25th February 2012
Mumbai
Maya,
It is only in my soul’s interior where you could have been created. How else could you echo my every thought before I uttered it? When those glass jars fell and broke, I could only watch in wonder how the colors merged and slowly became the exact shade of your skin today. When you spoke, I knew I had heard those words before. I wrote all of them on my favorite typewriter, the one with a few keys missing and fading ink. You do know that nothing you do or say can surprise me; for I have written your prose in my poetry. The calluses on my fingers will tell you the same story.
Like a patchwork blanket, I made you from forgotten pieces and incomplete bits of what once had been and with my needle & thread, I stitched all the pieces together for one good night’s sleep.
Everyone I met before you was a draft version, only a partial eclipse. But you, you were the darkness of the eclipse and the halo of light silently shining from behind the darkness, all at once. And my delusions were the only way to witness you without being blinded.
Always,
Anara
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Anara - A gorgeous mess of curls, a chaotic landscape of laughter laced with wine and hopeless romanticism. Having grown up on an overdose of fairytales, she only naturally believed that love was the answer. From time to time she forgot the question but you couldn’t blame her – it was not easy growing up questioning your sensibilities. Did she understand at age ten why it was such an intriguing thought to kiss her best friend? Could she fathom at twelve why watching Tara change into her night dress was strangely exciting? Could be the hormones, she thought at fourteen. Definitely the hormones, claimed a seventeen year old Anara.
And then came along the quintessential college sweetheart – the guitar playing, intense conversationalist. Such carefully careless charm had he. When he strummed those strings, every girl stopped to stare. But he was searching for something deeper, something intense. Much like himself. If one were to define his style, it would need a genre of its own – the splendid morbid. Intense music, a dark sense of humor and shy eyes, all went perfectly with his genre. He noticed her, not noticing him, on many occasions. At eighteen, and maybe even at eighty, one often wants what one can’t have. In his own subtle ways, he tried to get her attention and once when he had the chance, he told her how her eyes told a story he wanted to hear. Anara laughed that laugh of hers and felt a rush, much unprecedented.
A few weeks of stolen glances and corridor conversations later, Yusuf gathered the courage to ask Anara for one evening on one Sunday. What they would do, where they would go, he wouldn’t tell. Curious as she was, Anara looked forward to her surprise rendezvous. It wasn’t everyday that a boy like Yusuf would want to listen to stories that her eyes had to tell. Sunday saw Anara at the planetarium, staring through a telescope at constellations which looked even more splendid than they sounded. Add to that a supremely attractive boy, as supremely attracted to you. One kiss and Anara knew what she probably knew all along.
In the months and years that followed, Anara knew she needed a confidante, someone who wouldn’t judge her for feeling how she did. She knew she needed a release before the fear & confusion consumed her. Maybe one kiss with one boy wasn’t enough so she tried on a few more for size but always ended the same way she started – with a void, unwilling to be filled and a heartbeat unwilling to be skipped.
Tara and she had been childhood friends, the kinds parents had to forcefully separate because it was bed time. The kinds who began looking similar because they spent so much time together.
Tara was a gentle soul, like a moonlit night fading behind midnight clouds; Tara was the nurturer and Anara the vagabond. No wonder they were like missing pieces to each other’s puzzle. On one of their usual post dinner walks, Anara told Tara everything – how she would never forget their kiss as children, how the lips of Yusuf and all those who followed did nothing for her, how she found herself more & more attracted to Tara and didn’t know what to do or how to deal with all these feelings. She spoke for her so long that she probably didn’t realize when Tara stopped listening. Teary eyed, she looked over at her best friend only to find tears streaming down her cheeks as well. She had found her refuge, thought Anara, her soul asylum. Anara lost her best friend that day, but in the shards of that moment, she had found herself.
Self discovery can be a brutally painful yet beautiful experience, much like getting a tattoo. There were days when she felt like a square piece in a circular puzzle. It’s a long journey, from acceptance to love and to forgetting, even longer.
It wasn’t the typical beginning. But there was nothing typical about Anara so her story too, couldn’t have been. One of the very few dating sites she seldom browsed through showed a new member - a thirty year old female, living in New York City, interested in men / women. No pictures, none at all. But just seeing Murakami on her list of favorite authors was enough. One innocent message wouldn’t hurt, thought the usually cautious Anara. What ensued was a witty repartee of messages, each one more interesting than the last. Closer to dawn, Anara slept with a smile on her face and her phone on her chest.
