Hence, words.

I haven't been able to write anything in a long time. Honestly, I've missed writing, and I hope it has missed me back too. When I write something, I keep typing furiously looking at the keypad of my laptop, trying in tiny efforts that get extinguished within the blink of an eye to convince myself that it is as good as writing with a pen and paper in hand. As I finish typing each word off, I realize it isn't good enough.

It isn't good enough because the words come easy here. It didn't take me one complete second to write down the word 'Love', or two and a half seconds to etch the words 'He repaired me.' permanently onto paper. It didn't take my hands the effort to glide over the rough paper and move along the curves of the alphabets. I didn't have to lift my hands every time I wrote my 'i's' to put the little dot on the top.

So I do realize that it's a compromise. A big one indeed.

Writing down makes you realize the immensity of the sentiment that went behind in associating meanings to the words. If you look at it, at the end of the day, words on paper are ultimately representation of sounds that have come to mean something to us over the years. If you keep going back to the start, in the end, nothing would mean anything. No one knew what the word 'meaning' meant at the beginning of things. In the end, it is all a big oxymoron.

I'm talking about the importance of the words on paper. Where am I writing about it? Well, on my laptop. So I do realize that I'm a severe hypocrite.

But there is one thing I'll always realize over and over again. If there is a truth, then that is silence alone. Songs, words, books, blogs and everything else that man has made exists only to make the silences more meaningful. So that we know what to call that feeling when our eyes light up at the sight of good food or when our eyes close down at someone's touch.

We needed to explain each other what we feel in our silences. Hence, words. We needed to know things other than silence, in order to truly recognize what silence really was at the beginning of things. Hence, words. We needed to remember over centuries how our souls communicate truly only in moments of absolute silence. Hence, words. We needed to understand someday that no matter how many words you write on paper, there is never going to be a complete translation of thoughts. Words never capture everything. We needed something to remind us that in the end, our only language is silence and everything else is just a charade. But for every truth to exist, there also must exist a lie. If there were no words, would we ever know what silence was. Hence, words.

I needed to do something about that feeling in my heart when he looked at me. I needed to give it some tangible form so that it could take the silence from my heart and put it safely in his. The only legitimate thing I could ever exchange was silence. But what do I trust my silence with? I can’t trust silence in the hands of silence. There are so many silences floating around him. What if he picked up the silence from some other person who doesn’t feel about him the way I do? That is why I entrusted my silence in something else. Something that distance could carry without attenuating sentiments beyond repair. Hence, words.

Pink Fingers

I came back home with pink fingers.

I was five. I had gone to my friend’s place that evening and he had taught me how to play with rubber bands.  He would hold one end and I another, and we’d count till three and take turns to let that red rubber band slip off and hit the other one’s tender hands. It was fun. Maybe those were the signs of a beginning of a lifetime of sadism. Maybe I was plain stupid. But every time I knew he was going to let it slip from his fingers onto mine, I’d squeeze my eyes shut. Praying for a moment that somehow that rubber band would get caught up in mid air, or he would change his mind and just stop it with his hand.

He never did. He rolled from one side to another in innocent laughter as I braved a ‘Oh-that-didn't-hurt’ face. I didn't want him to know that my eyes were cowering in pain. I hope he’d notice I’m flinching with closed eyes. But he never did. I’d laugh it off, because come on, who makes a puppy face after taking a hit? That’s shameful.

When it was my turn, surprisingly enough, I used to flinch too. I used to flinch thinking that my dear friend at the other end of the rubber band will feel what I felt, and how could I do that to someone, knowing how much it hurts? So instead, I’d just tilt it someway so that it didn't hurt him as much as it did to me.

That’s what life is about in the toughest of moments in my belief. About flinching at the thought of the pink fingers in someone else’s hands. People forget how they might impact others. They remember only their own pink fingers.

Funny how today I am five no more and I can relate rubber bands to words and sometimes their absence.  People remember what words do to them, and forget what their words do unto others. But here’s the catch. Be careful, all. Stretch the rubber bands only as far as your friend at the other end can take. Because if someday their fingers bleed and they choose to let it slip at their end and walk out on you, that day what you’ll have is a broken rubber band in your hands and you’ll be sitting friendless in that playroom called life.

Who will you share your evenings with and who will you steal candies from?

Nah, you’ll probably find new playmates and buy candies all for yourself.

But what about your pink fingers then?

Truth is, no one would give a damn.

