Today, I loved you

Today, I had a bath. It doesn't happen usually during winters that I bathe because I want to. I wanted to have a bath. I put on fresh clothes, and not the t-shirt I'd been wearing for two weeks straight, because I didn't want to dress-up and be tidy. I had been doing that because I didn't have you to dress-up for. I didn't have you to see my combed hair, which usually spills over the corners of my forehead, fresh clothes straight out of the washing machine - un-ironed though - men's cream on my face, and my smile. I did all of this today. I dressed up for you. Because, today, I was in a mood to love you - notwithstanding the history, or shall I say, because of the history.

I have warm water at my disposal now, quite unlike Delhi where we had to use the stove and still not get the requisite quantity. So I can afford long showers. Have you noticed that immediately after getting a hot-water bath when you walk out of the bathroom or while having your shower when you pause to apply soap, you feel cold? That's the body adjusting to the temperature around you. So you hurry up and apply soap as quickly as you can - don't know how women do it - or dress up immediately after walking out of the bathroom. 

That brief moment of unwelcome coldness, which makes you numb - quite surprisingly - is what we had this year. That is what happened to us. After years of warmth and love, we - or rather, I - goofed up and submitted to the cold without looking at the clothes you'd kept ready on the bed for me to be warm again.

As the year, a turbulent one for me, draws to a close, I recall, for some reason, this caption that you'd put up alongside a picture, which you had updated immediately after my departure from your college.

"Winters are cosy until I'm warm."

This isn't exactly what you'd written - pardon me for my fading memory - but I remember exactly how you were smiling at the camera - a blue pullover complementing how sedative the smile was and your teeth complementing your moles. Your teeth always complement your moles. 

A friend had commented, "Seedhi-saadhi Gorakhpuriya." 

That is who you are: a seedhi-saadhi Gorakhpuriya. Pardon me for making you anything but. Pardon yourself for turning into something else, if you have. 

So I bathed, put on two pullovers, and basked in the Sun. I sat on the bench - do you remember the bench? I strolled around and chatted with an autowallah. He was worried if I had taken the picture of the number plate on his vehicle in order to report to the police. I assured him that I had no such intention. I got a dejavu - you had no such intention either, didn't you?

This year, we've fought more and talked less than ever before. This year would hold the record for the fewest number of conversations that we've had. Also for the distance we've travelled away from each other. And yet, because of the history and not despite it, I write this letter to tell you: My dear, I have loved you and I'll always do, just like I have since I have known you. I have forgiven you and would keep forgiving you, just like I had been doing. 

While taking a stroll around my locality, I was overcome with just how much we'd once meant to each other. To cite an example, I remember that you had called me sometime in September 2014. You were sick, and your mom was there with you. You called me and cribbed. You were complaining that she'd been making you uncomfortable. I was sitting outside Saket Metro Station - Saidulajab side - with my roommate. I had told you that it's okay to have differences with your parents. I'd told you that they are the only ones who'd love you because of the differences as well as despite them. We talked, and I tried to calm you down. 

A few days later, I met you at Noida City Centre and you greeted me with a swollen face and a scarf tied around your neck as if to strangulate you. I wanted to hug you there, immediately upon my arrival - out of pure, unadulterated love - but the exit gate got in between. Also, I was shy. We sat outside the GIP and talked, I brought you biryani - to your delight - and by the time I saw you off, I was convinced that I had made your day. Your happiness at the sheer number of edibles you had at your disposal that night confirmed that the day which had a begun with a phone call over which you'd cried, "Kislaya, milo yar. Mere paas kuch nahi hai," and ended with another phone call, "Mere paas, biryani hai, cold drink hai, fruits hain..." had been a token of the love I had for you.

The months May to October 2014 defined the kind of love I had for you. It was the first time that we were in the same city, and I couldn't help being ecstatic - not because we were meeting or going out every day, but because you were there, so close that I could hop onto a metro and reach you. I had always longed for closeness when we were in college, and I finally had it. 

That's how I felt today. I felt that I still have unconditional love to bestow upon you. Last night, I had this weird fantasy that made me feel how I had felt while looking at the aforementioned picture on THAT birthday. I want to plan one more birthday for you. Last night, when this thought crossed my mind, I was magically empowered to bury all the pain in some corner of my heart and think about just that - planning your birthday. 

"Mere birthday pe humse zyada khush to tum rehte ho," you'd said. It holds true to this day. I cannot describe why it happens - maybe because I travelled to you only to stay for a few hours, which was an act of love I couldn't make out then. Today, I felt as if there'd be no repercussions even if you go away with someone else. It felt as if I was born to love you, and not ask for it in return. Today, my love went one step closer to unconditionality. 

So after returning from the mini-stroll, as I sat on the bench, again, and watched the Sun set, I couldn't help but recall your face resting on the support pole in the metro. All eight of us were returning to the campus, and you, in an act of complete nonchalance, closed your eyes and leaned against the cold metallic body. There were so many shoulders around but you chose the pole. Maybe because you'd always been independent. 

Your black sweater gently hugging your breasts, my yellow sweater which you had cradled between your arms, that strand of hair, which always rests on your forehead, your blue shoes and your closed eyes - illuminated by the setting Sun - made me believe with absolute conviction that I was in love. I knew then that she is the woman I'll always love, with all of my heart. Today, at this moment, as I write this, I can say that I love you with all of my heart. 

