To the Voice, To THE Woman

Dear Love,

After talking my insides out with you over the past many months, I don’t really know what to articulate here. But I know I want to and I have to say what you must know.

It is strange how I always knew someone like you would come along. How I discerned I would be finished even before I was introduced to your mesmeric though decidedly anonymous persona on the internet. Like they say “I knew I loved you before I met you, I think I dreamed you into life...”

When I first came across your chitter-chatter in the web world, I smiled even perhaps as my heart naively ached. I made a little holler, you coyly and graciously reciprocated and the rolling of inconceivable conversations took me to the utopia that I didn’t think exists in the mundane. You made my mind come alive and my being gyrate to an unknown rhythm and accord. It was as though you stirred me into mind orgasms that left me hankering for more.

Was I lucky that you spotted me in your milieu of ardent admirers or was fate finally beginning to compensate for keeping me in yearning for all of my twenty seven years?


My most beloved, if most people are like visitors to my heart, carefully scrutinized and allowed access and shown to their separate chambers, you were like a tidal wave of passion which crashed and sank my castle, occupying every single room and every individual speck and dragging and drowning me in every facet of your emotion. Your eagerness in contacting me, your unsurpassable wit and your openly frolicking teases in plain sight of everyone, made me go red in the cheeks. Yes, only you can make me this adolescent that I never was, even when I was in those years to prove it and with those girls to show it. 


Your literal dragging me to the secret messaging chambers and whining light-heartedly how you want my words to be only yours....I have never seen or even heard of anyone like you. Here finally is someone who ignites a young mind in the day while her alter ego ignites passions in hearts. Not ignites as much as chains and drags them to the town hall and sets fire to them in full view of the rest-peasants and nobles alike.

Remember when you childishly asked, “Why don’t you add me on Facebook now?” and I instantly retorted, “Because if I did see any more of you, I would fall for you.” I meant it with all my heart as you laughed filling my voids with its tinkling, considering it just another fancy.

And then I saw you and I could see what no one else could. Pictures after pictures of a smiling beautiful face but searching eyes! I saw you wrapped in the arms of a child who basked in the affection you bestowed and beside a man gloating with the pride of owning you.

If there is another thing that cannot be explained, besides the fatal lure I feel for you, is how could this man leave you for another woman? How clogged would his mind and senses be to let go of nature’s own special child-bountiful in life like a tree blossoming in springtime and bequeathing love everywhere she treads as the eagerly cascading waterfall, sparkling with freshness and affable even in the apparent din.

How I could sell my body and soul just to trade places with him-to feel you in proximity, to watch you open those lovely fish eyes every morning, waking up to me! To know the curves under the sheet by my bedside are yours and the soft palm that reaches out from it to clasp my fingers will be mine. To feel that the exquisite mind that weaves magic with its every manifestation, ponders about me!

You think I just know you through your pictures, I just know you though your voice...wish you could realize I know you through my soul that feels tugged by every iota I get of you! You tell me that nothing can transpire between us when I have ambled way too ahead towards you to even remember where I came from or how I was, without you in my head. And don’t make a mistake my love, had you told me this even when I took the first step, I would have doubtlessly said the same. There is no other way that does not lead to you. 


I have my own enticing vision of you. In your home, in your kitchen quarters, you would be wearing a sari well tucked at the edge, those long tresses wrapped and bondaged sketchily on your perfectly symmetrical forehead. You would be there caught day dreaming, leaning against the refrigerator with one leg bent and both hands supporting your behind on the door and your eyes forlorn into the ceiling. If even I appear in that situation just once, I for one would feel truly blessed.


I go about thinking how you would be teaching your adorable son with a pencil rolled between your full lips and sighing at the mathematical complications. I picture him looking at you with the familiar to me awe-filled eyes, as your expressions see-saw between the baffled and despair. How I want to reach out to you, to smoothen the cresses that mar your glowing countenance and put my palms on your shoulders to gently press them and unlock the knots forming within.

You say you can’t love or trust any more. How then do I feel a blind trust you place in me as you relate how unfair life has been with you? Why do I feel your heart throbbing when I whisper sweet nothings as though I had you pressing against my chest? Why do I feel even when I’ll meet you, it would be like you were never away?

I know no fancy words....I promise no unfathomable oaths....I just want you, to love forever and more. I don’t care about your body or how you fear it might fail to meet my expectations. I don’t have any. All I have is love that is prevailing in my insides and too formidable to contain anymore. All I have is me telling you that your son and you would never be alone or know another tear again. It is never too soon or never too late when it feels this right.

I do not bring roses or champagne glasses....I have no fancy tuxedos to wear or a band playing a romantic tune in the backdrop but if you can hear which I am sure you would if you try-hear my soul pining for you, my blood rushing through my body wanting to protect you and my breaths coming and going just to hear you say “Yes” when I ask you this-

MARRY ME?

Yours-in every life coming my way, whether you do or not,

Me.   

P.S.1 I wanted to end this letter on a sad and dejected note conflicting with even a foretaste of the 'happily ever after' but it is Valentine's Day and what the heck, you can't say Santa does not exist at Christmas.
P.S. 2. This is another attempt at the Open love letters and hopefully there would be more after everyone liked the first one- To The Girl at 27. 

To The Girl at 27!

My Dearest,

Ah the pleasure of writing on a paper again, almost matching with the pleasure of having you. ‘Having’ yes, I did but to say I “have” you though would be a blasphemy. And before you allow that frown saying there I go again and bring tiny anxious lines on your lustrous visage, let me just ask you-Who can have the rays of sunshine trapped in his fingers no matter how strong be his grip? Who can box the fragrance one senses standing in the midst of sandal trees?

For such are you-flowing like the river, warming like the rays, enticing like the scent of a rose, mysterious like the dark night, glorious like the white moon and out of reach like the stars that shine beyond. You sprinkled some of your sheen on me and made me bask in its sensation forgetting that I am trying to own the fabric of the infinite galaxy. The galaxy that I am going to fade into with my end and the galaxy that you have to tread on, leaving your nimble footsteps on everything untouched yet!