In Maya, Anara saw so much of herself that it was surreal. Maya loved wine. And dogs. She loved travelling and grape mint hookahs. Conversations never ended and in that magical space, time zones ceased to exist. The nine and a half hour gap between Mumbai & New York disappeared as both Anara & Maya spent every waking hour talking to each other in any way they could. At work, it was cryptic one line emails which only they could comprehend. While travelling it was the phone. In bad network zones, it was messages. They left no medium of communication unexplored, all within the space of a couple of weeks. The first time they saw each other over Skype, one was smitten, the other mesmerized. Conversation was sparse only because words were inadequate.
Maya was to visit India in May, a whole four months away. Love is a strange creature; it erases time zones but elongates time in itself. And soon even six hours of Skype conversation just didn’t feel good enough and staring at Anara’s pretty little diamond nose pin inches away on the screen didn’t feel close enough. On an impulse, Maya threw a fantastical idea at Anara. “I cannot wait to see you, Anara. Just meet me already; meet me half way across the world. Just say yes”. At 3:00 am, Anara made the best decision she ever had and six days later she was holding tickets to Istanbul in her hands.
In the days that followed, Smitten and Mesmerized were just that. They promised to write a letter to each other every week for 6 weeks until they were to meet at the Istanbul airport. It was after all, a classic fairytale - ink on paper with a whiff of perfume.
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16th January 2012
Mumbai
M,
I’ve never had a problem with words; until now. How do I even begin to describe the landscape of my mind? How do I put into words this unfathomable, indescribable feeling?
Maybe it’s like looking out of an airplane window at three in the morning, when everyone else around you is asleep and seeing the night sky studded with so many stars, you wonder where they even came from. In that moment, you feel so insignificant and yet so alive. Insignificant because what you behold is so wondrous, so fantastic, it’s unreal. And you, a tiny person in one tiny universe gets to witness it. You look around and everyone else is asleep. It’s just you and the stars. You are that night sky.
Or maybe it’s like getting lost in a crowded market. All of seven years old and lost. It’s the pounding heart, the searching eyes, the fear of not being found. It’s like scanning the faces in the crowd with every blink of my teary eyes, looking for a familiar face. It’s my heart sinking when it gets darker, weary with all the searching and crying. It’s sitting down on the curb, almost hopeless, face in my hands, begging the universe to let me find you. And then you find me. You are that feeling.
No, maybe it’s like trying to write a story. For hours I look at the paper, untouched. The ink in my pen, aching to flow. It’s the pile of crumpled paper at my feet, with my unfinished story. It’s the desperation borne by my inability to find the perfect words. Endless hours of arguing with myself, waiting to be inspired. It’s that moment when I think I should give up but my heart doesn’t quite agree, so I give myself one last chance. It’s the hours that follow, the incredible ease with which words come to me and flow into one another, weaving the exact story I had in mind. It is the sweet sleep after that, my ink stained cheek on the pillow. You are that masterpiece.
Or maybe it’s like a walk on the beach at dawn – and I’m the only person in sight giving company to the sun, lazily waking up from its slumber. It’s the cool sand under my feet and the sounds of life around me – sleepy waves kissing my toes good morning. This, what I feel today, is a bottle, washed ashore on the beach. A dull green bottle, most definitely a wine bottle, cork intact. It’s the romantic enchantment of finding a scroll of paper inside the bottle and in that moment, knowing that love has a way of finding you. You are that message in a bottle.
You, M, are not one of the feelings I am trying so hard to describe, for all of them are merely a fraction of you. And I know that when I see you, all the other pieces will start coming together, perfectly aligned like a jigsaw puzzle. I promise that for every piece, I will write you a letter, just like this one.
Always,
A
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23rd January 2012
New York
A,
I know you're fast asleep right now but I just had to write this.
If I was there right now, I'd wake up to find your arms around me and my head resting on your cheek. If I was there right now, I would open my eyes and smile at you - deep in sleep, inches away from me. I would kiss you gently so that I don't wake you. And then I would slowly get out of bed, drape the sheets around me and find a pen and paper. I would write you a letter, of longing and of happiness. Of patience & the prize. I would tell you how much I miss you even in those few hours when we're sleep.
