The light peeps in through the carving on the top. She looks at it often enough but never really opens it.
The carving is intricate but quiet, it doesn't impose, it doesn't demand attention. Like the silence between the music, where they'd kiss against the night sky, his arms around her waist.
He gave her the box at the beginning of the summer last year. Did he know then that it was his last summer, she wondered. Had he decided at that point, that it was all too much for him?
She returned home, drenched from the rains, and found him hanging from the ceiling fan. His head leaned to one side and his mouth curled. Like he'd purse his lips any moment and say "You're beautiful, baby." And then she'd say, "Even like that? All drenched and mucky?" And he'd nod.
He gave her the box for her bangles, because she had so many and she'd have them lying around everywhere. But that never happened. For months after the unfortunate monsoon, the box just sat on one side of the bed. Her side of the bed. She slept on his side, taking in whatever was left of him. The impression on the pillow, a sliver of his perfume. Her heart would beat faster when that happened, and she would cry until her eyes got swollen and her throat closed.
Then one day, on a solo trip to a hill station, she found something in the middle of a forest. The remnants of something dark and terrible but also intriguing and convoluted. And then she brought it back and her heart thundered inside her until she put it in the box and wrapped it in a shawl and hid the box.
The crying stopped. She picked herself up. She ran a comb through her hair and went for jogs. She had a safety net. She had her box, she felt closer to him than she ever had before. She knew, if she wanted to, she could go to him.
Comfort is a strange thing. When you find it, you stop needing it as much. And it comes from strange things. Some write about it, some find pistols in odd places.
In the end, they all sleep better

The forever that people speak of is a curious little thing.
There is a long winding road lined with people and trees and people. Some wear top hats and some hold up their naked feet to check for bruises.
You and I are on this road. We don't have the same forevers. Mine is blue and scratched up from the constant rumination. Like an old cassette, the dear things that people wore out through trying summers.
Yours, you don't tell me about. I ask you if it's black and smooth, like the rocks from sea beds. Like the rock you got me from your trip to Greece and you held it up against the sun to show me how beautiful it was. I said, "it's a dark blue. Nothing is ever completely black." And then we kissed.
I asked you if it was green and neat but you said no and you'd never tell me because it's private and I said ok.
Our forevers are like children left loose at the beach. They run in crooked lines, drunk on the summer and their youth before it slips away. They fall and rise, they hold hands and then fight the second after, walking away in childish huffs. When the sun sets, they fall asleep next to each other, tired but with secret smiles playing on their lips.
You and I. And our forevers. So complicated. So many shades of the unknown. So much challenge, so much excitement.
You and I. I wouldn't expect any lesser.

The stars were knotted in your hair, while you stood against the sky. I couldn’t even see your eyes; just dark pools lighting up now and then.

The clouds were thick and stormy and the trees didn’t quite hold their own. They swayed, as though possessed by a greater force, from end to end. You stood still, though. Untouched and uncaring.

Somewhere through the night, the rain came down in anger. It drenched us to our bone. The stars washed away from your hair. Your eyes leaked sparkling water.

You kept going further and further until you disappeared. I moved towards you, panicking, but you were gone.

Perhaps you hid behind a tree, or maybe you became a glowing blob of molten matter up ahead in the distance. You weren’t there. You were never there.

There's that moment where you need someone to hold your hand. Not because you're scared or upset. Not even because you're in pain. But because sometimes you like holding hands, and don't think it's necessary that it be backed with a reason.

On Saturday mornings when you wake up and lie around in bed, you wonder what it'd be like to have someone lie with you there. You aren't lonely. You haven't had bad dreams. It's just that you want someone to lie next to you, behind you, and make small talk or share your morning silence.

You like it when people tell you that you were missed. It doesn't necessarily make you feel important. It doesn't always cheer you up magically. But on days when you are lying in bed, battling pain and larger things, you can look back on these times and find something to hold on to. 

Sea-side love.

Beyond the angry vehicles and the impatient people, there is a little world behind a blue umbrella.
The rain and the sea are riled up. The rain attacks the city with the new found vehemence. The blue umbrella holds its own. It stands strong, quivering only now and then, unable to contain the emotions.

