joie de l'écriture

She called me to the side and whispered like a sudden burst of bubbles – “I love you!” She pecked me on my cheeks and disappeared back into the party giving a backward glance. Her mascara eyes glowed brighter than any star in the sky that night. Her scent smelled beautiful; sweeter than all the roses that I had gifted her an hour back. I stood there, only 19 floors above ground level, in the balcony of Rishab’s house and yet it felt so close to heaven. I could hear the party turning loud and wild inside. Outside in the balcony, it felt like a different universe altogether. The serene lake in the background made me feel like a hero in a romantic movie just before a song sequence. I stood there - her image still flashing on my inward eye, her scent still fresh on my shirt and those words still ringing in my ear like church bells. Beautiful! My phone buzzed and flashed her picture. 1 New message received. “J” Words were too many to pick from and my mind couldn’t construe the meaning of any at that moment. I texted a J back. Honestly, I was so overwhelmed that I actually just forwarded the same message. Quite lame she tells me now. I turned back and smiled. Infact it was more like a silent laugh – I was that happy!

She messaged again. This time a ‘?’. Now what was that supposed to mean! Err. She definitely expected something, and I was pathetic at the guessing game. My quiz results in school had told me that more than once. A ‘?’ in return would have definitely aborted the conversation and sending another J would have caused a THE END to this romantic movie. I wanted the song sequence to continue. After all I was the hero and she for the lack of better words was the lead girl in the item number! I barged into the living room where the party by now had crossed all levels of sanity. The music was deafeningly loud; there was too little food and too much booze. I scanned the room to find her seated in the corner sunk in a bean bag, her eyes fixed on her cell-phone as she clasped it nervously in her hands. She looked stunning in her black dress, long chandelier earrings and loose tresses, not to mention those eyes again. I walked towards her while she still fiddled with her phone. The music turned to Nat King Cole’s Love, her favorite she once told me, and then our eyes met, followed by our hands and finally our lips. Natasha Jaiswal, my Valentine. Today exactly 3 years from that day, and again at Rishab’s party, I have another girl in my arms, and she has a baby in hers. She is no longer a Jaiswal, but a Kapur, the ones with the U and not the OOs. Funnily, she shares my surname now. Her husband Roy Kapur is a nerd. And not just any nerd but a rich nerd who can boast of fancy college degrees as much as he can boast about his cars in his acquired American accent. Such is life. Those 3 years were like a roller coaster ride without a safety latch. We never fought or argued, we just broke up because we had discovered the true meaning of love in that span of 3 years… in something else.

She smiled and blushed at her first love or something like it. I hugged her closer to me, picked up my jacket and said “Let’s go” We went to our usual pizza place and ordered our favorite triple chicken special pizza. “So” she broke the silence. It seemed to be killing her. “So…”, I continued, “Should we..” She waited for me to finish. “…should we order some garlic bread sticks too? They have an offer on…it says…” She wacked me on my hand before I could finish. We held hands again on the table surrounded by bottles of tomato ketchup, mustard sauce, mayo, chili flakes and oregano. Little did we know our life ahead was to be flavored in such varied tastes too. “Thanks for such a special day,” she said with a seriousness I had never seen in her before. I tightened my hold of her slender fingers. “For me too. It’s such as amazing feeling. Isn’t it?” She nodded and that was the beginning of the end.

Love for us at that age when watching movies and sipping cutting chai in the canteen filled up most space in the life was like in the fairy tale books with the hope of attaining a state of happily ever after. Most people would agree real life begins only in mid-twenties once college ends. That’s precisely the point when the quarter life crisis strikes. You realize there are more impossible trinities than your economic classes have taught you. Well paying job, interesting job, good manager - to name one; Beautiful girl, rich girl, accepting parents - to name another. The problem with me was I was wired differently. My Maslow’s need hierarchy pyramid seemed to be completely upside down. I was contented with myself for some strange reason. May be life isn’t that complicated after-all I thought. Time still hasn’t managed to bias that opinion of mine. Natasha & Rishab were my batch-mates from Engineering college who were only fractionally well off when it came to our final scores. I attributed that to their hard work and contented myself. The party at Rishab’s house was 3 years after we had graduated. He had managed to become an Investment Banker in an MNC after completing his masters. I wasn’t surprised at all, the hard-worker that he was. Plus he was the kinds who could do all it took to slog his back side off until his 40s, before resting on it for the rest of his life. Natasha had taken up a software job in an IT company & started from scratch after studying machines and gears for 4 years. Plus she was the kinds who wanted to visit the USA and joining an IT company was probably the fastest way to get there. I had taken up a mundane role in bank right next to my house. It helped me spend more time on my interests of photography and writing. Had it not been for the efforts to impress Natasha and for fighting my parents fear of an unemployed young son, I wouldn’t have accepted the job in my wildest dreams. However, it had finally happened that night, she was impressed. That was the only bonus I ever received from the company. We met more often and chatted more often – on the phone, over email, through skype, at the coffee shop, in the park, at the mall, and at Rishab’s parties.

“You think we should speak to our parents?”

“You take a call. You can assume a green signal from my side. I can say that from how easily my elder brother got married to his girl.”

“Hmm… Well I don’t know. May be I should wait slightly longer. Am not sure if I should pick this up now. I might get a call for the US anytime now. And I don’t want to leave them thinking about it you know.”

“OK with me. So when are they letting you know?”

