Time passed like honey oozing through a pinhole. It was already an hour past the decided time and there were no signs of her turning up.He was getting more and more restless with every passing minute.She loved doing this to him – promising him every morning to meet at the designated time at their usual meeting place near the corner of the beach, keeping him stranded for hours and then never ever turning up. Though she did this to him with unfailing regularity, he still used to wait for her everyday, hoping that she would turn up anytime – with that sweet apologetic smile of hers which would manage to cool him down instantly, no matter how irritated he would be with the long wait. But she never did turn up.
Even today, the same pattern of events was unfolding – much to his chagrin. Frustrated to no end, he decided that today was the last time he was going to be subjected to this dishonourable routine. He promised himself that he was going to settle this once and for all today itself, no matter how long a wait it took him. With this resolve having been made, he cooled down a bit and proceeded with the waiting game, to no avail. She did not turn up as always and he had to come back home when it got too dark to stand and wait on the beach.
As he climbed up the stairs to his apartment, he was feeling angry and idiotic at the same time – angry with her for not turning up and idiotic for believing her promises like a fool every single day.Walking in, he chucked away the roses he had bought for her into the wastebin – they were useless now. He was in an agitated state of mind and thought a drink would do him good.Picking up the drink from the counter, he found that he was out of ice. “That calls for a trip to the fridge” – he said aloud to himself. He loved doing that – talking aloud to himself, irrespective of what people used to say about that habit of his.Holding his drink in one hand, he opened the giant freezer.
“Aha…there you are!!!” – he exclaimed, “And to think that I have been waiting for you all day long at the beach”. She was lying there – fresh as dew. The days spent in the freezer had failed to dull her pristine beauty a single bit, except for a deep gash running across her neck. “If only she had not protested so much…”, he said aloud to himself, as he shut the freezer door.
Tommorow was going to be another long day at the beach….

The mist in her unbelieving eyes resonated in his own as he stepped away from her, leaving her, hands helplessly outstretched, near the gate.The old gate which had been a witness to all that had ever been between them, stood still as ever, all-observing,silent. The hurt in her eyes broke his heart into a million pieces. “This is proving to be a lot tougher than expected” – he said to himself as he walked his way, purposefully oblivious to her sobs, growing increasingly inaudible with each passing step. As he grew increasingly closer to his final destination, his mind grew increasingly clouded with the visages of the only woman he had ever loved , in the truest sense of the word.
The sights and sounds of that fog-beaten winter evening in Delhi still echoed true and clear.He was sitting in his favourite coffee-shop near the large glass window, watching the pre-occupied metropolis go by in its own trance.Apni hi dhun mein chalta jaata hai ye shahar….he said to himself, deliberately delaying the last sip, as had always been his wont.He was about to leave when he saw her walk in.Clad in a simple salwar kameez, she seemed to be a total misfit in the plastic sophistication of cofee commerce. Yet, there was something disarmingly appealing about her that made him do something he would have never allowed himself to do – fall for her.He had always prided himself on his ability to connect to people and he made good use of this as he walked over to her and introduced himself. That small introduction had then gone on to reach bigger proportions, so much so that today, she was the only thing that could have stood between him and his ultimate goal.
“I am leaving, to never return. I won’t tell you where and I am not taking you along.This is where we meet for the last time” – to utter those few words had taken an Herculean effort on his part. Even more difficult was looking her into the eyes as she gazed at him blankly, not wanting to believe what she had just heard.After what seemed to be an eternity, as the import of his words finally struck her, she broke down like a crystal vase hitting the cold stone floor.She had pleaded with him to take her along or atleast to tell her as to why he was doing this to her .She would die without him – she said.At that moment, something burnt with so much intensity within him that he felt like pulling her towards him and embrace her, never to part again. Only the numb awareness of what lay in store for him prevented him from doing so.What had followed thereafter was emotional mayhem as her grief and his enacted antipathy collided in a display of intimate pathos.With the greatest difficulty, he had managed to extricate himself from her desperate embrace and walk away – afraid to look behind, afraid that he would not be able to stop himself from going back to her.
As he reached the Secreteriat building, waves of doubt raised within him – would his action achieve what he had been told it would.He quelled them, telling himself that this was nothing but her that was making him think so.As he entered the gates, he absent-mindedly felt the underside of his jacket.Everything was in place.Precison plannning was another thing he prided himself on and this was his final plan.Crossing the gates and the foyer, he entered the main hall.Dodging the security had been easier than he had accounted for.Looking at the multitude of people inhabiting the hall,he knew that he had selected the right time and location.Now he had to act before anything went wrong.
As he slided his hand under the jacket and flicked the switch, the only image he could see in his eyes was hers, the only sound that rung clear in his ears was hers.The million smithereens that his body blew into were nothing compared to the way her heart had broke that morning.