Their world is a lot more secure in the monsoons. Behind the blue fabric, they are overwhelmed with everything they feel. The rainwater runs down their faces, like tears of gratitude. They trace patterns on each other's palms, speaking a secret tactile language.

They inch closer, trying to find a way to express themselves best. Their thoughts remain unspoken as they see a cop in a yellow raincoat at a distance.

They start walking away, worried that they'd have to bare their feelings in front of an irate policeman. The blue umbrella in all its majesty protects then from the rain, but fails to shield them from the judgemental eyes of the city.

Sunlight falls on the life size clock. A girl stands in the centre, facing the curvaceous 12, holding long stemmed roses. She is wearing a red and white dress. The hands of the clock come together in front of her, like an arrow coming out of her small bleeding heart.

The hands move around her. She feels important for a brief while but gets used to it soon enough. She looks around her, at the hands and the harsh afternoon sun, and then she waits. Her hair moves in wave like ripples. She appears to be moving with time. She looks to her right now. Her eyes fill with liquid anxiety and her hands hold on to the roses with an iron like grip.

The sun walks away, in the evening calm, without so much as a second glance at her. The anger has seeped out of her in small dark patches on her back and in streaks across her face. She has her back to the start of her day, her life has literally turned around.

The darkness covers the clock and time seems to stop, even though we know it never really does.

She’s gone, while the hands move around dutifully, working hard to draw the day to an end. The crumpled roses lie in a heap where she once stood, smelling of discarded love.

Take a lie and wrap it with glitter.

She, the one with a big umbrella and dangerously high heels, overbalanced at a crossroad and came down in a heap. All the vehicles screeched to a halt and a flurry of colourful words was witnessed.

She looked sheepish but not mortified and tried to pull herself together while the street watched her.
The man in the black car came out, and amidst loud gasps, helped her up. He offered to hold her bag, a dull pink because they don’t make it any other colour, and her folder. She quietly followed him to his car and got in, nodding at the wonderful man who held open the door for her.

They fell in love, in the confines of his car that smelled of rosewood. He told her he knew that there was something rather special about this day and she smiled while it rained and perhaps little fairies in a parallel universe sang and had a tea party.

They then got married and went on to have two perfectly healthy children one of whom became a state level swimmer. The other became a realist and called out his  parents’ bluff and said this story was cooked up to cover up the fact that they had actually been set up by their own parents because they were getting older and nobody would want to marry them.

They looked like they were caught cheating on a test but they quickly covered that with an indignant tone and angry expressions.

The son smirked and walked away.

There is a rather annoying game- where people play hard to get.

I don’t see the charm in pretending like you don’t care, when you actually care enough to pretend. How is it endearing to not return calls from people for a few days to make sure they don’t think of you as too available? If I get a call, I answer it on the basis of whether I want to talk to the person concerned or not. I can assure you my thought process isn’t, “Hm, I really want to talk to this person, but well you know, I don’t want him to know I want to talk to him. So let me miss this call and call him back next week.”

If I call someone who I have met only a couple of times, because I want to see where it goes with them, and they pull childish moves like pretending to be busy, I’ll stop bothering almost immediately. There is no pride in trying to pursue someone who appears to be disinterested. Especially when you don’t know even know their last name yet.

I am not advocating that you jump up and down with glee and answer everyone phone call with a high pitched Helloo and creep the other person out with your questionable enthusiasm, but I am also strongly against making people jump through hoops to test their interest in you.

I know a lot of people who “play it cool” I get that. What I don’t however get, is how people take this and run with it to a level where the other person is convinced that they don’t care and back off. This might work if you want the other people to take it down a notch, but if you don’t, you now have a situation on your hands where you’ve made your indifferent bed and now you’re going to have to lie in it.

“For well you know that it's a fool, Who plays it cool, By making his world, A little colder.”

Even the Beatles are making my case.

Restricted.

In a place where the lines aren't so clearly defined, they meet, unlocking rusty doors.

Their nails will always remain chipped, their throats will remain parched; a reminder of a day when the sun set behind them and the room looked jaundiced. 

Hair pins don't open locks. Stones do.

The walls are a sickly shade of green, the bricks hidden under years of dirt and moss. The backs of their shirts are powdered with dust; the fronts of their shirts are all creased.

