to put your feet up and relax. Maximum relaxation.

Signs can be misleading. But concrete steps are scary; so is initiative. The vicious cycle of hopeful wait is inviting; so is the ease of giving it all up. Where is the third choice? Where is the assertiveness? 

Sometimes you fail to see what others notice; a face, a wallet, a degree or a diploma, a smile, a story, a past, an anguish, a success, a failure, a rebel streak, a confusion, an allure. You just feel a restless soul that mirrors yours. You want to run to them and say, “hey, me too“. But you don’t. You just move on to safer grounds, turn back stealthily, and observe from far.

Some hearts get easily confused. They know what they want, but they worry about what they are supposed to want. That ruins it all. What will people say? What will the future hold? There will be others, love doesn’t happen just once. The more we justify, the more we spoil it.

Sometimes it’s out there. Within reach. But you will let it go. Uncertainty wins. But you had known. Didn’t you?

You’ve just read a post from ‘Dialect Of Heart’. Kindly consider leaving a comment.

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.

—————————————————————————————————————— 

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!

 

You’ve just read a post from ‘Dialect Of Heart’. Kindly consider leaving a comment.

Sentimental Reconconstructions

This summer Sameer is in love with Carol, and Ayush is in love with Priya. Last summer Sameer and Priya had gone on long drives, and Ayush had kissed Carol on a moonlit beach.

Sameer had etched in his memory the exact moment Carol had let her gaze linger on him, when they were in the arms of their respective lovers on a dance floor. He was seventeen and a purple skirt fluttering around honey-colored calves, delicate eyelids lined with kohl, and slow laughter rising in a throat had engulfed his young heart in the throes of passion. When the one in his arms knew, she had shed copious tears on his handkerchief but recovered surprisingly fast when she learned it was Carol. It took him a week to realize the swapping that had occurred that summer; he had seen Ayush’s arms around Priya on a night he was out with Carol, and wondered whether they had waited for him to confess first.

                                                ————————x————————-

He has been in love with Carol for four years, two months and six days now. In between classes he waits on a mound of soft grass and waves to Carol as she squints against the sun. They share a strip of mint gum and sit with books on their laps. They go to the theater on Friday evenings and to the beach on Saturday afternoons. They have their Sunday brunch sitting at their favorite table in a dark bistro. They rent a movie on Sunday nights and on the couch she lets his hands roam. They read late into the weeknights over cups of coffee in the college library. He gifts her flowers and non-fiction, she gifts him records and fiction. He makes long phone calls at night; she sends short texts throughout the day. They are used to this predictable companionship, the effortless love devoid of jealousies and mind games and insecurities.

                                               ————————x————————-

Graduation is over and jobs await them in different time zones. They are anxious about the separation and compare their schedules, install Skype and promise to write or call every day. Sameer watches her hair that falls neatly across her forehead and rests on her jaw replace the messy bun, and the three inch high pumps replace the ballerina shoes. He panics when Carol packs a black dress with sheer sleeves and a low back, pencil skirts and bright cardigans instead of her brown trousers, black sweaters and gray shirts. He doesn’t waste time and proposes marriage that weekend. She has a fit of nervous giggles and waits for him to join in the joke. She had never been able to resist petting stray dogs and babies in strollers; so she extends her hand to watch the rush of relief in his pleading eyes. A glint of a promise to fulfill rests on her finger when Carol boards her flight two days later.

                                                 ————————x————————-

She was browsing magazines at the newsstand when Ayush shouts her name. It makes her happy to see the familiar face from her past in a crowd of strangers. He is taller now, interned at an architecture firm and has an apartment fifteen minutes away from hers. Carol doesn’t want to fan any distance-induced insecurity and avoids mentioning the meeting when Sameer calls her at night. They have worked on re-establishing their predictable companionship across the time zone variance. He slept early and put an alarm for three am to call her up at her bedtime. She inquired about his lunch and the day so far as she flossed her teeth every morning. They used video chat and wrote long emails on weekends.

