She Settled

Disha had overheard a conversation, and suddenly she felt as if her stomach was sinking. Her father’s words, “yes we would like to meet your son”, kept on giving her the sweat under the fan in her room. It was one of those October evenings in a middle class nuclear family where everything goes according to a plan, you have to be clear - what career choices to make, what will be made for dinner, you make ‘prasads’ on those assigned days according to the Hindu calendar and some roses bloom in the small garden in front of the house and people retire from their jobs and read a newspaper every morning after that in the same garden.

She had entered the peril zone this birthday, and suddenly everything had changed, she was supposed to think about settling with someone and that someone was supposed to be well settled (he could not be a bohemian, and not with too much of out of the box ideas about life).She was supposed to think about a changed life out of her will, she had to think more about sarees than books, more about culinary skills than adventure trips.

Disha was not against marriage but she felt suffocated when things came prematurely than her heart accepted them. Today if someone wishes to fill the house with roses but what you have are rose buds, would you cut them and force open the petals? No you won’t do that .They will be allowed to bloom in their course of time. So why do we hurry with ourselves?

She always had this question what if she never felt like having a man in her life or may be just travel with a partner , what if she never got the idea of what getting settled really meant , because may be you settle to be happy and if your happiness lies in something else then that is your settled life. May be she would fall in love with a man in her sixties and make love to him each day like a curious teenager .But why today and why now because she blew twenty fours candles .Let her know what she feels about being a woman, let her fail with many men, let her leave a trail but let her be.

Ten years later, I saw Disha in a café reading ‘The Story of Philosophy’ by Wil Durant and Lonely Planet in her satchel was popping out. She was wearing a khaki trouser and a white top which hung on her carelessly. Her laptop was open and maybe she was making some reservations. There was a shopping bag which had some coloring books, a soft toy and some groceries. Who knows what she became professionally ,  who knows did she even marry because I forgot to look at her fingers and those coloring books , children is the next question , maybe for her little girl or for the neighbor’s kid or maybe just for herself. How did she go back home? Did a car pick her up or she took a cab or maybe walked her way home humming ‘Wo sham kutch ajeeb thi …ye sham bhi ajeeb hai’ .I don’t really know but in my candor she looked Settled that day in her most inconspicuous ways.

They Met for no Reason

She walked in the room and sat beside him, the place was overcrowded and their thighs touched each other. Everybody was waiting for the screening of a short film. She asked him, “did you guys made this film?”He said, “Yes we did” .Who knew life would change for both of them after this simple exchange of words.

Each time they met, they slipped into an intimacy and closeness they could not stop as if the river just flowed, as if someone had opened the latch, as if there was something more important than taking in air.

They had to go out for dinner; she struggled with strings on the back of her dress and he sitting on a slouchy sofa in the dim lit room admired her between the strings through the gossamer curtains. She walked out of the room and suddenly their conversations turned into an altercation ,I don’t remember the reason.Why I don’t remember it now, I don’t have a reason for that. They got tired and slowly the twilight turned into a quiet night .It was not so quiet as the dogs were barking somewhere near the watchman’s hut but still an known silence  had taken a huge space inside the house. She had loosened those strings as they were not required anymore and was lying on the bed clutching a pillow close to her bosom. He walked in and looked at her back and then gradually moved his hand around her waist to make her face him and as she looked up he held her close to him and snuggled his face between her bosoms. The night was sultry and some breeze came from a wooden window on their left, teasing the sweat between their bodies. He told her about his childhood pranks and hurts, distant family and close friends, his failures and punishments and those scars which have made him what he is today. He cried in her solace as if he was a lost wanderer fooled by the mirages of life and was finally resting in the shades of palm.They fell asleep gradually and in the morning she found a note on the bed. What was in the note I don’t know but she had a grin.

She was waiting for him in a café which was at a walking distance from her place and as it had been raining the whole day she had carried her lilac umbrella with her .She was wearing a yellow knee length dress which had tiny white flowers on the hemline and her hair were still wet .He walked in as if he did not care that she existed and then sat opposite to her and ordered two lattes without asking her. He watched her sip as her lips touched the rim of the cup and how she kept the cup back on the table. He did not say a word and just penned her beauty down in his thoughts which enticed his eyes, the beauty which had no reason of its existence; it just existed as it had to. He left paying the bill and she left with one hand holding the umbrella and the other had white lilies. Somewhere in those moments between opening the lock on the door and before entering the house she decided to sit on the porch and watch the rain as it falls. Her hands rested between her legs and her toes were getting wet with each drop. She wanted to have his child not because she wanted a child to mother, not because she wanted a marriage not because she was a woman but she wanted to know him since innocence .Rain had stopped and she went inside.

They never met after that evening. They were the young lovers of the spring who had lost their way in the summer heat and when the rains came the world got greener and they turned grey.Although I believe in one of those winters they will grow a sapling because fertile thoughts are not dependent on seasons.

Somedays

Those days when you wake up and you hate the sunshine outside, you don’t like people with happy faces and chirpy talks. You don’t want to open your mouth or even move your finger and look at the wall or your laptop blank and lost .Days when Keep Calm posters don’t work on you , neither that cup of coffee or green tea in a silent corner nor your favorite book.

When Chandler Bing’s sarcasm isn’t that amusing and you really don’t want to know how Barney stays awesome. Your top-drawer collection of Music to escape this wordily wise world does not take you in trance and that blueberry muffin does not taste good. When your identity is the pain and you look for anonymity.

You slump yourself on the bed and nothing makes you feel better, you don’t feel anxious about anything, there are no questions and you don’t want to know the answers .The pragmatic populace calls it depression but I don’t understand what depression is all about but I do understand that this is when HOPE has found a new place to rent and you are abandoned for good .This is when you are dying in the moment, your past is not affecting you and Future in not even in the oven.

So now that you are dying and you are not dead yet that means some part of you is still living and this part of yours, Preserve it. It is good to be distracted if not focused because still you are attracted to something but being distant is not a salubrious concoction .These days are those ‘Somedays’ of our lives when we get apologetic of where we are and how life is happening to us. As we grew older we realized it is a relative world and the more we digested it, we also in our brooding corners compared everything and sadly we compared our feelings too. Look at a child near you, when he is happy eating a chocolate he is just happy, that is an independent state devoid of relativity.

Who saves us from these ‘Somedays’? We do, by ourselves .We pick ourselves from the most uneasy thought to a neutral one and from there to a sober one and gradually the smile is back. Some do it with oversleeping; some  by talking to strangers; some go for long showers listening to the force of water on their bodies  which silences the noise inside and others , the true optimists  , they still go looking for their tea kettle , but maybe this time Green instead of Black is the flavor which will play the trick.