You Are Here

I feel sorry. For you. For me. For everyone out there who is exactly like us. Because in the world we live in, we are the weaker people. We are the emotionally unstable. We think too much. We analyze more than we should. We are difficult to handle. We feel so much at one time that it’s impossible to contain it. We believe too often. We trust too soon. Sometimes the only constant thing in our lives is the way we fall in love with everyone and everything around us as quickly as we fall out of love for it.

We fall. We get hurt over things that don’t matter. We break to bits. We look for people to fix us. We put ourselves out there. We are all over the place. We are people with vulnerable hearts fighting the urge to call this one friend we think will understand at three in morning. To vent. To cry. To get over things.

We know all there is about not letting people define our happiness for us. All about not tying our goals to people. And yet, we think our stories will be exceptions. This person will change everything. Turn our lives around. This one time, will be different.

We get angry. We want the person we are angry at to come and make up with us. And you know the funny part? This person, who has made you angry, who has hurt you, will always come reason with you on how it was not exactly their fault. That’s what they'll do. They'll explain. And reason. When all you want is just to forget everything and talk the way you used to. That you don’t even think it was their fault. That in the end, they were missed more than anything else. That all you wanted to know is that you were important enough to be made up with. Isn't that what we crave for? This crazy idea of acceptance?

And this, this will eventually kill us.

The Moment

"I wish we could better understand death. And life."

"There is nothing to understand. Trust me. I've seen it.

You sit and play things over in your head thinking how you will possibly react if something like this happens. Truth be told, you never know what will come over you when it does happen. Like, for real."

"You’re wise."

"I know I am. I talk fluent Paulo Coelho, kid."

"Paulo Coelho doesn’t make you wise. It’s not, like, the definition of wise or something."

"That was a metaphor. Can’t you just let the woman have her moment?"

"Ok. Sorry. Here. Have your moment."

Unrequited Love

Ten forty nine.
My eyes sweep across the newspaper in one hand as I pick out imaginary fluff from the curtains using the other. Toothbrush dangles from one end of my mouth. The gentle hiss of water boiling fills the house. I braid random strand of my hair absent-mindedly. Drink coffee. Strong and black with a little skim milk. Hum along to Julia Stone. Write, if it comes to me.And somewhere, during this trance like state reeking of blissful solitude I end up watching random snippets from this movie. Passively out of action.

I have watched it before.
Few years ago. Without developing any liking to it. The typical boy meets girl. Set in the eccentric capital city of England. Average actors I have seen in different movies throughout the decade. I didn't find it boring, back then. Or bad. Just bland. At that moment. Or clinched. Maybe I was too distracted. Maybe.

I like it this time.

There is always a movie like this, isn't it? Funny.

One thirty two.
I call you.
My phone cradled in the hollow between my neck and shoulder as I pour myself this wine with no name, I won in a bet some two weeks ago. Three fourth in a steel glass.
I hear the phone ring. 
Three times before you pick up.

One fifty five.

I take a long swig before I close the door behind me. 
My head just the right amount of dizzy. 
The tip of my tongue laced with a hint of cedar, caramel and blackcurrant undertones.

Two thirty two.
It rained last night. Out of season. Again. That explains the loose white cotton shirt sticking to my back every time I lean on something long enough. I undo the second button as you talk to me about the pottery classes you took one summer when you were fourteen. You stop and pass me a sly smile.
“What?” I laugh, pulling my hair down and carefully tying them up again.
You shake your head and look around. Your eyes stop momentarily at the adjacent roof. Quite similar to ours. Part of the series of abandoned houses we discovered four years. ago. Ugly patches of grey and black cover every wall. Slippery.

Two forty eight.

I prop myself up next to you. My feet dangling on the edge of the roof. You look at your hands. Recite a verse aloud, to no one in particular. Its Latin you tell me a while later catching your breath and holding my gaze longer than usual. Your eyes half open to the sun behind me. Your fingers, slender, long and warm, touching the side of my hand as you slightly hold on to the border of the wall we are sitting on.

I still remember the look in your eyes from that day.
This look.
Of wistful knowing.
You never looked at me the same way again. 

Ghosts

..Because sometimes its not about hoping for the best.

Its about hoping at all.

Signs

I.

You will look at them. People you have known for years. That friend you grew up with. Lived through all those stories you tell people you just met. Had sleepovers. Borrowed books from. Stole shirts.  Survived heartbreaks. Shared countless inside jokes and innuendos. You will look at them one day and  would never want see them again. You’d wonder why you are friends with them in the first place. You will suddenly discover this tangible lost connection you haven’t noticed before.  Walk away. For you. For them. Start new. Reflect. Come back later perhaps. Or not.

II.