On evening Ayush invites her to a movie. She shows him the ring and feels stupid when he laughs and assures her that it was just for old time’s sake. They meet every Friday for a movie and later he takes her to eat at quaint little eateries. They talk incessantly about missing homemade food, the work they want to do, the books they read, the movie they just saw and occasionally they talked about love. Priya and his romance had lasted just a summer. She had invited him to her marriage a year ago; her husband is a businessman who looked twice her age. Ayush is dating someone from work and adds with a laugh that it isn’t anything serious. Carol rushes through her conversations with Sameer on Friday nights and wakes up with an inscrutable guilt the following morning.

                                                ————————x————————-

Priya walks on Manolo Blahnik, lets Versace silhouette her curves and is forever finding her car keys in her pink rose Birkin. She travels abroad every season to attend fine art courses, film appreciation seminars, photography exhibitions, wine tasting events, shopping festivals, international fashion weeks and if she played her cards right, she could get away with spending less than three months every year with her husband who spent his time cooped up in boardrooms and conferences all over the world. She felt flattered by the unwavering love and attention he showered on her and felt affectionate towards him in her own way; she enjoyed the privileges of being his wife.

She had stepped out of her origami class when she sees him smile at her from the opposite sidewalk. He has a beard and wears glasses but she recognizes the boy who pursued her relentlessly for a single date five summers ago, and they hug. She tells him of her husband in a conference somewhere in Seoul now and congratulates him on his engagement to Carol, who she had talked to when she had called up Ayush a month ago. Sameer senses the sudden heaviness in his chest but keeps exchanging banalities with Priya. They promise to meet for dinner the following weekend. That night he confronts Carol about Ayush and couldn’t curb the accusatory tone; she hung up on him. She calls him two days later and explains that Ayush is just a friend who makes her feel at home in this new country. He apologizes and they laugh at their first major argument. He doesn’t mention the dinner he would have with Priya in less than five hours.

                                              ————————x————————-

They are unsure who started it but in six months Priya’s clothes and shoes occupied three quarters of his wardrobe and an assortment of tubes and jars crowded the cabinet over his bathroom sink. He got used to waiting in a car outside the airport every time she could cook up a suitable excuse for leaving the country. She wore dark glasses and large hats when they went out for a stroll. They avoided restaurants and ordered in food; she was too popular for her own good. She talked to her husband when Sameer was at work, and he talked to Carol from the balcony as Priya slept on his bed. The obligatory night-time calls to Carol wearied him now; a part of him wanted her to detect the love he was faking, but he was scared of the aftermath too. They had been inseparable for six years; he was the one who had proposed marriage, he was the one who had sought constant re-assurance of her love and trust. It broke his heart that his Carol, with her warm smile and her good heart, wasn’t the one he envisioned a future with anymore. He rationalized that destiny had its own ways and meeting Priya after so many years had raked up a lot of dormant feelings. He watches the waif-like creature on his bed and her soft curls fanned out on his pillow and his lips brush the ivory arc of her shoulder. He has an intense desire to protect her from every hurt and sorrow. She had assured him that she would file for divorce soon, but she had to talk it over with her parents, who would be devastated by the news.

                                                   ————————x————————-

She didn’t go home that Christmas; he had sounded a little distant lately and she planned on a surprise visit to cheer up her fiancee. She had dismissed the sense of foreboding when she had heard a woman’s laughter during one of his late night calls. He explained that he had let out his spare room to accommodate his neighbor and his wife who got locked out of their apartment, and they were just enjoying a few drinks. Her worst fears were confirmed in Sameer’s startled eyes when he opened the door on Christmas Eve. She wanted to see the woman but couldn’t stop laughing at the absurdity of it all when she barged in on a flustered Priya sprawled on his bed. She didn’t speak another word, walked into the bathroom and flushed the engagement ring down the pot in front of her bewildered spectators.

                                                  ————————x————————-

On a walk in a moonlit beach seven summers since the day he had first kissed her, he slipped a ring on her finger. She was reluctant but he had persisted. Carol and Ayush got married in an intimate gathering of family and friends later that year. Two months later Priya had mailed him a photo announcing the birth of her baby; Carol noticed a large family huddled around her hospital bed and a bald man, Priya’s husband perhaps, proudly holding the baby.

