They always ask you, don’t they, your wives, your girlfriends – ‘do you love me’? And you always tell them, yes.
Yes?
Always?
That’s a lie, ain’t it? At least for me. I don’t feel in love all the time. Yes, there are those moments, when you know you are in love. Whatever the hell love is. You know that, at that particular slice of time, you actually want to go to her, or if she is not around, call her up, and just let her know, that you love her. Whatever the hell love is.
Every other time, when she raises the question and you you answer in affirmative, it is just to avoid inconvenience. Like what would you tell her otherwise anyway? That you are not sure? That at that particular moment when she asked you, you are not sure? Bullshit.
Maybe because we want to keep our lives simple, we don’t give a shit to truth. Peace matters more than truth I guess. Even when you really think about it, how long are you going to peaceful with lies anyway? Pata nahi.
Some time back we were in Blue frog. Me, MRP, Tota and Maina. So have I totally totally gotten over Maina? The convenient answer is yes, but is that the truth? In fact that is almost true but is that the 100% truth? Of course not! ‘Maina looks very under-confident, why is it so, asked MRP yesterday. I didn’t know what to tell her. I don’t even know the Maina that exists today – haven’t really spoken to her that much. It was some other Maina that I knew and the very mention of the word under-confident brought me back memories of the under-confident Maina who I knew of. With whom, I spent such an awesome time back there in insti.
No wonder I felt uncomfortable with MRP asking about Maina. Because for her there is just one Maina. For me, there are two of them. Whatever Maina may be today, there was a time, and if not a time, a set of moments spread over time, when all I had for her was pure love. Whatever the hell love may be.
Ah, this is going nowhere. I wonder why I am writing all this here. Creating problems for myself, confusing people reading this. Confusing them about who I am, what I think. But do I really have a control over who I am and what I think? The only control that I have is over how I act or behave. I guess only few people will understand the depth of this post and may be so it is okay. Or may be Tota will get upset and stop talking to me once more. Like it was few years ago.
MRP, I want you to know that what I really enjoy is letting you be a part of my life, even if you annoy me at times, because you annoy me much less than anyone else. And you do make me feel loved by your sweet gestures once in a while. Similarly, I like being a part of your life – but just once in a while. Often, I am simply happy all by myself. Yes, there are times, when I feel like hugging you tight and giving you a peck on your cheek and holding you close to me for a long long time, till either you or I sleep away. And that’s a lovely feeling, a wonderful feeling. That’s pure love. And yet, if I ever I think how life is going to be without you (which for whatever reasons, I hardly ever think because even the idea of that sounds very hypothetical), I don’t panic. I am prepared. I am like, fine, I will go on. With my cute little plans and things-to-do list, which will take up all my life anyway. Because the fact is, I was done with letting love for a girl rule my life, being the centre of my life. But just because I am done with it does not mean I don’t remember about the time when it was not so. When you ask me if I love you, my soul always thinks of what the word love had meant to me once, and it realizes that whatever I have for you, feel for you, is nowhere close to what I have been capable of.
And yet, I still think we are perfect to get married to. I think we can keep living together for many more years, the way we have lived together for so many months now.
Don’t ask me why I wrote this now. What does this post of mine means. I just felt like letting it all out. For you, for Maina. and for Tota.
There are things I can never forget. That standing on my hostel terrace trying to jump. Then giving it up because I thought let’s see what happens if I assume I am dead. I have been doing great ever since. Just that I am still dead. If not completely, then partially. Something did die that day and I know will never come back.
I can never forget how Tiwari dragged me from my room to our hostel bog. Because I had been lying there for ages without food and water. And then how he made water run over me. And brought me bak to life. whatever was left of.
I also remember trying it so hard for TF. Because there was so much of love, it had to flow somewhere. And when it was not collected by anyone, it jut flew out of the drain I guess. I can never forget how LOLY kept me active on the social circuit – cutting me off from isolation. Taking me to plays and pubs. I can never forget how Tota let it go finally and we started talking to each other the way we always used to, letting that stupid phase of our lives when we didn’t speak to each other fade away. And that doesn’t mean I don’t also remember the day he came to me and told me that the only reason we were friends was that he had been allotted a room next to me in Sarayu. That I was such a bad person that no other way would we have been friends. I wonder if he still believes in that. Because I don’t. I think may be he was very angry that day when he said that. I don’t really remember what day was that. Or what the context was. But those words still rattle. Somewhere.
