Epistle 44: Pottery Barns
A/N: Hey there everyone! :D :D Here is the next update! :D :D
Happy Reading! :D :D
16th May, 2004:
Finally, the trauma of the 10th and 12th Boards for me and Ranveer respectively no longer haunt us in our dreams and we're just a couple of weeks away from our results. Our house was in a frenzy these last few days like it's always supposed to be during the vacations, but atleast that's sobered down now. All the other elders in the house have gone for a vacation to Kashmir for ten days, and Baa has gone for her teerth yatra to Banaras (yes, I just rolled my eyes).
So it's just Maa, Papa, Disha and myself for the first time, all alone.
Well, Ranveer just returned back from a one-month vacation to his village. He's been yearning for it since so long that I could not have been happier that he actually got the chance to do that. Yes, I did miss him terribly, but then again, his happiness is always above mine. And now that he's back, we're back to being our usual selves - constantly arguing, bickering and pulling each other's legs. I still remember when we used to feel so afraid of being rude to each other or cutting the other person's speech when either of us were talking.
Now, there's barely a day when we pretend to be formal. That's what happens when you become such close friends and are always around each other all the time. There's no fear of being judged after some time and you can be your honest true self with each other. There's trust, friendship, communication, honesty, faith, love, understanding... name it and you'll find it between us. And this is how I love us to be.
Ahem, before I get too sentimental about that silly boy, let's move on. Ranveer and I had our first pottery class today! Interesting, isn't it? Like I told you earlier, in the one month that Ranveer's been away, Kaki has been doing some pottery work on her own back at the village and that's kind of caught Ranveer's fancy. And since you know how whacky I'm to try out weird things, I asked Papa whether we could join pottery classes. He looked confused at first, but since he knew it would make us both happy, he decided to let us join them. And the best thing is that the classes are actually in a pottery barn!
Okay, this must officially be the coolest thing we could ever do!
Since Ranveer has first-hand experience in doing the basics in pottery, he's naturally the best in class (God, he's so tiresome to be around at times with that perfectionist attitude of his), but what's even more surprising was that I am just as good! For the first time, I was at par with him! Now you can only imagine how happy I must have been. I don't know whether I rubbed it in his face too hard because he was so happy that I was doing well in class, but by the time we reached home, he looked quite annoyed with my constant blabbering.
I need to learn when to shut up at times, I think.
But then again, I could have easily annoyed him with the amount of wet mud I've put upon his face and his clothes. He hates it when I do things like that, but then again, it's so much fun troubling him! *evil grin* And it's not like he's all innocent too, you know. He made my face all muddy as well. So by the time we reached home, we both looked like two disgruntled puppies who were shooed away to our respective rooms to get a shower. Maa looked nothing short of scandalized, while Papa looked amused.
Well, once we got all cleaned up, I didn't waste two minutes to go tell Papa how we were at level today in class. Honestly, even though Papa looked proud of me and praised me quite a lot, but there was an entirely different conversation going on between Ranveer and him simultaneously through their eyes. Okay, sometimes I'm really, really jealous of him! How does he manage to do it? My father, mine! And even here he beats me to it! Damn it, there's some mental or supernatural defect with the boy.
He's too perfect to be true.
But then again like he tells me, the people who are too perfect are often the ones with the maximum amount of imperfections as well. Perfectionism is a disguise best suited to those adept at wearing them upon their veil of frailty. I would have rubbished this line of thought had I not known that it was true. But it was. Not just for him, but for me as well.
The biggest proof sat on the wall in front of my bed - both of his vulnerability and mine. I've had this painting with me for four years now and there isn't a single day where I can't stop appreciating the sheer grace of it. There's something about that painting that says it all about us. It's as though Ranveer did not just paint out all of his emotions in one painting and center it around me, but also portrayed an entire story through it.
Our untold story.
There are days when I stare at that painting for hours, thinking about how far Ranveer and I have come in these eight years and how much he means to me just like I mean to him. He can do anything for my happiness, be it finding a compromise between viewing the stars through a clear sky or through an obscure saree (well, his simple compromise was to use transparent cloth to see through, genius that he is) or be it always telling me a different story every night (well, I'm still wondering how he transitioned from normal short stories in story books to his own little tales that were nothing short of a beauty).