I want to tell you how much I love you, but for that I would have to assume that you are a separable part of me although so infused are you now that if I say, loving you is like self-love, it would not be digressing from the established truth I live with every day.

You know what debates ran in my mind between the good and the evil voices: “She is only 27, so what...he was also, once upon a time! He is 59, so what...won’t she be too someday? And he would love her the same. Ah, they would grimace....won’t he be tumbling in his grave by then?” But my time to go has come sooner than I wanted, sooner than I cared and sooner than allowing me to dare. I realize now that being with me would take too much from you and selfish that I am for you, I would hate to see you hate me ever.

My dearest, I want to remain an exultant reminiscence for you, not a dilapidated, old man shrivelling to ruins eventually too soon, wiping all joyous memories-of bearing you with all my strength, of making you shed your over-mature thoughts more than shedding what you wore, of turning many a sighs into heaving, of mingling two bodies in such an intoxicating fusion that it turns me giddy by just imagining the taste of it. It was not only a flight of fantasy, it was like the developing of wings of a young twittering brood that jumps off the cliff and realises soon that it can fly...high!

It was how you held me for hours and how I held you in those moments. It was how just a look of you gave me the adrenalin rush that I haven’t felt with one from your gender before, although my age justifies my calling me experienced. In all your vulnerable innocence, you have no realization how insane your after-effects can be! I would burn with desire just watching you move around the kitchen counter...seeing you untie the cascading hair and then brush them free with your slender fingers...how you ran your own palms over your arms when cold winds played truant or how your eyes lighted with fire and the edge of the lower lip was bitten with the teeth on the thought of new mischief contriving within. I would wonder how something so strongly physical could be just as enduringly emotional? See how you became the wonder woman for me.

But I leave you deserted now for such must be your eventual fate. I won’t be able to face you facing me as I would have to face or see you justifying to one and all that age is just a number. But I do want you to play against the world, face them as my dear girl who would fight all her battles and seek happiness even without me. Let me go while there is still redemption for you.

There would be many who would come your way. Your aura would ensure that a discerning eye would not let you flash past. Be careful my little one, but don’t build walls to protect yourself. Be on a watch but let not the watches watch you. There is no right time to fall in love and no right person-there is only the right feeling. Let not your ignorance or arrogance come in the way of testing those who might be your test. Love is worth a few adjustments, love is worth a few pains....but spending alone the rains, crumbling every time the cold breeze harshly jolts you, with no arms to wrap you snug in guard, is definitely not.

Let your heart be open and the mind not closed. Let the comparing eye be shut with force. Lower expectations but not your standards! Let doubts surface but also allow the soft waves of emotions to calm them down. Men are not perfect but that does not qualify them to be jerks either. Just don’t weigh too much like you do, before feelings also begin to take the pendulum way.

Be not afraid to express how you feel, it is always better to know where exactly you stand than to wriggle within in a hypothetical see-saw. You are very fragile my love and like the hesitant bud that knows not how splendid it looks when blooms. Allow yourself to take chances. It took me years to come close to you like I did, don’t try the patience of any other man. All are not me and with you just about any can’t be.

Laugh more and like there’s no tomorrow, let those little lines of sorrow evaporate in your mirth or the semblance of it. Be open to experiments for they eventually culminate into experiences. Allow men of mettle to first see your soul and then your body for it would pain me to see someone handle you without care. Let those who touch you, touch you! And make sure when you close the eye for his first kiss, you leave my moist imprints in some far away allay, never to be trudged there again.

No man can bear his woman closing on him for someone else. So don’t try to share me, bear me in your mind if you must, for even if you don’t, I won’t rust.

I leave now, to go I don’t know where. Our paths wouldn’t cross and even if they do, please pretend that you don’t know me, no matter how you see my pining in my mute appearance. Only you are blessed enough to look through me. Show me that this would all be worthwhile eventually. Walk away showing pity, for I was not man enough to say I would take care of you even if life took me away.

They say love stories are best which are left unended...some feelings-unattended...some gestures-unreturned...some laughters-unreciprocated...some tears-unvalued...and some couples-unbonded! We were not the usual love story, were we? So how could we have a usual end? Sometimes the lack of “happily ever after” is how ever after not so happily begins.

Not expecting you to understand, but accepting nevertheless,

Yours only.

The End!

All her life or whatever of it she could remember, Pranita had waited for her daughter’s distress to come to the brink. But today when her limp body lay so unresponsively in her arms, a peaceful pallor dispersing on the mute face, the hapless mother could sense the tears rolling down her own cheeks but a complete numbness within. She had thought she would be strong to face this whenever it would inevitably come-but what strength can tower a crumbling edifice? They say a peaceful death of a suffering soul is God’s way of justice-it conquers all. Why did it make Pranita feel shackled still and cheated yet again?

Her little baby was standing at the heaven’s edge that knew no bodies nor minds and the sufferings thereby created by the web of earthly life. She was now a soul that would no longer be stared at by the world that oscillated between crudely calling her ‘handicapped, retarded or paagal’ and more sophisticatedly ‘mentally challenged’. Her little Sonya, all of sixteen by years on the calendar and barely two by growth of mind, had passed to the oblivion, to the land of no return and today Pranita held her the tightest, like she had never before. 

She remembered the days when she had to, to calm the almost violent little body, rudely stirred by helplessness or fear. Sonya was born a beautiful, pink child to Pranita and Subodh after three years of their love marriage. She was troublesome and less responsive than most children but nothing that the doctors did not term “normal”. It would be difficult to pin down the exact moment in time when she traversed the “abnormal” genre. Some say it was the overdose of antibiotics by a "qualified" doctor that sealed the fate of the vulnerable child, others blame it on wrong vaccination and some more ‘enlightened’ ones raise fingers at the fact that her mother did not stretch out flat on her bed during the dreaded solar eclipse.

