An evening that changed me - A part of an incomplete story yet to be completed...

Can one single evening with this one person you love, probably the only evening you would ever have, change how you feel forever?

I think for me it did. One evening, a single night and a few hours of the morning with her have left this void within that I never felt I could feel. There is something that makes me feel incomplete without her. I have never wanted someone the way I want this girl. I have never enjoyed watching anyone sleep the way I enjoyed watching her sleep. 

When she left I felt as if something within me just left at that same minute. Something doesn’t feel right, something is incomplete… there is this sense of hollowness that I don’t know what to do about. May be it is passing, fleeting momentary emotion, but it is a strong emotion nonetheless. 

Even though I know she won’t come back, and there wasn’t much there for her to hold on too, but I cannot somehow resist hoping what if I am wrong, and I might wake up one morning to find her right there. 

She has taken over my heart, my mind and touched my soul in so short a period of time that even I can’t believe. She has left me like a ship wrecked sailor, on an island, unfamiliar safe, yet lonely. I never thought I could spend one evening with a person and when they would leave I would feel so empty and lonely. 

The words I keep one repeating is empty, hollow and lonely. One evening and life has changed. One woman and I am a wreck. I know myself well enough that I will be able to pull through this too; for I am Noor and no emotion linger within me long. 

But an evening and one person changed me forever!

Maybe tomorrow he would feel better and talk to her!