Its been fourteen years. You now listen to Floyd and paint your nails black. Grab a sandwich with extra mayonnaise and a dash of mint on your way to work. Small talk with the people in the adjacent cabins at your office. Except one. You saw her for the first time last week. Humming along a familiar tune. It reminds you of the streets of Kolkata. It’s probably from that Bengali movie you saw when you were nine. You can almost trace the smell of  Chingri Malai Curry  that wafted through the house every Friday afternoon in the summers. The few vivid memories of home. Of Amma.

You should probably talk to her, you think. Everyday.

III.

There has been a delay. You look at the watch and count on your fingers. Sixteen hours till your appraisal meeting. You will probably be late. Sigh. It wasn’t a good idea after all. Happens every time you visit home. A five day leave always ends up with Ma pleading for two days more. How much difference does it make, she says, we don’t see you for months, anyway. She’s right about that. You count on your fingers. Again. Four months till you come back. Stop. Look around. They have been here a long a time. The father and the son occupying the bench next to yours. Sipping cheap bland coffee from Styrofoam cups. Engaged in a  discussion you cant really hear. The father with his right hand rubbing his knee every once in a while. Watch. A warm hug that follows. The son mumbling words of concern. The father, his eyes, proud and shining patting his back. 

Think. Of the vague goodbye you have mumbled to yours all this time. The hollow promise of staying longer next time.  Count on your fingers. Yet again. The years that have gone by since you ended your conversations with an embrace.

 Of acceptance if nothing else.

IV.

Close those books. You have been reading the same sentence since an hour. Hold your head in your hands. It doesn’t seem to go away, does it? Make your eighth cup of coffee. Go online. Read about how nine cups of coffee a day can act as toxic to your body. Smile. You are one cup short.  Browse through stray word documents in your computer. There are far too many.   Remember. You were hurt when you wrote this. Happy when that. This, was just random. That, was an after effect of over analyzing.  Think of writing a book. A secret blog would be good too. Pictures and words. Your pictures and your words. Say it out loud. Savour the warm feeling in your chest. Laugh on the prospect of that. So naïve.  

Its been long. Sigh. Go back to those books.

Or.

V.

This is it.

This is the sign you have been looking for.

Good luck.

Time-Machine

If you are reading this I want you to be aware of the lives you are touching this moment. And the lives you are being touched by right now. Just by existing. Breathe in. Breathe out. You are leaving finger prints all over the place. Delicate translucent webs of your highly concentrated essence. Replaced every minute by someone else. Each a different substance. A different memory. 

You.
Falling out of love. Over-dozing on caffeine. Laughing at the joke you didn't quite catch. Keeping your blanket close for five extra minutes on winter mornings heavy with longing.

You.
Vomit on your sweater. Shifting uncomfortably in a room full of people you don’t know. Thinking of the foliage from the last fall carefully preserved between the pages of your journal. The butterflies in mason jars. Distant scent of mildew in the otherwise fresh air brushing past as you run. Stopping a while later. Bending on your knees . Heaving. Catching breath.

You.
With your lips. Raw. Eager. Slightly parted. Tracing the hollow between her neck and collarbone. That piece of flesh you've always wanted. Her cold fingertips composing random patterns of yearning at the back of your neck. The soft signs closing the space in-between.

You.
Conscious and clumsy. Hiding your face. Marks of anger running down your arms. Making pretty pictures. Listening. Being told that you are what is wrong with the world. Reading. Creating. Feeling infinite.

You.
Separated by exactly six degrees from another person. A door. An opening to the world beyond. Just five acquaintances away. Absorb the thought. The endless possibilities of it.

You.
The walking evidence of constant evolution. Sixteen percent Carbon. Twenty three pairs of chromosomes. Ten pints of blood. A DNA like no other and yet bound closely with the common fear of falling.
You never quite fear the heights, you now realize. But, the fall.

You have left an impression. On me. On us. 

Veil

I saw you.

December of two thousand eleven. Just another Tuesday. Middle of the fifth semester. Nine of us had been roaming around the city streets. Talking. Laughing. Making memories. On three fingers of diluted single-malt scotch. Stopping, in between to eat at food joints we’d discover out of nowhere, whose names none of us remember now. I, however, recall this song. A fast paced peppy number coming from a small cigarette shop on the curb. I wish I could remember the lyrics. Or the artist. I hear it sometimes at night, when I’m lying on my bed, my subconscious wide awake, while the rest of me is drifting off to the distant sound of wood crackling in the fireplace. It’s been a long time I realize. Long long time.

I saw you.

For a split of a second. Looking over your shoulder with this look of slight indifference. Like you were almost waiting for everything to fall apart. Right that moment. I caught you at chance. And because I did, it changed something inside me. Forever.

There were two of us calling each other crude names. Three were busy holding up this other friend who had downed too many whiskeys. One, with his shoulders hunched in a threadbare pullover, was walking ahead of us all, phone to his ear, whispering sweet nothings to this girl he never told us about. And I, I was just cold.

Later, you smiled at the photograph we all took just before we became silhouettes in the dark that was closing in.

I saw you.
Just so you know.