They speak of things they don't dare speak of otherwise. Love that is found in their coded text messages and their furtive glances across crowded places. The kind that will tear them apart, in several pieces, should anyone find out about it.

Silence and the occasional snuffle. Silence and ragged breath and small sounds that are nervously happy. Silence.

Under the fragmented sky, that they can see from between the concrete, they look at kites that are lost, fluttering red specks against the clouds, far away from where they are.

As the golden brown evening light melts away into inky blue evenings, they pick themselves up and walk away. Separately together.

Innumerable stories. So many people with their feelings locked away in rooms. So many people with moss stained clothes. So many.

Half solved crosswords in the newspaper, held down with the happy yellow box of cereal. 6 down is Baku, the U leading to ubiquitous. The cereal has a free toy inside it – a plastic dog that has a squeaky bark when pressed.

All stray reminders of much deeper feelings.

Your striped blue tie reminds me of your first interview; humble beginnings but extreme gratitude of having made it. The tie hangs in your cupboard, lost among the other neatly stacked clothes. I remember days, very early on in our game, when I would hold it to my face when you weren’t around.

The meaning we attach to inanimate objects; a piece of cloth and a barrage of emotions.

My running shoes always sat next to yours; looking rather diffident next to your feisty ones. You always made fun of my socks, when we went jogging. I never kept up with you and strangely I didn’t mind. There are people you meet, against whom you know you’ll lose a game. But you participate anyway, because atleast that way you have a chance to play with them.

We run as fast as our feet will carry us and as far as possible to get away from something that is never going to go away. It will stay, steadfastly, inside your head until it decides it has bothered you enough.

When we first met, we had deep conversations about intellectual things. We argued and agreed and took equal pride in both. Then, we found ourselves in a place where our conversations were mundane and our pride was over having picked the right movie show.

If these are comforts that come with time, how comfortable would you like to be?

The people we know almost always become the people we used to know. Not because they go away, but because they change a little. They are sitting right next to you but are thinking thoughts that are of a place faraway.

When we sit on a park bench, sometimes we hold hands not because there is overwhelming affection but a vague fear that if we don’t, we’ll slip away from each other.

The heart doesn't know what it wants.

I have no idea why but today wherever I look there are hearts staring back at me. It's not even Valentine's day! We already have to deal with all the pink glitter once a year. I am not against hearts, I am sure they're great, but why would you make random things heart shaped.
Initially, it was just red heart shaped balloons at traffic signals. Today, I saw some fast food place selling cutlets in the shape of hearts. Oily hearts on pink paper napkins.
Someone on Facebook uploaded a picture of an annoying kid holding a big furry heart shaped pillow saying "Happy Maharashtra Day" The heart wasn't even relevant!
Then earlier today, while having lunch, I notice an ochre coloured plastic heart. It was a mould for cookies. In my own house.
I think I'll put up with all that if some people I know stopped cupping their hands in the shape of a heart while cocking their head and saying "aw" That really tips me over the edge.

Popcorn. Caramel, usually.

