I think that there is a moment in each of our lives when we realize that we are in fact our father’s son or mother’s daughter. It is a shock because most of us go through life fighting our hereditary, fighting against reason, biology or most frustratingly fate to prove our basic individuality. But the truth is there for those who wish to examine. Little tells hidden in doodle writing, photographs caught in a certain light or just the way we like our coffee.
It happened to me when I caught myself staring at a still moment in time, slightly withered yet fresh with emotion; a photograph of my young father. The stance, the swagger, the paunch, the gorgeous blowing hair, the faintly askance smile (ok I exaggerate but you get what I am saying right?). if it weren’t for out-of-style pencil thin moustache it was me, in a foreign land amongst strangers looking back at me.
(As an aside I admit that the photograph resembles Amol Palekar more strongly than me.)
So is it then that the physical similarities wound deeper to personality flaws. I do get my quick temper from him but I have learnt to control, stem and divert it towards more fruitful malice and Machiavellian paybacks.
But the weight of being a father’s son does lie deeply. Would I make the same mistakes, would my life follow the same footsteps. Will we gravitate in ever widening circles, but still going round and around, the invisible epicenter of our fore fathers. Was our lives decided by the first of our kind?
Will I be my father’s son.
Monday, June 18, 2007
ONCE AGAIN!
On the whole Pune is a quiet city. Like a well disciplined bachelor it lives, rising with the sun but spending the first few hours in quiet contemplation slowly getting ready for the day during which it puts in a good seven hours of work then gently winding down to settle for a quiet dinner and a early night, awaiting the next day.
*there are moments when with quiet suddenness everything ceases as if the city itself is holding its breath, shocked at some monstrosity, like an ill judged comment during a group conversation.
The summer was stretching itself into an epic. Warm air swept through Pune streets, black clouds hung enticingly on the horizonbut were soon whisked away. {The heat was broken into chapters by scarce showers not enough for the salvation of souls waiting for the monsoon.} The day pulled itself into the evening putting extra resistance to the onslaught of night hoping desperately that rain might make a late appearance but it didn’t.
Purple evenings drowned into darkness with spectacular blaze of colour. Restless sparrows jetted through the air in seemingly chaotic flight patterns, I waited too see a mid air collision which never happened. The day slowly died to the sounds of rain-birds crying softly in the somewhere-land. And Pune waited for rain or something to happen.
It was afternoon. The lashkar police station was looking very beautiful. Trees on all sides were shedding leaves, toasted brown, hiding the ground in shades of peach and browns, somewhere underneath was treasure or entrance to a magical land where they had tea parties with riddling hares, or underneath it all would be dry mud, red of the land. You would never know if you never tried to find out.
Why was I here? Because they sign on the road from where they had towed my bike told me to. it waited at the side along with other miscreants, sulking rebelliously, daring herself to defy all, ‘the system’, in a heroic attempt for freedom and the open road and the next traffic stop to be accosted again by its offended host.
I stood quietly under a tree observing her thoughts and other owners nearby. All of them had that posture conveying a mixture of carelessness, naughtiness, rebelliousness and regret. Their calmness depended on their present liquid cash reserves, ad-lib and acquaintances.
I had been through the Routine before. The enquiry, the explanation, the excuses, the pleading, the transfer of tender. I knew how it all went. I felt like I should tell the rest of them that it will be all right, that in a few hours they will have their vehicles back and forget that anything ever happened. I felt responsible for them, as if I was their messiah, I had to show them the path. But I didn’t. instead I just stood aside and watched them gradually become friends, retelling their sad stories of how they came about to be in this situation. They only needed some commonness, which they tried hard to find, to feel some sort of belongingness to a group which included all those who were just and right and were being wronged by an oppressive system.soon they would be laughing and exchanging intellectually stimulating abbreviated sms’s, I was glad that I didn’t own a cellphone.
The station had a very surrealist atmosphere. There had to be a different world behind there somewhere, from outside it looked very small for the amount of people coming in and out, maybe in there was a doorway to a parallel universe where everyone indicated before they turned and only parked in designated parking areas and lunch hour started around mid morning and stretched into the evening.