And then there were the Hours! Those never ending hours that eat you up from within slowly. In the dark, silent night, as the clock tick tocked, you lie awake for the Hours to pass and the day to start. But even then you know that there will be those Hours again and then another day will start and that this cycle will continue till the very end. And, whilst those hours go by and you sit there thinking all those odd thoughts, some that make you laugh, some that make you cry and all this while you wait for those irksome Hours to go by. It is with this thought that she sits on the bay window, looking out of the window as she sees the sky light up finally. The colour turning from black to midnight blue then to crimson to yellow and finally the clear blue. She can see that it’s going to be a clear day, sunny but not in a bad way and maybe she will be able to cross the day. May be he will be a little better today and maybe he will talk to her today. Sometimes she thinks she is as insane as people say that she is. Sometimes she feels that they are right about her, that “she isn’t all that there”! She feels the same too. She isn’t normal to love someone so deeply and yet so platonically. She sits back and thinks of the first time she saw him. Ah! Yes she remembers. They were all playing and right there sat this unknown man amongst all those people she knew. Something about him struck her, but she dismissed it without a thought. The beard and those deep dark eyes that seemed to have captured his soul within them. Those gentle, scared and yet scary eyes. He was reading a book, there sitting amongst strangers or so they seemed. She was talking on the phone , she was smoking and waiting to get on to the court when all of a sudden this stranger walked up to her and asked her if he could borrow a cigarette and somehow she just couldn’t say no. There was something about the way he asked. Something about him! Over the next few weeks they spoke and realised they could talk to each other without having to think twice. And, oh the conversations they would have! She felt in an odd way that she was attracted to this man even though she did not like men, but there was something about him. But it wasn’t the attraction that it should’ve been. She felt as if this was someone she wanted to take care off for ever, someone she wanted to love and cherish. He told her a few months later that he was sick and that the schizophrenia was not much he could control. Yes indeed he was conscious of what that meant and was scared that she too might turn her face away from him, just as many had after hearing of this. But somehow she wasn’t scared and she wasn’t disturbed by this declaration. She felt that urge that she had felt in the very beginning of their friendship return two folds stronger... The urge to take care of him and love him! He would often tell her what the voices said to him, but just the gist and she would never ask him questions for she felt it was invading on his privacy, privacy of the parallel world he lived in. No, she wouldn’t want to do that! That wasn’t the right thing to do. She was sure he would tell her what was important and she knew he did. Suddenly she breaks away from this thought of the story of him and looks at the time. Loudly she exclaims “Oh My! Its nearly 7, better get the coffee started and then I have to get ready too!” She lights up a cigarette and walks into the kitchen. While she puts on a fresh pot, her thought drifts to that day when for the first time she got a call about him. Sitting in office trying to wrap up for the day, she was all alone and her phone rang. It was the friend through whom they had met. He had tried to commit suicide. He had been saved but he had no one but her. She rushed to see him but he wouldn’t see her, for he was ashamed that in his fit to get away from the voices he had taken such a drastic step. She forced him to look at her just the way she had forced her way into that room, just the way she has forcibly made friends with him. She made him look at her and told him that it was ok. That it was alright. She wasn’t angry or hurt nor was she disappointed him even though her heart ached. She prayed from that moment on that when he makes the next attempt, he should succeed and his agony of living those Hours when the line between real an imaginary were blurred would end. She prayed in earnest letting go at that very moment her need to hold on to him forever. Maybe today he would feel better and talk to her. Oh she missed him every day and she missed his warm smile and the little excitement that she saw on his face each time she walked up to him. They loved each other like no other could, yet it wasn’t what many believed it to be. She was for him his Delhi where for her he was the only man she could truly love with her heart and yet not feel anything but platonic concern. She stubs her cigarette and walks up to her room, setting out her clothes for the day, she thinks about that time when he was coming after ages to Delhi and how she was waiting at the airport holding her breathe craving for the sight of him for she hadn’t seen him now in years because the doctors said he shouldn’t go and live in a lonely city like Delhi and she had let him go. Oh how she missed him! While she waited for him to come, she was so nervous. A nervousness she couldn’t believe she could’ve ever felt. And while she waited a fear started settling into her mind, maybe he imagined he was coming. What if he doesn’t! What if he just thought he was coming to Delhi and to see his Delhi, all the while she was waiting? And, when he walked out of the doors of the airport she had never felt as good as she felt at that time. He had never thought this tiny little thing would ever hug him that hard. She had started to cry in a mixture of relief and just pure joy of seeing him in front of her, in flesh and bone, hearing his voice. It was a sense of calm that she felt on seeing him there as if something in her life had been missing in all those years that he wasn’t there. As she pats herself dry, she looks at that little box by the side of her bed in which she keeps his letters, each one so carefully preserved for it might be the last one he might write to her ever. He writes beautifully. Oh yes he writes, not types. Those letters that describe everything to her that is happening to him, everything that feels and every sight that he sees, for she is the only one who will understand. Maybe today he would feel better and talk to her. She doesn’t call him often or write to him regularly, because she doesn’t want him to feel bound, but she hurts for him and misses him but she doesn’t want him to feel imprisoned by her concern. She thinks of all those moments that she has spent with him and she thinks of the simple joys of a good cup of coffee and a shared cigarette that they enjoyed together, without the worries of what the world has to say about them and what they feel. She feels perfect when she is with him, for in his eyes she is his Delhi and she is perfect. She does not fear judgement from him for he does not judge her for her decisions nor for her being who she is. He loves her truly for being the person she has been just as she loves him for being the man he is. But their loves for one another people do not understand. They call it many things yet they haven’t been able to decide what it should be termed as. While they are not lovers they are companions. With all this thought running in her head she heads to the kitchen to have a cup of coffee, picking up the phone she dials his number again, but cuts the call even before it connects. Let him call himsell she thinks! Maybe today he would feel better and talk to her. Something tells her he isn’t ok, for he would call or he would write. He hasn’t written to her in long and she misses his beautiful writing and his lovely words, full of awe and wonder. Through his eyes she always sees the beauty of everything he sees and yet he hasn’t written to her in long. She walks into her house at 8 in the night hoping he might have written to her, only to be dismayed by the lack of any letter. She thinks of calling but then doesn’t, she doesn’t want him to feel bound to her. Maybe tomorrow he would feel better and talk to her. And may be the Hours will not be that bad then!