Sometimes, I don't know where we are going... where we are heading to. There are days when the world seems unfair and cold. Nothing on those days feels worth fighting so hard for. And then there's Ranveer, who simply takes my hand into his own. And suddenly, it doesn't seem so bad. It's as though he's handed over a purpose to me. I don't know what it is about him, but he fills me up with a strange satisfaction and happiness that I cannot explain.
He can silence me away with one glare, and yet he can get me laughing like a maniac in the next. He can irritate me so much and get me so angry in one moment that I feel like never talking to him again, and the next moment he'll say or do something that'll just melt my anger right away. He can send me into a bliss of security, and yet he knows how to keep me grounded. He can get me thinking that he's the most boring soul in the world, and in the next minute, he'll do something that'll shock me out of my mind in amazement. They always say that rare are those who can make you laugh and cry at the same time, and those people are never to be let gone, no matter what. And I have that person right beside me.
Ranveer Vaghela is a mystery that even my entire life would fall short to discover completely.
Ishaani smiled as she kept down the pen, biting her lip slowly. Turning the pages of her diary to nearly a month ago, she stopped at the entry she was looking for.
8th April, 2004:
Slap me next time if I ever tell you that I know everything about Ranveer.
Honestly, whenever I think that the boy is incapable of giving me any more shockers, he proves me wrong every single time! And what he did yesterday (wait, take it as today only since it was technically four in the morning by the time I dropped him off) was something that I'd never expected from him!
He was drunk!
Drunk!
Can you believe it?
Goody two-shoes Ranveer Vaghela, Mr. Prefect Perfect was drunk!
You know that I've been having horrible mood swings every day. It's not something that I can help and I just feel irritated with everything and everyone. And like always, I ended up removing all of my frustration upon him when all he came to tell me was that I needed to go to sleep early because Falguni Maa said so. And from something as stupid as this, I ended up speaking nonsense to him about how he was always trying to boss me around (God, I can speak some extraordinary crap at times).
On any normal occasion, he'd have let go of the comment, but unfortunately, even he was in a foul mood yesterday because of something that Baa told him (well, she just finds new ways of testing our patience). So he lost it and fired back at me saying I was becoming a sissy with every passing day because he was getting too overprotective of me and that I was just taking him for granted now, treating him constantly as some sort of emotional whoopee-cushion. And as always, rather than calming him down, I fired back at him, taking a lower dig about him not going to be getting admission in his choice of college and well... let's leave it at that. It was stupid and we both picked up the stupidest of points.
I admit that always removing my anxieties and frustrations upon him isn't the right thing, but seriously, how dare he call me a sissy? What does he know how it feels like to be me? I have my own share of thoughts and feelings without this eccentric family sucking at my blood every minute. I know that he goes through much worse, but that doesn't make what I go through any easier. That comment was downright insensitive and I'll have my revenge for him for that tomorrow.
Ah, let's come back to the point before I start sounding bitter.
So, I was upset and I decided to go to the terrace. But like every day, Kaka came and locked up the terrace at ten. I had no option. I didn't want to wink away the keys and get him into trouble, so I decided to do the next best thing. Taking a bobby pin with me, I went to the terrace door (which luckily is a latched door with a lock on it). Locks are easier to access than keyholes. Well, let's just say that I managed to crack open the lock in less than 3 minutes. Yeah, I'm not entirely proud of it either, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
I went and sat on the floor idly, staring at the moon in silence. And even before I could think about anything else, I began to cry. Papa always says that it's good to cry when you're sad - it makes your heart lighter. I don't know what exactly I was crying about now that I think about it. Maybe it was the lack of thoughts, or the overwhelming thoughts that had now fused to become one giant reason to cry. And so I kept crying.
I kept wiping away the tears furiously until another fresh batch of them rolled down my cheeks again and I did the same thing. I looked at the sky bitterly, suddenly wanting them to absorb me into their beautiful world. Nobody was my own and the one who was, I'd hurt. I don't know for how long I remained like that - hugging my knees close to my chest as I cried harder and harder, until nothing made sense anymore. I cried because the tears wouldn't stop. What the purpose of my pain was, I'd lost track of.