By the time Sonya became three what was just a speculation-a nagging fear, became an incorrigible verity that she was a “special” child. An epilepsy attack at the age of five worsened whatever minuscule evidence of progress was triggered, leaving her left side in paralysis and pushing her into a semi-coma for almost a year, frustrating the child who just lay staring at the ceiling. Thereafter she was out of school and cramped within the four walls as her physical deformity became more evident and her actions unsuitable for public bearing.

Pranita recalled every excruciating torment that she had faced in the last sixteen years-it was as though life had been churned out from her in slow doses. She had been used to of a fast-paced corporate vivacity and waiting for her toddler to grow up quickly so she could return to the mainstream and gather the remnants of her sagging career as a journo. Little did she know that the light of her life would remain at two forever-never would she tell if she wanted to pee and sometimes roam in her panties soiled with shit, soon making Pranita’s life one. The rounds to parlours and late night parties had slowly distorted into a series of doctor visits, getting check-up reports and medication and worst of all-controlling a girl who had the strength of a teenager and whims of an infant. She could barely leave the home or allow the doors to be left open for fear of the outsides coming in.

Pranita unwittingly felt the scar on her forehead again-a brutal cut made by the sharp edges of a flower vase that Sonya had hurled at her because she she was being made to get up after bed wetting. It was not just a blemish on her physical being but a pain that perhaps reached up till her entrails and gnawed every impulse, every instinct. It would never fade and disappear.

With teenage on the threshold had come newer problems-the girl began her periods and howled at the sight of blood. The doctors brought in more injections, poked into her plump frame, so that the monthly cycles were curbed. Her now persistent screams would reverberate through the almost dead corners of their flat, making even the neighbours shudder. Friends had trickled their associations, acquaintances made sure they remained just that and the relatively strangers could not help but wag their tongues and warn others to stay away from the “evil” house.

But Pranita had held strong-looked into the eyes of every stare she received and played dumb to every taunt that filtered through to her ears. Gossip vines were even abuzz that Subodh had a mistress in another town for which he remained on tours for two thirds of a month. He had been empathetic at first-after all it was his sperm that upshot it all. But such is the terrible countenance of diseases that it makes chickens of even the strongest. Before long statements like, “I can’t bear to see this, it breaks my heart” floated in the air and he would walk out to get a breather-the breathers that soon seemed to be found only outdoors and which slowly choked Pranita for often she felt the walls closing in and no one even to hold her hand. The father-the protector, the guardian had shown how spineless he was, taking the easy route out to let the mother wear the pants, not bothering if they constrained her spirits.

Pranita wiped the tears from her eyes that had just flashbacked the whole of her torture. Was it an hour or more since she held the dead body of what was once her life? She lifted Sonya with all the strength she could muster in her own fragile frame and rested her on the bed. In the almost ominous silence of the room, Pranita viewed herself in the mirror opposite the master-bed. Could she recognize the object staring back at her for she did not feel like a person anymore? What happened to her beauty that was once her pride? When was the last time she gazed at the mirror for so long? And those trickling strands of white hair around her forehead, did they develop this morning, born when Sonya stabbed her nurse’s arm with the scissors while the poor woman only tried to inject her with the medications? Oh boy, how the nurse had ran out for her dear life, the third one, in this quarter!

Pranita removed the vial and the injections from the side table and threw them in the dustbin. Those things looked ugly whether they were wrapped in polythenes signifying their purity or discarded in the bin with tainted, twisted tips. The doctor had given those with extremely specific instructions- “Not more than 5 ml to calm her down and only in emergencies, Pranita. Anything more and it could be fatal.” Pranita had injected 5 ml down Sonya’s body-not once, but thrice, emptying all the three emergency packs and kissed Sonya as she became drowsy and then went to sleep. She had held her tightly to her breast feeling the heart beat fainting as the minutes passed and soon there was no sound-none what so ever, reverberating in her ears or mind. Silence so strong that if it were a sword it could pierce through the air slicing it irrevocably!

Now that the action was done the reaction took over like greedy hounds chomping the limelight-Have I done it for her or have I done it for me? Did I want her to be released from her mind numbing fears or was I placating my own soul jarred by the cacophony of her perpetual screams? While she lived like the dead each hour, her mother died like the living each day! Am I fit to be called a mother-was I ever?  She picked up her mobile to call Subodh, in a meeting yet again at 11 pm, to tell him that Sonya's ailment finally got the better of her. She was removing the garbs of responsibility but little did she know that garbs of guilt were waiting on the aisle to wrap her tight-had perhaps already become her second skin! Were the noises finally over or have they only just begun?

P.S. This is a work of fiction based on the case facts of a brave young woman whose daughter is undergoing such a sad condition by a cruel twist of fate. It is absolutely shuddering for me to think what she goes through each hour and every day. Let’s pray that no mother should face such such an endless pain ever.

The Night to Remember!

Her giggle filled the dark and desolate corner of the unkempt park that was like an upbeat prostitute-in demand during prime time and then brutally ignored when without. Darkness and mirth generally do not go hand in hand unless it is to walk down the path of sinful bliss. Her subdued effort to hide it could not conceal this obvious pleasure. It was a lucky thing that the nearest guard’s post was a good hundred meters away-this meant they could get away with anything...yes, anything!

Romona and Ambrish were naturally and slowly slid into the experimental mode-more like drugged into it. After months of ‘being’ in love, they were getting to manifest it into bodily exploration. They both lived “virtually” as neighbours in the posh locality of the apartments sprawling opposite the huge campus of that private technical college but could never find a common ground to meet without prying eyes and gossiping acquaintances. They had run out of excuses also to bump into each other, with an age gap of three years-Romona being fifteen and Ambrish all of eighteen. After painstaking scheming, they finally managed their first clandestine date and then decided to declare their official ‘status’ to friends the next day. There was an inexplicable excitement seething within their small frames. After all there is just once in a lifetime that you lose your virginity and the prospect that hitherto scared youngsters seems to be viewed with a stance of adventure in the current times.