Autumn seemed to have skipped the whole of Pune and settled only at this place. Outside the borders of this land, trees were either leafless their dark green-brown coverings fallen besides them or evergreen, dusty, not lifeless but jaded.
**The place had a wonderland like feeling to it. it seemed to be the only place in Pune that seemed to be experiencing autumn.it was surrounded by tar roads on all sides and as soon as you stepped in it felt like one has passed into a season-warp.
I sensed my kinetic’s restlessness, it was planning its escape. I could see the headlamp carefully recce the area looking for the bigger piles of foliage-fallof, trying to decide how quickly dried leaves burn to make a diversion. it pleaded me to flick my cigarette butt into a nearby hedge which was looking quite flammable. But I scoffed at the idea and convinced it to wait some more.
“hey,” the past spoke.
I turned around, in the shade of trees she waited. Dreams and demons look alike in the shadows. Her peach brown eyes like the sleeping foliage around her feet, dead, waiting, expecting something, they stared at me, the slight curl of the lower lip and half pout, and light furrows on the forehead which would deepen into wise lines of graceful oldage. On the edge, the halvness, the indecision, it could go anywhere.
Say something, anything. Please let it be nothing stoopid.
“hey”, my halfsmile in return, raised eyebrows and troubled eyes. What was there left to say.
Everything
“what are you doing here?” she smiled, it seemed to be a sign of acceptance, loose conversation greased the tracks of memories letting them slide into the vast emptiness of the mind.
“just passing through,” I replied
ok that was cool I can admit, but it would have been so much betterif you stoped grinning like an idiot.
There was something so fake about people trying to be weird and interesting. Maybe I could be more debonair and suave if it weren’t for my subconscious significant other snickering at my attempts.
“I missed your smiles,” she informed me.
“I just missed you,” that’s exactly the sort of thing I shouldn’t haveblurted out but I did.
Her eyes darkened like the half hearted rainclouds that appeared over Pune and disappeared before anyone coul;d get acquainted.. but her eyes retained their colour as she glanced behind at the guy sitting on a bike under the tree looking anxiously at her.
We can take him, no problems. Easy, I will distract him and you can kneee him in the groin. Just get him on the ground then I will do the rest.
In the shadows dreams become demons, and wait, for night to come. I stared at the man, trying to evaluate him. Visually balancing his pros and cons trying to fit him above or below me. He smiled weakly under both are glares, his dress indicated a person who was easygoing but stylish in a ‘I don’t care what I wear’ sort of way. He glanced at Rita waiting for her to move.
Don’t look now but she is waiting for you to react. keep calm you don’t know who he is.
She really was staring at me, watching every single muscle on my face with expectation. She expected me to react in a certain way, but I wasn’t certain what she expected. I turned towards her and smiled casually.
She smiled back, almost relieved. Maybe she had expected the dolphin to rise and kill, but the dolphin had learned. I thought she would introduce us but she turned towards me and and kept on talking.
“so what are you doing these days?”
nothing wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t tell her I was working at a call center, I remembered her hating them, I remembered me demeaning them. I remembered being hungry and with no money. I remembered that I would stop pretending. I decided.
“I am working at a BPO,” I said softly, waiting for her to turn away and run to the guy who was most probably an investigative journalist taking a break to research his upcoming documentary on VCD pirates.
It’s not me you know, I sometimes feel that you made me up just so you could beat yourself up.
She laughed. Her eyes twinkling, suddenly alive like the boxer jumps on the top rope while the vanquished lie on the floor unmoving.
Leave just leave. Or say you are the manager, vice president in charge of something, make up something. This feels too bad. Wait! What did she say?
“what?” I was too lost in my schizophrenia to have heard.
“I said I am sorry, I know how much you hate it. what you were starving or something?”
“yeah kind of…” I replied. Was she mocking me or was she genuine. Before I could say anything more her guy walked across.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
The New Man-ifesto
Here we go again. It’s that time of the year again when rose exports rise sharply and Hallmark’s are burnt ceremoniously. The big V day has come and gone. Reams of pop-newsprint proclaimed grooming advice for the perfect date and how to make relationships last, seemingly all aimed at men. Alas the raddi-walla will only give Rs 5 per kilo for it. In this post-post-modernist world of ours where does the new age man stand.