                                                   ————————x————————-

Years later they meet Sameer in an airport lounge; he has a slight paunch and a wife with a hugely pregnant belly. They exchange few awkward pleasantries before he disappears behind a copy of Fortune. Ayush and their five year old daughter double up with laughter on seeing the enormous bouffant of a lady who sat beside them. As Carol watches them she wonders if Sameer knows about the child born with his dimpled chin and who must be tottering behind his mother’s Manolo Blahnik heels now.

(Note: I read the phrase ‘sentimental reconstruction’ in Mario Vargas Llosa’s novel, ‘The Bad Girl’, and it led me to weave the above story on the sentimental reconstructions of intolerant hearts, passionate hearts, forgetful hearts,malleable hearts and loving hearts.)

You’ve just read a post from ‘Dialect Of Heart’. Kindly consider leaving a comment.

In A Perfect World, On A Perfect Day

The curls dance on her forehead, wild and untamed, to the rhythm of an autumn zephyr. She spreads the blanket and sits down leaning against a rugose pine tree. The earth is still soggy from last night’s rain; she sinks her palm into the dewy grass and her short red nails sparkle in the sunshine. She sees him in the distance walking towards her, carrying the lunch basket from the car. She tries to remember the last time they were alone, undisturbed and with ample time.

It was two months ago when he got a day off from work and had ordered lunch from the Chinese eatery near his home, eating spoonfuls of oily noodles from each other’s plates, and they had let the sauce dry on the dishes as they talked for hours comparing notes on their childhood, travels and books. Later they sat cross-legged on the rug watching Woody Allen’s “The Purple Rose of Cairo”, and at dusk he had kissed her for the first time, as they stood on the balcony and watched the sun go down in the distant hills. They talk on the phone every night, pass each other in the hospital corridors, share rushed lunches in the canteen, strain to hear each other’s voices in crowded cafes on weekends, and feel the quiet assurance of interlinked fingers as he drives her home after long days at work.

He suggested the picnic two weeks ago but had to wait for their work leaves to coincide. He picked her up at five in the morning and had stood grinning as her father shouted a list of ‘dos and don’ts’  from the second floor balcony. They rolled down the windows, fought about the choice of car music, bought bottles of water from a shop on the highway, sneaked sidelong glances at each other when they were overcome with sudden bouts of coyness and tried to mask the shiver of excitement on their first outing together. He swerved the car through the narrow hill roads and after a few hours stopped near a forest resplendent with dappled autumn foliage.

He flops down on the blanket and she takes the basket from him. She notices with some amusement the work he has put into planning this picnic; carefully folded napkins, sandwiches with neatly removed crusts, snacks with hummus dip, cream puffs, three apples, a pulp fiction novella, an iPod dock, a camera, two wine glasses and a bottle of red. She plucks twigs of grass, aware of his eyes on her. He laughs at her discomfiture, stops the assault on the grass and takes her hands into his.

They laugh at the awkwardness of being a new couple, and decide not to let it mar their day. They explore the nearby woods; run their fingers over moss-covered tree trunks, photograph leafy canopies, soak in the sunshine and dip their bare feet in a stream that runs through the woods. On the walk back they come upon a pair of brown puppies curled up on a rock and sunning themselves. He picks one up for her and she recoils in fear; and it is then he learns about the day when she stepped on the tail of a neighbour’s dog with hitherto unused fangs! With mock solemnity he speaks of discarding his plans of rearing eight full-grown Alsatian dogs in their home. She blushes at this offhand remark of setting up a home together, in a future of yet unspoken promises and possibilities.

At brunch they are ravenous and the sandwiches, cream puffs and apples disappear fast. He puts on some music and they read out passages from the 1930s hard-boiled detective story populated with ‘moustache-twirling, cat-loving, trigger-happy’ gangsters and sly, buxom molls who are secret agents in disguise! The racy narrative and the absurd characters delight them, and their laughter scares away a pair of birds from the tree under which they lay sprawled. His fingers brushes away the curls that hide her eyes from him and they watch in companionable solitude the blue shards of skies through a cover of pine leaves.

