From Your Valentine (2)

I wake up to the sounds of shouts in the street. It sounds like a huge crowd rushing and trembling. There are sounds of women everywhere. I wonder when my agony will be over before or after the festival. Today is the festival of Lupercalia, dedicated to the god of fertility. 

The women folk must be out in the streets, dressed in white for the ceremonial sprinkling of animal blood on their bodies. Julia might be there too waiting for her chance for her name to be picked by her prospective groom from the urn of good luck.

I could hear the prayers from the sacred caves breaking the silence of early morning. The chants were audible as they were repeated by the women folk everywhere, from the hills to the valleys for begetting children and for good crops this year. 

The huge doors are opened and I see Julia before me not Asterius or his soldiers. I am too dumbfounded for words. I’m surprised that in the midst of the festival, she has come to see me. Dressed in white, she looks more like a ghost than a real person. 

It takes me some time to ask her why she has not gone for the festival near the caves of Romulus and Remus, the founding fathers of the nation. She replies in a low voice: Everyone has gone for the festival and I have stolen the keys so that I could come and see you. You need to hurry because there is a horse ready for you. You can run away from here and from death. 

No, I cannot. I am a priest and I cannot break the trust that your father has showed on me, I mumble. She is not convinced and comes near me. Though it is quite dark in my prison cell, I can see her face and she looks pale. It takes me sometime to understand that she may not have recovered fully from the disease that almost took her life away. She holds on to my arm and caresses it with her long delicate fingers. 

Not any longer. You are not a priest any longer. You are freed through a royal order that might in fact gain you a death worse than that of a criminal. It is better that you run away for your life. As for my father, he might forgive you because you saved my life, because he sees you as a good man. You are to be executed in the morning without any blessings from a priest. There is no time to lose. 

That shocks me because I am still a priest though I might have disobeyed Claudius and his orders. There were many couples that I had married off disobeying the order of compulsory bachelorhood for all soldiers. I have seen the women cry when their men left for war. Nor was I fool not to read in Julia’s eyes, the same flash of love though I have never been with her. 

Suddenly, there is an alarm raised and I see that the prison guards are on their way back. I snatch Julia by the hand and we run as fast as we can through the empty corridors. She leads the way and by the time we reach where the place where the horse is tied, we can see crowds of people, all splattered with blood on their clothes and crops back from the festival of Lupercal. 

To be continued...

Eternal love

The morning was beautiful. She woke up early even before the alarm clock started ringing. A miracle.Usually it woke up her neighbors before it did her with the continuous music. She always made the alarm as  part of the background  of her dream. This deafness to alarms resulted in her getting up late every day.  

This day was different. She could feel it in the soft freshness of the morning air. From the balcony, she viewed the morning air with surprise. Could this be the day when he would come to her? She had a lot of intuition about these things and felt hopeful. 

She couldn’t believe that this is the same city crowded with protesters over something over the other in the daytime. The white building of the state looked lovely this morning. Not even a single sound. 

She stood there for sometime.  She heard the hooting of a distant train. What silence. Only a few people like the newspaper boys moved here and there. She decided to go on a morning walk. She changed her clothes and was out walking in a few minutes.

It was not yesterday that he left the city. She didnt know here he was.  If he was here, she will see him on the morning walk across the park. What all things I want to tell you, my dear? But the situation was not as hopeless as she made it to be. 

He was just a phone call away. But what prevented her was her shyness, what if they become lovers? She couldn’t face him. Still she resolved to tell him how much he means to her, that not a day passes without his thoughts and that she would do anything to have him in her life even as a friend. 

It was this obsession, that feeling that there was something between them that was unique, something that happened only once in a lifetime, that magic that will never happen again if she lost him.She knew that from the first day that she met him, that there was something about him that she loved beyond words, through her silences.

Memories came and visited her. What was this madness that never let her spend a day without thinking about him? Every day was like this-thoughtfulness, indecisiveness and finally sobbing just before going to sleep, hugging the pillow. Night time was for writing down what all preposterous things he meant to her, while morning took all these thoughts away. 

Obsessed with him, she felt that this came out of her denial of some natural feeling towards him. At times, she had this gut feeling that it was mutual; he also felt the same. But then what?

