The blind date

"Give yourself one more chance, it will work", I reassured Katherine as we sipped our evening coffee. It had become a ritual now. Everyday, we finish work and come here. "The corner shop" was our solace. It is here I've sat and listened to her talk endlessly. She has cried here. She has taken out her frustration here. She has jumped and squeaked with excitement here. All in front of me. After all, we are best friends. She has had a hard life where men are concerned. She was married for an year but it gradually fell apart. I don't think he was somebody to hold on to anyway. He slept with his socks on, who does that? I know that this one thing in her life has drilled a big hole right through her heart. The void she now tries to fill with men, alcohol and herbs. "I don't know if anybody will like me anymore. I have been with a lot of people now and it feels like they're just lifeless ghosts. I can't find happiness in anything. ", she said. "They are all fools, and plus this time its a blind date. Isn't it exciting? You don't even know the guy" She just nods her head, unsure. I know she is afraid. Afraid of the heartbreaks, the fights, the tears and the disaster that follows. She has a pure heart. Katherine has always been the one who genuinely gets attached and cares. It is her who has to put the pieces back together every time they fall apart. She needs a new life. She craves something stable, something which makes her feel the magic that love has. My thoughts are interrupted by justin bieber's ridiculous "as long as you love me". I never understood why on earth she put that as her ringtone. "Hello" she answers. "Yes, this is she." "Oh, hi. Yes I will be there at the Palm view at 7." She widens her eyes and I know who it is. She is fidgeting with her hair, nervous. "I will be in a purple dress". "Okay, I will see you". She hangs up. "Was it him? What did he say? How is his voice? Did he sound too desperate? Was he excited?" "Okay stop!" she interrupts me. "Clearly, he is not as excited as you are. And he is okay. But I just don't feel up to it. I think, no I am pretty sure I will screw this up too. Julia, I am terrified."
I open my eyes with my phone ringing. Checking the time 4am- I pick up the call. "Hulloh", I say in a completely sleepy way. "Okay, Julia get up!"- squeaks a very excited Katherine on the other side of the phone. "He swept me off my feet. He brought flowers, he has the best taste in wine. Oh sorry, his name is Dwayne. He's got those dirty green eyes we always said were a mark of an emotionally stable man. We stayed in the restaurant till 11. Then, we just walked through the central park to the twenty seventh avenue. He said he really thinks we can work and I'm meeting him again tomorrow. Julia? Are you there?"
10 years later I think of that night when I fell asleep while she went on for thirty minutes about how her first blind date was the only one she would ever want to be on. I look at Katherine and Dwayne, lost into each other. Dwayne looks at her like she is magic. Like every little thing she says is something he'd cherish and hold in his heart. I smile stupidly thinking of that time when none of us were sure. Sure of what would happen if she went on this blind date. What would happen if she took the leap once more and landed on her face. I see them cooking together in their kitchen, sneaking a kiss or two as they face each other and I know. I know that all it takes to get through this terribly unfair thing called life- is just one person.

The feeling we dwell upon

Love. Uncountable texts have been written about this for over centuries. Before man started to go to war, he learnt how to love. Before man knew what fire is, he knew what love is. Before there was inhuman slaughter of human lives, man knew love. But what exactly do you mean when you say you love somebody? Is it the sheer moment, the passion, the impulse? Or is it the long drawn sketch in your mind which leads you to say these three words out aloud. Oh, I don't know. I have said it when I don't even know if I mean it and I have said it while feeling every little letter that this phrase contains! Once you do know what love is, what do you do? Do you surrender? Do you let it just be like a supportive system? Do you let your life revolve around it or is it on a subconscious periphery? Love is not as simple as just saying it. It is a thousand more complications, promises, compromises, fights, hurt, joy, happiness and the whole package that comes with it. Oh dear, if it is that complicated- why do humans tend to get into it so fast? Why do we feel the need to rely on someone? Why is it that at the end of the day we need to be in bed with someone and not alone! Yes, my thoughts are as messed up as the post I am writing. There are those times in life when you feel you're better without it but almost instantly your heart smacks the brain and says- would you be really able to live without it? When I see my man, I feel that somewhere I might have restrained him from something he could be. Maybe I somehow become the reason of things he cannot do in life. Do you know how it feels to be responsible for someone's downfall? If you don't you'll never know what it means when people say that guilt is slowly killing you from within. True, you may grow apart if they are not near you, but isn't love the feeling when you want the best for the person? No matter what it does to you. No matter how you are affected by that decision. I'll leave this post on the confusing end itself. You can neither live with it or without it. The sooner you start making right decisions is when you will grow. And, let's all do whatever it is that makes us happy or the one we love. Whoever said- Life is short had no idea that these are the deepest three words mankind will ever know.

The blues

As he lay next to her on the bed, he looked at her. She was fast asleep. The alcohol from last night making her sleep a little more soundly. He kissed her softly on the neck. Moving a little closer to her, he wrapped his arm over her and closed his eyes. He didn't feel like sleeping. Looking at her face again, he was filled with anxiety. The fear of loss. He'd told himself that he wouldn't love so deep that it would have the power to hurt him. But this girl. Oh, this girl! She made him something that he thought he couldn't handle. She was his life. Her eyes were the only eyes he would look for when he would be happy. This nose, he always mocked her about. Telling her it was too long for her face. He kissed this nose and he knew there is no other nose he would be kissing rather that his wonderful woman's. He looked down at her lips and smiled. Thinking of how her lips curve when they make her face look even more beautiful. He could do anything for her- she would too you know. She was one of those who would lose anything to be with him. He knew that. In these 2 years, he'd had enough proof and show of what he meant to her. A feeling of uneasiness still clenched him. What if she went away? What if she found her happiness in someone else? The sheer thought of this kicked him right in his nuts. He felt like he couldn't breathe. She felt like the reason he lived for. The thought of her with someone else? He felt like the most important part of his body would be taken away, and more importantly- his soul. He knew he could not live without her. Oh how he would rip that man out of his skin. He would cut any hands which touched her. He was very uncomfortable now, with the worst thoughts in his mind. She moved a little, opened her eyes. She slowly turned towards him. When she looked at him, he could feel that she was looking at him like he was the only person she wanted to wake up next to. She kissed his lips very tenderly and said-" I wish I wake up like this everyday of my living life". He smiled, and kissed her back. Everything was fine with the world then.