He tells her about his dog, his first car, his old school, his brother and a predictable Star Wars obsession. She tells him about her total lack of cooking skills, early morning swims and her fascination for Pamuk and Nabokov. Later, her cheeks are flushed, and she can’t tell if it is the jubilation bubbling in her heart or the wine. 

They pack up the blanket in the basket and walk towards the car. She doesn’t want the day to end, and trails behind him. He turns back to look at her and she knows he feels the same, and her heart overflows with endearment. On the drive back home they park the car on the side of a busy road and watch the sun go down behind a grove of trees and the birds returning home in the evening sky.

You’ve just read a post from ‘Dialect Of Heart’. Kindly consider leaving a comment.

The Harmonious Uniformity Of Falling For The Underdog And The Wrong One Too

The storm had abated. Sleep and sanity restored. The question that went on in a loop: “Was it even love?”

I wonder why I put myself through these sporadic instances of total loss of reasoning; from which I come out with a battered and bruised ego, drained of precious energy and time, priorities gone awry, mind plagued with self-doubt, sabotaging my goals in life, repenting in leisure the consequences of my impulsive actions, a memory tarnished with unpleasantness, questioning my decisions and choices, and most importantly making a fool of myself.

Why do I do it?

Because fools rush in. I fall in love too easily; initial triggers may be a smile, kindness, intellect, assertiveness, a love for books, sarcasm and sometimes even questionable wit! The person is just incidental; I am more often in love with the idea of being in love.

But I don’t realize it until it’s too late; till I sit back, put my feet up, take off my rose-tinted shades and analyze why I do what I do.

The Current Tally Of Romantic Follies: (excluding the momentary infatuations that last no longer than a week)

1. 1997-Being a Conformist and Crushing on the Teacher:

A humongous crush on my history teacher which lead to nothing more than remembering the Mughals and Chandragupta for posterity. I studied history with a fervor that would have taken me to great academic heights had I applied it ever again!

Why did I rush in? 

He was the only person who noticed the timid girl everyone overlooked in a class full of boisterous students, and boosted her self-confidence with kind words of encouragement.

2. 1999-The Movie Star…err…Person:

I wasn’t aware of the movies that would follow, and the non-entity he would become. But when “Pyar Mein Kabhi Kabhi” came out, I was overcome with admiration for the intense, brooding and caterpillar-browed Sanjay Suri (What was I thinking!!!). I tried to immortalize his influence in my hormone-ridden teenage years by writing odes of love and pasting his photograph in my diary, which my sister later displayed in front of my guffawing friends.

Why did I rush in? 

All the schoolgirls fantasized about the blue-eyed poster boys of romance Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio (Titanic was a craze then) and on the home-front Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan (it was before the debut of Hrithik Roshan). I had to find and love the underdog. I had to be contrary.

3. 2005-Blush of First Love:

I was all of nineteen years, shy and awkward. And there he was on my computer screen, talking to me about books and movies, hearing about my day and making me double up with laughter with his quick wit. We met only thrice and wrote long letters and emails. The long distance tired him after a year. I failed to understand why trivial details like distance mattered when two people were in love. My flabby cerebrum gathered much later that I was the only one who was in love. I spent the next six months digging up the songs one is supposed to listen in times of extreme anguish and hearing them in a loop. I couldn’t take to the bottle, and it was physically impossible for me to grow a beard. But other than that I resembled Devdas in entirety.

Why did I rush in?  

 It was the love of an unsullied heart. Simple.

4.2008-The Rogue with Superficial Charm:

You meet a person, you share hometowns and your old school, he charms you with his undivided attention, you are wary of his intentions, but he becomes your friend, he says he loves you, you laugh it off, he repeats until you believe, you feel obliged to reciprocate his love, you get to know his family, you talk to his friends, you compare notes about growing up, he meets your friends and your family, and he puts a ring on your finger. Nowhere in the story would you feel the need to hire a private eye to do a background check on the person whose ring you wear. Then inconsistencies in conversations crop up and to your horror you find yourself at the center of the web of lies and deceit he had spun around you. Job, education, fidelity…everything was a farce. You go through denial, anguish, anger, disappointment, shame and feelings of worthlessness for lack of good judgement. It ends abruptly; leaving you with a violently disordered life and a distrustful heart.