It was Ambrish’s birthday to legal adulthood and when asked by his steady girlfriend, what he wanted as a gift, no prizes for guessing, he voiced his dream of seeing her gift wrapped so he could slowly unfurl and taste the eagerly awaited gratification. They had talked over the phone for hours about what they wanted to do to each other and now in that dusk dipped evening of solitude and almost no light except the faint sheen of some street lamp at a far off distance of the closed college block, their dreams were finally seeing the daylight.

Romona had almost sighed with some bugs hovering over her head and butterflies in her well toned stomach, sitting crumpled on a big rock behind the thickest of hedges. Doing some random text forwards on her phone, she waited like Prince Charming would have, to find Cinderella gone without her shoe-she waited for darkness to fall. She had sauntered in as an evening walker, though a tad overdressed for it.

“Fuck! All that time spent on dressing up was such a waste.” She could barely tell even the colour of her see-through top, let alone the colour of her cheeks, which blushed even further as she had finally heard Ambrish’s whisper, for he was to walk in about half an hour after her. ‘Clever’ she had thought of him with an unspoken pride, to be so meticulous and for all the detailed planning to keep it hush-hush. It was THE big night as she jumped up to hug him. The first physical touch sent a charge down their systems as hungry bodies clung to each other, yearning for a fusion.

“Fuck!” he grimaced.

“This is the first thing that you have to say on meeting me Rishu-reallyyy?”

“Baby, it’s not that. I forgot the damn condom.”

“Crap...although I knew something like that might conspire. "Happy birthday, baby!” And Romona presented herself to him with condoms dangling at the ends of her forefingers teasingly. ‘Clever’ she had thought of herself too, when as if to defy it, her mobile phone began to ring in the most obnoxious of Lady Gaga’s numbers, breaking the silence sheepishly like a jarring note stuck in peaceful flowing music.

“Switch the damn thing off Romo...you’ll get us noticed,” is what Ambrish could manage to mutter in the quietest of blasting tones.

“It’s Natashi. Oh god, I told her I’ll call after we finish. She’s as excited about this as you are,” she almost laughed, switching off her phone. “Baby, stop frowning. Just because I can’t see that frown too well does not mean that I can’t feel it,” and she ran her fingers tenderly all over his face and melted him faster than ice in daylight. His hands clenched her tight by the back and pressed her to himself feeling her well endowed chest breathing heavily against him. It was so difficult to contain himself now for the moment he had fantasized about for hours at an end sometimes, was materializing and for a while he did not know what to do first.

He began to grope and closed her mouth with his own, his heart beat skyrocketing. So this was what all the porn promised, he mused with eyes closed. So this was how the fairytales feel, she reflected. He unbuttoned her shirt with a frantic zeal unmatched by all that he had felt for all the expensive gadgets that his father’s money had got.

“Kaun hain wahan?” said a stern tone, in a heavy local accent, accompanied with a thud sound of a laathi beaten on the cemented floor and a flashlight blinding their vision momentarily. And the lovers fumbled-Ambrish trying to get in control of himself and Romona of her clothes and almost bare torso. They couldn’t see the guard but knew it was one by the sound and situation that they were in.

“To yahan tum chora chori mauj karne aaye, haan?” and gurgled a mean laughter that instantly sent a chill down Romona’s spine. Trying to be the man there Ambrish got up to explain but could barely walk a few steps ahead, with the light focussed on his eyes, when the well targeted laathi came crashing down his head, making him squeal and slip into unconsciousness. Romona gasped in horror as she saw Ambrish fall to darkness and felt the gleam on her face now. The torch then moved down on her body, as though the guard was relishing every inch and the slow movement of the light became excruciatingly painful for the victim.

For victim she was now transpiring to become, as she realized and her body shuddered at the prospect of what could happen now. She tried to speak but words came out dreadfully broken and sweat covered her even in the cool windy evening perhaps just as much as fright enveloped her. She could shout for help but at that time there were no walkers and this was the most secluded, closed block of the college-they had made sure of that before setting up the date but apparently not sure enough. The other nagging dilemma was that even if someone did come for help, how she would explain to people what she was doing there in the first place. Teenage is a tough phase when you have to make decisions based on morals and righteousness-the path is always slippery and the walker always tentative and unapprised.

The guard walked towards her, fully aware of the predicament of the pretty young thing before him, perhaps even better than she was. She did not know that he had watched them since the time they were together, as he was walking back after the end of his shift from the path behind the undergrowth. He knew he wasn’t much visible to the girl and that her phone was switched off and if there was light enough, perhaps she would see on his face the most devilish grin that had ever so blatantly smeared a human countenance.

The next few minutes saw Romona encounter the worst nightmare of her life as he ripped her off the modesty that is transfixed to a woman’s soul. She had come there knowing she was going to surrender her all, but never in her most horrendous of horrors would she have imagined it happening like this. Her mouth was closed as the bulky and sweaty man overpowered her and brutally satisfied the unwarranted lust that had taken over his body. She was wriggling in pain both physical and mental and tears were the only way that the agony seemed to be finding an outlet, as her entire being crumpled. She tried to move a hand to reach to Ambrish or fight back but she was too tiny before the monster like every biggest of good thing just by itself becomes miniscule before the unfeeling relentlessness of the evil.

Half an hour later Romona walked out in a dishevelled state to Natashi’s house where she was supposed to be for the night spend. Her clothes were untorn but her body and soul were in irreparable shreds. She did not know how Ambrish was and couldn’t care less. Suddenly love was no longer magical. Suddenly life was transformed within a matter of a few minutes. Although swinging between regret and anger, she knew there was no other end to this except utter helplessness, for she couldn’t even identify her assaulter with conformity. What was to be the night to remember, became the night she could never forget!

