...continued..

So, I was home.

After endless conundrums of physical and mental pain, buzzing noises from the outside act as differentiators between agony and hope. As the coffee machine created a spluttered sound, I realised how little by little, time was running out. After having faced a lot of inner tumult and shrewd detachment, reality was a lot different.

I stood by the kitchen and walked back a few steps, took some long breaths, and nothing happened. Perhaps love was a lot different what I had imagined it to be. It was not exactly a knot in the stomach, it wasn't exactly pang of guilt or a knock at your consciousness, perhaps it was just those few deep breaths pushing out air from the lungs. A little breathless and mind numbed, it was time to say a few things.

A letter for a start.

So I began to think. Being in a powerless position, there was not much wrong or right I could do. The best thing to do as of now was to watch myself fall. How is the feeling? Well, it's like this. You don't fall from a cliff and you don't exactly experience the fall in a dizzy way, of course. A few more breaths, and you feel time is your only companion, moving a beat with your breath, giving you space to think only the ceiling does not cave in, the world does not go black, you are still there, holding your coffee, a little glassy in the eyes more or less.

There is no finality to anything, there is only time and infinite time. You don't step back and let the noises dictate you.

So, it was time, for the letter.

There was some spilled coffee on the table, a pen, paper, and a mass of flesh. I had to hold the pen, thank my doctor with a little silent prayer, and I picked up the paper. After some unbearable scrawls, and distorted sentences, which looked like ink blots for psychoanalysis, there was quiet. Nothing, except gentle taps of the pen. My ears were aching to hear some sounds, which did not come. Still, nothing.

Some years ago, I was on a visit to the hills when I befriended a beautiful girl whose memory struck me. The trip had been one of the many, typical family visits with the entourage of cousins, herded up North.

A physical strain was needed here. Snapping away from the memory, I yearned for a forceful bodily movement. Writing would require some of it. The lusciousness of good moments came rushing out like a forced release.

If you have lived in just one city for most part of your life, every analogy you draw begs indifference. After 26 years, I was beginning to feel dwarfed in my own presence, a diminutive commoner adding a head to the crowd.

Squeezing some more from me, I felt the uniqueness of quiet was fading away into the coffee machine's repeated gurgling sounds. If you wanted to be free, the city wouldn't let you. You drown with it, and float like mass watching, listening, a moribund participation blending in its vastness. But, was it so difficult to write or flippant to express? I shuffled in my seat. The paper was still there, blank as before. It was a rite of passage, and the final act.

Hence, it began.

"So, here we are. I don't want to prefix an endearment and write your name, because this would mean some kind of an address, which it isn't. It is an attempt at conversation.

We have known each other for many years now, and I should be able to say I know you only enough. I could break into a serenade but I wouldn't for the simple reason it would distract both of us from the hurt. The sound of that word. I don't...."

And, so, it went on. A simple, fairly illustrative explanation of where we were, as I saw it, and how perceivable future had little to do with each other's happiness.

You would tend to imagine lovers are shy creatures who explode into garrulous screams of uniqueness of their own individuality when hurt, it is sort of a tussle for commonness, which is humorously ironic in its own way.

How can you be common in each other's life besides some fluid moments spent together. Maybe you walked on the same road to your favourite store, sang the same 60s numbers in gusto. You held hands, and were together. In this case, holding hands meant folding your own hands in a sort of prayer-like fashion hoping things would work out. In a clever way, I was right too. The affair looked to be an extended weekend in the mind, a frenzied imagination like a perpetual state of decadence after three-four Long Islands.

Perhaps it meant reconciliation now and more of coffee.

The anger had subsided and maybe the right side of the head was calling for more soul searching. But, that voice was missing. It came back in spurts, a loud crash and thump, and it was gone again.

(w.i.p)