The Village

And we moved on

On the night you came to my house, I thought something really bad had happened. My sister opened the door, and told me you were standing outside, crying. 
I rushed to the entrance and when our eyes met, you held my hand and I remember you saying something very silly.
“I got married...,” you said, stammering, “...today”. It sounded silly because I obviously refused to believe that. I was right. You were drunk and so drunk, that you imagined you had attended your own wedding, instead of your friend's. 
We laughed about it the next day. But even as I was pulling your leg about the incident, you interrupted and said something sweet.
“You know why I cried?” you asked.
“No.” I was still laughing.
“I couldn't have imagined marrying anyone, but you.”
That's what you said, or that's what I thought I heard. We were still just friends then, so I couldn't hide how shocked I was. But I ignored you because it just seemed like the right thing to do.


Months later, I remember us sitting at your table, playing a game of scrabble, and you looking perplexed.
I asked what happened, and you said, “I don't have great letters.”
“Yay! I think I have my dibs on a win here,” I said.
You were very engrossed though, either staring at your letters, or at the board, going back and forth, refusing to give up.
Minutes later, you smiled. You threw one glance at me, and then back at the letter board. You added a “Y” above my O, and “U” below my O. My letter was LOVE.
“I still beat you to the score,” I said.
“But I managed to Love You.”
I can't for the life of me remember who won the game, probably that's how lost I was. Never until then, had scrabble blown me away. 


After that game, nothing of real consequence happened. Seasons came and went. Three summers just died, so did the winters, one bitter and many bland. I had forgotten about that incident and even about you. 
You went somewhere, and said you were not hoping to return. I was with somebody else, and he really wanted to marry me. He was probably waiting for me to say “yes”. But, despite all that, we were going fine. 

And then I saw you at the supermarket one day, scanning through pickles, along with a friend. She was petite, but had surprisingly broad shoulders. Your long hands wrapped her arms as she picked up some bottle. Her face was pleasing and beautiful, and she did not look anything like me.
Your presence riled me, and I could not tell why.
I was about to walk away, when you happened to see me from the corner of your eye.
It was stupid to behave like we didn't know each other, so despite feeling awkward, I came towards you.
“Hey…long time,” you said.
I did not think you deserved a Hi, so I instead blurted, “I am getting married.”
I lied. And that was such a shame.
“Oh!,” you muttered.
You reached out for my hand to congratulate me, but as soon as you held it, I realised that you weren't letting go.
“Your palm feels so cold,” you said looking intently into my eyes. “Are you okay?”

I released my fingers from your grip and tightly held on to my dress as if trying to hold on to the lie, wary of being exposed and stripped naked of this farce.

Suddenly, my eyes welled up with tears. I wish I had held myself together because your friend or may be your girlfriend was looking at me. She gave me a reassuring smile, so I did not feel too bad.

I walked out of the store, thinking of what you had once said:
“I couldn't have imagined marrying anyone, but you.”

Arranged affair

Bijith Nair furtively tossed a sugar cube into his insipid tea, and tilted his head towards the right, from where he could get a clear view to the door of his kitchen.

He could see the slouched back of his wife; her round figure taking up every inch of the viewing space that the doorway allowed. The way her arms and elbows moved in measured swings, he predicted she was chopping something.

Noticing she hadn't been keeping an eye on him, he quickly added another white lump to his tea and stirred it delicately, ensuring that the spoon didn't hit the bottom or the circular-frame of his ceramic cup. The clanging would draw her attention.  

Somehow, today, he did not want her to know that he was finding it difficult to resist this sweet temptation that diabetes had long denied. Sugar reminded him of love and may be that’s how he felt now, but she didn't need to know that, not yet. 

He was about to reach for his cup, when she called out to him, “Biju! Should I give you porridge or cornflakes for breakfast?”

“They both sound hmmm…,” Bijith struggled for a word, and after a few seconds of vacuous thinking, came up with “…very delicious! I can’t decide. Why don’t you choose my poison?”

It was meant to be sarcastic, but it almost, came across as complimentary. Why else, would she mutter a polite “Thanks”.