As the train moved cities, I likened it to the long journey that lay ahead for us wherein we'll move cities, grow up and apart - as we did - only to come back to each other. You were my home. You are my home. You'll always be.

"I am lucky to have you. Don't ever ask why I sent this." 

I would not ask you why you'd sent this. I'll just rest in piece tonight knowing that it still holds true.

I must post this now before I walk out of the bathroom, fail to bear the cold, and pollute this letter with my desires.

"Severus, please?"

"Severus..." mumbled a pensive Dumbledore, his eyes transfixed on the bravest sepoy he'd raised, as Draco Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange looked on.

Severus didn't move. He didn't even blink an eye. He just watched and watched the old man, under whose commands, he'd lived much of his life for the past seventeen years.

"Please," the headmaster sounded more helpless this time, like the autumn leaf about to get detached from the tree it had survived on, ready to hit the ground, ready to let go.

Severus stared for a second more, perhaps to bait his heart into the delusion of sanity, to pip his tears with remorse, his love with hatred.

The last he'd cried was seventeen years back, holding a dead woman in his arms, with her baby wailing at a loss it couldn't even comprehend.

A sepoy isn't supposed to have any feelings, and he'd fooled everyone except a beating piece of flesh that had survived on a Patronus more than blood.

"Avada Kedavra!"

He didn't take a second longer to flash his wand than he'd taken to rip apart his conscience, and the bravest man Hogwarts ever had was now a Death Eater.

Death had failed to surprise him any longer, for he'd seen many. It was his life that did.

For seventeen years he had lived for a reason he couldn't quite understand. He was the man who died every day for the boy who lived.

The day he died for the umpteenth time, albeit never to rise again, it was the boy who looked on, not wailing this time, but yet again unable to comprehend the loss he was staring at.

Severus cried for the first time in seventeen years, but it wasn't for death. It was for a pair of eyes he was leaving behind.

The eyes he couldn't look into and protect any longer. The eyes he'd already lost once, and would do anything to save that from recurring. 

The eyes of a Lily.

Like in his life, he was cheated in his death too. Why did he live on then? Why did he wait for so long?

It was to answer a rhetoric he was asked every day, "Severus, please?"

This is a tribute to the departed soul of Alan Rickman, who portrayed the role of Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series.
It is a character I hold very dear and seek closure from.

Rest in peace, Severus. You'd live on, in here. 

Always!

Why does a writer write?

Why does a writer write? I have been pondering over this question for quite some time now. Does he write because he wants to or does he write because he has to? Do you know what happens when you choke on a piece of bread? When it gets stuck in the throat? You drink water to gulp it in or you try to spit it out. Either way, you try to get rid of what chokes you. And you feel relieved when you do. A writer is the one who has to do both of these things, because none of them, whether alone or collectively can bring him relief. He needs to gulp it in and spit it out; gulp it in and spit it out; and the cycle continues. The cycle continues so that he can keep the choking at bay. He still chokes, every day, but just tries to keep it at bay so that it doesn’t kill him.

But what is it that he chokes on? What is it that kills him? It is the same thing that kills all of us- Pain. Except for the fact that some choose to live with it and others try to evade it by surrendering themselves to the pursuit of happiness. But I question, why are they pursuing it? Why do they need to pursue it? Is it not something that naturally comes to them, like breathing? Like there is a class that pursues happiness, there is a class that befriends pain. They are writers. The thing that chokes them in the throat is pain, some of which, they gulp in, the rest, they spit out. Writers don’t write because they want to or because they have to. They write because they need to live; they need to survive.

They aren’t some benevolent magicians meant to save the world through their works. They are humans, who are just as fallible as the rest and are trying only to save themselves. They do not necessarily need to be polite, humble and generous people who are meant to be empathetic towards others. They can be rude, arrogant, angry creatures trying to battle these issues within themselves; or maybe these issues are what propel them to write. Maybe their inability to maintain calm in the state of chaos and loss thus incurred and the pain thus suffered is what they want to write about. They want to write down what they couldn’t speak and also what they did and why they did so. Why did the past creep in then and made them who they are? Why and how have they been moulded into someone they never were?

These are the questions that they can either choose to gulp down and store in some corner of their hearts as pain’s indifferent token, or spit the answers out on a blank canvas with such intensity and ferocity that matches the magnitude of the glitch in their throats. They keep the bug from troubling them for as long as the time that the bug takes to replenish itself, for the world feeds it a lot of fodder. It is the reason why a writer observes the dog limping, the child crying, the old man’s eyes, and a common man’s cries. He observes the world around him and feels sad. He finds that the others are no different. He finds that others are there, right in the eye of the storm; and he finds that they have no means to fight back. They are there as if they have been destined to be there. It makes him sadder.

But why does he write then? Does it help him? Or does it help them? Does it change the world? I don’t know. But what it surely does is that it changes him. The fits of the former self do come back to haunt him, but more or less he comes out reformed; not perfect, but reformed. He sees the bitterness around, and realizes that a moment of kindness even if that goes against his comforts and even if it doesn’t bring him any sort of relief, can do wonders. They feel good for the person, but they feel numb within. It is a strange kind of feeling that perhaps they themselves cannot explain. A writer doesn’t know what he wants when he writes, he doesn’t know how would it help him, or how would it help the world. He just writes; plain and simple. He is a wanderer, roaming around, observing the world, carrying another one within him, and trying to bring the two at par. All of this for what, he doesn’t know!