Funny thing how I came back with pink fingers today and I am five no more. Funny thing how I didn't care as I let slip the rubber bands and walked out of the door. Funny thing how I am five no more.

A Little More Than That

Loving with all my heart is the only kind of loving I have done. I've let it knock out my senses and leave me in a daze. I've let the smiles capture so many breaths of mine, that one day I stopped counting. People have told me I love a little too much. People have told me these people I love so much are going to be gone one day. Some will fade away and some will leave in a flash. Some of them I’ll walk away from and some of them I’ll shut out. And I've told these people that they are right. Yet today, I love like it is the most completely honest thing I've done with my life.

I don’t understand how someone can love a little or how someone can love someone ‘kinda’. How can someone love just half of someone? I haven’t heard someone say I love her half-smile or how it feels perfect to fit half of their fingers into their half-palms. Love comes in wholes. What comes in halves , two-thirds and one-fourths are doubts, egos and torn photographs. I've loved whole. I've loved every wrinkle on their foreheads, each gesture of their hands. I've loved how they look after a long day at work. I've loved them when they wake up in bed an hour late with messed up hair. It’s a little funny though that I've been told I love a little too much.

Half-love is like half done poetry. Untrue and not beautiful. How will I notice the hair-pin bends of their smiles? How will I know how they are feeling today by just looking at way they shuffle their feet while standing? How will I get to remember the little details of how their noses cringe when they laugh? How will I memorize how they look before a kiss? How will I do all this by not loving someone till it is a lot more than enough? Hence, I shall love a little too much.

They’ll think I love them like I love words, or like I love to travel. They might even come to believe that I love them like the soils love the first rain. I’ll tell you a little secret here, though… I love them a little more than that. I love them a little more than they think I can. I long for their voices a little more than I pretend to long for. I’ll hug them a little tighter and a little longer than they think I will. I will love them a little more than that. I will love a little too much.

#TrueLove

I've thought about it a lot.  What is love and what is not love? What drove man to come up with words like ‘Infatuation’, ‘Crush’, and then the most controversial of all, ‘True Love’?  Is there any scale of damage from 1 to 10, or probably an odometer that the heart has, which can tell one from the other? The reason why I capitalize True Love is because I think it is a patent. Probably, the most popular patent that humans have ever come up with, of something that doesn't even exist.

Is a heart supposed to thump the loudest only at the sight of your ‘once-in-a-lifetime-and-never-can-it-ever-happen-again-one-true-love’? Personally, my heart races with equal enthusiasm when I see my favorite brownie arriving at my table. Call me an antithesis of True Love walking around shamelessly, but I find absolutely no hesitation in announcing that True Love is a myth. A well-fed, well-guarded, big fat myth.

Ever since I can remember,Bollywood songs and those expensive cards on the shelves of gift stores told me that True Love is different It has the following attributes:

1. It can happen only once in a lifetime. Anything you have before or after that is a crush, infatuation, or self-healing and void-filling.

2. True Love demands nothing. No keeping, no wanting to know, complete trust and no hard feelings. Ever.

3. True Love is the real deal. Rest everything just comes and goes.

4. … and well, I didn't pay much attention to what people have to say about this so I can’t really keep the list going. Trust me there are people who can.

It took me 22 years to get to realize what love really looks like.

There is a door. A beautiful, glorious door with sparkling white rice bulbs along its periphery, painted in shades of pink, lilac, purple and red. The door is majestic and alluring. None like you've seen before, nothing so bright or glorious. You want to enter, so you knock. No one answers, so you knock again. This time you wait a little. You still are captivated by the beauty of the door. It’s been a while now, and no one has answered yet. Then you begin to grow a little tired. You wait more and more, and then you’re angry. Your eyes hurt while staring at those bright lights now. The paint, you realize, is a little too flashy. People can have different thresholds of when they get too tired of it. But they all do someday. After weeks, months and years of waiting to enter the door, you are exhausted. You lose heart a little everyday and then one fine day, you decide to walk away.

But then you notice there is another door a little distance ahead. This one’s not grand, not sparkling and not alluring. It is as ordinary looking as it could get. The woodwork isn't done well. Sharp edges remain and it hasn't been painted in any color. It’s there, right in front of you. You wonder how you didn't notice this one before. You give the door a little push and it opens up for you. Just like that. You can walk in or walk away. But the door did open this time. 