P.S: I did write this piece, but I find myself unable to find a suitable title for it.If you feel you can do so, you are free to visit the comments section and drop your suggestions there.
🙂

The inspiration (if you may call it so) for this post arises from something I came across while travelling by train about a month ago. Now, train travel in a melting pot like Mumbai does give rise to a plethora of experiences provided you keep your eyes and ears open in the right sense. Even then, I had not accounted for what I eventually saw and heard.
On a leisurely, though sultry afternoon, I got into a Churchgate-bound local. The train was not too packed, which gave me the luxury to freely let my gaze move around and observe the various specimens of humanity that call this city their home. From the mandatory newly-wed couple seemingly lost in their own world to the typical share-market somebody conversing on the phone at a decibel level high enough to bring down the WTC, this particular compartment was amost resembling a microcosm of the human species.
The train had crossed Mahim when my ears detected a sound that seemed to be particulary distinct from the rest, a voice that seemed to carry the burden of pathos arising from lost dignity. It belonged to an old woman who seemed to be on the wrong side of 70 at first glance. She was moving around the compartment begging for alms. Now, beggars are not an uncommon entity to come across in this part of the world but this one had something disturbingly different about her. In stark conmtrast to other beggars who seek to literally blackmail you into parting with a few units of Indian currency, she moved across the compartment with her hand stretched out, though she did not seem to be beseeching people for some cash. If somebody did put a coin in her hand, she gratefully acknowledged it, otherwise she just moved on. All along, she seemed to be speaking to herself and I concentrated, trying to make out the contents. As I listened to her, what I managed to make out was – she and her husband were turned out of her house by her son who was of the opinion that they had outlived their utility to him. Since her husband was ailing, she was forced to beg in the trains. Though I was initially reluctatant to believe her entirely, her voice had a honesty that I found difficult to ignore. Also, one of her sentences stayed with me – “Whatever you do in life, ensure that you don’t have to depend on your kids in your old age”. These were the utterances of someone who had been subjected to the ultimate ignominy – that of your children throwing you away like used towels after all that you had done for them. Those words really disturbed me deep within. They were a symbol of broken faith, and subconsciously I found myself standing in the trial-box – a representative of the ‘human’ society that had failed her miserably.

Though I got down the train after some time, the image of that old lady, broken by fate, yet holding on to the last shreds of dignity, has remained with me. It really set me thinking as to how people can be so insensitive and cruel (that’s the only word that comes to my mind right now) so as to desert their parents when they need them the most. Having had an upbringing which holds familial ties above (almost) everything else and having seen my parents take so much care of their ailing parents, I really find it diffcult to comprehend what makes people do that. I guess it all boils down to your basic nature combined with the kind of upbringing you have had. Also, the dog-eat-dog realities of metrolpolitan living tend to scrape off the remaining shards of humanity. I believe that we seriously need to have in place a system to take care of the elderly. After all, a dignified life is the bare minimum that they deserve after all that they have done to make us into what we are today. The government infrastructure might succeed in resolving the problem to some extent but by and large, its our collective responsibility as a society to give our elders an environment in which they don’t have to beg in train compartments to survive. In our own small ways, we can contribute towards this. It is for each of us to figure out for themselves as to what they can do but we have to do something if we wish to make any claims of being a ‘civilised’ society.

P.S: Writing this post was a moving experience for me and I find myself increasingly willing to do something towards it.How that is to be done – I will decide soon. If reading this post awakens the desire to make a difference in even a single person, I will consider this post a success.

Today seems to be that kind of a day when virtually anything that I do ends up sending my mind walking down memory lane, often to those dark bylanes which I consciously (and often, unsuccessfully) seek to avoid. So rather than trying to fight my subconscious and causing further distress in the process, I thought – why not seek catharsis in expressing those thoughts rather than fighting them. Of course, this will more be about observation rather than inference, more about asking questions than seeking answers as I don’t find myself in a position to arrive at a dispassionate conclusion.
So what’s it that sends my mind on a trip to neverland today? It’s that unfathomable phenomenon which we insufficiently manage to define as Love. More precisely, the following words try to frame my thoughts as to why do we ‘love’ somebody, why we so desperately want someone to be a part of our life, our being – so much so that if not fulfilled, these desires turn into poison for the soul.
I feel that when we say that we ‘love’ a person and want to be with him/her, its basic human possessiveness at work. The statement that we love somebody, more often than not, simply means that we desire that person on the basis of not what he/she actually is, but on our perception of who or how he/she is. Essentially, it’s our own thought that we are in love with and this is what makes it especially hard to let go when things don’t go our way. Human beings have an inborn ego (here I mean a sense of self & self-importance) and it is never too easy to accept that we can ever make a wrong choice or that we don’t measure up to somebody’s standards or that someone simply does not perceive us in the same way in which we perceive them. This, I believe, is what causes all the heart-burn. When we desire somebody, we effectively invest a part of ourselves into that desire and when the investment does not seem to bear fruit, there is this sense of loss that haunts us to desperation. So, what we are essentially dealing with is a sense of self-loss rather than plain rejection or failure. As with other investments, we then assess the extent of loss and having consoled ourselves that we simply made the wrong choices, we move on. But some wounds cut deeper than the rest. Greater the importance we ascribe to a particular person, higher is the sense of desperation. When we are confronted with rejection from the so-called ‘chosen one’, the self-imposed stigma of failure is that much greater. We are driven to the edge by our own mind which tells us that we could not measure up to what was our own choice. This is what causes all the pain, all the tears and ‘broken hearts’ around.
I started off saying that I will be writing about why we desire somebody and looking back, I see that I have actually dwelt more on what happens if we are faced with unrequited love. Maybe I will reserve that for another time and call it a day at this point.
Most of what has written above is solely based on personal experience and observation and I will be the first to agree that these are very inadequate tools when dealing with something as complex and perplexing as human emotions. So, if you feel you have something to say, the comments section is always there 🙂