Even that day in the rain was evidence to this. They were sitting in that coffee shop sipping hot coffee when she said in half jest" let’s walk in the rain". Before she could even think, he’d got up and was out in the rain. There was another couple who walked before them, hugging each other closely and for a moment she wanted to walk with him like that.

"Look at them", she said. They shied away from each other thought they were closely aware of each other. That night, she was a little crazy as she wrote about those little things in her diary. Suddenly, her phone rang. Strangely it was not him but her fiancé, who had called.

“What happened to you? You don’t speak soft to me anymore? You speak like a stranger, nowadays”. She knew that she didn’t do this deliberately, for her fiancé meant the world to her. Five years is not a short period of time and with every passing year and the distance that separated them, they had stuck together supporting each other everyday. 

On days of idleness, he would call her and ask her to study for her exams, for which they were appearing together. That exam meant a lot to both of them. Now both are lost and that too because of her foolishness. She could understand losing her new friend or obsession but her fiancé that was like saying drawing a boundary can make land into two nations. 

Still this morning she felt hopeful. Her life would have an answer, not this endless maze of problems, coming one after the other. She couldn’t call him and ask him to come and meet her. May be a real meeting can cure her obsession. It made her nervous, the thought of meeting him. 

She dreaded even that thought but that’s what she always wanted to do. Each and every day, she wanted this meeting, this resolution of her confusions but nothing happened. She went and sat at her favourite place in the park, on the stone-bench beneath that chempaka tree. The flowers gave off an intoxicating fragrance. Her phone rang. Her fiancé.

“Why are you not talking to me? You remember this date. This was the day when I proposed to you way back in college. What has come over you?”
“So? She asked.
“With marriage in December, how can you be playing such games?”.

“What if I don’t want to marry you?”
“Now dear, please be careful. If that’s what you wish, it’s fine with me. But what about the parents? What are you going to tell them?”
“That I will do, you don’t have to worry”.

While she was talking, she saw someone familiar walking towards her. That was him. She cut the phone and ran towards him. “Where were you? I was worried!”He smiled and put his arms around her. She was sobbing so hard. She couldn’t control herself. He  held her close. He moved his face close to hers and kissed her. First kiss. 

All her desperation was gone. The agony over whether she will meet him or not, the pain of his absence and her repressing her all feelings, everything was gone. He took her on a long drive in the city before driving to the beach far from the city. She chatted about all the things that had happened in his absence.“Where do you want to go now? He asked her.“The beach. I love the seashore, though it makes me serious about life”, she replied. 

He smiled and kissed her again. She responded fully to his desires and glowed in his love. “Don’t go anywhere again”, she pleaded. At the beach, they stayed in the water, hand in hand. The evening sky was tinted red. The ochre light of the evening, with that secluded beach made him daring enough to kiss her in the open. 

“I love you baby. I will never leave you alone”, he said. He led her to towards the sea, into the deeper waters. Now she became afraid. He hugged her tight and laughed aloud with each thrashing wave that splashed against them.  

She decided to speak to her parents when she got home. Her marriage could wait; she wanted to be sure herself whom was that she loved more, her fiance or the one whom she found anew. It was her dream come true and she thought that she did choose right.Looking at the lights, what she felt was that this was a very special day of her life.

Mine

 

If I hadn't met you, I would not have known what it meant to be in love, the meaning of three little words, which you used to say so effortlessly daily when it has taken me ages to even utter those little words.

If I hadn't known you, I would never have understood what true companionship meant, the nights spent all talking, watching movies and fighting like hell.

If I hadn't loved you, I would never have known this sinking feeling that comes when I hear someome criticise you though you are no longer mine to own or to defend.

Memories

Your sky blue shirt with chocolate stains, your cheeks that were smudged daily with my parting kiss, your eyes that lately were filled with a longing beyond words; 

The songs at midnight, how you croon the blues, then in those amazing days the things that you did to please me and made me sing those melodies that make you laugh. 

These eyes that never meet yours scared of what you see in them, afraid of what it knows to be true, too shy to show what it really want to say in words, despite of your pestering. 

May be, it means all the things that you don't want me to say and you don't want to say either because of strange misgivings. 

But when you say those three little words, it's like magic and the world lights up in zero time. 

