Pining / Loving

29th June.

You're getting married tomorrow. I keep repeating these words back to myself while playing out our entire childhood and growing up in my mind. You were my closest friend, my biggest confidante, the first boy i had a crush on, the first boy i kissed, the first boy i pined for. I wanted you even when you didn't want me. I cared for you even before you started noticing that I did. You made growing up harder and better and full of sadness and beauty and a whole lot of emotions that may have been love. I did love you. And now, today, as I keep thinking about you getting married tomorrow, I cant help but think about the 16 year old who nervously dreamt of a lifetime together. The kid who hung around from windows and balconies hoping to get one glimpse of you. The one who'd patiently wait on the terrace looking out at the road to see you coming back from college. The one who'd wait for the clock to strike 5 every evening. The one who settled to be your friend because she couldn't be anything else. The one who'd see you fall in love and get your heart broken and go away to boarding school while silently and desperately wanting you. The one who conjured perfect moments for us in her head. The one who was so scared to have you fall in love with me, but was so grateful you did. The one who felt magic when we got lost in each other with the sunset behind us. The one who looked forward to your hugs.

You sucked too btw. You made me feel scared and small and helpless at times. You made me feel left out and cold and lonely. I think I pined for you much much more than I loved you. And that's possibly why I loved you so. I wanted you and I couldn't have you. I had you and then we didn't last. And now - i don't know.

And there were so many reasons we couldn't be together. We still can't. Obviously, one  because you're getting married tomorrow. And my 16 year old self feels sad and left out once again, and the memories keep coming back with a strength that's almost making me giddy. What had happened to the love I had for you? Was it waiting quietly until today to come back as grief and longing? From tomorrow, youre officially, legally, somebody else's. And whatever these feelings are - this sadness of my 16 year old whose dream of a lifetime together ends tomorrow - will become unacceptable, almost criminal. So for the last time today, and like the countless times before while growing up, here's my feelings for you, uttered in silence, me to myself. 

 Wanting you, not being wanted by you, and then eventually being loved by you was a teenage dream come true.

So so long - and thanks for all the memories.

Written in January 18

We're frantic
Looking for spaces to
Hold us in
With our worn out smiles
And heavy hearts we're looking
At words in a 6/4 screen
We're looking for people
To take us in
Anything will do
Baring our heart-
Unmasking at night
So that no one can see
What we can hide once again
When there is light.
Our fights have changed
It's now within
Our enemies are no longer unseen
They're all me, I vs me
Me vs I, a thousand names
A million whys
They're now the words I can never say
They're now the moments I've already spared
They're now the people I choose to accept
They're now the same, those who've left.
They're the times you let me down
They're the times you don't come around
They're the times I fight our fights in my head
But never with you, for you'd never understand.
What gets left behind
Is a silent night
A night of what
Could never be
And like this now
Will remain unfini-

Nov 18,2014

Winter seeps in
Through my matchbox house
Unknown words
And pools of strange neon drenched streets

Amidst all this beauty
Growing up,at times
Throbs like the ache
In my bones
When I was ten
Or perhaps nine

I sit there looking up at the same piece of sky I'd seen
Since i was nine,
Only this time through the secret fumes at 2 am.
The same spot among the clouds where I used to find faith
I now look up to find crimson clouds drifting slowly by,
The night is silent.
No drunk twenty year old stumbling back home
No yellow lights from the balcony opposite mine,
No books to get back to, no best friend either.
The abyss remains, swirling up and down, more up than down
But I don't have you around to tell me it'll be okay.
Loss hits me years too late,
When it happens, I'm busy moving on with life
Until it crawls back years later and creeps up on me
Reminding me of what I've lost.
In the mornings though, in the harsh happy sunlight,
I count what I still have, what I am grateful for.
I use my fingers to clutch on to a pen, a keyboard, a cigarette,
Anything that helps me make sense of what
This whole deal is.
Sometimes it feels like nothing.
Blank pages scare me now, they tell me they need to be filled and I,
I have lost my words.
I've left them behind in the race to live, the race to meet goals and deadlines
And in the futile hopes of saving the world.
People scare me now, they come with so much grief
So much that it adds on to mine and pins me down.
I want to write of happier things, words that can move,
poems that make you feel alright again,
But I can only paint flowers with bright shades of pink and yellow
I can only turn the pages, look at them and say
Here, I've made something that looks happy, please be happy now won't you.
It scares me when I think of how darkness is elemental.
How even when there's light, darkness is just a flick away, it's the natural state of being.
Light takes effort to sustain.
What if it is the same with happiness?
Happiness takes effort, and for the life of me,
I can't write happy.
What does that mean?

