RELEASED ---- FROM LOVE TO LOVE

She lit the cigarette…her fourth in about two hours. She only smoked because she knew it hurt him, basically, it was the only thing he seemed to react to. A tear traced its journey from the end of her eye as she took a deep puff inside; she’d grown immune to the taste, bitter as it was, yet she relished it, for she knew the smell made him take notice of her.

‘Notice of me’; she shook her head. What was it she wanted from a relationship? Were the movies reflecting there charismatic sets in her desires? Is it so bad to ask for love? Another puff. Her relationships have always gone haywire, what is it that she’s looking for? She expected words of love, yes she did; she also wanted some time alone with him, she wanted him to tell her how he felt about her, all those things that she’d read and seen and heard. Was it too much to ask for? As she burst crying, she took a deep puff, letting the smoke in the air accompanied with bouts of cough. Why do people do not feel the need to tell each other that they cared and loved after a while? And when does everything and everyone becomes taken for granted? Was she trying too hard, or was he finding a way out?

Way out? The words echoed in her mind, being louder than her cough bouts. What did they say about committing oneself to love and all that concerned with it? What a fool she has been, she cursed herself aloud…No , these stupid commitments are not forever, they are used only as an additional measure to make one loose stupid minds to their hearts, and everything starts looking different. Or maybe it simply puts to rest all mushy mushy things, signaling that we are on a serious tread, we will be together all our lives, we share a house and a bed, and that’s all. Who has the time to make you feel loved everyday? You are loved, once said, must last a life time. Then why can’t she be like him? Why is she restless? Why does she kiss him every morning she wakes up, while he seems to dwell away in his sleep? Why does she unfailingly wait for him in the bedroom so that he would make her sleep in his arms, when she knows his preference is the television? Why does a feeling of hurt crosses her mind when she sees a couple hand in hand on the streets, when she couldn’t remember when did they last walked a few miles purposelessly? Why did her friends open love notes for each other fill her mind with exasperation? NO, he doesn’t need a wayout, SHE DID.

She pressed the cigarette butt on the ash tray, wiped her tears and dashed towards the mirror. The kajal seemed to be everywhere except her eyes, her face looked red and bleak, her eyes radiated loneliness and she was clearly a failed example. No, this can’t be, she thought to herself, I love him the way I do, and am not dependent on his love, but on mine. They are gonna be together, only that she wouldn’t be pressing him notice, she would herself make her unnoticeable to him, for she’d immerse in world that she will create for himself, where he needn’t be there in person, but only as her thoughts. She’d still kiss him mornings, yet not expect to be kissed back. She’d do everything for him that she will feel right, yet never blink an eye when he’d suggest otherwise.

A nice hot shower released her body from the pain. She’d not cried anymore. She threw the pack of cigarettes in the dustbin, and simply got on with her official assignment.


**** After dinner, she wished him good night and went to bed. He probably expected her to call upon, she didn’t. She finished her read, and slept peacefully, knowing he will be by her side when she wakes up the next morning. ****


She’d released herself in letting him go.
She’d freed herself from the expectations she had from him

.


It wasn’t easy, she still gets desperate sometimes, but then she hasn’t lost her love, it keeps her going – with or without him.

I became Strong, when you set me Free.
And I became even Stronger;
When I LET you GO.

The AfterMath.......

