Sunday 26 February 2017

You are living him, and I'm living you.

People have been advising me to stop writing to you. The reason that they present for this befuddles me. They say that you should make the woman wait for you, that you should make the woman miss you. They say that women are drawn towards men who make them wait, and that they outright reject the ones 'who wag their tails behind them.' Well, that was the phrase used, in Hindi of course, by the last person who gave me the advice.

I laugh at those people. Some of these advices have come from women themselves. Which means that they know that this happens, they know that it hurts the other person, and yet they are willing to do nothing about it. They say these things with a sense of vindication and pride on their faces, as if to tell men that the more you're into me, the more you're going to get ignored.

Unless, of course, I'm in love with you. Then, it is a different ball game. But not so different, isn't it? After all, this is what he did to you. He made you wait. He made you wait for months, gave you excruciating pain, and yet, here you are, writing your Instagram bio in his template and using his locations in your stories. If you tell me that 'Berlin' came up out of the blue when you sat down to write that, I won't believe you.

Now, before you go bonkers again, and as I've already grown tired of telling you, this is not written to belittle you. Rather, I'm writing this to appreciate your courage and bravery. Also, in the same breath, let me tell you that as much as I hate him from the core of my heart, I can't judge him. You say he never said a word that hurt you. That already makes him the better man, after all the spears that I've thrown your way, however painful that might have been for me, as I had to rip open my heart every time that I hurled them at you.

You had told me about the time he arranged a bandage when you experienced a muscle sprain in your leg, tied it around your feet and made sure that you're comfortable. I saw the look in your eyes when you'd told me that. Your eyes spoke of how much you wanted it to happen again. They spoke of how ready you were to hurt yourself only so that he could touch you.

Like the way he would have touched you that night. You told me about how you two talked about the world and its stories after it was done, but you didn't tell me about how he travelled your world and drew stories on your bare body using his bare hands and bludgeoning lips. You didn't tell me how you shared the moles on your tongue, the ones you had hidden from the world, with his, and how you got the life-altering serum in his saliva.

You must tell me about the way he held your breasts and switched them between his hands and his mouth. For I've been there too. I've heard your moans in their most subtle form. You must tell me how you cried, almost helplessly, when he slithered under your sheets, buried his face in your neckline and crushed your breasts with his. It destroys me to the core to think of that night. It destroys me even more to think that maybe our night was a recollection of the past, or worse, a dress rehearsal for the future.

But you know what? I'm okay with it. I'm okay with having the second-hand experiences of your famished youth. As long as I can be of any help, of some comfort, I'll be ready to play second fiddle. It hurts to see how a few beautiful months spent with a relatively strange man can overpower the years of warmth that we had, and make him the centre of your life, or to put it bluntly, your bae.

But that's what love is, isn't it? It blindfolds you first, and then, depending on how flabbergasted your heart is, it either gives you a mirage or a miracle.

I'm happy to be your mirage, if that is what it takes for you to reach your miracle. I'm happy to be the guy who couldn't make you feel anything, if that makes you love him with all the heart you have left. Or maybe, love me back with some of it.

You are living him, and I'm living you.

Photo courtesy: Berlin Artparasites

Tuesday 7 February 2017

Remember me in parts

I have a constant picture stuck in my head. It's of you, but just your face and a blue dupatta matching your white kurta. I might have picked that up from one of your pictures. And I find ancient architecture in the background. The pale yellow walls of a fort, with dilapidated paint and scrapings peeling out of them. I see the Sun in the background, its rays shining against one-half of your face, thereby darkening the other half.

You look towards the sky and smile. You don't look at me. I'm not sure whether you know that I'm there. You smile, I look at you, and I smile back. Of all the places and forts that you have been to, I remember this picture vividly. Maybe because you took me along with you. It's not just me who takes you to places, you do that too.

So you can wander all you want, to all the places you wish to, I'll always be there smiling at you. I get this dream repeatedly, even when I'm wide awake. Someday it will turn into reality. It might not be in the way I've always expected it to be, but someday I'll live to live this dream.

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You wake me up from the slumber. I look at you and recall that you'd slept with your bra unhooked. Your breasts would have felt free. I was looking for the signs of guilt on your face in the morning. But there were none.

I'd asked you the previous night whether you'd go home or not. To which, you'd replied that you have no home. I wanted to kiss you right there when you said that, but more than that, I wanted to take you home. You got up in the morning, left the bed, stood up facing me, and hooked it back under your kurta. A small piece of your belly, perhaps that spot where my lips had made you moan the loudest, was visible for a few seconds. It reminded me of the few seconds that I had with you. Few seconds, out of the whole dark night.

You washed up and sat against the mirror, I appeared with a bottle of water and placed my lips on your left cheek, despite having the fear that you'd push me away. For the night was over. For it was way beyond 9 AM. But you didn't. It was then, that I felt I had loaned you a home, albeit only for a night.

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You ask me to remember you in parts. A whole is the sum of its parts. You are my whole and my parts. Yes, I can only remember you in parts.

The part where the lip gloss barely hid the chapping lips. The part where the scars on your face overshadowed the moles I'd drooled over. The part where your rebirth looked more beautiful than your scarred body. Also, the part where I fell in love with all these parts more than I'd ever loved the whole of you.

But, it wasn't enough to make you feel what he had made you feel on that night. I realized that there was still a part missing. A part I can neither seek nor produce. That can only be given to me by you. A part of you.


Picture courtesy: Berlin ArtParasites