You...

Love for me was never about forever after. It meant, living in the moment, enjoying each day as it comes and goes. But then you came along, with a sense of incorrigible despair and distance. Miles and miles of distance. But not loneliness...never loneliness. 

Being the quintessential romantic I was, I had pursued love at various times earlier. And as a firm endorser of serendipity (the movie and the ALSO the word), I fell on my face too. Things changed then, when you came along. 

I started smiling more often, not the silent preachy laughter, but the loud boisterous one. Mostly on you though, but you merely reciprocated with the worst jokes on the planet and it scared me, just a little, to imagine life without you. The bespectacled lawyer, who thought that being sarcastic was his birthright and sneering made the world just a better place to live in.

It irritates me, how you have an opinion about everything on the planet but when time deems fit, you are eerily quiet. And it amazes me, how in spite of our ideological differences (which are far too many by now) we always reconcile. Also the fact that every time, you look at me, I ease into a protective vacuum where criticism doesn't matter, only love does. 

That's why Mr Bhattacharya, you are my best friend, my confidante, who judges me right in front of my nose, who reprimands me often either for being to loud in public or at times for gulping too much alcohol. 

It makes me wonder, wasn't it so utterly serendipitous that I had bumped into you at a tuition class, six years earlier, as an awkward teenager,in her cobalt blue school uniform and two pony tails? After which we had to struggle to build a friendship which is so special and meaningful.

You taught me how to love, with respect, consideration and immense honesty which is so difficult to master. And although thinking about the future makes me a little nauseous with anxiety, in those rare times I get to walk beside you, I have the feeling that love mustn't be judged by it's longevity but in those fleeting moments which makes life worth living.

Happy Valentine's day.  

Of Pain and its side effects

It was just another day, when a friend told me, "Hey you haven't updated your blog for a long time." I sneered thinking, in this gigantic community of internet based readers and writers, how does it matter what I write?

But I told him, "I don't have the time."

He asked, "Why don't you make the time?"

For a couple of days I have been thinking, what could I write about. And a single word comes to my mind. Pain. Not the seething, unbearable physical pain. But the quiet, docile, heartbreaking pain, which stifles you from the inside. Why should such a pain exist? What are it's symptoms and what is a possible cure?

Last Sunday, a colleague of mine lost her dearest companion, her beautiful dog, Jacqueline. The news of it shattered me, because I love dogs and I couldn't imagine what I could have done, if I was in her place. Possibly shut myself down, without speaking to anyone for a month or as long as it took.

Around the same time, I was reprimanded at work, in the most ostensible fashion. I lost my weekly off and I scraped through the week somehow, with frequent visits to the washroom where the humiliation of a breakdown would thankfully escape the public eye.

The week was difficult for both of us in different ways. While I made a joke about it, bracing myself every now and then, my colleague recovered a little, each day. She didn't skip a single day at work. And her smile slowly grew bigger and brighter.

We were fighting different battles, both of us, but we were also battling the pain inside us. And we tried to tuck it in, to hide it, discreetly but indefintely. And at least for me, it didn't help. What I realised is that we get over a sense of affliction, only by embracing it first. Because our lives will forever remain punctuated by moments of discomfort and agony. But there will be times, which will dissolute the unpleasant moments and we'll somehow learn to move on.

And letting go is far more difficult than simply leading an unhappy life. It's harder because it needs great resilience, courage, and a silent hope and prayer that like a gush of wind, the pain will also ease away.

Ultimately it does. What lives on, is a childlike excitement, which is vulnerable but equally innocent. It allows us to love, and be loved, try new things, make mistakes, admit those mistakes and to move forth in life.

The pain is not less painful now, but somehow we are okay to let it consume us temporarily, before finally setting us free.

Hoping for hope ...

At times, you genuinely feel that life couldn't possibly get any worse. An endless tirade of letting down people and no matter how much you try, you screw up. With tears in your eyes, you imagine those times when you fought with your parents to let you take up humanities because chemistry, physics and biology couldn't make you happy. Even as a child contentment mattered more you, much more than grades or an occasional praise from a school teacher.

"You don't understand," you said, "I want to write because that is the only thing I can do. The only thing I can ever be good at." Such blatant disregard of parental authority was of no use. Their willingness to make you multitask and attend two tuition for each subject since you clearly no good at it, didn't help either. But in one of those unimaginably boring classes you did manage to meet an amazingly stupid guy, who still believes in you, especially when you don't.

It is futile to be stuck up in past, but when you have fought for your way for half a decade, it is a worthless feeling to even
consider that you might not be meant for what you have forever aspired towards. That you are indeed, mediocre, and to let go, is for the best.

But then life has its ways. This particular week, when I have been the most uninspired, the most wonderful things have happened to me.

1. A book - As always, your moment of redemption is when you read. It's thrilling to vicariously experience a multitude of feelings and travel across years, generations, places. This week it was Antony Shadid's House of Stone. A two time Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist's determination to re-build the house of his forefathers house in Marjayoun, Lebanon.

