Twenty Rupees

I still don’t know why we decided to take that walk.


It wasn’t rainy. It wasn’t winter. There is no winter here anyway. It wasn’t the calm, cold October month. It was hot, sultry and sweaty. Summer making its obvious presence felt on our armpits, and our foreheads, where little beads of perspiration pondered sliding down our noses.


Am not sure if we talked that day. I remember sly glances and colour on cheeks. Yellow dupatta and a bright green slawar kameez, a white tee and Bata chappals. But nothing of conversations. Funny how a few days ago when friendship was the term that had defined our relationship, words would never stop, tumbling over each other in their rush.


But now friendship was lost. And in the first walk together to nowhere, there was something else. And we were smiling all the while.


It was she who wanted the watermelon. I watched her as she ate. It was as if even watermelons loved her. Or perhaps I was too lost to really think of the careless way in which she bit into the pinkness of the melon.


Two brown seeds were sticking to somewhere between the tiny crook where the lip starts and what you would perhaps refer to as the chin. I looked at them (and her). My hand rose hesitantly, fingers wanting to brush the seeds off, wondering how it would be to feel her skin.

My hand must have just begun the sojourn to her face.


“20 roopa chetta” (that will be 20 Rs.)


She brushed the seeds away herself. My hands found two ten rupee notes in my pocket.

Rain Clouds

You told me rains were tears of the clouds. You told me you wore bangles because you liked to listen to them talk to each other. You told me that you loved the way the beach sand sticks on your soles. You told me you loved to make patterns in the sand. You said nothing beat coffee. You always insisted on drawing a smiley face with the ketchup bottle on your plate after you were done. You liked waving at trains. You loved lying on your back and watching the clouds till the night swallowed the sun, and you could see them no more.

I walked with you in the rain, because I knew you put wet towels on my forehead the next day, if I fell sick. I bought you bangles, smiling at the way you listened to them talk. We walked on the beach together, letting the wet sand tickle our toes. I took pictures of all that you drew on the sand, and pinned them up on my wall. I insisted on lying on my back with you watching the clouds, while I studied the way your lips moved while you spun stories about clouds.

I knew you hated early mornings, preferred white roses to the red ones, I knew you washed your hair with coconut oil and amla, that liked your coffee with more milk and less sugar, I knew the way you laughed, gasping for breath, and clutching at your sides. I have seen you cry, the way your lips quivered and the tears always came out of your left eye first. I knew the way your hair always came undone, strands that kept falling into your eyes. I knew the way you held my hands and squealed when you were excited. I knew the way there would always be silences between us, where you’d be near, yet so far, and I waited for you to come back to me. I knew the shops you went to, the food you ate, the worst coffee you’d ever had, the worst fear of yours, your biggest dream to sail on a yacht alone, with Orhan Pamuk and Marquez for company. I knew the books you loved, the way you could never like Howard Roark, I knew the passwords to your e-mail accounts, the combinations to your number lock, I knew how hard you tried to learn to whistle...

I thought I knew everything about you. I thought we were perfect.

But I never knew that you never loved me. Until you left.

The animatedness of inanimation

I guess life has been opened and closed simultaneously for me. There are new things everyday and also the old things. There is nothing happening on some days, while a lot, though nothing particularly significant (usually) that happens.

It is nice to think about someone all the time, miss him,his touch, his smile, but also miss a lot of inanimate animate things like a missed call, a message, a scrap. Sometimes I think it’s so worthless to be in this state that I am in right now. This over invasion of inanimate things in my life. But then, there is no other animation that happens. Then again, if not for these inanimations, I am at a loss as to where and what I’d be doing.

It seems perfectly natural to miss one person constantly, think about what he would be doing, which side of the bed he sleeps on, how much tooth paste he puts on his tooth brush, the amount of stubble he might be growing now. It also seems incredulous that I spend my time on this. But again, to come back to what I was saying, it all seems so natural.

If I’d chose to do something other than the ones that I’ve mentioned prior, it shocks me that there would be nothing. True, I might write, I might paint, but there is this constant thought process going on somewhere, almost involuntarily about just one person.

Sometimes I think obsession is bad. But then again, it’s not so bad at all. Is it?

I enjoy my state of mind usually, and I just don’t mean the “good” state of mind. I also mean the not so good, and the worse. But what happens is that the thoughts which i enjoy in these frames of mind differ. The whole missing part which seemed so romantic a short while ago seems all so wrong and so melodramatic and oppressive. And i get into animated discussions with myself. This however ends in a lot of inanimation.

So there, life- and the animatedness of inanimation.