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.

Then I was jealous.
Not because of anything but because her beauty is overpowering. It's all consuming. I can't breathe anymore. Well I can, but it's almost like I can't.

In the rains, her hair was filled with the stars. In the winters, her hands were beautiful through all the wool. When she turned around and looked into the camera, her eyes darted about like children chasing butterflies.

In the nights by the fire, the charms hanging off her wrist made sounds that destroyed you because you were worried that you'd get hooked on to them.

It's like when they put her together, they knew they had to get it right.

They did. 

In the crevices in the wall, live people that have lives worth mentioning because aren't all lives worth a mention?

There's Govind with his drying moustache that he oils every night. And his wife with the belly as brown as a stone. She smells of food, like dal perhaps or maybe oil. It's hard to tell. 

Aaram sells mirrors, because he thinks it's fascinating. He tells stories about his mirrors, like how film stars buy them off him because his mirrors are clear enough to reflect the future.

Sarika is the brightest student you've seen but all she really wants to do is be a part of a film where she can sit in a plane. Strange enough, just a plane ride won't do. It has to be a part of a film.

Lilavati, who calls herself Lala, does things she doesn't talk about for the fear of judgement but she enjoys them all the same. In the nights, when she comes home, she soaks her feet in lukewarm water and massages her neck which is terribly sore. 

In the cracks in the ground live people whose stories are as fascinating as their narrative, peppered with words that you'd fear to ask the meaning of. 

As the curtains are drawn, and the cracks are filled with plaster, these stories become rubble because the voices that tell them are unceremoniously silenced. 

Silence.
In the small spaces where the texts rang out and the parts of my day where I laughed to myself at something silly or sweet or poignant.

Last night I woke up to my phone buzzing, like the bird at the window that you sometimes imagine.  
There was nothing there, just static. I looked at it, turned it over for a bit in my hand and then fell asleep somewhere along the way.

The morning, my phone was still barren. No ideas crammed in winding messages and no late night missed calls that comfort you - because you know it's nice that someone remembered you once everyone had slept.

You must return. That's how it's supposed to be. 

The girl at the bus stop waited for a while before she pulled out her phone and dialled a number. Then she dialled it again. After the third time, she gave up and sat there with her head hung low.

The sun went down a little and when she looked up her face chalky and pale, and she had aged ten years in sixty minutes. She looked at her phone again while her eyes leaked defeat and her hands trembled a little.

By the time she left, she was a changed person. Something somewhere had snapped. Some cog in the machine had given way. Her gait was a little altered, as though she had forgotten how to walk and it was now a pointed effort.

I saw her world rattle a little, while the rest of the real world walked by like it was just another dandy Sunday evening. 

Somewhere down the road, the trees block the path.

At such a place, people wonder for a bit and then walk away. They make quiet conversations that no one know of. They look confused. Their journeys are cut short.

I climbed that tree with you and we watched the world go by. We couldn't get past, but we created a little trip for ourselves.

I sat there, my arm wrapped around your neck and my eyes sparkling. That minute felt like a long while; one that I wanted to re-live over and over again.

The next time people complained of the road block, I turned away and smiled into the sun. 

He came in on a little boat and sat by the shore. He didn't look tired for someone who'd been rowing. Perhaps he hadn't been too far away. I could see the patterns his back muscles made through his thin shirt. I could see the dark brown of his neck, like clay before you make a pot. He sat with his back to me, knees drawn to his chest, staring into the sea.

The waves came and broke a little away from him and then meekly went away. The setting sun cast a glow on him. I looked at his back for a while, but he didn't move and he didn't turn. After a while, a dog came and sat by his side. He petted it in a distant manner, where the affection and the attention was doled out with care so as to not waste any of it.

In the warmth that the world bathes in after the sun has gone, he turned around and looked at me in the eye. I felt a slight flutter and my face twisted itself into what I think was a smile. He nodded and raised his hand a little bit. He knew I was watching all along, a stalker in beach slippers. 

Then he got onto his boat and moved away, slicing the water, until all he became was a speck in the sea.

The roads all end in the same little clearing at the edge of the apparent world.

We are all there. We are all a part of something seemingly big. We are holding hands and looking doe-eyed at the sky.