He’s the one with sensibilities trying to make sense of the fairer sex. Scarred by previous relationships that were supposed to have last a lifetime but were hastily cut short by restless women who refused to be tied down. Playing by the rulebook has never been harder because the petite things, with a toss of their pretty heads, have broken the rules.
Our world is changing or has already changed. Women are the heart breakers with a Zen-like philosophy towards relationships. Men practice Buddhism and yoga to relieve the stress of competing hard in the work place and working harder in the bedroom. The war of the sexes seems to have ended. They came, they saw and they changed us.
The playground is leveled. The roles have been reversed or doubled for us. The urban male is a better cook. He takes tips from his mother for getting his chappatis exactly round. He watches ‘Black’ with his platonic group of female friends and sheds silent tears while also being the one who opens doors and pulls chairs for them.
What happened to the uber-man, the alpha male? Humphrey Bogart never lamented saying goodbye to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. Why is it that Men can now just dream of being Clint Eastwood’s lone cowboy walking into the dusk, unattached and content in his solitude. Do Mark Darcys have a place in this world? Do they, we ask politely, have an evolutionary future or will they be culled silently. Unfit to be evolved further are they going to be the Dodo’s of humanity, only fit as case studies for future social psychology students?
No! Comrades its time to stand up, the revolution is here. It’s the dawn of the Men Liberation movement. Our voice will be heard. Its time we rid ourselves of this longing to settle down and while we at it try and find out where this feeling emanates in the first place. We believe it’s a subtle sabotage conspired by the enemy. Yes Comrades they are the enemy. Do not let them deceive us! Listen to your blood. Now howl with me. We are the wolves free to go where we please, the open scape is ours to prowl. Now howl with me… howl I said, not whimper.
Monday, June 11, 2007
LEAVING RITA
Rita stepped out of my life to just another name then I began to forget, first her body, then her hands, her hair, her nose, her voice but those eyes I could still see staring at me in accusation, in acceptance of my animalness. I couldn’t forget those how much ever I tried. She was better off without me, I believed that.
I didn’t really forget her. But she wasn’t Rita anymore, just a memory, a memory of myself. Whose story was it? hers, them, mine? Ours? Sure I cried, I hung around all her places just to catch a glimpse of her but she had disappeared. Pune had inhaled her back as it had exhaled her with finality. Now the parrots screamed in frustration as dusk drew its curtains. I wished that I could see her again, coincidently as if it were meant to happen. I still had a lot that I didn’t say. More now that I had a little time to put words around my screeches.
Hindsight being such that I felt my inadequacy then with far more accuracy than was good for me. My depression was back like storm clouds blackening a perfectly nice sunny day. I wished that human race would just give up and start all over again. I searched for the giant undo button of life. This time I was the mouse running the maze, I had hurt the cheese, if only I could go back and say all that was needed. But words couldn’t heal, I knew that. And I was better off now. No electric shocks, no more games, just me.
Me, the one and only.
Me, the one and lonely.
She had changed me, hopefully for the better. I still had to test out the new me. I was still a lonely dolphin. My eyes were darker than ever, and I was loosing my Gift.
It was recurring with dangerous regularity, I heard everything that was going on around me, watching… waiting, observing. My eyes were recorders. They saw but they never felt. That went on in my head, and i stopped talking to myself. I could feel the voice somewhere inside me, sometimes maybe it was lonely as well. I felt like I had just woken up and the nightmare of sleep was far more better.
Or maybe it was all a desperate attempt to gather sympathy or pity or any emotion that would just heal me. People came; they said I looked sick, I told them I was. They left. My friends said I should start smoking, I pointed out I had never quit. That could be it they laughed back.
Ajay was in a relationship again; she was a page three also-ran. Marketing vice executive in charge of product distribution, a salesman or something. She took part in disco haunts every night, a great boyfriend being an essential ingredient like the latest cell phone. Ajay was happy because of a little thing called expense account.