She pushed her eyes close, but sleep would still deceive her. Allegations, and accusations, thrown to her hit her like burning arrows, cutting through her, making her all the more vulnerable, so much so, that she knew sleep would win, another battle. To put in other words, she would loose, yet again.
She wondered who started it off in the first place. And then why did she let out her deepest fears and secrets to them? Alcohol dashed with emotions is a dangerous thing, she’d learnt it long before, but probably forgotten the lesson.
God, let me sleep…Today….
I will deal with this tomorrow.
She’d faced her biggest fears today. Not even once did she let her eyes off the speakers who took their turns to tell her what and how things should be done. Tricky games, they played on and on, and each passing second, her past came haunting up to her, biting its teeth into her soft flesh, making her shed a tear here and there. They knew her no more than what she knew them , yet they had created something in their perceptions that was probably unlike her. She wished someone would stop, somewhere, surely, none of them would breach a level. But no, they did. What started off as a stupid sounding game, turned into a reality checkpoint show. She had failed someone, maybe repeatedly, and she dreaded to hear things about her, that were unfortunately true, yet, superficial. As she pulled herself close, she heard them arguing over her circumstances, present and past, and the irony was that she wasn’t a part of those discussions about her. ‘Did they know my part of the story, or they just pulled all the strings together on their own to make bow and flung burning arrows at her?’ Did she smile? She pulled up all her courage in the world, and though she tried hard to forget the night never did happen, somewhere, some words, stung her like a cobra’s bite, poisoning her entire self, her entire being, questioning her existence, and possibly her deeds.
Humans are a strange race. For I, am aware of what and where I lack, but I never prefer it to come to me by anyone else. Not in a night like this.
Someone said they wished to see me and him happy, forever, (though I doubt the integrity of the word ‘forever’, it more or less implies ‘fictitious’); yet the sincerity of the speaker drifted her mind away from the use of the chosen word. Someone else wished the same, but whether it was the alcohol or something else, that she possibly couldn’t understand fully, he wanted her to quit, quit something that could harm her, “No cigarettes ever, no nicotine in any form”. She wondered what made him say so. She wondered if she needed so many approvals to light a butt. To take a puff, deep, so deep that she would cough for the next half an hour. Well, she knew it was the most polite of their ways to say that, yet somewhere it hurt her. Someone mentioned her being way low than what had been expected, after they’d heard my stories. Stories. Like what? Her eyes searched for a pair that would have said ‘You are perfect, perfect in all ways’. No, this imaginary set of eyes didn’t exist. She smiled. Someone mentioned the hardships that lay in the front, taking care to view the situation from one angle, yet making statements on her. Stating, how hard life must have been to her. How long she’d been smiling, she knew not. Did she need that appreciation certificate?
Beds. I always change sides when sleep deceives me, thinking perhaps on one of the entourages, it will enter my eyes thinking I am someone else. And that side would be preferred the next night. And the next, till sleep gets my game, and then I would explore the bed yet again.
She felt the need to clarify her actions, and justify her steps, right or wrong. Why did she need the approval of others, she couldn’t really make out. Whether it was alcohol or was it her deep rooted hurt, she didn’t know, but when she heard that voice taking her name, in the most informal manner, stating that ‘I’d be forever around’; she blurted. As I said, the word, though fictitious, associates with itself having dreadful impacts, perhaps like this one. She said something he never liked hearing, just the way she didn’t like mentioning it. Something dark, something rave, yet something that was the reason of her being here. She went on, after he was done, and let out her story, the way it was to her. Scary, torturous, and uncertain, lost in the unknown, amongst the known. There was no need. She didn’t need to. Infact, she shouldn’t have let it out.
Justifications are a waste of time, and emotions. They call for unwanted bouts of self appraisal, and self reprimandations. Pity. I hadn’t still learnt her lessons. Perhaps, there were more chapters to be unfolded.
Just after she spat out, she felt naked. She wanted to escape, away, and her wounds drew fresh cuts. The stupid after remarks felt like salt, only making the pain much more unbearable. She wanted herself, with her, in the perfectly imperfect world of her own. She screamed she wanted to go, for she knew they wouldn’t let her, not at this hour of the night. The night was almost dead, and her fears had come to life yet again, mocking her from all possible corners, and the only way they could do it in a callous way was being with her, alone and vulnerable. ‘My fate is such, that my fears will rearrange the chemistry of the universe, so that I could be cut, bled, and stung’. She was home.
Switch side, I said to myself, tears didn’t scare me anymore, what scared me was something inside of me. I begged sleep to envelope me, and like everyone else, it had its conditions. ‘I will, enter your eyes through the sides’, it said, ‘but the centre of the canvas will be painted in the colors of the night’. Devious. I know.

The Beads and the Threads.....

My life is like a thread,
Holding together different beads,
The thread is made of feelings,
And decides on how the beads are going to cling.

Some are vibrant, and sharp.
Some seem exceptionally pretty,
Some I have lost already lost,
Some will cease to be with me.

The beads and the thread,
Make my life what it is,
Whether scorching suns will shine on me,
Or I will have the pleasures of a cool breeze.

There are wars of aggression,
Or sometimes, plain confusion,
There are moments of passion,
Or severe criticism.

Each thought, each act,
Unfolds a new chapter in my life,
A new beginning, or an old end,
A daughter, a sister, a mother, a wife.

Some chapters are long, others shorter,
Some tragic, others of love,
But are engraved in my heart,
The chapters and various stages.

The beads are the puppets,
The thread, binding scripts,
Somebody directs, maybe circumstances,
And I do the lipsings.

And trust me,
For I very well know,
That I am nothing more then,
Another bead, in another thread…..

Changing Equations,.,.,

No, this isn’t about maths, but about a more complex subject: Relationships. It’s astounding to discover that the word itself is so much multifaceted, complicated and baffling that at a moment when one thinks he’s got it, he fails miserably in managing it. It goes simple. My best friends, since school, turned a bit stranger while I got into twenties, and by the time I got married, I felt they don’t know me at all. We talk often, say about once in a week or so, but the talks are limited to daily routine or a major problem that one of us might be facing. I was the first one amongst the three of us to get a job, to fall in love, be engaged and then to get married. Now that the two of us have got married, are working, and have taken to new responsibilities, the bond somehow seems to be growing weak. We don’t call each other often, sometimes we don’t even feel like dialing the numbers, and we don’t share much anymore. My best friends of 8 years, people without whom it was difficult to imagine life, bonds that seemed stronger than anything, are not sweet anymore, if not sour. Equations have changed. New people new responsibilities and possibly new friends. Derivatives are still the same, at the end of the day; I have managed to crib about almost everything that isn’t happening as I would want it to, in my life. The people have changed, times have changed, so have I.

This change is true of almost any possible relation one can think of. We are mostly drawn to each other not because of similar problems, or tastes, but because all our life we want to hold on someone who can sympathize with us on how much hardships we are facing in our lives. We share, not because we want to, but because we totally depend on others to tell us whether we are right, or wrong, whether we should or we shouldn’t, whether we can or we cannot; the list could be endless. Think about your Mom, about the times you thought she was the closest to you, to the times you came to a conclusion that she simply doesn’t understand. Or maybe your brothers, sisters, cousins, or even people you fell in love with. Once I passed out of college, and got to work, I realized that I shared, or cribbed, or asked from advice from a few colleagues whom I happened to like because of some or other quality that I didn’t possess. At a moment when I would gain a closeness factor with one of them, I would pour my heart, like they would. This would refresh me, rejuvenate me, and instill in me a new ‘ME’. Now that I have relocated to a new place, I would soon need new people to decide on new equations.

And then I say, I am still in touch with the best people I came across in my life. In touch, just touching their lives from a far off corner, as my equations have now changed.

Truth certainly sounds bitter!!