The second door is what love looks like. Like it is in real life. Flawed and imperfect. The only reason why I think people talk of True Love and the first door is because such things are good for our ego. We want to believe that there is a better kind of love. Free of wants and desires. We want to believe that we are capable of more. That makes us strive better and harder. True Love is a good motivator, but it is a myth. Flawed love is as far as you get. Love will want to fight, and break you in anger. It will want to take you out for lunch. It will want you to stay away for a few days. Love will want not to talk after a long day at work and simply read its favorite book. Love will want to kiss you. Love will want to not snuggle up with you in a blanket at times. Love can go away at will and sometimes without a reason. Love needs imperfection to thrive. True Love doesn't need any of this for thriving, because it does not exist.

You can stare at perfection as much as you want, but when you’re done, you can always come back home to the second door. Standing outside the first door, knocking and being unanswered is important too. It is necessary, because then you’ll understand how exhausting perfection is and also how it feels like your heart to be home.

To all those who realize this, happy homecoming! 

Paper Cups

White.The unforgettable color of those cruel paper cups. So white that they startle my now grey conscience.So impeccable and spotless, unlike my bruised hands, that I can't not hate them. At the age of five,when I was an unaware little boy whose life had been sold to the tyranny of a li'l tea-stall, I couldn't understand why I dreamt of paper cups so often. They would shake me by the collar of my tattered shirt and would say scary things in my ears, not letting me sleep.They would sneak up behind me while I bathed in those tin boxes they had told me were bathrooms.Now I know they had lied. Just like those white cunning paper cups I hate. They had said they would treat me better. But now all they do is remind me of the smell of boiling tea, and tea, I hate. For it did burn holes in my life. Holes in the shapes of those cartoons you grew up watching and I did not. They came half-empty and half-full with fake promises of better days. But all they brought was the smell of tea, that sat boiling noisily on the stove all day. All they brought along was the scent of cologne those men wore to work. They'd roll down their windows of their air-conditioned cars just enough to yell out my name. I'd fumble up to them with a hurry in my footsteps and paper cups in my hands, eagerly wanting to buy my way out of that rickety tea stall. And so I have finally. But I don't drink tea out of paper cups ever.I ask them to get me coffee. Because coffee isn't bad. It's not like the tea. It's not like those paper cups. Unforgettable. Discomforting and white.

The Parting Gift ( Part 7 )

It was raining a lot that night. Asha was sitting by the window.She always liked big windows, the ones that could let in the air, sunshine and rain. She had turned off all the lights to feel the dark. Sitting in the dark by the window made her feel less cluttered. But there was something uneasy about the rain that day. Every other time it used to rain, she had never felt so connected to it. The raindrops encroached in through the window and broke into many little droplets on her arm. They felt uncomfortably cold, but she did not feel the need to brush them aside. Finally after around an hour,she got up and walked in to what used to be Chitra's room. Every time she did, she felt a strange ache rise in her heart.It was something so deeply tragic, something so unbelievably painful that she had stopped trying to control how much she missed her daughter. She felt so alone in that house.She looked at the perfectly made bed in her room, and suddenly remembered how she used to scold Chitra for leaving her bed unkempt.She walked to the study and took out her diary and wrote something down at a go. Not a single scribble, as if it was all so clear in her mind. She finished writing, left the diary open and went out to walk in the rain.

Falling of the skies

A hundred reasons and thousand names

all rained down from the sky,

as she turned her back on all of them

with a long silent goodbye.

A million stars hung their heads

and sunk themselves so low.

As if they all want her to stay

never wanting to let go.

One less pair of shiny eyes

shall look up to them at night.

And they'll all miss her silently

and glow a li'l less bright.

The winds in her hair shall now run free

and find new corners to go,

to new places and faces

and to people they did not know.

The lament of the moon,

the lament of my eyes,

were sung out loud that night

with the falling of the skies.

It had been three years now. Chitra had passed away in that very room. The surgery never happened, because the leukocytocis had become too aggressive. One sunny winter morning, she did not wake up. 

The previous night, was however, unforgettable. She was feeling quite better suddenly.Active and willing to do things. She had asked her to call Viren home that night.He had come rushing. Very nonchalantly, she did something which both of them had secretly hoped for in a long time. As he came to sit at the edge of her bed, she smiled at him and asked him to tell her stories like used to when she was a kid. By the end of an hour, she started feeling drowsy again. She didn't say much, but looked at him, and whispered quietly "Goodnight Baba."

