A Letter to X

Hi

I don’t know what am I thinking and why am I writing this letter/email to you. It’s been a long time. So long that it kindda stopped aching. I mean not completely… but I guess it doesn’t hurt the same way as it used to. You know like when some part of the body becomes numb…like that…. only that it’s not really a body part. It’s the pain of numbness…..kindda…

For couple of years now we have lived a certain part of our respective lives in two different corners of a web…. I picked my corner…..not that you didn’t pick yours….but it was more like me picking a corner away from you….there was a time when we lived in the same corner….we picked that corner together…..corners get claustrophobic ….too much Love can suffocate….

Sometimes I dream about you….and I see you smiling….just the way you used to….I want to hold you in my arms and kiss you….but ……

When I pass through that restaurant, I kindda feel full …thinking about all our meals there….our corner table, where we sat each time….I wonder if you ever go there now…..I don’t…..

Your photographs sometimes find their way on my desktop…..I don’t know how….I touch them to feel you….then I close my eyes to see you….

Do you ever close your eyes like that to feel me?

What happened between you and me is our story. Everyone has “stories”. Some people sell them and some just tell them. Ours is not to sell, not to talk about. Though we have not talked to each other for couple of years, our lives are still connected. They will be connected for the rest of our lives. There was a time when I couldn’t imagine my life without you….I still can’t…..probably because a part of me still lives in the past. The past is not as dark as the present. Future really doesn’t exist, because I am constantly besieged between past and present.

How you loved to read the letters I wrote to you ….I know you still read them at night when you are alone….. Then I read some letters for you….the letters that I never sent you….I can never understand why I read those letters….I feel like I have committed a sin by not sending those letters to you….they have been written by me…. but they belong to you….. Are they technically still letters …. Even if they never went out in mail….

When I moved away I took some of your stuff with me. Heart works with its own logic…even “things” have certain amount of life…..they don’t just remind me of you, they help me in being away from you. I still celebrate your birthday, my own private party.

When I see you at crossroads sometimes, my soul darts towards you …. Embraces you…. Kisses you….makes love to you….on the crossroads…..I leave my soul there…..amidst its junctures of passion and scorching orgasms……..why should I punish my soul….it has suffered enough……abstinence doesn’t work for soul anyways……I wonder….I do wonder a lot…..

The time that I have been away from you I have learnt a lot of things too. I learnt about my mistakes. Not that I really care about them…..I would have still made those mistakes… because those mistakes got me closer to you. And then there were your mistakes…..or were they again my mistakes…that created the distance between us. Would I go back in time and change things?….a part of me wants to change it…. But then…I really don’t think I want things to change….the way I love you now….I never loved before…. I was selfish. I still am.

in the balcony

We live different lives and we also live our lives in different rooms/houses/buildings. How does it feel to go back to your first home? Well you need to feel it to know it.

Yesterday I went to Kalkaji (DDA Flats) with mummy and saw the flat which was my first home. Mom wanted to go and meet her old friend Baby (I know too many Punjabi Aunties called Baby). Though she lives in Mumbai she was here visiting her father. Of course I was a toddler when we stayed there, but there was a weird familiarity with that place. I felt very comfortable there. I don’t know ….

It seemed like a metaphorical womb. It was strange to be there after so many years. But for my mom it was a lot more… She seemed thrilled…excited …I dunno…. I mean I was excited and all, but I had nothing to go back to…..you know like when I visited our house in Agra almost after 12 years (or my school in Agra) I had memories…. And there were so many of them, in all different colors and stories…. So much of “nostalgia”….

When she was standing outside, in the balcony, I swear I saw her trying to do away with her tears. I guess a lot was going on in her mind at that moment…memories of Vinny growing up and then me as a new born baby. All that time she spent alone in that flat, all the time she might have spent waiting for Papa.

It would have been too much of “nostalgia” for her; it was that time when we didn’t have a phone (Not that she could have called back home too often any which ways: STD Calls were too expensive back in 80’s). I know for sure that Papa must have been late everyday. Damn…that time must have been quite tough for her …all alone in this new city with us little devils... I guess that’s when she became friends with Baby Aunty and got cozy with the rest of her family too….I know, I am what I am because of what happened in her life….I wouldn’t have been here, if some other man would have been in her life. I mean it would have been some other damn sperm. But then it wouldn’t have been about me (it’s not about me anyways right now)…. How her life would have been then? Happier? It’s hard to say…..very hard indeed!!

While Baby Aunty was in the Kitchen preparing Chai, Mummy was in the balcony….. Perhaps in the flashback living through those seconds, minutes, hours, days she spent waiting for Daddy. She had no idea about the other woman then. Now, the fact that the only man she ever “loved” disgraced that relationship, sucks. She hates him now.

Be it a man or a woman, everyone wants to cherish each moment of their love life and take it to their grave. But mom really doesn’t have any of those memories…..it really doesn’t matter that we are doing pretty good as a family now (with Papa gone)…..She probably stands in the balcony thinking about all those years she spent raising three kids ....without much help from her husband. I wanted to go out in the balcony and ask her what she was thinking about…. But I just couldn’t….I don’t know why…..