Krishna never got his sarcasm, but even after 42 years of marriage, Bijith hadn’t stopped trying. It made him feel accomplished and more involved in the decision-making at home. If Krishna ruled the house with an iron hand, Bijith liked to believe that he ruled the house with sarcasm, one that was mostly lost to her and his kids’ untrained ears. Nonetheless, he had made his point, and to Bijith that seemed more important. 

Now, sipping into the sweet concoction, he was reminded of the heady days of his youth, when love was not singularly bestowed on any one woman. Though most of them had either ended tragically or comically, except for the arrangement his parents had fixed with Krishna. Their marriage had always seemed like an amicably agreed upon deal. Nothing of real consequence, especially romantic, had ever been exchanged between Krishna and him. Suresh and Shiva happened to them during those rare occasions when they were overcome by passion or call it lust. Love was a word only hanging in the air; it all felt more like comfort. And yet in all these years, she had been the only one who mattered. Though, something always felt amiss. And until yesterday, he had never figured out what.

He smiled and got up from his dining seat, moving towards the large French window, which opened to his balcony.

Bijith never drank his tea at the table; it was always outside from where he could see the compound. And because his building shared space with a school, the ground was always home to children running amok either during PE class or recess.   

“What happened? Why exactly are you smiling to yourself?” Krishna asked, interrupting the string of thoughts running through his head.

“Nothing…just remembered something amusing,” he said, his mind straying again.

“Since yesterday, I have been noticing you…suddenly behaving strange.”

Krishna was sly, he knew. She could read him easily, or probably, he gave out too much. This time around, he had to act with caution or he’d risk letting her know.

“Stop over-thinking,” he said, “Breakfast ready? I need to step out in a while.”

Walking on the jagged pavement of Mumbai’s Fort area, inside the arched stone-walled gateway, Bijith thought of what happened yesterday. He met Sharda right here, while he was out on a stroll, like he was today. Sharda looked just like she had when he last saw her over 40 years ago. They had dated briefly, before she was married to an Army man. Though it had been a long time since, meeting her hadn’t felt strange at all. It all still seemed so familiar and fresh. It was hard not to draw comparisons with Krishna. Especially since the two women had once been close friends in college. Unlike his wife, whose skin fell into lose folds on her face, Sharda’s was still taut. The passing years had barely done her any damage. Only the silver strands that intermittently emerged from the long black of her hair, told the story of her ageing. She had been widowed five years ago, and lived alone in the city after having lost her only son in the battlefield.

They had promised to meet again today. He had been anticipating this moment since last night. She would come. They would smile. Somethings would be exchanged. An untold story would bloom again.

Sharda hadn’t disappointed; in fact, she had come before time.

“Hi,” he said. She could make out that he was nervous; Bijith was toying with his own hands. “I have been thinking about us since yesterday,” she said.

“So have I,” he muttered.

“Strange…we met again.”

“There’s always a reason,” he interjected.

She handed him a small note.

“This really helped me,” she said, “but I don't think, it was meant for me.”
"Thank you Sharda.”
They hugged awkwardly. “Hope to meet you again,” he said, before they parted one last time.

That afternoon, when he got home, he slipped the note into a book that his wife had been reading. She would find it later; he cared little about her reaction. He just wanted her to know something that he himself had forgotten.

It was dated July 19, 1971. It read:

Dear Sharda,

Thank you for the wedding invitation. Am glad you are moving on, and marrying that Army guy. I hope you have forgiven me for breaking your heart. I was so foolishly infatuated with you, that I had forgotten what it was to love. It’s funny how my wedding was eventually fixed with a friend of yours, who I didn’t bother to give a second glance while in college. We have been married for a month now and for once, I think am really in love. 
Am just saying that love happens, and mostly when we least expect. It doesn’t need to happen the way we would have wished it to happen, nor does it have to feel like how we want it to feel. I am so comfortably in love that Krishna doesn’t even know. May be, she might never know, but does it matter. I hope the same for you and your husband.   

Best wishes,

Bijith (and Krishna)

The inevitability of possibilities

While sipping into my mug of coffee, I wondered how it would be to see you, right now, in front of me, like you used to be, in the world that was five decades younger. I spared a moment to feel how you felt, when my fingers reached out for the strands of your wispy brown hair; I remember then, how your pale skin would redden; but was it blush or an embarrassed glow, you didn't tell.