That moment Viren could feel his heart beat right out of his chest with his love for her. All the fatherly love and concern he had hidden somewhere behind those steady and cold eyes, came out all at once with his tears. Everything went back to the sight of her in that pink frock, and the way she used to sway it. 

Next morning they went to her room to find her dead. What happened next was a blur. Things moved fast. People came and went. Phonecalls were made. Condolences were offered. 

But what remained was what she had left behind. The empty room that was still so full of her, the drawings behind the doors she had made as a child, the silent afternoons and evenings. These, and one more thing. The parting gift she had given to her father. She had finally called him Baba, after all these years.

Asha and Viren never repaired their marriage. They hardly talked after her death. With their daughter now gone, the only link that could have brought them back together was just a strong memory in their minds. But maybe that's how it is. It is okay, at times, to not go back to how things used to be. Even if what you have now isn't what you really want. Maybe life is more about the moments, rather than the people. More about the parting gift, rather than all the angry years in between.

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With this, I call it a close folks. The story I wanted told, has been told.

The Parting Gift ( Part 6 )

" You need to think this over, Mr. Ganguly. I suggest you take you time."

With thee words, the doctor left Viren standing in the hospital hallway, feeling like someone had hollowed himself from the inside. He could hear his heart beating out of his chest. He found himself looking down at the floor. He could see his fine ,shiny black shoes. They were fine leather. Impeccable finish. He could have thought of anything, anything at all, but not about what the doctor had just said. 

This was their eighth visit to him and each one was worse than the last. Tests had confirmed that the leukocytosis wasn't going to get any better. It was going to get worse. Chitra had now visibly started looking pale. Towards the beginning, she used to be tired, but it never used to show up in her eyes.  She knew what she was up for, and refused to get hospitalized. " I want to be home. Not here." That's all she had told him, and he didn't know what to say. He couldn't decide how to make all this stop. He couldn't understand how he could make the world stay still for sometime, while he bent over the floor and gathered up the pieces of his life. He didn't understand how he could make Chitra live. For all he knew was, he'd break if their daughter wouldn't live any longer. He'd die too. 

He needed time to think whether to let her ebb away with each passing day in their home, or whether to put in all the strength he had to fix his daughter. He needed time. Lots of it. The sad truth was, the clock on the wall in front of him, and every other damned clock in this world was ticking the life away of that little bundle of joy he had held in his hands about 20 years back. His heart ached, and his eyes teared  up. He could not longer make out the floor and his shoes. He could hear a humdrum of noises. Noises that carried anxiety and anger, just like the voice running over in his head. This place was full of people who were scared. Only a few here were fearless. He looked up finally and turned his head to the side, when he saw Chitra from the door left ajar, sitting in the revolving chair inside the cabin. There she was. Acting all unaware, she swung from left to right in the chair, with her hair flipping a little every time she did. He couldn't let her fade away like a winter afternoon. He wanted her. He wanted this sunshine to never go down.

There inside the room, she was. Thinking to herself when they'd be out of this depressing place. She hated the smell here, and she was pretty sure she didn't want this to be the smell she took in with her last breath. She wanted it to be that of her mother's hands, pressed hard against her cheeks. They way her mother always smelled like a lot of cherries. She wanted it to be the scent of the aftershave her father used to wear to work. She wanted it to be the smell of the winter outside. She didn't want to go that way. She wanted to remember each hallway of the home she had grown up in, with all its windows, with all the drawings behind the doors she used to make as a kid. She wanted to memorize tile patterns on the floor and noise of the birds outside. As a kid, when she saw the movie 'Anand', she had thought to herself, how great it would be to have a life and death like that. Well, the life didn't turn out to be as that great. There were no songs in the balcony or on the beach, there certainly wasn't a doctor that resembled Amitabh, but there was a chance of a better way to fade away. She wanted to cash the chance. There was nothing to lose. She wanted to be so familiar with the cabinets and the shelves, and so accustomed to the photographs on the wall, that even if she wouldn't be there anymore, those things there, that little doll from Japan, and that wood carving that her mother had made, they would all have someone staring at them. Someone so familiar, that no one could say that she was gone.

Smile At Me from a Distance

What if Life were a book? It would  come in a muddy brown hardback cover. It'd have all kinds of stories written in it over the years. But all the pages that were once white, would now be strewn with black webs of words, people and time. You won't get to strike out the mistakes. The pages would know everything. They would know me. If you'd look close, you'd know my favorite pages. They would be the ones that would have been worn thin at the edges. If my life were a book, I'd let you read...