Why did I rush in? 

After the fiasco of my first love, I was flooded with wise words of well-meaning people who cared about me. My hippocampus was receptive to only one, “You’d be better off marrying the one who loves you than the one whom you love.” Bad advice. Wrong man. Flawed judgement.

5. 2011-The Butterflies in My Adrenals and Tibia:

I had started a new phase of my life, coming out of the shell I had retreated to three years ago.  But I steeled my resolve never to be carried away by the idiosyncrasies of my heart. Murphy smirked and applied his laws on me during the last month of my internship. There was this ordinary face in the crowd, a tongue that vocalized so fast that I had to beg his pardon thrice before I could note down anything he said, and a sarcasm and smirk that highly annoyed me. I detested his ordering the interns around, stressing on military camp punctuality. But gradually I liked working with him. I was his ‘Woman’ Friday, in strictly Robinson Crusoe context. But I was still unaware of the dirty trick Cupid would play on me.

I struggled to curb my feelings of extreme elation every time he walked into the ward, or said something appreciative, or crinkled his eyes in laughter, or told me random happenings of his day, or elongated the vowels in my name adorably, or just sat there with a frown of intense concentration. I couldn’t explain why my heart somersaulted if by some happy accident he came for his evening duty early or our duties coincided. Butterflies not only inhabited my stomach, but my jejunum, spleen, adrenals and pisiform bone too. I kept asking myself what I saw in this guy. Why would I like someone I barely know and whose relationship status remained elusive to me? But the ways of the heart had flummoxed mankind since eternity and I was born human too despite the reasoning power of a gorilla; I just had the harmonious uniformity of falling for the underdog and the wrong one too. My internship ended. But I couldn’t still the frenzy of emotions that threatened to overpower me. I knew I was going to be impulsive and would cringe in shame later. Apparently there are no limits to idiocy. I confessed to him what his thoughts were doing to me. It was a leap of faith even when the other shore donned the cloak of invisibility. I wasn’t expecting a confession of an undying love for me (there was still some residue of good sense in me) and I was prepared for the rejection (I’m not pretty, smart or sassy), or that he had a girlfriend or worse, a wife. But he never replied. One year has gone by now. What stung me was his abject inconsideration for the words that took me all the courage I had to write. My feelings weren’t even worth a reply; I was totally non-existent in his world. That hurt, bad.

Why did I rush in? 

There was this somewhat rude boy, with a perpetual frown and impish gaze, and he made me happy by just being there. I know it wasn’t love (too strong a word), or lust (there was no scope for anything remotely sexual when you see a person disheveled after umpteen night duties at the hospital), or infatuation (too feeble a word), or obsession (I don’t make any attempts to see him or contact him). It was a girly butterflies-in-the-stomach, smile-lighting-up-the-room, laughter-ringing-in-my-ears, I-want-to-know-all-about-you and I-feel-good-when-you-are-around feeling. And I’m still waiting for it to fade. It has faded finally!

I hadn’t been fortunate when it comes to matters of the heart, and my belief of finding the love of my life seems cruel every passing year. But I am not writing off the existence of love. It’s there; I see it in the lives of those around me. It has only eluded me. 

But considering my consistency of falling in love (or whatever it is) and doing something stupid every three years, I am dreading 2014.

(Photo Courtesy: ‘Fools Rush In’ by Gil Conradis)

You’ve just read a post from ‘Dialect Of Heart’. Kindly consider leaving a comment.

Vulnerability

A brown shirt,
Laugh lines,
Impish gaze,
Beautiful hands,
The way my heart stopped,
A much loved voice,
Vivid images,
Memories nonetheless.

Took a chance,
Said out loud;
Vulnerability exposed,
Bruised and abused.
Numbness prevailed,
Hope died a slow death.
Past lessons reviewed,
Same mistake, yet again.

Fell in love,
Gave my heart;
Unasked for,
Unwanted, a pesky burden,
Tossed away ever so far.
Cumulative hurt,
Bottled away again,
As busy life awaits.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.4

You’ve just read a post from ‘Dialect Of Heart’. Kindly consider leaving a comment.