P.S. Though the drama is fabricated, the story is based on the fact that a couple of teenagers were caught making out in a secluded park recently. It has led to way lot of gossiping and speculation but perhaps what no one learnt from this was that even the smallest of risks can sometimes lead to the most hazardous of damages. Having to deal with students myself, I am aware of how lightly they take such matters and how quickly they jump into relationships that cloud reasoning. This is an attempt to make them think over before doing anything “blindly” in love.

For the Love of Books

“Have I died and gone to heaven?” Kreesha mused.

When she was told “Book Lover” was an incredibly delightful little haven tugged away in the outskirts of the narrow, buzzing lanes of Chandni Chawk, she had almost chuckled at the idea of Old Delhi being hipper than the ‘with it’ bookstores sprawled across the eagerly emergent New Delhi, seething with modernity. Her avidly reading, connoisseur of sorts of a landlord had been a little more than usually insistent, even by his own standards on her going for this little treasure hunt that took her almost two hours to reach to the periphery of Delhi from her whereabouts. He had been going there since his grandfather’s time, which itself seemed to be establishing its credibility. And as she had devoured all of the books in the roomful of his humble library in the last two years of her college life in Delhi, her own modest means now left her with little choice but to rummage through the streets of din and madness to satiate her interminable hunger for good literature.

She often wondered how anyone could replace the enchanting epiphany of holding a book tenderly in his hands, with the sans-emotional experience of almost cruel clicking on the computer keys, to read a book. Technology had made information easier to access but literature difficult to enjoy. She could think of no way of swapping the pleasure of lounging in a corner of her room with the crisp feel of a best seller or a classic in the hand, thumbing pages or reading with such an invasive interest that you lose any sense of time or existence. Ah, the subtle delight of putting a finger to your lips and turning to the next page because the curiosity of the suspense can barely be constrained in your insides! She was still old school in this- Something in the hand is better than “virtually” everything at the finger-tip. She had a cupboard full of such riches back home in Jammu, squirreled away when her family had seen better days. How she achingly missed them now almost just as much as she craved for her mother in the simulated pace of Delhi!

Kreesha had taken extra time to dress that day for Mohinder Uncle had advised her to wear something traditional and go to avoid unwarranted attention, since she was going alone and was still relatively less aware of the capital per se. She had tried justifying how the western attire is no longer scandalous in any part of the country, but having gone through Delhi’s lust laden glares, she didn’t laugh the matter off. There are two different worlds within and outside the bookshop he said and he wanted her experience to be nothing short of an affable one. Kreesha had just one salwaar suit, bought for her school farewell, as otherwise she lived in and out of two pair of jeans and some ten tops. She knew her widowed mother was doing way enough already than to expect her to provide her with a life of an ‘ordinary’ twenty one years old. She had come to Delhi with the focus of becoming vocationally independent to support her mother now and nothing came in track of that. Books were her only escape route when life’s drudgery became excruciatingly grim. She knew she was a little overdressed for a trip to a bookstore, but heck, wouldn’t everyone at Chandni Chawk be anyways?

‘Book lover’ was a reader’s paradise alright. Piles after piles of neatly stacked books adorned the meticulously well-laid shelves and the sombre ambience in itself she thought was enough to keep her meandering around its little by-lanes for days. Criss-cross rays of sunlight played along through the airy chamber providing it a vintage feel and despite many people trudging around with their keen eyes, the serenity inside was unfathomable. She was feasting her eyes at the beckoning volumes as a glutton would if he was left by himself in a shop full of delicacies, almost sniffing with a rare fulfilment, the muggy smell of paper. How could such a store be obscured in oblivion like this? But it seemed it wasn’t really, for students, the aged, housewives-everyone seemed to be indulging there to their heart’s content and yet leaving so much to explore. Books there were available on rent, discount, second hand or for just sitting there and reading-you name it and they had it-the rarest of first editions, the silent yet eloquent manuscripts lying there from ages perhaps, waiting for someone to swab off the thin veil of dust and open them to life again.

“It is idyllic just standing here, isn’t it?” said a calm voice from behind her, that almost startled and broke the all pervading trance. She smiled as she turned, for that was exactly her sentiment. “I have an expression of a child, who’s somehow found his way to fairyland, haven’t I?”

“I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats over vales and hills,” he said, as his tall frame rested upon a rack that housed the romance section, as though he had was just come to life from there.

“When all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils?” she replied with the grin that only enhanced her dimples puckishly and a grin that only books could hitherto evoke from her and a grin of remembrance that would have made William Wordsworth proud in his heavenly abode. “I don’t know where to begin from here...it’s massive. Despite me being a very frequent traveller to bookstores, I don’t think I have seen so many books at one place in my life. I could live here forever.”

He chuckled, “With books-when there is a vast city calling you out to mingle with frivolity and mirth?”

“Bah, humbug-Uncle Scrooge style, eh? Outside is a world that would teach you with experience. Inside books is a world that has been experienced and waiting for you to take a dip- to enjoy the greatest of highs-conquer the Himalayas or triumph over territories and the self -watch generations go into submissiveness and eventually revolt to liberty! People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading!” And there was a pregnant pause, “Aaa...I am sorry, sometimes I don’t know where to stop.” She broke a little awkwardly thinking she just gave an unwarranted lecture.

“It is true. You remind me of Helen Keller. She once said that Literature was her Utopia,” he smiled and though it was warm, she somehow felt it was not used to of making very frequent appearances. “All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one, you will feel that it all happened with you and after that it all belongs to you.”

“Aha, wasn’t that Ernest Hemingway who said that?”

“Damn, it is difficult to please a well read woman!”

The well read woman blushed, half so for the compliment and half so for the need to having please her. “The well read woman is called Kreesha and she assumes the better read man is not called Ernest Hemingway?”

“You could call me Earnest if you do so, so very earnestly Kreesha!”

“And would you be reading all of those?” she pointed to some ten books lying on his arms. “And these would all be reading me,” he said again in his puzzling ways. “Come let me help you select something that you may not have read before and what you may not be able to not-read again and again. And by the way, did I tell you, you are among the few truly beautiful things I’ve seen around here?”