There's a stiff wind and the abyss not too far away is cloaked in a fog as thick as you wouldn't even imagine. I half expect people to take pictures. But they don't. We aren't those people anymore. We are older, wiser, calmer.

My palms are sweating a little and there's a strange little flutter somewhere deep within me. I shut my eyes tight and open them again. The ground beneath me slips a little. Then a little more. Then it's like we are on roller skates in a surreal little skating rink.

There's darkness. It's over. It really is. 

The milkman died in a car crash. The car crashed into him. "This morning, around 4" his wife told us while yanking out her green bangles because those signify marriage. "What do I do wearing these now?!" She said in Hindi, in a voice that was mostly drama lined with grief. The person next to her tried to pat her back but it seemed more like tap-tap-tap with some non-gentle sobs.

The people flocked to his home like garrulous women at a convenience store. The sounds of their bereaved voices carried all the way across the street. The sorrow and the ensuing depression manifested itself in loud shouts of protest. They screamed at God that He took away their friend, a man who was not only honest but also a generous soul during cricket matches being telecast on TV. 

His kids, X and Y because I don't know their names, sat in one corner looking stricken and largely uncomfortable by the constant show of affection towards them, a concept otherwise alien.

When they carried his body, a fight broke out about who got to carry him to the crematorium. The man with the loudest voice started chanting something but stopped abruptly because someone else wanted to chant too. In the end, it sounded like a terrible medley leaking out of a radio and the poor milkman looked small and insignificant on the stretcher, amidst the little army of people fighting for importance.

We took the curtains down and look at each other with yellowing faces. Hers much older than mine, and clearly wiser too, given that it wasn't painted with the kind of anxiety that seemed to be bursting through my temples.

She looked at me while I folded the pastel green curtains and put them in big shopping bags. Her room now felt larger, brighter and altogether impersonal. The books from her shelves were now in cardboard boxes in my room. The wooden artifacts that dotted her walls were now taken down, put away. The table no longer held grocery lists and phone bills. 

You must no go, I wanted to say. I can't not have you live next door. 

But I didn't say anything. I just stood there, feeling like a child. 

We sat around making half-hearted attempts to empty out her home and life into containers and bags. As the light from outside went down and the room grew darker, the naked bulb hanging from the ceiling made a large ominous circle on her floor. 

I hugged her before I left, but I still couldn't quite find my words. 

I know. She said. And you know that I know. 

I came out and saw him. He was standing at the door, with his back to me.

You aren't supposed to be here. I felt my voice tear.

I am not, he replied.

They carried him away when I was 10. On a long, white sheet. They didn't have time for a stretcher. I called out to him then, but he didn't reply. I called out, again and again till all I heard were the remains of my sound flitting about.

Don't come in. I shouted at him. Don't come in now. It's too late. I have given up on you. You can't just come along and change all of that. 

His white shirt is dirty. 

He never came back. All that I saw was a bag of his clothes. A plastic bag, as if we went shopping for vegetables and didn't know where to put them. 

He went away. 

I told myself I was relieved. I can't deal with all this, I said.

Then I threw up in the bathroom and fell asleep on the floor. 

I am putting out the lights.

The darkness smells of candle wax. In the borrowed light coming in through the window, I am writing my memories of you. Such that no one will ever see them later. Not even me.

I live under my blanket, I cringe under the weight of all those layers. The cold night air weighs down on me like leftover guilt.

I fall asleep at some point. I wake up to the street lamps dozing off against the pink sky.

The trees are glowing with the afternoon light. The rustling tales get amplified as we come and stand under them.

We try and hold hands because there isn’t much else to do. You keep playing with your hair. It spills on to your shoulders in a riot. I am tempted to reach out and touch it. I don’t.

You have something to tell me. Under the cackling tree, you say you want your things back. Your clothes, that smell of flowers. Your books, some of which are dog eared from quoting and re-quoting passages in the night. Your slippers, pale and blue and smooth from use. I don’t have the courage to ask Why, but I notice that you have pulled away your hands and stuffed them into the pockets of your sweatshirt.

I nod. A brief, pointed nod. You look at me and the corners of your eyes, where my laughter lived for a bit, start to fill up. “It’s really hard. You know that right?” You ask me. You want me to say that I understand. I look at my feet.