The quintessential bad love story in Indian cinema should ideally have two or more people. In the situation that it doesn’t and we have only one person, it might get confusing; or it might be a psychological thriller where the protagonist has Schizophrenia; but we don’t want to explore that just yet.
For the sake of this piece: We have 3 people.
The girl is called something generic like Priya. She is then referred to as Pri or Cookie or some such nickname. She is a Philosophy major; she wears horn rimmed glasses and carries a thick book. We all know that those are the only characteristics of a Philosophy major. She flits in and out of college wearing summery clothing in the winters and with her face wrapped in woollen scarves in the summers. But because she studies Philosophy and is above everyone else, she isn’t bothered by inane things like the weather. She doesn’t have friends, only admirers: a bunch of other girls who look at her in awe. You can throw in a whole social activism angle too, but then she might really appear to be smart and we don’t want to digress.
The boy who falls for her has to be, what is loosely termed, stupid. He has to be muscular and self-centred. Efforts are made to display his lack of general knowledge and his general disregard to education. He has to have a rich father, a kitty party going mother and several servants, atleast one of whom is called Chotu. We can always throw in a lonely childhood (while the parents partied) to add some so-called character to our man so that the audience doesn’t begin to dislike him too much. He could be called any number of things because it doesn’t matter; but we’ll call him J. Yes, he is too cool for names with more than one letter.
He meets Priya at an airport, almost always. They could also meet at coffee shops, malls or movie theatres. They can never meet in nightclubs because she is a serious Philosophy major and doesn’t indulge in frivolous dancing in dark spaces. (Later of course, one could show her dancing in an inebriated fashion, to show the other side of her otherwise demure personality, but this is optional)
Against the background of a busy airport, she pretends to dislike him but is actually charmed by his pointless humour and carefree personality. He is moved by her concern for the world and society and her well rounded knowledge of things. (She knows who the President is and not too many people are as well read) They fall in love in a matter of a day, but she has a degree to pursue in another country and he is headed elsewhere to waste time. They decide to meet at a certain place on a certain day but find it beneath themselves to take down phone numbers or addresses. He never shows up, because on the same day that he is supposed to meet her, he finds his calling as a filmmaker and almost instantly makes a film, wins an award and has the power go straight to his head.
She is heartbroken, (insert nightclub scene here) does what she has to accept the facts and after failed attempts to find him (because without a phone number and address, one can’t track down one’s true love, after all) gives up on life for a while. Then she picks up the pieces of her shattered existence and starts doing volunteering work with the blind. Her interest in philosophy comes down to her sitting in her pink pajamas reading the same thick book.
She then meets our third character, let’s call him Ben (because we are in a different country now and we have to have a name that doesn’t sound too Indian) who is absolutely fabulous – he has 2 PhDs, a diploma in Thai cooking, another degree in music and can knock your socks off with how kind he is and how he helps out at old age homes.
Then of course, the night before she marries Ben, J comes to find her.
She says she is going to get married the next day yet has time to use the night before to show J around this new country. Then we have a series of apologies and lost love stories and general confusion. He says he has turned over a new leaf (this can be seen by the fact that he knows who the President is and now wears glasses too) and wants to marry her. She declines but still shares one last passionate kiss with him overlooking whichever famous river this country boasts of.
The next morning she goes away to marry Ben. After a while, J runs long distances in her general direction only to find her waiting for him, teary eyed. Ben is close at hand with a Zen look on his face. She hugs J and says that she isn’t marrying Ben anymore because she came clean about who she actually loves and Ben only wants her to be happy. (You may say "aww" at this point if you wish, but no pressure)
J and Priya get married in an airport because that’s where they first met.
PS: If you didn’t like this post, you may take this up with this friend of mine. She took me along to watch this masterpiece London Paris New York and I haven’t quite recovered.

Dissonance

There are few things that scare me a lot. The night before the results of a big exam. Maths. Earning the wrath of certain people. If I have to call these people or mail them, I think of all sorts of things. I wonder if they are busy. I wonder if they might see my name flashing on their phones and get angry. I wonder how they might react to my call. I factor all this in and then go ahead and call them. Sometimes, I just quietly turn off my phone and put it away; and congratulate myself mentally on having averted a potentially ugly situation.
The people I know sometimes become the people I used to know. I forget what my name sounds like when they say it. I forget the sound of their laughter. I forget how they pronounce certain words. Then many years later when I hear someone else say a particular word in a fashion that they did; I think of them and wonder where they might be.
There are nights when you sit and run over everything you’ve done. All the things you missed out. The times you turned down offers to go to a beach for a weekend getaway. I am everything I do. And everyone I meet. If that actually does work the way I think it does, does that mean, the things I didn’t do at least slightly alter who I am. If I had gone to beach last week and I had consumed alcohol from a coconut shell, would that have in some minuscule capacity made a difference to who I am.
I miss my phone ringing in the night. I miss taking long cab rides as the sun sets. I miss myself in colourful socks and in worn out jeans. I miss everything that I had and I might have. I miss my sister being in the same room as me, on long boring Sundays.
It is a Saturday evening and everyone at work has left. I am writing this and drinking coffee from a paper cup. I wonder if there ever comes a time in any of our lives when we are perfectly happy with everything. If it does, does it last a while? If it doesn’t, is it because we expect too much? And if we did drop our expectations, is there really a point in such a compromised happiness.
I wish I could just fix everything there was to fix, or atleast make peace with the fact that sometimes you can’t fix things.
"I know someday you’ll be a star in somebody else’s sky
But why, why can’t it be mine."