Born and brought up in Okhlahoma, Sahdid was the Foreign Correspondent for Washington Post and then the New York Times, he covered the Middle east for the last fifteen years. A reporter had once asked the father of two, "Why do you keep going back to war zones?" and Shadid had most assiduously replied, "I am covering the middle-east. And war is what's happening in the middle-east." and he went about how it was important for him, to witness the revolution, to somehow believe that, "if you are not there, the story wont be told."

Shadid died in Syria in February 2012 (a couple of weeks before his book's release), while reporting the on-going conflict. A week into the project, he was escaping from the country, returning to his family waiting for him on the other side of the border, in Turkey. He passed away on his way, after an acute asthma attack.

And even though, I am just half way through the book, Shadid's resilience is what keeps me going these days.

2. Search Engines - All hail the internet for magically producing before you the most hopeful things, which you couldn't possibly encounter otherwise. A certain boy with Spinal Muscular Distrophy starts a blog and decides to laugh at his nightmare, of his muscles wasting away over time.

Another boy with a board with the following words inscribed, "Kiss me, I am desperate". It's funny but, an act of kindness has never hurt.

A mother's first meeting with the recipient of her 13 year old daughter's heart, who passed away in a Skiing accident. Miraculously, her heart continues to beat inside a 40-year-old mother of two.

3. Wonderful people at work. Who keep looking out for you. Get you presents, guide you and make you laugh even you are the most miserable.

And then you realise, the biggest let down would be, if you stop trying and stop dreaming. If you stop believing that one day you are going to interview Shahrukh Khan or study at NYU. Life is too beautiful and blessed to be bogged down by thoughts of constant discouragement. If you are unhappy doing something, quit. But if there is an iota of curiosity to just stick around and see what happens, take it up and pursue it will all your heart.

As I have realised, life might be distressful, mundane and frequently depressing. But the question is, what are you going to do about it?

Tomato Tomato

Desolation. Pain. Betrayal. Loneliness. Tomato Tomato. Sometimes a blur, sometimes brighter than the sunlight, searing into my skin.

A conundrum. The perks of being a journalist to being a writer first, ready to converse, share and confide. And then the remnants of love, found and lost. Mostly memories, the guy who grabbed you in the middle of a staircase and kissed you, first scaring you and then making you unimaginably emotional.

An emotional breakdown. The feeling of his skin on mine. Warm and comforting. A difficult day in office. And then a brilliant book. Seeing his forever contemplating face on my computer screen, a subtle sense of reassurance.

A futile attempt to join the gym. His laughter. His words, "I'll love you even when you're fat." Irritation mixed with despair, both of which, never get the better of me.

I want to write a book one day. But stories feel forever evasive. My ten year old brother finishes the fifth Harry potter book in a day. I have tears in my eyes.

My last vacation was a year and a half back. I miss home, a sense of belonging which feels so damn far. And also, of late, a strange boy with a strange name, who is always willing to make amends, "no matter how tumultuous times may be."

"Wo jo ruki si raah baaki hai
Wo jo ruki si chaah baaki hai"

It was one of those moments and one of those days. The concept of love seemed like complex hullabaloo, forever elusive. Moreover I didn't want my life to end up in a commotion where I would be a wreck, my feelings dispensed by how someone else felt about me. Also I was very particular about the kind of person I wanted in my life. Actually I just wanted one thing really - he should be anything, but me.

Not a vulnerable to the least, someone who could bear with me when I cry during videos of puppies falling off the stairs (poor little things!) Actually the idea was a little disfigured considering I grew up reading Danielle Steel and Nicholas Sparks - a world where machismo was limited to petite little things being swooned over by tall hunks, soldiers, doctors, lawyers. You know, the sorts. And I believed. Believed that it was possible that someone would like me even if I was being stupid, rowdy, a downright bully and even unfair at times. But for a long time, a harmful feeling continued to sink in that may be, just may be it's stupid to nourish a thought, where feelings were devoid of consequences.

So just like that, I stopped and became a cynic, weary of emotions, especially my own. And then, like a hitchhiker stranded in a desolate road, someone leaped into my life. Transforming my perpetual need of solitude to someone who craved company, human contact.

And surprisingly, we had similar histories. Just what I didn't want. Both downright introverts, ostensibly stubborn, sensitive and we knew the prayer "our father" by heart.

The only difference though, was that he liked cats and I loved dogs. And he had a better handwriting, was studying to be a lawyer and was somewhat a nerd. He sang like a dream while I danced to Gangnam style better than PSY. We were meant to be, after all.

“...when you know, you know. And you don't fight it. You don't deny the inevitable. You free fall because you know there's someone there to catch you on the other side.”

"It's like I know how to love but not how to make love."

"What am I there for.." he guffawed.

"And I don't even care about it too much you know. I mean I do care.. but not like that. Plus I have been too busy...." , and before she could complete her sentence, he held her close to him and said, "We don't have to, if you don't want to."

"What do you mean if I don't want to? We have been married for like two months now, let's just get over with it okay?"

"I don't want to get over with it. It should be an experience, for both of us."

And then they stood, eyes locked, hoping that the other will break the silence.