A Fool for Eighteen Years

You spend eighteen years of your life thinking you have some sort of a talent. Eighteen years you spend thinking that you have something that makes you above average and you are indeed gifted. You do not boast about for you have been taught not to do so, and yet there is a sense of pride within you. Whenever asked if there is something different you do, you proudly say yes you write and can do a decent job at it!

After eighteen years of believing that you have this talent, gift or whatever you may call it you suddenly realise one day that it was all something you had imagined and something you hoped you had.

That gift wasn’t ever there. You realise this when you see the several incomplete pieces of writing strewn across your house... when you see the half baked projects that never actually reached even mid way!

When this realisation comes crashing down on you, unlike yourself you are not disappointed or saddened as much as you ought to be. On the contrary, you are amused. The situation is ironic and you are amused at yourself for making a fool of yourself for eighteen years and fooling your own-self for eighteen years.

Irony increases because the only way you can express your amusing disappointment is by writing it down. May be it is the last time you are picking up a pen!

24/05/2010 – 21:55

Time

Something I wrote when I was 12 or 13, but it still feels so real... Sometimes I feel it captures all that I feel every time something memorable happens...

I wish I could,
But somehow I cannot,
I want it to last,
But each moment goes by so quickly.
Time, I wish u would stop,
Stay here with me,
So this moment could stay forever,
As long as I live.
But I know,
You wont stay,
'coz you got to go away,
But knowing this each day,
I still wish I could,
But somehow I cannot,
STOP you time,
For its time, Time you go away.

The flipside of singledom

Sometimes you stay up into the wee hours of the morning, all single and alone, enjoying the pleasures of silence or the freedom of doing what you like. Then you look at your watch and think to yourself “Wow! It is 2:30 am, got to go to work, so I better try and catch some sleep!”

You walk back into your room, switching off the T V, shutting off the lights and doing the whole routine of locking up etc. You get into bed, snuggling up in your quilt and Bam! The loneliness hits you hard.

It hits you that there isn’t anyone waiting for you in your bed except your pillow and that there wasn’t anyone to call out to you even once to say “Babe! Come and sleep now, It’s getting late and you have a long day ahead tomorrow.”

It hits you that when the first rays of sunlight hit your face in the morning, there is no one next to you in whose crook of the arm you can bury your face and feel the warmth. And, when the maid rings the doorbell, there isn’t anyone to argue with on who will get up to open the door.

It shatters your belief in the whole world of single-dom that there isn’t anyone hoping and wishing you have a good day and no one to come back home to, who will look at your face and jus say “Bad day, huh?” and then maybe, just may be give you a warm hug.

And, as you think of dinner, you realise that your life now lacks the simple pleasures of cooking for someone, or being cooked for or just cooking together and then fighting on who will lay teh table and who will clean up afterwards!

There isn’t anyone to argue and fight with on what to watch on T V or what movie to go for! There isn’t anyone to help you sort out the laundry and there isn’t anyone to curl up next to and read.

A tear rolls down your eyes as it strikes you, how you have no one to wake up next who will say something as simple as “Do we have to go to work today? Why don’t we just stay here curled up in bed and may be later uncurl a bit!” with a wink and a kiss.

You start to sob as you realise that there isn’t no one to wake you up sometimes with a cup of coffee or someone who remembers just how much you like your eggs sunny side up! And as you cry you realise that there is no one to wake up with on a Sunday and laze around the house with and no one to call you just once in a while in the middle of the day to tell you that they are missing you!

And, you start to weep as you understand that there isn’t anyone to whisper sweet nothings or someone who smile when they see you. There isn’t that someone you keep no secrets from and there isn’t going to be a simple short sms saying stupid things like ‘I love you’ or ‘I want you’ on your phone again!

You get up from your bed, wiping your tears and you find a piece of paper and a pen, writing all this down , your loneliness doesn’t go but you feel a little better. You get a little drowsy and you think “May be I should just try and sleep now!”

You put the paper aside, switching off the light, stubbing out the cigarette you hug your pillow to sleep, only to be woken up in a few hours by either the sunlight or the maid and then the feeling of loneliness hits you all over again!