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.