“It isn’t meant to last”, he would grin. Light glinting off his pearly-whitened teeth. Shirt that was a size small and pants that hung precariously, sandpaper beard and petroleum hair. “Someday paradise will burn till then spill your drinks and sing”, smiling he slithered out.
This was before I removed him from my life.
That was one of mine, you bastard. I should have heard me say. But I didn’t, I couldn’t or wouldn’t and I thought of it when I was staring at the night sky and saw all the stars looking back at me and the hungry, haggard face of the moon.
This was after I had Ajay’s blood on my hand.
The moon, the one and lonely, waiting for all of us to die. A dolphin in the sky.
He had walked out of the door, once again, just strolled out. I felt myself get up and call him, smiling. I didn’t know why I called him back. I don’t know why he came back, he hated being called just as he was leaving. Maybe he felt that he owed me something. But he did.
“yeah”, he smiling asked, facing me.
“yeah”, I replied, my fist feeling his pearly-whitened teeth and sandpaper beard. My Voice didn’t ask me to do it, I didn’t think that it would be a good idea to do it. it just happened. For one moment I felt all of myself doing it. My calm fist caressing his unsuspecting lip, bursting it to let his surprised blood spurt on to my pained knuckles. For one moment I felt myself doing it.
Then he was lying on the floor, unmoving. Mahlesh not staring at the TV where men in coloured lycra beat the hell out of each other. Mahlesh, waiting for something to happen, watching my unemotional face then at Ajay’s sleeping face redding the unswept floor. Then starting to hysterically laugh at our animalness.
Water streaming out of his eyes, but it was blood that came out from Ajay’s face that was staining my hand. He laughed and gagged and laughed.
Vin came from inside to see what was happening. He didn’t laugh, he didn’t smile. He looked at Mahlesh fallen catching his stomach groaning, Ajay straddling the floor blood coagulating, me feeling the texture of the blood on my hand. Then going in to bring ice in a towel.
This was before we cleaned up Ajay, before he came around and visually picking me out sitting silently on my couch, staring at my eyes, accusing, accepting my animalness. Before he moved out and saw me occasional around the usual hangouts, hating me, fearing me, never talking to me all the things that weren’t there to talk about.
An ogre, the one and only.
An ogre, who didn’t feel anything.
A killing dolphin, who sang to himself when no one could hear.
I stared at the sky, the stars watching me, the unmoving face of the moon, where somebody left footprints in the dirt because there were too lonely where they lived and hoped that someone out there would talk to them.
Cynicism would save us, burning hope to keep away the darkness. At dusk I missed her the most when the sun’s sets fire to the sky and all the small birds fly around screaming or maybe singing glorious praise of a fight that was doomed to loose, its result forever decided before hand and the battle itself renacted daily.
And the phone rings and my universe stops waiting in anticipation and fear, hoping as much as it should be as it shouldn’t that the sound on the other end would be hers, for somebody else to pick it up and call out ‘its for you’, to remember every detail of the single moment when I reply ‘hello’, the slight warmness of the cell, the slight humming that only else can hear, the plastic coldness of its touch on my ear, waiting I wait.
If we could fly will we still be lonely.
I didn’t really forget her. But she wasn’t Rita anymore, just a memory, a memory of myself. Whose story was it? hers, them, mine? Ours? Sure I cried, I hung around all her places just to catch a glimpse of her but she had disappeared. Pune had inhaled her back as it had exhaled her with finality. Now the parrots screamed in frustration as dusk drew its curtains. I wished that I could see her again, coincidently as if it were meant to happen. I still had a lot that I didn’t say. More now that I had a little time to put words around my screeches.
Hindsight being such that I felt my inadequacy then with far more accuracy than was good for me. My depression was back like storm clouds blackening a perfectly nice sunny day. I wished that human race would just give up and start all over again. I searched for the giant undo button of life. This time I was the mouse running the maze, I had hurt the cheese, if only I could go back and say all that was needed. But words couldn’t heal, I knew that. And I was better off now. No electric shocks, no more games, just me.
Me, the one and only.
Me, the one and lonely.
She had changed me, hopefully for the better. I still had to test out the new me. I was still a lonely dolphin. My eyes were darker than ever, and I was loosing my Gift.