Coming back to you MRP, you ask me often, if i will miss you when you are gone away from me for a day or two. And I always tell you I will let you know if I will miss you. Because that’s exactly how it is with me. Even when I might actually miss you now and then, I don’t want to think about the two of us in that I-dont-want-to-miss-her ever kind of a way. I want to be prepared to live with whatever i have. I have very little fear of losing all that I have. That day when, when I had wanted to die so much, I had lost everything. All that I have today, you, a nice job, friends who still exist, family who still wants me to spend time with them, are more than what I can ask for – things over and above a zero state of having. I belong to the zero state and so I don’t think I am made to miss anything. That does not mean I will not feel bad if I actually lose something. Be it you or my job or my lifestyle. But i don’t fear it too much. I have no intentions to hold on very tightly to anything. I don’t keep praying to god that – ‘please don’t take away anything from me’. I am always ready to keep going through whatever comes my way. And may be that’s why I act so weird at times. That’s why I never go overboard trying to make you happy. Because I want you to be happy irrespective of me. I want everyone to be happy just by themselves. Everything else is only a bonus.
Following are still the coolest things that I want to do, and will do them as and when I will.
Writing a book
reading 1000 books.
climbing Mt. Everest
Riding a horse from Manali to Leh
Sex on the beach
Playing the role of a villain in a movie
I still think this is all I really care do in this life. And may be a permanent fan following that keeps my ego happy. Ah, I so refuse to change. To life, I toast. Wherever it takes me.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Approval of the guy Sweety was to get married with.
HTC Desire over which a week was spent in doing nothing but downloading apps.
First Mumbai half marathon.
End of an assignment in Gujarat that sucked in more than year out of my life. Celebrating it’s end with colleagues in Goa.
Seeing Tiwari and Neelabh getting married. Seeing Sweety getting engaged.
The one month long mountaineering course with my girl in Darjeeling / Sikkim.
The first promotion in job (and an year full of some kickassaly hard work – growth from being a team member to managing teams. So fast. So swift).
Moving out from company guest-house and renting out a flat after more than two and a half years of free stay and free food and free everything else.
Settling in Mumbai – with my girl.
Seeing Sweety get married. And making mummy and nani and dadi and everyone else go through MRP’s pictures clicked on my HTC when Sweety was getting married.
Seeing Jar getting engaged. And then Sweety getting drunk over her birthday.
Dancing in a MJ getup on my budday as Mr. and Mrs. Tiwari, Tota-Maina, Mr. and Mrs. Sadhu, Subbu and MRP watched and laughed. And feeling awesome that all these guys came over to see me dance!
Going to Croma to buy a washing machine cum drier. But bringing home an LCD instead. And then watching movies cuddling with her.
Learning to glide with Subbu.
Being with papa for a while, and staring together with him at his broken leg.
Learning to make exotic cocktails. And offering them to dost loge.
And of course, throughout the year – loads of sex.
Popularity: 1% [?]
2 May 2011
‘Just about eight months to the wedding. I want to start sending invitations to my guests from now itself. I want them to block their calendars and all that. It’s not too early no?’, he asked.
‘No, no. Not at all.’ Yum replied. ‘In fact, I have a nice idea myself about a style of invitation that no one can forget. If I may?’
‘Haan haan, bataao bataao’, he was curious.
‘How about getting some such personality to record few inviting words on camera, to whom the world listens to? And then sending these video-cds or may be even a link to an uploaded video to your guests?’, inquired Yum.
‘Sounds interesting. But that some such personality could be?”
By evening, he got his answer. Yum had arranged for the personality to start recording his first marriage invitation video. The video became a viral hit overnight.
9 June 2011
Still a few months before the marriage, he realized he hadn’t figured out what gift to gift. To his darling son on his wedding.