I would tell you that even though 'words' and I have had a long standing love affair , they desert me when it comes to you; that the closest I can come to expressing how I feel for you is not through a word, but through a sigh, a smile & a slight nod of my head. Maybe I can’t find the right words because there are just too many of them flooding my senses or maybe there just aren't any perfect words for 'this'. If you, in your dreams, can find the words, tell me all about them when you wake up. Until then I will write you a letter you can read with your morning coffee.
M
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28th January 2012
Mumbai,
M,
In endless words and constant beeps,
Discovering you, discovering me,
Never mind the lost sleep.
A dream, maybe that’s what she could be.
The intensity of impulse, that leap of faith,
Someone like you, so much like me. Soul mates.
And now we were counting down the days.
Istanbul - Infinite memories to be made
Twelve thousand five hundred and forty one,
I would walk every mile, the last few I would even run.
An emptiness so incredible, a heart so breakable.
But the longing to hold you, insatiable.
In your ways and in your words,
You bridge the gap that hurts the most.
A midnight bell, a note from you.
In you, my love, my every dream came true.
Always,
A
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7th February 2012
New York
A,
Things I love about you...
1. Your voice when you've just woken up. It's like sipping hot chocolate on a cold morning - delicious and warm. What would I love more? Kissing your sleepy words.
2. That you remember little things about me and my life. It's a wonderful feeling to know that more than anyone else; you probably know every detail of my life. Well, pretty much everything. (I'd like to believe that there is some semblance of mystery left.)
3. How you awkwardly try to change the topic when you are out or at work and I talk dirty! I know a part of you does want to know more but you realize very quickly that asking about my day's plan is a good way to distract me.
4. I love that even though you are thousands of miles away, with you, I hardly ever feel insecure. And when I do, I act like a spoilt puppy but you are good with puppies.
I love that there are just so many things I love about you. I cannot wait to see you.
M
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16th February 2012
Mumbai
M,
We are six days from seeing each other for the first time. To travel halfway across the world, to meet someone I have never met, all alone, is far too adventurous even for my wandering-soul standard! All I know is that this feels right and just the thought of you does to me what lamps do to a dark room. It’s surreal to admit that I have fallen in love with someone when I don’t even know what their skin feels like, what their hair smells like, what they look like when they wake up or how they sound the moment before they break down and cry. I want to know everything about you.
Do you want to know all there is to know about me?
I’m black & white & nothing in between.
I’m the winter ice in your summer drink,
A message in a bottle, scrawled in ink.
Like marble floors, I will soothe your soul,
I will take the pieces and make you whole.
Now that you know me, you know that even my prose is poetry. You know that while some people collect stamps and coins, I collect words. I hope you also know that when we meet, I am going to want to touch you every now & then just to make sure you are real because I always believed women like you were just a myth, a concept. But then you came along and challenged everything I had ever believed. Maybe that’s what love is – an anti-thesis of all our beliefs.
Six days!
Always,
A
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What was louder – the sound of the 737 engine roaring to a slow stop or her heart thumping with excitement? Anara couldn’t tell the difference anymore. Her flight arrived one hour before Maya’s and they were to meet at the exit gate of the airport terminal. As if in a stupor, Anara collected her luggage, cleared immigration, all the while looking around just in case Maya’s flight had landed before time. She knew Maya’s flight details and revised them in her head over & over, just to calm her excited nerves. Here she was – all alone in a foreign country, thousands of miles away, to meet a woman she knew for two months. My own fairytale, she thought as she smiled to herself.
Minutes turned to hours as hope turned to confusion, panic & eventual despair. What had happened to Maya? Her flight was on schedule – every passenger had arrived & exited. Maya hadn’t messaged before boarding the flight but that was because she was caught up in last minute meetings. She was surely going to come. Wasn’t she?
Like stars on a clouded night, there was no Maya. Anara waited, like a lost child, wanting to be found. Twelve hours later, she boarded a flight back to Mumbai. Numb and dazed, as she reached Mumbai and switched on her phone she saw a familiar name on her screen and words which broke her heart, splinter by splinter “I’m sorry. I hope you will be able to forgive me as it is unlikely that I may be able to do so myself. I couldn’t do this. I didn’t have the courage to leave behind the life I should have told you about. But maybe I was a blue print for better things to come your way. Forgive me.”
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25th February 2012
Mumbai
Maya,
It is only in my soul’s interior where you could have been created….
