AFTERNOONS

(image: deviantart)

To

S and S

Afternoons are great for hard-edged conversations. Even better than absurd, miserly-short night time because by then, most people like to surround themselves with their own unexplainably mildewed, dark thoughts and either build a cocoon out of these, or strangulate themselves with these. That’s when they begin to fade away like objects in a sepia-toned photograph. Nobody can see clearly. And it works like so because that’s the rule. You’re always the strongest every morning, the weakest every night.

Happy bunny in the morning, weeping wolf at night.

The afternoons are somewhere in-between. That’s when life is not being anything but its real faceless, self. Things are as they are, not as they ‘seem’ in the revolving axis spinning uncontrollably in the back of your skull. Nothing is popping out in technicolour, all wild and exaggerated, or soggy like wet paper, mild and subdued. It’s just what it is, with an acute sandpapery roughness to it. Very business-like, actually. And my finest, most precious conversations with both of you began on afternoons like that—one on a decidedly rainy afternoon, the other on a confused pendulum, swinging between unbearably sunny and very pleasant. One began with a notebook and a writing challenge hurled at me out of the blue, the other with a sense of comforting randomness. On one occasion, I managed to write the most wonderful short story I’ve ever seen myself writing. And on the other, things escalated quickly from finding faults in others to an absolutely unforeseen discussion about the politics of losing one’s virginity. But I like the fact that we spun out our own stories on each occasion. That made it all worthwhile, as if we had accomplished something.

Accomplished a lot, actually.

You’re both so different but that only reminds me of the two faces of a coin. One is short, the other tall. One has beach hair, the other has something of a bipolar element clasping onto her roots. One couldn’t bother with a bad joke and would straight away call you out for it, while the other could sway in your ocean of lameness without making you feel a penny more awkward than necessary. So I flip one side and it is the tail, flip it the other way and it becomes the head. In my head, though, this is very much like trying to separate an egg from its yolk, unsuccessfully.

To one of you, I could spill out the greatest compliment in the world and it would still boomerang back in my face, sounding like a pithy insult. Maybe it’s the way I articulate my thoughts. They are still sepia-toned, confused and unclear at daytime, so you better forgive me. And in the other one of you two, I can sometimes see a reflection of my own indecisiveness. It’s comforting. There is a quintal of heavy advice, frothy feel-good messages (that we may or may not believe in ourselves) and awkward conversations floating between the three of us. You have got to remember this when the current phase of our lives is over and lost in a whisper too:

We make a weird triangle.

But I wouldn’t change it for the world. Because I know that ever since the day that I’ve learnt to articulate myself, I’ve been just a ‘nobody’ floating about in the universe, looking for meaningful conversations. That changed with you two. Simply talking, or expressing ourselves in whichever, however many ways, was the most liberating aspect of our souls clanging together on strange afternoons in the college. Clanging souls make noise. But there is so much honesty in that familiar yarn of comfort. So much to say and to feel and to keep on coming back to, on a stupid, lonesome day.

I don’t know about you, but I would love for us to spend another afternoon together, no matter how many years may have passed, by then, in this cold vacuum called life.

Yours truly

WHAT GOES AROUND

To

S



We have known each other for more than a decade. And we have known nothing. We have lived like the best of friends and the worst of enemies. Sometimes like two peas in a pod. Sometimes like venomous vipers in the bushes. But as far as this futile venting goes, although ten years sounds like a very long time, it’s like we have not lived at all. For all practical reasons, we are too young to border on the vast, absurd dome of experience.

Yet.

But soon we will be.

And what happens then? There is something so wrong with where a sense of nothingness leads our rusting memories. For example, when we do get to that dome of experience with a few strands of grey hair (hopefully) left on our scalps, what will we even think about each other’s names scribbled on a sad, yellowed scrap of notebook paper from fifth grade. Or, will we even ‘think’ about each other?

Maybe.

Maybe, not.

Though I hope it is the former and not the latter, there is always that nagging, yet disturbingly familiar feeling which whispers quietly to me, and says: oceans, sands, time zones and every random thing in between that goes around in the world, as it pirouettes on its axis like a fat ballerina, will only serve to separate us more. Pencils with attached erasers, fancy lunch boxes, all that Disney magic, water bottle wars, music from the 2000’s crashing into an EDM whirlpool etc. is already in the past. The stuff of the ‘future’ has arrived, and neither of us can decipher it. But it is here. And just like Disney fizzled out from our new adult lives, you and I grow fuzzy in each other’s memories. Something changed about the way you do your hair. Something changed about the shape of my glasses. And somewhere in the middle of such trivialities, we didn’t quite catch up with each other as perfectly as we imagined, as we once very well could. But we might have told ourselves otherwise and cozied up in self-reassurance.

So we aren’t connected, no matter what Facebook or Whatsapp or an emoji tells us in order to deceive us into complacency about the present. We just are not. It will never work out. Because we are not our older selves anyway, and time cannot be frozen and reheated like last night’s dinner. I prefer what we were though, absurd as it sounds, since what has been has been, and cannot be revived. I preferred it when our conversations slid into each other’s seamlessly, when memorable quotes slipped off the top of our heads, when spontaneous laughter just poured into a gamut of more silliness without prior warning at the end of a tiresome day… Back when… Back when…



But because we are the sort to be swayed by letters and specimens of bold, handsome cursive handwriting, every word hurled meaningfully ‘online’, comes across meaningless.

And just like that, I know now we’ve changed...


Yours truly

TUMBLEWEED

Memories don’t fit like a hand in a sequined glove. There are no shut drawers or watertight compartments or cartons to capture Memory A, as opposed to the bleak and distant Memory B. We’ll never even know why A weighs more than B. In fact, both of them could be as different as chalk and cheese, and still be engaged in a rapturous pillow fight on the mental landscape at exactly the same time as a fortune teller sits describing your non-existent future, while you stare at the blank, harsh daylight of the present, right outside your window. Sometimes you ‘choose’ A over B—you ‘allow’ a certain flimsy memory regarding a sad, broken street urchin smiling across the coconut-water counter for no reason, to weigh heavier than the traumatic memory of an exam. Something will come up and you’ll forget the urchin again. He’ll be gone in an instant, replaced by something more painful. Perhaps the memory of a horrible meal at an overly-expensive café, overlooking (not some beautiful Riviera) but the broken roads of Satya clogged with stinking sewage water in the monsoon. So it happens. And it’s okay; we’ll move on. We’ll forget the memories A and B, but not quite in the same way. Their shapes and sizes will remain impressed indelibly on our prefrontal cortex or whatever. Is this why some things are painful to talk about—all because of our dashed gamut of ‘memories’?

The only constant is that there are no rules.

But it makes sense. Makes sense all the time.

I think that human beings forget nothing, simply because we have the power to pick and choose. We ‘choose’ to text someone, or to not do it. To call someone or to not pick up the phone. To read motivational stuff online or to stay away from social media. We choose to give importance to some people and then, pretending to ‘forget’ them, we ‘move on’. But the dashed, obstinate memories remain where they ought to be. And when that memory A or B takes over, we can scarcely look at ourselves in the mirror and lie. We could forget that memory, but not the shape and size and feel of it; that we were the ‘creators’ of such a memory in the first place.

And that’s why nothing is the same when you or I ‘choose’ to ignore the trivial flashing of our phone’s screen. Nothing is quite alright.

(Image credits: abscfreepics)