“They said this week. Let’s hope soon”

Seventy two hours later, Natasha was at the door of their mansion-like house with 2 Large suitcases, a backpack, fighting back a few tears and a crowd of cousins, relatives, and people from the friendly neighborhood – the well-wishers with the shopping lists I would say. I stood at the corner watching all the drama happen, hugging, kissing, offering sweets, breaking of the coconut, snaps that went on facebook in real-time which attracted 89 likes & 45 comments in a matter of seconds, and all the tamasha that I despised even on the silver screen. I always believed real life was way too real than what was portrayed in the soaps. I accompanied the gang to the airport, squeezed between two aunties who were loud, ludicrous and loaded with a lot of strong perfume which gave me a headache. After being adequately crushed by their wholesome beings, my lungs needs fresh air and my mind some fresh thoughts. I started thinking of my last night’s conversation with Natasha. We had met only once in the last 3 days, for not more than half an hour, where we discussed our future. We had agreed to be more mature about our relationship and not let different countries, different continents and different time-zones affect it.

“We will be fine”, I assured her as she sipped coffee and burnt her tongue carelessly. “It’s just a few months, may be a year at the most. We will be connected all the time, just a buzz away.”

“I know…I just hope distance doesn’t affect us negatively… you know what I mean…right?”

“No. I don’t. But it doesn’t matter, because nothing changes between us. You are going to have a ball out there. This could be the best time of your life. Make the best of it! But please don’t put on that fake accent, I will throw up on the phone otherwise!”

We laughed, finished our coffee hastily, damaging our tongues, and hurriedly kissed in a dark corner before I dropped her off at home. The last one we ever had. The coffee kiss I call it. It lent the bitterness of the coffee to our lives ahead, quite subtly though like cappuccino.

Rishab had excused himself from this eventful ride with some excuse and had wished Natasha luck over the phone. He had handed over a box of her favorite vanilla cream pastries to me, which I had absent mindedly forgotten to carry. By the time I returned home after bidding good bye, they were spoilt and smelly with the pungent smell of rotten eggs. Reminded me of the perfume of the ladies and made me feel sick. It was strange but I missed her already. It made me even sicker and I finally threw up and went to bed after witnessing 6 hours of family farewell drama. One of her aunt’s had fortunately or misfortunately planned to visit her NRI son at the same time, and had made the efforts of changing her flight to that of Natasha’s. This meant, I couldn’t speak to her until she reached the US, and that would be long hours from now. Puke!

A whole week and 14 hours had passed before we could talk to each other. She blamed it on the busy work schedule in the very first week of the project kick-off. She was sweet enough to drop me mail everyday from her office about nothing in particular, just a hi or something equally silly. She said she wanted to save all the stories for when we would talk on the phone.  I noticed her email address now had a US domain – quite impressive I thought to myself. I called her over the first weekend since she left and spent an hour and INR 900 on the call, listening to things that would have been cheaper had they been captured as photographs and mailed across, or described via text over an email or would have just been left out of the conversation. She sounded amused like a kid would be in a toy shop discovering little joys around every corner. Life for her suddenly turned out to be a toy shop. I pictured her vehemently making gestures with her hands, here manicured fingers making random patterns in the cold air that she now lived in, her eyes big like the buttons on the overcoat she was wearing when she visited Times Square and of which she had sent me a picture, as she continued describing the awesome time she was having. When I hung up and the machine flashed the call duration, and my mind involuntarily did a calculation of the call charges.

Week after week the monologues continued, and I felt like I had registered for some low-grade virtual tourism package which had their tours for an hour every weekend. While I should have shared her excitement which had always been so contagious, for the first time in many years that I had known her, I felt like I couldn’t be a part of it. I seemed to be repelling it as strongly as like poles of a magnet would repel each other unless one turns its back to the other. In my case I did. I started going back to my weekend getaways to shoot and drift my mind from the nothingness that surrounded me when I spent long hours on the phone sitting in my room as the world outside offered splendid sights to the eye of the camera that had started to gather dust in my cupboard. She didn’t seem to mind knowing my love for photography and instead mentioned that she was happy I got back to it. She said so in the mail she’d sent as a reply to the text I dropped her stating it as a reason why I couldn’t call her that weekend. I had written it more out of a self-inflicted compulsion than out of a desire to keep her informed. As I traveled and captured it all in images and words, I had my own toy shop moment. The only difference was, I kept the joy to myself. I had met a small bunch of photography enthusiasts at one of Rishab’s party and I decided to join them on their excursions. The weekend calls faded in time and in memory, and I no longer felt the compulsion to inform her about my trips. She too got busy with the project and barely found the time to mail or atleast that’s what she claimed. My passion for photography had a taken a new direction since I met others who shared the love for it and I had started doing freelance photography at weddings, preparing pre-wedding albums and ofcourse at Rishab’s parties. I had started bunking work and hopping between parties and weddings on some days and it gave me a kick! When I finally had made up my mind and let out the news of resigning from work to pursue photography full time, I was expecting horrid reactions. However, none of that happened. I guess too much of Indian cinema had flawed my perception of parents’ expectations from their kids along with many other perceptions including love itself. On her birthday, I called her and broke the news after wishing her a happy and joyous birthday. I thought it was some sort of an oxymoron, but nevertheless it didn’t seem to affect her. In fact it seemed to offer her some relief and in return she broke the news of a permanent posting in the US. This time I was happy for her, even if it was out of my relief of the end of whatever little had remained between us even if it were as little as such birthday calls.

We had a long conversation that day after months, and we hit each other with surprises one after another. We hadn’t spoken about “us” as a couple all these months, except for the first few calls, when we exchanged the standard ‘miss-you’s. Every since then it was always about her or about me, but more often it was about her. Today, we couldn’t help but conclude on what couldn’t have been more obvious with the turn of events in our lives. I had become a traveler and was far from settling down, while she had just started living her American dream. As we parted ways for all “practical” reasons, I knew within and I believe so did she, it was only a temporary matter, maybe a toy-shop moment we both shared together for a while.