The long writing hiatus has left me feeling exactly how I felt before it started, so it's safe to say that it wasn't particularly worthwhile, although I would have loved to pretend that it had some profound outcome.

There are books to be read and exams to be given. There are stories to be told, and documented, not because they are special but because they could be a few years from now. There are 5 km jogs to be completed, despite twisted ankles and seemingly major excuses about everything that helps silence my conscience about sleeping through workouts. There is an ambitious year ahead to be taken on with enthusiasm and determination, so as to enable me to be in a position to stand at the end of the road with satisfaction and not guilt.

There is more writing to be done. Everyday. It's important to write, mostly for oneself. I have to sleep knowing I wrote. Some days the writing is private. Some days it's less private. It's hard to believe this when you see people around you biting and snatching things, but the competition is with oneself.

Dreams of the inane variety.

Eventually I stop at a shop on a quiet road.
It isn't anything special, but it's a pretty afternoon and I stop to buy myself an umbrella. They don't have umbrellas they tell me, and give me funny looks. It's clear that it's a grocery store. The man at the counter peers at me, with large pitiful eyes. He asks me if I'd like something to eat.

They think I am homeless, I think and look at myself. My clothes are frayed at the edges. My feet are small and shapeless in the over-sized slippers that I am wearing. "I am not poor, I don't know what's wrong with my clothes!" I say. They point at the door. "Have some bread if you like, but we don't have anything else for you at the moment." I start to walk away and as I do, the man glowers at me and shuts his shop. The clicking of the lock has something final about it, like the end of something that had the potential of being significant.

I walk towards the end of the road, but the end doesn't come for a while. I give up after some time and walk back. There is no shop. It's just a different road now.

I found a paper napkin at the bottom of my book shelf. The writing, in black, quivered over the damasked paper. It threatened to fade, to vanish completely one day. I peered at it, until the words stopped dancing and it said "Cafe Churchill. November 21, 2009." and it had our signatures underneath. 

It was like chancing upon a Polaroid, a mental one in this case. Maybe it's the one where we are all trying to squeeze into the frame, our heads sticking together, our smiles connecting to make one big smile. Maybe it's the one where we're making silly faces, but it won't be, because you don't make silly faces. 

I thought about the day and the years that followed. I thought about letters and silly scraps of messages, movie ticket stubs and bills from dinners that we would never had been able to pay back in college. Birthdays and beer towers and swollen eyes and dramatic stories. 

It's very hard for me to write about happy things. Maybe if one of you had left the city never to return or perhaps broken my heart in a terribly cruel fashion, this piece would have had more artistic merit than it does right now. But we're here and perhaps in the future I'll write something more poignant, but for now I will revel in the comfort of having known you for as long as I do and for everything that it was thus far.

The room smells of chicken soup. My hands smell of soap. The darkness beyond the curtains deters exactly no one. We are all here; tubes, medicines and all. You wanted soup and mangoes and the doctors said no. But I got them anyway. I am a rebel. For all the right reasons.

The room smells of something unpleasant and your face looks vapid. You reach out and hold my hand. "Give me a smoke." You say and I say no but you beg me and I turn away and cry while looking at the sky from the window. Because my rebel streak has ended. Because I want you to live but I also want you to die happy and I can't have both and I can't have either.

The room reeks of anxiety. And then it reeks of grief. There's nothing in between.

There are whiffs of you when I pack your things. Your perfume and the yellowing copy of Great Gatsby you were reading.

Then there's nothing. The room is filled with what is left when everything is gone.

On the wrap-around porch, sits a rocking chair, the darkest brown wood and blue upholstery. It moves softly, in the morning breeze. It looks at me, invites me towards it in silence. "we can write your stories together." It says. "Bring a friend this winter, won't you?"

In the winter, we sit on the chair, the sun dancing at our feet; my orange socks a tad too frivolous against your black ones. We're under a shawl, our hands locked together and hidden from the world, like secrets in the dark. The chair creaks under the weight of the things that go unsaid. The tea cups sit by, squat and eager, admirers in our little court.

The rocking chair lulls me to sleep and when I wake up, we're in a little cocoon of our doing, snug fits in a world of disarray.

They are old. Maybe close to 80. The husband asks me, in halting practised English, if I know the check in procedure. Then he tells his wife, in a quieter voice, not to worry.
I look at his ticket and point him towards the first counter. "just hand it to them, and they'll do the rest." He looks stricken and grateful, all at once.
"Will they allow her to come till there?" He asks, pointing to the demure little woman who he must have been married to for much longer than I have existed.
"is she travelling with you?"
The wife says something, clutching the crook of his arm. She looks older and smaller than she was a few minutes ago. I switch to Marathi, after hearing her speak, and both of them are instantly more at ease, the conversation now in a language they've been born into.
"She isn't coming with me." He tells me and I feel a pang on his behalf. "They won't let you in, beyond that gate, unless you have a ticket."
It's a small thing. It's a few metres of being alone. It's something the rest of take for granted. Something that we secretly enjoy, to have a snatch of privacy from the parents who want to come drop you, or the lover you're escaping from. In that moment, I realize that when you're old enough to be standing at an escalator that only goes upwards, you want to hold onto every crumb of companionship you can manage to.

I help him with his check in, and he thanks me several times. He looks at his wife on the other side of the glass. His heartfelt farewell having found its way into an affectionate pat on her arm a couple of minutes before. Theirs isn't the generation of hugs and rushed kisses.

She waves at him, and he raises his hand. Then he turns and walks towards security, thanking me one last time. The wife waits and watches him walk away, until he is one with the crowd; just another husband in a sea of people.

Bombay airport, May 2013.

The darkness in you.

Then you cracked open in front of me and the lights went out.

In the dark room, I watched your blood seep through the cracks, covering everything. Every part of me was painted, every bit of me had partaken of this charade. Of observing you, like no one had before.

It was as thick as the night. It was as heavy as the feeling at the pit of our stomachs when we see the end of something we loved.