But then you didn't say a lot of things. I probably, always assumed you said them - often imagining them to be good - because it made “me” happy and “us” seem perfect.

I forgot that every coin has an another side, one that I, out of habit, rarely flipped to see. So when you didn't show up one day, I had to go back to the coin, you once gifted me. "It was a rare one," I remember you telling me. It had a lion's emblem on one side and it just seemed like anything ordinary. That day when you left, I turned it around...It was blank. Only the copper base was slightly roughed up, as if someone had on purpose, hammered the image that had been embossed. It was rare, I joked to myself. And you were so foolish, I wondered.

It's been such a long time since it all happened. So much water has flown under the bridge of time. So much water, so much...that now, you seem like a memory so vague that all I can think of is your brown hair and the white of your skin. I don't know nothing, otherwise; not even when we first met. May be, if I knew when exactly you came into my life, it would have been easier to remember when you walked out. But this "may be" was only a “possibility”, something I had stopped believing in after you went, until she came.

Now, when I see her feed me the last sip from my mug of coffee, I know the inevitability of possibilities. I want to reach out to her hair, but my hands have given in...aah failing nerves. But when she observes the way my waisted hand moves restlessly on the arm-rest, she lifts it for me, cups my fingers in the palm of her hand, and then slowly slides them into her greying strands. They are not as soft as yours...that I know. She does not even redden enough for me to discern. But another miracle happens, and only, I have seen. The wrinkles on her face disappear, and I can tell you, it is out of an odd pleasure. The pleasure of loving and being loved. This is rare, rarer than your battered coin.

The dilemma of fairy tales: To believe or not to…

Ask me what I'm most smug about and pat comes my reply, my parents' "unimaginably true love story". 

A boy of 12, falling in love with a girl of eight, only to be snubbed by her throughout school life. At the age of 25 (during a visit with friends to Mount Mary in Bandra) — when he's still holding on to those beautiful memories of how she once sashayed into the school exam hall, borrowed his expensive Parker for the paper, and unconsciously put its cap into her mouth — he's startled by her presence.  
"Johnny," she says, "After such a long time?" 
"Err...Sandra," he asks, shocked, but not once surprised at what youth had done to the geeky teenager he still loved from school.
"Wow, you've grown into a handsome young man," she says.
He stuttered nervously, "Err..uhh...well...Thanks," wishing he had the courage to say the very same words to her.
That was 29 years ago. Today, they are married with three kids, and a house, they've so meticulously worked on, to make it "their home." Their's is a fairy tale — one which could undoubtedly begin with a "Once upon a time," and end with an "And they lived happily ever after." 

I've grown up listening to this fairy tale, or so believing in it, cause it played right in front of my eyes and I knew how beautiful it was. So, I would be lying if I hadn't expectantly waited for my very own little love story. 

At the cost of being mocked at and being made to look like a fool, I continued being this so called "believer," who waited for her "Mr Right" — that Knight in shining Armour (so much so that I also wrote two poems on it http://www.janeborges9.blogspot.in/2010/08/one-of-them-is-in-love-with-you.html) —  who blew her heart away (Yes, I can be very corny or mawkishly sentimental as dictionary.com puts it subtly). 
I was teased for being single, with one saying, "you will end up like an old hag, rotting at your office desk, till a good old 60" and the other saying, "you just don't look enough... why don't you keep your eyes open when you walk;" or my mother telling me every time she came from church. "I prayed that you find the right man, who keeps you happy and blaah, blaah, blaah, blaah". Trust me, none of these dampened my spirits. 

Then, one day something happened... no, not the love story... like how I had imagined. 
But even as a new hope has spooled in everyone's heart, except mine...I am reminded of my father — he still has that Parker pen, and guess what, it hasn't been washed or used since then. 

And it was good

The romantics made rose of it,
The little-jewels made gold of it,
The flirts made a mock of it,
The animals made hunger of it,
The cartoonists made potrayals of it,
The psychos made craze of it,
The strong made weak of it,
The haters made venom of it,
The drinkers made relief of it,
The instruments made music of it,
The foodies made taste of it,
The doctor made treatment of it,
The scientist made subject of it,
And This girl made love of it...
And it was good