We walk back, an awkward bubble walks between us. When it’s time to take different routes, I say See You Soon and you say Take Care, but neither of us mean it.

Just an altogether strange mood laced with jumping emotions about nearly everything. The fact that the world has a weekend coming up and we don’t, people, things, the end of the year –you know the usual stuff that gets you all weirded out when to be honest none of it is that difficult.

The weather is comfortable but a little bit gloomy and while some think of this as a good time to drink hot chocolate and giggle, it reminds me of the stuff that I don’t like or enjoy and then it gets me down. The people around me are being gleeful for no reason. I don’t blame them, it’s just that today I am batting for the other team.

There is a time when the things you have to do become enjoyable and you don’t mind them so much. I am waiting for that time, because well, it’s just far too tiring to go through the day doing things because that’s the only option.

It isn't really a special day, but it's a tiny bit noteworthy in the back of my brain where the tiny noteworthy things stay.

There were some cobbled streets that led to here and there were some blind turns.

It rained often enough and I did quite enjoy walking around, a lot faster that I usually do. I read a lot more than I would have and it doesn't really matter why. I jogged a lot more too. I grew up a little and stopped crying as much. I started revising my arguments in my head before I said them out aloud. I learnt, but not quite completely, about giving people space. I came to enjoy my own space. I realized that while I like meeting people, I like not having them around all the time. I watched a lot of shows and listened to respectable music. I came to laugh at myself, even if it was begrudgingly. I changed a little, here and there, and it wasn't unpleasant at all.

In this space and time, I found myself being happy, both together and alone.
After you cut the parts that you don't like and keep the parts that you do, if you're still happy, isn't that what really counts? 

All the leaves come crackling down around our cab. It’s like carving out a little dreamy spot for yourself amidst the harsh traffic lights and honking cars.

Somewhere caught between the sidewalk and cyclists in a frenzy, I imagined this to be as magical a moment as it gets in rush hour Bombay. I looked out and far ahead in the distance, I could see the sea. I tried to shut my eyes and smell the salt in the air. I couldn’t but given the general mood it lifted my spirits nevertheless. The road opened up for a bit and our cab shot across the street with new found enthusiasm.

With the wind finding its way in and whipping my hair into the mop, I looked over at you with your head thrown back and your eyes shut.

What a nice little ride it was.

The plants died.

Their yellowing heads hung at awkward angles and their white tears stained the thin stems. The owners of the home, unaware of the death of their balcony companions, continued to paraglide and swim and shop for antiques at exotic foreign locations.

The maid came in to an empty home, still battling the remnants of the viral fever that pinned her to the bed for the past week. She looked horrified and then blamed herself for not having foreseen this. She went and touched the leaves, which crackled a little under her grip. She put a mug full of water in the pots, in a desperate attempt to resuscitate them.

The plants remained dead. The maid left feeling bad but forgot about it when she found out that her son had failed the third grade for the second time.

The owners came back a few days later, were upset,yelled at the maid and then got over it the minute the dried leaves were swept away.

They, then, sat on their sofa and looked at vacation pictures.

All the roads came to an end, somewhere in a clearing near a pond. From the car, we saw the stars in the pond quiver with the promise of the night. We rolled down the windows and looked out for a while. We didn't say anything.

At some point, we turned the music on and for many hours that followed we listened to the lyrics from a stranger and related to them.
I think at some point I dozed off and had a dream. A dream that we are standing at the edge of the pond, daring each other to jump in. I remember you were scared, but you said you weren't.

I woke up and the music was still on and you were asleep. I held your hand and it was warm.

In the morning, the water in the pond swallowed the stars. The sky was a golden blue. We drove away. I am not sure if we had come to the edge of the world to seek something, but either way it felt like we found what we wanted. 

All the confusion inside my heads spills out in ways that keep getting increasingly convoluted.

I see my energy wash away pretending to be that person –the one that laughs in the right places and says the right things.

My space keeps getting darker until my room is black again. I draw the curtains and the street lights peep in with just enough orange spots to make my head hurt.

In the room at night I find myself making endless lists of pros and cons. I find myself admitting things that I would never admit in the light and promise of a new day.

There’s this feeling wherein you know at the pit of your stomach that everything that you consider happy right now might unravel sooner than later. I try and hide from it, but in the darkness it finds me.