The wisest thing love can teach you
Is how to protect yourself from it.
How to know who could be bad news and who could be devastating.
The wisest thing love can teach you
Is how to save yourself from it.
Strain your heart out before it gets murky
Shut the door and put up a warning sign
Do not enter
Do not enter
People aren't magic and it will take me all my life to look that in the eye and say all that I ever believed in was a lie. People ain't magic, they're as mundane as they ever could be. Quirks aren't attractive, they'll be the slow clasping death of you. Spiral back into your comfort zone, build up some iron fences and know that being cool is never cool. Stop reinventing yourself for others.

What happens in your head stays in your head, always my love.

I've not been able to sleep for the last two hours. There's a strange restlessness within, reminding me bitterly of some nights in 2013. It's an awful beating within my ribcage-  like a tremendous amount of air waiting to escape. I know what they are. They are the remnants of unresolved emotions. The left-overs of moving-ons. The crusts and crumbs which you leave to organically decay after you carefully sweep away the toxic garbage.
It's been 5 years. 5 years since I have had zero contact with someone whom I shared the most of my childhood with, someone who was once my best friend, someone who I eventually fell in love with, someone I had my first kiss with, someone I fell in and out of love with, but somehow, never stopped caring about.
I grew out of love, and watched that hurt him with a horrified heart. But I couldn't help it. He didn't understand me. I was too young to compromise. The timing was wrong. I was scared. He was naive. There are a million reasons, all of them validating my decision 5 years ago.
But that's my part of the story. I never knew his. I don't know how my memories have convoluted in his head. I don't know how he remembers me. I don't know if he does at all. For the most part of the last 5 years, he wasn't really on the surface of my memory. Things did not end well, and the Herculean amount of ego that made him up, helped both of us separate and grow away from each other. There was zero contact. There is zero contact. Zilch. I won't pretend it wasn't a huge discomfort. He did go out of his way at times to make me feel uncomfortable. For a presence that huge and continuous, the sudden stop was shocking. But I had my ego too. I wouldn't break down, I was better off. I soon did fall madly in love with someone else, had a tumultuous relationship, had my trust broken, and decided to part ways again. This separation had visibly broken me. I developed insomnia and anxiety issues, and I came to hate with a vengeance. It took me several years to move on from that relationship, if not that person.
However, coming back to Him. We've physically crossed paths several times in the last few years, considering we live literally not even 200 metres apart from each other. The silence, the ego, the walls have naturally required stronger efforts to sustain. But somehow I managed to do it. I possibly got the strength from his resilience, I knew how obstinate he was. I wouldn't be one to bend over either. He'd surprised me with his nonchalance far too many times for me to take any step for reconciliation. I figured I did not need any. Fuck that. He's living his life, I'm living mine. Plus, I didn't know what he thought about me. I wasn't getting humiliated, no way.
I wish I could tell you this story had a better ending. I wish I could tell you 5 years was enough to redeem the 9 years before that. There have been numerous moments I had wanted to reach out, this in itself is a frantic effort to calm myself down. And the fact that he is literally 200 metres away from me as I speak, helps this in no way. There isn't much to lose if I reach out, but would I be able to console my sentiments if I'm pushed back? I'm not sure I can nurse myself. I'll wait for a hint, let's see.

Earlier this year in April, Sikdar Uncle passed away. The year before in September, just after B's birthday, he was diagnosed with a malignant tumour which eventually got the better of him. When I think back to when I first got to know of the diagnosis, to the day I learnt of his death- I was certain of one thing- the relentless suffering. No matter what would eventually happen, the pain couldn't be avoided. I knew that. And that is what I feared the most.
He passed away after travelling 1500 kms away from home in the hope for a cure, after numerous hospital trips, after a few futile surgeries, after flying back home, after nights of losing control over limbs and organs, after days of near-paralysis. Earlier, when he was better, over my childhood days,I remember him sunk into his armchair, sometimes reading a newspaper, sometimes aimlessly looking into the TV screen, and sometimes trying to crack a joke. I remember him in his humour- awkward, reticent, loud, humble, honest.
When I heard he'd passed away, I was in Delhi. I remember waking up crying to my mother's text, heart trembling at the thought of calling B. What would I tell her? Death means an agonizing absence.
I got tickets to Calcutta, and flew in to hug her.

This year, I could barely make it home during Pujo. I landed on oshtomi, after Didi pleaded and coaxed. B was there, so was Aunty. Minutes before I entered home, she swore to those around her that she could hear my voice. I wasn't talking, and nobody at home knew I'd be turning up. She'd always had one of my soul-strings.

Growing up, there was a shiuli tree in our building. Still is. Every year during Pujo, Ma and Aunty would sit beneath it, collecting shiuli from the ground, and talk about things they couldn't share in larger groups of superficial conversation. We'd look at them and smile- they were so similar. For my mother, sensitive and aesthetic, Aunty was her only real friend.

This year Aunty seemed a little lost from the moment I entered. I caught her tearing up more than once, and at other times, she too seemed sunk inside, lost aimlessly in an invisible TV screen in front of her. On dashami, I saw her wandering near the shiuli tree, and that's when I noticed that  there were no shiulis this year.