“Are you flirting with me Mr Ernest and if I say I am not, would you next tell me true beauty is skin deep?”

“No, I am not referring to adorable pancreas here, something like ‘A thing of beauty that is a joy forever, its loveliness increases, it will never pass into nothingness’...”

“So we moonlight as Keats too, either that or you just got lucky with all the quotes that you mugged up.”

“Either that or I just plain simple got lucky today....”

Kreesha did not remember when she had last flirted with someone-was it at school? And then when he had opened his mouth to use his limited hoard of verbal skills like they all did, she was so thwarted by what emerged from it that she gave up on the idea altogether. Words make worlds for how else can beauty be seen and felt if not worded?

“Would you mind holding my books, till I do something to satisfy the lady?”

“That won’t be easy, but the lady seems to realise that the gentleman does not like taking up tasks that promise to be a cakewalk.” And she followed him around like a puppy as he picked selections from famous authors, romance, autobiographies and philosophies of life. As much as she was enjoying delving into her passion, at the back of her mind was a faint flutter of how she might shell out for them all. Before she could decide, they had reached the payment counter. “Thank you so much. I think I will manage from here, I have wasted a lot of your time,” and they exchanged the piles of books.

Much to her surprise, the young man walked over to the other side of the counter and gave a gentle pat to the man sitting there who at once vacated it. Without a word, he took her books and put them in a jute bag and put pen to paper on a ‘Book Lover’ card kept there. He looked up and smiled and just like that left. She asked for a bill from the man who took over and he said that the books were with compliments from the store. Kreesha mumbled an insistence knowing it would be futile.

She walked out of the store and crossing the lanes, came upon the main road and called for an auto. As she boarded it and began her two hours journey back home, she looked again at the card,

“Greetings from one book lover to another,

Divya Vardhan Singh,

Book Lover.

P.S. Writing is nothing more than a guided dream. And a dream is no longer a dream if shared. Ernest hopes to see you around so that we could decide who pays for the next set.”

Her hands somehow instinctively picked out a book from the bag to begin it without further ado. Needless to say, it was romance and the title was ‘Making love, out of nothing at all.’

I hear, I watch, I wait

I hear, I watch, I wait...

It is the story of my life heralding to its dusk but perhaps I am now getting weary of the same old chronicle as my pent up body feels drained of supporting my equally tardy soul. It has been seventy seven years of a life less ordinary and hence I can’t really blame my bones for giving up on me. How do I admonish these wrinkles that line up my once flawless face? They tried to stay at bay for the longest of times on the human calendar but couldn’t really hold up against Mother Nature’s. And when one came even though peeping out a little hesitantly, the others lined up earnestly, as if to party! My smiles and frowns and ups and downs, perhaps made their resistance even tougher. They say fairer and softer skin is more prone to visibility of age’s vengeance. Now do I thank god for them or call Him in court on charges of un‘fair’ness? I laugh at the irony, which like everything else, is evident to me alone.

Sometimes I wonder, had I led a common life of drudgery, would this decline into oblivion been less painful? Or should I be indebted instead that at least I had my share of envious gaiety even on the run? Lady luck had been kind to me although many others of my own gender could barely bear me; but even she has rules about availing her allotted quota. Mine extinguished due to mindless gorging. I managed to eat my cake and have it and even lick the plate clean! And whatever if any remained on my lips, others made sure to do the honours...if you know what I mean.

I have loved and been loved umpteenth of times in ways that could create epics, seen the world, been there and done that, raised many an eyebrows and then many a good children!

However, today the world seems to have moved on beyond my grasp. Love is just another four letter word that is still not slang. At my age you don’t ‘fall’ in love, for the vision is anyways impaired and the ‘falling’ is anyways an everyday affair. My good children are now struggling to be good parents and hence priorities have shifted. Wherever I have been and whatever I have done is something that can’t be done again. No matter how much the optimists proclaim that history repeats itself, I know it won’t, or at least mine won’t.

I watch how the grandchildren enter my room and bow their head in obeisance before filtering away in the blink of an eye to merrier milieus. I am not the traditional granny telling on her beads and watching freshly hair spa-ed and face lifted ‘saints’ on the idiot box. But I am a granny still...who forgets things, seldom walks and that too with a limp and the only thing hard about her is her hearing. I have a television set for company although everything there is either too soapy for my taste or too loud even for my partially deaf ears.

How I wish they would sit with me so I could relate to them the stories of my past! That’s all I have got with me-a hard disk of memories embedded in my brain that the virus of monotony and vagaries of life could not erase.

I was not hip and happening like they are now, but I had managed to create ripples in many tranquil surfaces. Suddenly the stories that I struggled to hide through my youth are now getting restless to see the daylight, hammering upon my insides ravenously, fearing that their lively exuberance would be embedded with an old body in its sepulchre.

 

If only someone could lend me their ears!  Would they believe me or would they be aghast to hear that old granny could be anything other than a dignified and antiquated epitome? I ache now to strip off the garbs of pretence, to breathe free in the element that is me-no longer so and so’s wife or so and so’s mother but such and such person, as I have always wanted non-judgemental people to know, admire and reckon which many did, who dared to knock repeatedly at my closely guarded portals.

I sit here and concentrate on the merry din that falls upon my eager ears like soft but happy mumblings coming from behind the doors of the other rooms of my house. I sometimes watch the empty bed beside me, run my fingers on its surface and then sigh. The empty bed has been my closest companion since the time its incumbent decided to quit the show while it was at the height of its glory. The empty bed seems to cruelly reinforce to me every day that it would never leave my side. It has loyally taken up the shape of my contours or whatever is left of them.

My materialistic accomplishments lie mockingly tugged into drawers. I sometimes rummage through them and take them out to adorn myself and relive in some iota my past glories. But these that once looked heavenly, pronto throw ghastly shadows on the looking glass, almost beyond redemption. No amount of even the latest accruements can adorn an edifice in its fading glory. My so-loved little black dress looks more of a little black mess at this point.