Soon I felt sick, just like every time when I cried this badly. My head hurt and the airway of my nose seemed to have been blocked. I could not understand why I felt so terribly sad now, but the feeling kept eating at me. I knew that I had to do something about it. But exactly what was it, I did not know. I looked at my wristwatch and realized that it had now become two in the morning. Gasping, I knew that it was too late to be on the terrace alone in the night and if anyone found out about it, all my terrace time would get banned too.
And then, magic happened.
I'd gotten to my feet shakily, wiping away the last remnants of tears from upon my face when I heard a song. The voice came from very far, but I was certain that it was a song. I soon realized that the voice got louder and louder, the tone completely out of match with the song's actual one. And suddenly without warning, the terrace door flew upon with a bang, and out came Ranveer.
I gasped in shock for the second time in less than ten minutes as he seemed completely unaware about my presence and chuckled to himself stupidly, a glass in hand. He walked unsurely on his feet towards the edge of the terrace wall, suddenly silent. He stared beyond the wall and down without another word, and I felt the air go fraught in mystery. I did not know what was wrong with him except that he didn't look okay to me at all. I walked up to him, now slightly afraid but I'd barely put my hand upon his shoulder when he suddenly turned around, frightening me.
I gave him an angry look, but he did not seem to notice that either. He looked at me and chuckled before singing once again, this time a song of Mukesh. Honestly, never have I been so petrified yet in awe of him in one moment. I quickly pinned him to the adjacent wall and put my hand on his mouth to stop him from singing any further. He looked at me dumbly for a minute before bringing forward the glass in his hand.
It was alcohol.
And it also explained everything else - his weird behaviour, his antics, everything. I took my hand off from upon his mouth and he laughed childishly.
"Do you want some too?" he asked me incoherently, yet I was able to get a gist of what he had asked.
"Have you gone mad? Did... did you drink this?!" I asked him in return, my voice now scandalized.
I hated alcohol and people who consumed it because I'd heard all kinds of stories in relation to them. Even Ranveer hated it. Yet why he'd consumed it was beyond me.
"Ofcourse I did... you- you- silly!" he slurred back in response, looking at me like a child who's lollipop was snatched away from his hand rudely.
"You're drunk..." I remarked stupidly, and he chuckled at me again. It was adorable; I couldn't even remain angry at him!
"If you don't get drunk, what's the point to drink?" he replied, still laughing at me.
Pulling my hand suddenly while running as fast as he could, he yelled 'weee!' at the top of his voice as I tried to hush him up, afraid of being overheard by Baa, or anyone else for that matter. As amusing as it was, if anybody else caught us, we were both busted.
"Ranveer!" I hissed at him reprimandingly, but it had no effect upon him whatsoever.
Before I could say anything more, he pulled me to the middle of the terrace and begun dancing, singing an amalgamation of a Kishore and Rafi song while he danced clumsily. He kept twirling me round and round, his grip somehow firm in spite of his legs wriggling. Finally stopping in the middle of the floor, he looked at me intently for a whole minute, his eyes somehow suddenly alert, as though penetrating my soul. He tucked away the stray strands of hair from my face and cupped my cheek, speaking softly.
"I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry too. I shouldn't have said those things to you."
"You say it, everybody says it... what difference does it make?"
And he smiled at me, a tear leaves his eye. I don't know what made me do it but I put my arms around his shoulder the next moment, and he in turn, held my waist protectively. And for the first time since I've known, I didn't even see the slightest of embarrassment or awkwardness on his face. Just a graceful look. Nothing more, nothing less.
"Can I tell you something if you won't take me the wrong way? I mean it just from a friend's point of view," he asked me suddenly, his voice quiet while he lowered his gaze away from mine in modesty.
I nodded my head.
"What is it?" I asked him gently, raising his chin up so that our eyes met.
"I love you," he tells me simply, his eyes piercing into my own ones with an intensity that even stupefied me for a second.
It did take me off-guard for a moment because this was for the first time that he'd ever told me something like that as a friend. It's what I felt for him as a friend too, and it did feel good knowing that. Finally making up my mind, I replied back slowly.
"I love you, too."
He continued smiling at me the same way he does every time, managing to stir something within my soul as his touch brought along a strange tingle upon my skin that I'd never felt before. I felt his eyes search my soul hungrily, retracting his gaze soon enough as though too afraid to search deeper for answers that he wasn't prepared for. There was complete silence between us as he finally took off his hands from around me while I promptly disentangled my arms from around his neck.
