FullStop

Dear __________,

Ever notice how conversation flows exceptionally smoothly when I focus on how's work-what did you buy today - ooh nice heels! -oooh show me your new bed! - aarrey yaaar, why don't you call him - arrey man, he's a jackass, and then just stops the second you say: So. How are you really?

I couldn't give a toss about the new bed, or the new boy in it.
The heels are great, but high as they are, you still look pretty low to me. Even online, even longdistance.

So why can't you just talk about what matters, and stop hiding behind boys and beds?
I probably can't fix it for you, but babu, neither can heels.

So.
Talk.

Amen

The fall that is really flight: That is what I have always looked for.
All it takes to remember that I already have it is to recall that the second I saw you, it felt like soaring, and all my walls came crashing down.

Don't make me rebuild them, na, please.

Cryptic, as always

Another note to self: A very wise woman said, "His interest, in other words, is very flattering but simply not sufficient reason to play."

Sigh.

In other words:
Wow, I love that someone I run into every day has a crush on me.
But in so many words, "His interest... is very flattering bit simply not suffficient reason to play."

Note to Self

Forget the context, write down the lesson:
I am a narcissist, searching only for my reflection to love.

Love as I picture it, Love with a capital L is therefore, at this time, beyond me.

Eyes Open

Ceiling punkah. Drongos, bee-eaters, spotted owlets. Scotch - the good kind, with two cubes of ice. Bamboo in the wind, dotted with bulbuls and magpie robins. Flowering Glyricidia - a poor version of springtime cherry blossom - but poor only if you're comparing them. By itself, the lace of baby pink and white and pale green set against a dusky grey-brown bark is enough to stop your heart. Marigold and chaffa in little brass pots. The smell of the earth in the afternoon, when the maali does the watering. The wide smile he flashes at you when you walk into your room for something and he sees you from the window. As white as the moghra he always picks by the handful and passes to you from the jaali of the kitchen window, just for fun (and sometimes, I think, to spite my mother, who detests these flowers being plucked off the bush.)

In the middle of the afternoon, the chaffa trees are blazing molten pink against the furnace-top of the sky, and the crickets and doves rhythymically crick and chime, crick and chime, crick and chime, crick.. and.. you're asleep. A sister, or a cat, sometimes both, both equally lovely, sometimes walk silently in and sit by you. (And then either jolt you awake or understand, and fall asleep themselves - respectively :P)

No one who's been inside an Indian afternoon in a peaceful place, in a home-place, could ever again think that peace = quiet, simplicity = beige or solitude = aloneness.

Now that I'm back in a quiet, beige and solitary place, these are the things whose absence is like a jagged edge rustling somewhere in the corner of my mind. Even though it is spring, and the birds, the vines, the daffodils, the lilies (and some days, even the people!) seem to be waking up and stretching after a long, cold sleep.

Simple sounds: ceiling fans, turtle doves. Utterly simple scents: moghra and wet earth. And simple gestures: being handed a bunch of white flowers by the gardener, being smiled at. Being handed a beedi by the watchman as an invitation to sit by the garden tap for five minutes and smoke in companionable silence as the sun starts to set.

These dot the whole day, when it's a peaceful day, in a peaceful place, with nothing much to do.

And then the gentle breeze of dusk, heavy with the smell of warm earth and windblown grass, starts to shake the old trees glittering in the sunset, and one by one, loosens the stars into the sky. The trees grow dim, the birdsong fades slowly, and above, a tapestry of silver and indigo starts to spread from the eastern sky. Slowly, the moon begins to glow and with the first call of an owlet from the neem tree, the day is done.

These are riches, this is heaven, this is the love like no other.

Just typin'

So much of what I've been thinking over the past month has been about death. About endings and unknowns.
Why?
Well, a few reasons. I thought my relationship was experiencing a kind of a death, and beyond, I imagined a ghastly, empty and cold unknown. I went home to visit my father a while ago, and my insides lurched. First with relief to find him well, and happy. And then with fear of what might have been but isn't here yet.
And then the day before yesterday, my dearest friend in the world lost one of her dogs to illness.
And in that wonderful and merciless way that life has, I was reminded that no amount of conceptual exploring ever really measures up to the real thing. Thinking about endings is gut wrenching. Living through a real, irrevocable one (or seeing your friend try to) is... well... Oh, Lord, a whole different game.
But still, in each of those imagined or real endings, my thoughts and feelings ultimately turned to consider what lay beyond. It is as if I simply cannot compute the possibility of Nothing. Even if something feels like it, I will create something, to fill the void.

And so I talked to the Man. And we acknowledged the end of one thing, and the possibility that another thing might be born to take it's place, if we let it. The end of our beginning. The birth of something to replace it - a relationship built on stronger legs than infatuation. But still full of fascination and adventure. And slowly, we are watching that imagined possibility come to life, I think.

And so I wrote to my father. Two cards. Newspaper cut-outs. A letter that is in draft inside my head right now, but soon to be penned in ink. I bought him a notebook to fill with poems. I called and stayed on the phone talking and talking and talking. And trying to imagine the possibility that one day, if he is gone before I am (this is always a possibility to be acknowledged), I will have something to fill that void: the memory of a real relationship with him. Not just one built on what I thought I had when I was in school. A real connection between two adults who love each other very much. And slowly, that is coming into being. He called me today, and we talked about his day. Just ordinary chatter. Totally banal. Infinitely precious. And for us, new!

Each of these two has been the result of imagining loss, and bringing about a change to prevent or dilute it in some way.

And as for the little doggie who has passed, I cannot bring anything new into being there, because it was not my loss, or my imagined loss. For that kind of ending, there is more grief, bitter grief, and then healing, and then a slow, tentative rebirth. All I can do is to help with hugs and phone calls and random texts in the middle of the day.

The one thing that puts all other Earthly things in perspective. Something I wish every individual I knew - and One in particular - could look themselves in the eye whilst saying: One day, I will die.

Terrifying, isn't it.
And liberating.

After that thought, nothing is more important than whatever life remains. To throw as much love as you can out there into the void. To pull as much as possible in. To discover meaning, and then, freedom.

How heartless the logic, how worn the cliche: The minute you discover the reality of your own mortality for yourself, your life can truly begin. Real life. The desperate business of doing one's best, cost be damned.
So here it is:
One day, I will die.
Now what.