On the ledge

In the seamless dark of the night falling onto this chilling February night, there stood a man. It was me. I was standing on a thin ledge. I had stepped outside my room window. Twenty five floors above the ground, I could hardly stand still. The crisp cold wind freezing my mind, with everything else. I tried to recollect what it was that made me stand here. I looked down, and I shuddered. It was the city that never slept- New York City. It was the city which gave me everything and then, snatched it all away. Everything. I could see the empire state, tall and elegant it stood. I wondered whether it wanted to just lay low sometimes. Just take a break from all that busy life. Mind flooded with all the pointless thoughts, I decide to look down once more. To face it. To face death. I shut my eyes, deciding to jump now. My leather shoes had dirt over them. I had decided to wear my wedding suit for this day. The piece of cloth that was etched to my body the day it all started should be there when it all was to come to an end. In the far recesses of my sub conscious mind, I still am thinking she might just come and hold my hand. She might turn up and say-" Oh, honey. Don't do this to yourself." The truth though, was embedded into me. She must be far away in some exotic place, you know. Paris, Venice or maybe Madrid for all I know. With another man touching her, caressing her the way I used to. With another hand entwined into hers where my hand would fit. This thought, even after three months would somehow create waterworks in my eyes I never thought I was capable of. Her last words to me were in the form of an e-mail saying she was sorry. Was sorry really enough? Would I spring back to life with that sorry? Was sorry ever enough? I couldn't concentrate on anything now. She was my life, a soul mate. I was the safest around her. The only place which was permanent. She took it all away when she went. She took the soul out of me three months back, and I have decided I would take the life away today. I closed my eyes. Now with the image of her and her lover in bed. That was it, that was all it took. I let myself free. I let myself lose into that image which I would carry to my death. I would bother her no more. I would exist no more.

The need to be something "more"

With every drop that poured down from the heavy clouds that night, she could feel herself shiver and sob harder. It almost took a while for the realisation to dawn upon her, but it happened that night. She'd learnt how to expect and not show, she'd learnt how to silence the demons shouting and shrieking from deep inside her. It would be this way, always. She'd expect- and things would go the other way. Somehow, she'd found her way lost into unrealistic realms of this feeling. Maybe, well because she pushed herself to her limits to stay in the line, to be someone that would look very happy but was a chained dragon on the inside. She would never show it and she knew it. The rain, the thunder, the voices calling out her name- nothing could pull her back from the state of nothingness she had drifted into. Nothing could tell her a way of finding peace with herself and the way she is. She just wouldn't suffice for anybody. She was one way or the other asking for too much in love, not showing too much in friendship and becoming that undesirable and "should be left on her own" daughter. She read theories and gigantic paragraphs about how should life be and how it has to have its own essence and meaning, understanding the lines to its very consonants. Somehow longing for those to come to life in her case was where she was pulled out of this imagination and thrust hard upon the sharp face of the reality. 

The one fading away

He'd slipped on his white pajamas and the dull brown t-shirt he'd asked his daughter to send from home. He was in the hospital bathroom with off white dirty tiles. The ceiling a bit too high. He walked out of the bathroom to a small private room assigned to the woman he'd fallen in love with forty years back. She was asleep. With wires attached to what looked like almost every part of her body, she didn't cease to look beautiful to him. Even in the last stage of this life consuming disease, she was still that girl who had his heart. He made his bed. It was a small mattress worn out with time. He laid down next to her. His thoughts had taken a positive turn today. Even though the plump doctor with an inhumanly long nose had declared her to be a guest of a week or two. I saw her smile today- he thought. Oh, that wonderful, sweet, life changing smile. It took him a long way back to 1982. He was on his way back home, taking the last local that left. Sweating and panting like a dog with the tedious day he'd had. He looked at a girl seated right in front of him. She had two old, rusty books clutched to her chest. In the blue salwar kammez with little flowers embroidered on the kameez. Her eyebrows so delicately threaded to perfection. She had dark brown eyes which looked bengali- given they were round and so mesmerizing. He thought he'd keep staring at her till the train comes to a halt. She instantly felt like the one he would be with. Even if the idea of love at first sight sounded absurd, he was concrete sure that he would this woman to wake up next to him every morning. Even after all these years, lying next to her on her deathbed he could not be practical. No matter how much people explained him. No matter how many of them said that it is going to happen. Oh how he could not imagine that round eyed girl, shy, with her books in her hands fading away from him. That woman he'd dreamt of taunting and teasing when she wouldn't be able to walk with old age. That woman who he'd visioned holding hands with while walking to the temple in chilly mornings. No, it just couldn't be her on this wired bed next to him. She couldn't leave him and go anywhere, not even to god. He needed her more! Yet, wiping his eyes, he looked at her majestically beautiful face one more time and drifted off to sleep.