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

ले देख तमाशा!

सुन रे सुन बेलिया
दिल ने धोखा दिया 
आँखें मिली तुमसे नाज़नी 
मेरे होश-ओ-हवास खो गए 

Have you ever felt that your heart cheats on you? Have you known that your heart is fickle? Are you aware that you've never really loved someone truly? What do you do when you know? Do you stop loving? 

You don't.

You search for faces. You search for faces to confide in. You search because you want to hide from the world the frailties that are a part of your being. You want to acquire power; power over someone else's being, their face, their pain, and their flesh. 

So you make a decision. You decide to fall. You fall from your own self-built castle of impunity and land into a pit you call love. Love, for all those who have felt it, is nothing more than an intoxication. It's just that the meaning of intoxication is subjective.

दिल ने रो रो कहा

ये आँखें हैं दिल की ज़ुबान

ख्वाब रोज़ रोज़ देखे नए।

You fall from impunity and land on a minefield. You look skywards towards the castle. You look towards the doors you'd barged through and you look at the mess that remains. 

And then, you look at yourself. You know that the mess up there is repairable. The mess down here- in your gut - isn't. You know  that there's no stairway to take you back there. And there's no highway down here either.

So you dream. You dream to find a grain of wheat to separate from the chaff. You dream of finding a silver lining, knowing very well that there's no cloud to find it in. But you dream, because you are a prisoner of your heart.

हो दिल का भंवर बोले सुन साथिया
छुप ना दुपट्टे में तू ओ छलिया 
प्रेम पुजारी के 
दिल का बयां 
होता रहा, 
रोता रहा प्रिये...

There are rules of the prison, though. Prisoners aren't allowed to die in peace. Death is a tricky taker. It takes those who love life the most. Death was cheated by its heart too. But for someone who walks down a minefield, life is only that valuable. So you tread. 

You get hurt, you get bombed, but you tread. You tread until your feet hurt and then tread some more. You meet other travellers. You crib to them about how you were tricked. You cry holding one of them hoping that they'd send you back. But they don't. Because they cannot. 

And that's how the world's been turning. We've all fallen into the pit we never knew existed. And we're too scared to end it all. So we walk. We walk down the boulevard, not just of broken dreams, but of broken hearts; or should I say, broken beings, tricked by the heart. 

In the midst of the chaos, you find stories similar to yours. You find scars and wounds that match the ones on your body. Once you find them, you hold on to them. You hold on to them until you realize that even they can't send you back. So you let go, and search for another one or two. You search for another face. You search for another story.

The heart tricks you again. But you couldn't care less. Because you know that all of life is a Tamasha, and we're here to build our stories. Only so that we can tell them.