And then just like that, out of nowhere, he quoted a piece of Urdu poetry about the beauty of my soul sparkling through my eyes. Don't ask me to quote that word to word, it's too heavy a language to understand. But it made me smile. Something that I thought was impossible to do just hours ago. I could feel the unhappiness fade away as he recited another piece of Urdu poetry, this time talking about what I meant to him. I would have been entranced completely had he not chosen that moment to suddenly pull my cheeks and chuckle away idiotically, but that just made me laugh more.
And for nearly the next whole hour, the two of us sat upon the floor cross-legged, where he kept on quoting Urdu and Farsi poetry to me, pulling my cheeks or poking my arm at the end of many. I didn't even know that he knew such kind of poetry! And even in the middle of those poetic beauties, he managed to tell me some of his strategies on the portfolios that Papa had entrusted him with, randomly confessing some of his feelings about how bitter life had been these days. It wasn't something I didn't know already, but it felt good to be his confidante for once rather than the other way round all the time.
Honestly, how could he be so adorable? How could he make me just smile like that? I've always heard that boys got very rowdy and cheap when they got drunk, and honestly when I first saw him like that, I did get momentarily frightened as to what he might do. But if you ask me, I've never loved him more than how much I do today.
He's a whole lot cuter than I ever thought he'd be. He just knows how to make me laugh, no matter what state he might be in. Yes, by the time I left him back into his room, I'll admit that he did get rather difficult because he kept hugging me and telling me thank you for goodness knows why. And unfortunately enough, he did throw up too. Thankfully, let's just say he was neat. I managed to get him to gargle up atleast before I finally made him sleep upon his bed, Kaka already fast asleep upon the floor.
I did stay back for five minutes and stroke his hair gently as he slept peacefully, a small smile on his face. He's worth it all. He's my greatest treasure. We may fight like cats and dogs and may piss off each other to the extreme, but at the end of the day, we are each other's solace. I use words as my defense mechanism to inflict pain upon him; he uses humour as a defense mechanism to hide away his pain from me.
I gave him a final kiss upon his forehead and got up, when I heard Ranveer talk something about pottery barns. Chuckling slowly so that I wouldn't wake up either father or son, I shook my head in amusement and left the room, not forgetting to close the door behind me. This was one very extraordinary night. A few hours ago, I believed it to be impossible to go to sleep feeling even the slightest of happiness, yet as I pen these words in my room, I know that I've never been happier before. As to Ranveer... well, the real fun will happen once he wakes up, depending upon how much he remembers.
It's going to be one memorable hangover for him.
Ishaani stared at the entry fondly, turning over the page. She guffawed whole-heartedly about the way she had bullied Ranveer, especially since he had absolutely no memory of the previous night. She'd left out some details for his own good because she knew that it would make him awkward and uncomfortable, but she let him know most of it anyway.
She turned back to the current page and sighed contentedly, before she continued writing once again.
16th May, 2004:
Ranveer is certainly a mystery that I'll never be able to unravel fully because he is a mystery as vast as the Universe. There's something about him that evokes a curiosity within myself - a hunger to learn; a thirst to prove my worth too. There's something about this first pottery lesson that kind of taught me a lesson as well, along with something to keep in mind as well:
It's not just the mould that determines whether you become a pot or not, it depends mainly upon the skill of the one moulding you.
Ah, this is one thing that I learnt about Ranveer today as well. He does not do his best in everything because he has the mould, but because he has the skill. He's always at the top of everything because he always plays to learn, never to win unlike the most of us. There's something very earthen like pottery about him that keeps him down to earth and humble in spite of the conditions he comes from, no matter how many bitter things he has to hear. Maybe that's what I'm doing too, step by step - I'm learning to learn from him.
Okay, now I'm the one who sound's terribly drunk.
These pottery classes are going to be interesting. It hasn't been a day and I'm already enjoying myself a lot. And I think even Ranveer's also enjoying himself reasonably when I'm not annoying him with silly things. I like this pottery barn a lot that we go to... there's something very novel-like about that place that makes me feel warm and comfortable.
I'm sure that the pottery barn will teach me more than just to make pots.
Constructive criticism will be more than welcome and sorry for any typos. :D :D
Next chapter:
Epistle 45
Edited by LadyMeringue - 8 years ago
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
Cricket