‘Dear Yum, what gift to gift?
‘A kickass live painting?’, Yum’s response was swift.
‘Hmm, good stuff’, he was pleased. ‘Who?, he asked.
Yum looked into God’s eyes. And winked. With a smirk. God winked back.
As the white haired painter painted his son in the evening, the son felt so proud of his father, you could see tears of love dripping through his eyes. And oh, how so beautifully did the painter in white hair capture them.
14 August 2011
Two months down the line, it was time to officially meet the ladkivaalas, the last time before the wedding night itself. ‘Can we have someone who can add some charm to our coterie?’
‘Sure, leave that to me.’ Yum assured. I know just the man who would be apt for this.
Yum arranged for the man who was apt for it. As the guests were seated at the ladkivalon ke ghar, and men and women chit chatted, the apt man spoke the apt line. ‘Hum to bus itna chahte hain ki baraation ka swagat Paan Paraag se ho’.
5 October 2011
‘Do you think it would be a good idea to have someone on board, who can help the wider public have online access to my son’s wedding? Through phone apps and stuff like that?’.
‘Sure thing’, Yum agreed. ‘And I think I have just the right person in mind for this jobs’. Yum and him laughed together at the Pun. Within five days, the marriage app was the most downloadable stuff on internet.
10 October 2011
The last function before the marriage ceremony could commence was a Gazal night where the who’s who of town were invited. Those who couldn’t, followed up through live streaming on their i-phones and i-pods and i-pads. Once the night was over, they understood why back there on earth, they called him the Ghazal king.
03 December 2011
The wedding night. Finally. Only when the baraatis started dancing around the dulha seated atop a ghodi, did they notice who the old dancer was, dancing with them. Singing and dancing with joy. With life. The old dancer brought through special invitation to shake a leg with each one of them.
Pal bhar ke liye koi hume pyaar kar le. Jhoota hi sahi.
Popularity: 1% [?]
The calf died. Papa fell down and inured his left shin. Multiple fractures.
It was Sweety who called me up to inform about this. And then she suggested I should go home. I did not understand why she asked me to go home. Why ask someone else, if you are worried, why not go yourself? Also, I knew she didn’t have any job so it made it easier for her to just go home whenever she felt like. I asked her where she was. She said she was in a train. Traveling to Delhi. She was in the train when mummy called her up and broke the news. Why didn’t mummy call me up? I asked her. I don’t know, she said. I told her I would call up mummy and figure out what to do. And that once she reaches Delhi, she should book a ticket to home for herself.
When I spoke to mummy, she was in my parents house in D-ghar. Papa was in a nursing-home. She said she had just returned from the nursing-home to change and all that. I asked her what exactly happened. ‘Papa has got fractures in his leg but there is nothing to worry about. There is a little swelling over the injured shin. Once that goes away, plastering can be done.’ And then she briefly touched upon the story about how it happened. The jumping calf and stuff. ‘Hmm’, I said. To which mummy advised – ‘you come when you were planning to come, there is no emergency here as such’. I said ok.
I was planning to go home sometime in November so that I could be with my parents when MRP’s parents would visit us. They were supposed to visit my parents so that the relationship between MRP and I could be formalized and stuff. Things parents do you know. But now with papa’s accident I wasn’t sure when to go.
The afternoon I joined office (after the Monday off for Bakrid, when we returned from Murud to Mumbai), I got a panicky call from mummy. ‘Please come home, we are moving your Papa to Patna and I am not sure how I am going to manage things there.’ I booked a one-way ticket and the next afternoon I reached the emergency room of the clinic in Patna where papa rested over a bed. His left leg – below the knee, looked pretty fucked up. I looked at if for some time. God, it was pretty fucked up. I wanted to post a Facebook update instantly. But that felt immoral. So I just forwarded the picture I took on my phone to Subbu, Sweety and MRP. And then looked at the leg some more. God, it was pretty fucked up.
Popularity: 2% [?]
great to read through…a nd that ending line!
Hope is is recuperating well. I wish speedy recovery.