"Fine, we will talk about this after work", and with those words she stomped out of her appartment wondering what kept her from letting her own husband touch her.

That evening, Mira took a small detour and instead of veering into the grocery section of the supermarket, she went straight ahead, brought a bottle of vodka and finished it on her way.

By the time Kapil got back home, she was already sounding nothing like herself. But even then, in her mind, she wanted to trick her husband to have sex so that hopefully by the next morning she wouldn't remember anything in case things don't work out.

She tried unbuttoning his shirt, putting her full body weight on him because she could no more stand straight.

"Since when did you start drinking." , he asked, surprised.
"Just. Aise hi."

"Let me put you to sleep. Chalo, be a good girl now."
"But I don wana be a goood girl. Me-sa-bad che!"

"Okay fine. I will come with you okay."
"No. Let's do it. Right here. Right Now."

He held her by the waist and took her to the bedroom.
"I will get a class of water. Just wait here."

By the time he returned, her clothes lay in a clump on the floor, while she pranced around on the bed.
"Whaaa- what is wrong with you?"
"Let us make BABBIEESSS!!"

He realised it would be next to impossible to argue with her. He just brought her down with a gentle nudge.
"Listen."

"No, I don't want to listen. I just want to.....", she said, fiddling with his shirt buttons.
"NO. Look it doesn't matter to me. I swear, even though I want it to happen. I don't want to force you into anything ."

And all of a sudden she started hitting him.
"What do you mean by that you creep? What are you? Some goddamn saint or something?"
And almost as if to shut her up, he took her face in his hands and kissed her, wiping the tears of her face. His hands slid down her body, as she stood shivering against his touch.

He removed his clothes and got into the bed, beside her. He had dreamt of this moment, but he also wanted to be convinced that she wanted it too. He knew it wasn't easy for her, with her past where often people left her and almost never was she given any say. She settled for the first guy her parents chose for her, because she was too tired battling her emotions. Whereas for him, the athesist and the narcissist humbug - it was love at first sight.

And how could it not be? Her frail disposition, her honesty, her smiles which lit up her face not too often, her incessant urge to always trust people, to look for the best in them, to rescue stray puppies and demand for a balloon in a restaurant when the kid on the next table receives one.

Truth be told, he has had numerous limpid one night stands with women whose faces he can't remember. But if he could trade all of that, to just get his own wife to trust him, he would. If he would get her to believe that he would do anything but her hurt her, he would.

Next morning, he woke up to find that Mira had already left for office, leaving him a steaming cup of coffee on the bedside, and also a note which read, "If there was anything as the best thing.. in my life it would be you.

P.s: You saved last night from being a bummer and I know I don't say this too often but do love you. You are not just my exception. You ARE my reason.

“I don't like to give up on people when they need someone not to give up on them.”

She looked at her watch. 20 minutes past twelve. The sun over her head, she stood in the sweltering heat wondering how on earth could a guy possibly get lost in broad daylight.

"Doofus", she mumbled.

And sometime later, he appeared, from the corner of a tiny lane, wiping off the sweat from his forehead.

He approached her with a straight face.

She wonders out loud, "What am I even doing here?"

"Sorry I am a little bad with roads."

"Clearly" she said.

They don't hug. Pricey missionary education doesn't quite accomodate that.

"So where do you want to go?" she asked.

"Ummm"

"Subway?"

He gave her a confused look and beseeched her to take a call.

"We could go to Cafe Coffee Day later." he said. Doof loves his frape. The only thing in life which is sure about. Perhaps.

Over the most horrendous tuna sandwich, hours of conversation followed. She hated his condascending tone, his horrible gentlemanly antics and his stupid cute face which looked in awe of her, as she animatedly nudged him to speak more.

"Say something."

"Like what?"

"Anything?"

"Let's go to CCD?"

Yeah so while she spoke, all he could think of was a ice cream laden cold coffee. Well, who wouldn't?

The day was a bummer. He didn't believe in talking all the time. And all she did was talk.

They parted ways with a handshake. Yes. A FREAKING HANDSHAKE. Respectful and polite. Hallelujah!

Two months later, both were back to their respective colleges. She was crushing heavily on a guitar player while he was... doing what he did best. Sulk and top his class and be mindlessly ignorant about any girl in his class who tried to interest him in a conversation.

He called her two months later, huffing and puffing heavily, blurting out the sanctimonious three words. It was the first time he spoke continuously while she just listened. She was again baffled by his guts when he said, "I can't stop thinking about you."

She pushed him off, told him to take it easy, promised him that he will find some one who wouldn't be an emotional wreck, like her. He backed off without so much as a grimace.

A year passed. She graduated. Moved to a new city. And then she fell sick. Menses, motions and fever.. all at the same time. She howled under her pillow, thinking of taking the next flight home. He came to know of it and kept her engaged with stories from their meetings .. he remembered things which even she had forgotten. The tears dried off in some time. And then words found shape. And from being friends.... they became more than friends.

5 years of knowing each other. Three years of inconsequential Facebook chats. 4 dates. That's all it took.