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PART 1
Jab tumse nazar takraayi sanam
Days heaved themselves through filthy wisps of smoke, nights dragged on tediously, swamped in black coffee and unexpressed thoughts. But she refused to come, gracefully unflinching as ever. She, his muse, the unnamed, unseen goddess, who gave him wings and words and worlds and dreams.
Yash deleted what he had typed. It was too close to himself, suffocatingly so. It was painful to face his own emotions. Also, and more importantly, the style was embarrassingly conservative.
He took a sip of green tea. The teabag had been left to infuse for too long. It reminded him of a writer left brooding for so long that his thoughts had crystallized into a complex matrix, embittered and undecipherable. He was carelessly emptying the teacup in the sink, admiring the translucent design of the liquid on the metal, when his cellphone rang.
It was his editor, calling to remind him of the submission deadline for the draft of his novel. It was a month away, or maybe a day. Dates made little sense to him, cut off from the rest of the world as he was. He didn't answer the phone. He didn't have a first line yet, or a story.
The problem, he mused, was surely this city he had exiled himself to two years ago. It sapped his being of all meaning, hope and peace. It was a city of opportunities where everything seemed possible, but life - a full, wholehearted life. He was fond of this theory. It was poetic. Even if it was not true. The problem was something else. Probably something so mundane that he could not get his mind around it. Or maybe even something so deep, it was dauntingly unfathomable.
He rested his hand on the grimy balcony railing and exhaled a puff of cigarette smoke, feeling a bit of his soul escape him as he did so. It was mildly satisfying, to look at it swirl away to join the grime of the city, to run his fingers through its warm dustiness and watch it beautifully dissipate away to oneness, nothingness.
Then, somebody touched his shoulder. It was... Tina, no, Sunaina. Sunaina had a nice ring to it - like a lazy river. Sunaina was his ex-girlfriend, from university. She smiled at him, sadly. There was something about sad smiles that he found irresistibly attractive.
"You haven't quit smoking?" she asked, music pouring out of her quivering lips. She had always wanted him to quit. In another time, she would have pouted and pulled the cigarette butt out of his mouth. But she held back. It would have been incongruous.
He couldn't speak, his throat constricted by a gush of emotions. She was so breathtakingly beautiful. Her deep sea green eyes sparkled like the life he sought. She was hope, she was light.
"I... had a conference here," she continued, "Thought I'd... come visit... Tom gave me your address. Um, your... door was open."
She taught at the university now. Neuropsychology. She had always been fiercely intelligent as well as strong, driven, and yet, compassionate and loving. And Tom was his best friend, his brother, his confidante - usually woefully disposable, but crucially instrumental here as the one person who could have known his address and who, fatefully, chose to communicate it to her, thus fulfilling his prophesised catalytic function.
Yash could only stare at her, transfixed. How could he have broken up with her? Why? Oh, but it was a reason so convoluted and deeply, intricately personal, that it could only be expressed dismissively, in the vaguest possible way, because words anyway would render it senseless.
"Right," she snuffled, with tears glistening from the corner of her eyes, "Just realised, we... broke up because you were coming here... and didn't want to be tied down by any relationships. So I... shouldn't have come. Actually, it's been a year we haven't spoken and I was missing you - sorry."
Yes, that was why he had broken up with her. It was trivial enough to warrant a speedy and neat reconciliation. Yet the reason was honourable and acceptable enough to foreclose a complete closure, and justify reconciliation in the first place. For her eyes, it could be seen, still bore so much love for a person like him, that it tore his heart apart. He pictured his heart tearing. He saw it, vividly, dripping shreds. He was going to die of shredded heart, as he watched her walking towards the door, with heavy resigned footsteps.
He saw it then, like a burning epiphany: a second chance at life. A chance he didn't deserve, but needed, most desperately. What a fool he had been, for failing to understand what his heart was longing for! It was her. It had always been her.
He caught her arm to stop her, and kissed her, like never before.
He attempted to imagine what the kiss would feel like. But he was interrupted by the phone ringing again. He did not have to check the number. It could only be his editor. There was nobody else. There was no Tom, no ex-girlfriend (whatever her name was). Just a dizzying abyss, and his weary mind's pitiably unconvincing hallucinations.
Perhaps a story could have been woven with the editor, the only person he still spoke to, if she had been a woman - it could have been a racy love affair, but with existential overtones and a touch of magic realism. A novel fit for philosophical snobs such as himself.
But as luck would have it, the editor was a tall stern grey-haired man with pursed lips and the soft zombie-like voice of a murderous butler from a predictable thriller. He considered, in a shrug, the possibility of writing a thriller then, with supernatural elements that teenagers would 'heart.'
Yash steeled himself. This was no time to be playful. He had to write. Something. Anything. It was the only way. He was a writer, he needed to write himself into being. He was losing himself, wasting away.
Just then, there was a knock on the door, and when he opened, all of a sudden, before he could make out who it was, somebody, in a half-swoon, collided against his chest. This was real, it hit him. Actual human contact, for the first time in the innumerable months of his hermit-like existence. It struck him like a blast of sunshine piercing through a cloak of over-polluted air and thick dust-encrusted curtains. He felt a heart pounding.
Betraying his first instinct, he was about to softly push the whimpering human form away, reminding himself of people's general shallowness and meanness that had pushed him, over the years, to shield himself from such actual human contact.
But she stepped back first, slightly embarrassed. The human form, that is.
"Hide me, please," she gasped.
...
Book Talk
Anupamaa
Vasudha