I wonder should I write a book on myself now, after all, I no longer bother about scandals and appraisals, with one leg in the grave. You can yack how much shit about me in the aftermath, how would it bother me when I can’t care or do a shit about it? Maybe I could disclose the hidden murky side to my perfection, which is instilled in every human, though very rarely acknowledged, let alone flaunted. I can relate how and where these legs travelled before reaching this space. Perhaps my shaking fingers would allow me this last consolation or maybe it is too much to ask of these petite things that allowed me every discretion, when they could enable others to dance on them.

And I hear again, the laughter coming from the adjacent room. What could they be discussing? Why can’t they come in here and talk for if there is anyone who needs to laugh most now, it is me. It is almost like a dying wish now-give me a moment to laugh like no one’s watching, to laugh like I did earlier that set the hearts fluttering, to laugh like it’s the only natural thing meant for me to do in this world.

I hear, I watch, I wait!

Oh my mute lips have spoken too much today!

Perhaps now I should go off to sleep and not get up ever.

Let my youthful soul be free of the dilapidated body that I was once so proud of, to find a new home and begin new glories!

Romance at Short Notice-Part 2!

Please go to Romance at Short Notice-Part 1 before reading this to get the full import of the story.

Turning her blatant gaze away from his face, Nilu finally managed to fish out words from her slightly quivering and very embarrassed self.
“I am sorry! I thought the house was uninhabited.”

“It is and I am the one who should be apologizing for giving you such a start. Actually I don’t live here as it is quite away from the city. But it is my great grandfather’s house and I don’t want to give it up. Being opened for some famous tourists from Delhi, I thought I might as well come here and pick up some stuff.” He breathed a pause, “I assume you are one amongst the many outside?”

She raised her eyebrows in consent and smiled at the reminder of being a part of the flock, almost a wry one and he returned it back as though empathising. “My god, I couldn’t help but peep outside earlier and with no offence intended, living in that must be like being on a highly dramatic stage always?”

“Not really, we do manage breaks in between when there is lack of audience.” And they both laughed, the ringing mirthful and reverberating through the hitherto silent room, watching it all like an engrossed spectator. “I can’t imagine though how someone can, not-live in a house like this. It is so perfect.”

He beamed again, spreading the charm on his countenance dwindling between the boyish and the manly, with the delight of one who was enjoying good company after a long dearth. “Yes, but when you live alone it becomes a little waiflike. And when I need to write books or paint, I do come here on a sabbatical of sorts.”

That was like rain wetting a thirsty flaky crust. Women in general have this compelling fascination for writers-men who express the world in words like the stringing of the perfect pearls; for men of the world otherwise always lack the right ones to do so. Nilanjana was doubly hit as she was a voracious reader and literature was her escape route from the accounts and figures bound new family. She couldn’t help but gasp at the prospect of meeting an actual writer.

“O-oh, I have seen that expression often young lady and before you pitch up your expectations, my books are still in publication. So I am miles away from being a celebrity yet.” And then mocking himself he added, “Tch, so the autograph would be of no use now.”

He watched her intently as her face see-sawed between being disappointed in one second to instant flushing again at perhaps the hindsight of what-the-heck-a-writer-nevertheless! “That’s okay, maybe someday I can gloat about this little brush of claim to fame, when you do become famous and proclaim that I stood in that house where history was being written.” Nilu cut short shyly at the realization of how dramatic it sounded- a rub off perhaps of all the bonding that’s been happening of late outside. She added rather dramatically again, “Literature is my first love.”

“And trust me it would be the most faithful one. Destiny has brought you here it seems. I have some original documents, photographs, etc, of writers, even of Wordsworth and some lesser known ones, a sort of a lineage and it would be a pleasure to share them with someone who understands their worth...just a moment, I’ll be back.”

Nilu couldn’t control the butterflies in her stomach and felt her heart would explode at the prospective excitement that was surging and was suddenly glad at not having come up with any excuses for this trip. She looked through his sketches and how immaculately they expressed faces, as though she knew them, as though she would cross them on the way.

Within minutes a box of treasure was opened before her and had God himself told her not to go near it like the proverbial Pandora’s Box, she would have sinned and shown that history repeats itself. She devoured unabashedly the unsullied pleasure derived from wondrous collection of things that were more befitting museums than be found in a house like this. Things spoke volumes to her and she was lost with no sense remaining of time, space or reality. She wished it was a giant ping pong ball and she would never get out.

Women of whatever ages are always similar to little girls yearning for real life fairy tales. Or maybe women from insides really are little girls who grow up on fairy tales but never grow out of them.

They kept conversing, laughing while he wittily recounted backgrounds and she entered the portals of history, passion and emotions, so generously unbolted before her. Unveiled were letters drenched in love so fragile, a locket that stood the test of time, a hand written diary that spoke volumes despite the dilapidated pages, pens of masters that rule eternity and what not. Imagine the fulfilment of a pilgrim upon reaching his destination-such was the unrestrained content ebbing in her little heart.

And just then came a sudden thump of an open window, made by a jealous, strong gust of wind, rudely breaking the trance!
Have you ever been in a dream where you were attaining something tangible after having craved for it from the longest of time and feeling it lovingly between your fingers; but then suddenly awoken, you clasp the palm trying to grasp the illusive, that is gone forever?

Sometime had elapsed as she returned to the present and finally managed to tear herself from the assembly of what had taken her breath away, to look up; and what she saw did not help transport her back either. Right before her eyes was her own sketch that the veritable stranger had made within minutes perhaps while she was lost in ancient manuscripts and she looked more beautiful there than any mirror had ever communicated to her.

Nilu was speechless. She fumbled for words. What words do you use before writers to express what you feel, so eloquently enough that it gets effectively conveyed to reach to the levels of how it is being felt?