Read about all those dreams and about the all the violence after waking up from them.
Read about the breaking of my heart and smile at me from a distance. 
Read about why this black tarry ink just splashed across the white of these pages in anger.Read about the consolations I brew to myself each morning with the coffee. Read about the people I thought I knew, and smile at me from a distance.


Look at the old pages, now yellowed with time and dirt.
The pages now shriveling up at places, as new drops of salt lash across them.Read about the chaos in my mind. Meet the devils inside me, and smile at me from a distance.Find ways you think repair can work, find them and come tell me.
Point out the places where you think I lie in my book. Point it out, but I'll never agree
And then you can let it be, and smile at me from a distance.

 Feel my soul peering out at you from the pages, feel it look you in the eye.
And now I'll know where you cried and where your lips curved in a smile, and where you ran your fingers through your hair in discomfort. I'll know everything about you. And you'll know everything about me.
We'll just look at each other with familiar eyes, and you can smile at me from a distance.

The Parting Gift ( Part 5 )

It had been a week now after the visit to the doctor.A leukocytosis had been confirmed. Now they needed to zero-in on the cause. It could be due to stress, improper medication or some other conditions. However, what the doctor wanted to rule out first was the most grim word medical science had known.Cancer. For that he needed to physically examine the patient and take a closer look at the possibilities. 

That night, after the doctor's visit, something rather uncanny happened. As they were on their way back home, Viren looked at the rear-view mirror to watch out if Asha was in tears. What startled him was the fact that Asha had been looking at him through the mirror too. Their eyes met for an awkward second and then they looked away and  pretended as if it hadn't happened. As they screeched to a halt in front of Arush's place, Viren got down to bid them a good bye. He was about to turn away when suddenly Asha called out to him, "Viren. Need to talk to you."

It struck an unfamiliar chord at his heart, to hear her say his name out loud after so many years. Suddenly, in a moment he went back many years. He lost track of all the moments in between. All the moments of anger, giving-up and letting go. All he felt then was relief. He could not explain why after living so many years with a decision he had chosen to make, it all slipped away in one moment. He felt like he was finally home, after a long day at work. He felt all this at once, and didn't even know when a tear rolled down his cheek. He wiped it off immediately in anger at himself. "What is your problem now? With everything already going wrong, why all of a sudden are you being so weak?", he thought. He put on a very unaffected face as he turned around to her. " Yes, what is it? "

"Viren, I think it's time you stand up to your responsibility for your daughter. She needs her father, and no matter how strong she pretends to be, it is going to get rough for her. Its time you both meet and stand beside each other. Take her to the doctor tomorrow."

"Asha, she won't agree to meet me. I have tried so many times over the years to make her talk to me. Not even once has she responded at all. What makes you think she'll meet me? I don't even know why she is so mad at me after all these years ."

"Well, I don't really care what you have done. I want my daughter to get better. I'll talk her into it. She'll meet you tomorrow. Don't blow it this time, Viren. She is all we have left from the two of us."

With these words, she turned around and walked into the house, closing the door behind her. On the front porch, she left behind a dead silence and an ex-husband who didn't know what to feel. Angry? Sad? Hopeful? He did not know. All he knew was the conversation broke his heart a lot. He got into the car and drove back what to what he called home. He didn't bother to change and fell asleep on the couch. He got up at 9 and hurried off to what he did not know was going to be one of the most remarkable days of his life. 

He was driving to Chitra's place to take her to the doctor. She had finally agreed to meet him. Her mother had not tired very hard to convince her. Probably because she didn't have much strength in her to convince anyone except her own self. She had simply looked at her daughter with tear strewn eyes. She could not look at Chitra properly these days without tearing up. 

Chitra had it all figured out. She was a smart lassie. She had looked at her reports and had googled all the anomalies and diagnoses. She knew she was 'wound helically around an inclined plane' as Sheldon would have put it. She chuckled to herself as she was walking down the stairs of her apartment. She did not want  to prepare for the meeting. She did not want to rehearse how she could manage a curt conversation without sounding rude or friendly. She did not want to think how she would look away from her father when all she wanted was to look at him properly after the scores of years. She did not want to, but ended up doing all these over and over again in her mind. She had made a mental note though, to not call him 'Baba' even once.