Travel

Life-lessons

You are my other that helped me to grow, to learn more about life and even about my own self. You might be a person, an event or a book that has left an imprint on my soul. 

You are my first love, this entanglement with melodies, the way my soul lifts up in the Hosannah or feels happy with the Magnificat or bursts out in a raga with the rains. 

You are my ever existing dream of weaving together dreams, words and melodies into a book of poetry worthy enough to be engraved in a beautiful script and to be set before your appreciative eyes. 

You could also be my love, the one that never found its way to express itself yet reaches out to you in words, gestures and memories wherever you are. 

You are a lesson, a mistake, may be a chapter that I cannot forget, a memory that I cannot erase despite of all the bitter strife of these years. 

You have taught me how to be, how to love yet not to lose myself and the lessons are not bad as you can see for yourself.

Little Things: Good Night

Little Things is a Web Series directed by Ajay Bhuyan and written by Dhruv Sehgal. This Rom-sit-web-com is set in Mumbai and has a couple Dhruv and Kavya as its characters. 

Dhruv (Dhruv Sehgal) is a postdoctoral research student and Kavya (Midhila Palkar) is a sales representative. The three episodes (of a five episode series) that are released till date are FOMO, Have a Nice Day and Good Night. 

The series focuses on the little things as Dhruv explains in Good Night while having a talk about Kavu's exes. On a night kept awake by mosquitoes, they go out and meet an old friend of Dhruv. Later they talk about Kavu's exes as she is upset that one of them is getting married.

Interesting tiny episodes with realistic dialogues. Way to go, Little Things! 

Monsoons

None could hear what the rain whispered to her in those dark nights.
He would follow her everywhere, with long fingers and intense gazes,
When she was walking up the road, his eyes would fall on her,
With a ravenous hunger, ravish and pierce her soul with agony;

How could she complain, for she loved him with her silences,
Gave him her heart and soul, let him own all her sacred spaces,
Whatever love was in her heart she gave without conditions,
So haunting was his love, his total devotion and his persistence,

In not letting her go that she couldn’t breathe a word to anyone.
Dodged everywhere and chained to him by each passing thought,
For one who never will turn up  when she needs him the most,
Lost and gone, this one dark love of her life, kills her the most,

Makes her forlorn, hysterical and desperate though lost and gone,
For a single tryst, a single glance and the soothing tone of his voice.

Confessions of a Female Quixote

You are in your twenties. You are a woman. You are single. You are crossroads and you are slightly confused with just one thing: love. What I mean is that you have a plain uneventful life with order and balance and all of a sudden you are unexpectedly drawn into a whirlpool of emotions, the moment you develop an interest in a guy.

Irrespective of whatever interesting adventures you are in the middle of or what work you are doing, this one person becomes the pivot of all your thoughts, so much that you are hardly able to find your balance in life and it becomes so obvious to the people around you that you are interested in someone. If it happens, not once but twice then you are done for and add to this, the fact that you are shy and find it difficult to communicate what you feel to the person concerned.

So the end result is a journal full of choked up tears of absence, kisses of fettered affection and unspoken love. Some of the agony is because of shyness but mostly because the person whom you attract is also of the same kind: shy, proud and difficult to understand. So, these definitions are a way of getting over what I know might be the best possible love in the world, of a magical chemically combustible kind, but mostly existing in the field of imagination and fantasy.

So, this female Quixote who reads too much, loves too much, thinks too much and writes too much. She has no windmills to fight for but her own personal fears and inadequacies. Rather than confiding in intimate friends or confessing your love to the person concerned, what you do is to scribble some loving thoughts in a journal on a daily basis, so much that over time you discover that the person you love has turned into a myth.

Then years later, you stand face to face with the person who provoked all this writing for years and all you want to do is laugh out loud because you feel like a teenager once again. Not just that you have made a myth out of the object of your obsession.

For us

You are my want, my need, my desire, my everything, my addiction that I never want to give up. May be the years, months and days might change this feeling for you.

But even after all these years, I want yours to be the shoulder where I return to with all the broken scattered pieces to be held close and put together; yours the eyes that hold the gaze and not hold anything back; yours the lips that greet me in surprise and yours the comfort that stays with me during the whole day. 

But right now, you don't seem to understand me and for now may be I don't want anything else either.