But he didn’t want her perhaps to say anything as in the next moment he wanted to take her elsewhere.
“And if you think these are amazing, wait I have something more!”
And he disappeared again into an inner room before Nilu could summon the right words, leaving her with emotions that were not so familiar.

“Nilu, Niluuuuu... ah, here you are. I have looked all over this spooky house. It’s getting dark baby, we are all packed up to leave. It is a three hours journey back you know and we’ve already wasted much in looking for you.”

When Nilanjana had heard Anshul, guided by some weird gut feeling she had folded the sketch sheet and put it in her coat. She would spend years wondering why she did that, but at that time some voice within left her with no choice. With Anshul were the two nosey brats who had startled her earlier and who must have led him to the room. She had not realized how much time she had spent there. She panicked within, 'I don't even know his name...I didn't even express what I felt!' She looked around hurriedly and at the desk she wrote on a sheet kept there,
“I cannot thank you enough for today.
Please call me,
Nilanjana
9922518399”

She kept the note under the same magical paper weight while Anshul was looking around at the sketches.
“Huh! What a waste of time and energy someone is going through in here! Come on let’s go.”

He put a hand around her waist as though it was not a suggestion but a command and she followed silently although her feet seemed to have been planted there. She took one last look at the room to keep a memory etched in the private domains of her mind and continued to be dragged against her emotions. Something had happened today that had shaken up her boring existence for good...something that would continue to stir her for years despite all calm exteriors.

So just like that she left, wondering what he would think when he came out.
And just like that also left the two little brats, but not before one of them looked around sheepishly and pocketed the fascinating paper weight-his very own souvenir to show off to friends back home.
And just like that came another mischievous gust of wind and took Nilu’s little note out of the window with it before it could reach the desired hands.
And just like that ended a love story that could have been a forever romance happening at short notice!

Romance at Short Notice!

Nilanjana stepped into the silent edifice of the house.

She felt as if she had to. The maddening clamour of all the people outside was irrevocably dampening her spirits. She had not been excited about this ‘family trip’ as it is, whereby every nook and corner of the big joint family of her in-laws was hunted and pestered with the proposal for a get-away and the most obnoxious ones it seemed were hand-picked to be taken to Shimla for so-called family bonding. But just two years of free matrimonial inclusion into the most illustrated gas stove making business houses of Delhi and she knew better than to object. Sometimes obliging others becomes a way we oblige ourselves.

Nilu set one foot inside the manor and she felt she had meandered into a different earth altogether- a quieter, solemner, life springing in the inanimate earth and all the jarring sounds relegated to the distant backdrop. Her sister-in-law could not feign to really hide her subtle contempt when Nilu had asked her to accompany her within. “Oh dear, little Nilu! What will you see in a god-forsaken house that some haughty Britisher made a hundred years ago? I knew that stupid guide was no good. If it were not for this beautiful garden and flooding last rays of sunlight here, I would have asked papa to sack him for bringing us all so high up on this mountain for a picnic. Stay here baby, we are about to start an antakshari of all the men versus the women.”

Phew! This almost a Semi-Hum Apke Hain Kaun types ‘reality’ show proceeding from the last three days was taking its toll on Nilu and she moved in by herself into the uninhabited house. Who would discern anyways if one was missing in a crowd of 34? Not her husband for sure, as Anshul was diligently conniving his custom made cocktails for all the guffawing jeejas and chachas, bubbling more with pride on each loud request and pat on his back, than the soda fizzing within the glasses. And the true bloodied Punjabis that they were, he would be busy throughout the evening handling bottles and stirrers instead of her thoroughly bored emotions.

The house though not very exciting from the exterior, was exquisite and pristine from inside to say the least. The furniture was Victorian and vantage with rare, intricate carving and in antique teak. The walls were adorned with antique plates and life like portraits of savvy ladies in dainty hats and stern looking men in uniforms and badges casing the better part of their chests. Some beautiful artefacts, artillery and sculptures were sprayed here and there standing out against the mute pastel milieu. It spoke volumes even in the minimalistic that was there. It seemed she was sauntering through an early twentieth century adobe in London. Spellbound, she moved into the central courtyard that had just a glass ceiling and multi coloured stone flooring so that sunlight played most impishly in her sphere of influence dancing among the ivy leaves that it swathed. It felt like an ethereal world existing within a not so real one either.

But just then she heard a thud of the door behind that startled her. She turned around to find that two nosey children of the jing bang outside had followed her into the house. Nilu decided to walk out in case more kids attempt to come in too and spoil any of the unscathed beauty that emanated in the bleak isolated interiors. She shhhh-ed the kids and told them to walk out saying it was not the place for children to be in and they giggled and disappeared behind one of the curtains. Also sad at the rude interruption of her aesthetically satisfying experience, Nilu took a deep sigh and turned her steps to go back to the on-going circus outside.

Just then something shone from inside the open doors of one of the rooms, almost like a ball radiating colourful rainbow rays and despite herself, Nilu found her feet moving towards the source of that almost magical illumination.

She hesitatingly drew aside the floral print ornate curtain that fluttered in the cold breeze of the open windows, even as she drew her coat more tightly around her own petite frame. It was a room full of books and unfinished caricatures and portraits spread on easels and on a large sofa. The source of that light was an exquisite paper weight of crystal kept on a bureau, with colour sprayed within that reflected the sinking sun’s light like the most glorious spectrum.

She palmed it gently and almost dropped it in the next second when she was startled again by a voice from behind her.

“It has a sense of magical attraction, doesn’t it?”

She gathered herself and the “magical” paper weight, putting it back to where it lay and turned around to see a tall man in his early thirties perhaps and dressed sprucely in casual jeans and black shirt. He was an Indian but had almost blondish hair with a flick falling over his impeccably white complexion that made her rethink if he really was a Britisher, who might have walked right out of one of those paintings after a costume change and make-over.

For the next few seconds none of them spoke and incessantly viewed each other as an awkward silence crammed the room.

(To be continued...)