It was recurring with dangerous regularity, I heard everything that was going on around me, watching… waiting, observing. My eyes were recorders. They saw but they never felt. That went on in my head, and i stopped talking to myself. I could feel the voice somewhere inside me, sometimes maybe it was lonely as well. I felt like I had just woken up and the nightmare of sleep was far more better.
Or maybe it was all a desperate attempt to gather sympathy or pity or any emotion that would just heal me. People came; they said I looked sick, I told them I was. They left. My friends said I should start smoking, I pointed out I had never quit. That could be it they laughed back.
Ajay was in a relationship again; she was a page three also-ran. Marketing vice executive in charge of product distribution, a salesman or something. She took part in disco haunts every night, a great boyfriend being an essential ingredient like the latest cell phone. Ajay was happy because of a little thing called expense account.
“It isn’t meant to last”, he would grin. Light glinting off his pearly-whitened teeth. Shirt that was a size small and pants that hung precariously, sandpaper beard and petroleum hair. “Someday paradise will burn till then spill your drinks and sing”, smiling he slithered out.
This was before I removed him from my life.
That was one of mine, you bastard. I should have heard me say. But I didn’t, I couldn’t or wouldn’t and I thought of it when I was staring at the night sky and saw all the stars looking back at me and the hungry, haggard face of the moon.
This was after I had Ajay’s blood on my hand.
The moon, the one and lonely, waiting for all of us to die. A dolphin in the sky.
He had walked out of the door, once again, just strolled out. I felt myself get up and call him, smiling. I didn’t know why I called him back. I don’t know why he came back, he hated being called just as he was leaving. Maybe he felt that he owed me something. But he did.
“yeah”, he smiling asked, facing me.
“yeah”, I replied, my fist feeling his pearly-whitened teeth and sandpaper beard. My Voice didn’t ask me to do it, I didn’t think that it would be a good idea to do it. it just happened. For one moment I felt all of myself doing it. My calm fist caressing his unsuspecting lip, bursting it to let his surprised blood spurt on to my pained knuckles. For one moment I felt myself doing it.
Then he was lying on the floor, unmoving. Mahlesh not staring at the TV where men in coloured lycra beat the hell out of each other. Mahlesh, waiting for something to happen, watching my unemotional face then at Ajay’s sleeping face redding the unswept floor. Then starting to hysterically laugh at our animalness.
Water streaming out of his eyes, but it was blood that came out from Ajay’s face that was staining my hand. He laughed and gagged and laughed.
Vin came from inside to see what was happening. He didn’t laugh, he didn’t smile. He looked at Mahlesh fallen catching his stomach groaning, Ajay straddling the floor blood coagulating, me feeling the texture of the blood on my hand. Then going in to bring ice in a towel.
This was before we cleaned up Ajay, before he came around and visually picking me out sitting silently on my couch, staring at my eyes, accusing, accepting my animalness. Before he moved out and saw me occasional around the usual hangouts, hating me, fearing me, never talking to me all the things that weren’t there to talk about.
An ogre, the one and only.
An ogre, who didn’t feel anything.
A killing dolphin, who sang to himself when no one could hear.
I stared at the sky, the stars watching me, the unmoving face of the moon, where somebody left footprints in the dirt because there were too lonely where they lived and hoped that someone out there would talk to them.
Cynicism would save us, burning hope to keep away the darkness. At dusk I missed her the most when the sun’s sets fire to the sky and all the small birds fly around screaming or maybe singing glorious praise of a fight that was doomed to loose, its result forever decided before hand and the battle itself renacted daily.
And the phone rings and my universe stops waiting in anticipation and fear, hoping as much as it should be as it shouldn’t that the sound on the other end would be hers, for somebody else to pick it up and call out ‘its for you’, to remember every detail of the single moment when I reply ‘hello’, the slight warmness of the cell, the slight humming that only else can hear, the plastic coldness of its touch on my ear, waiting I wait.
If we could fly will we still be lonely.
I AM
Have you ever touched your dreams,
and felt the simplistic joy,
of feeling them become reality,
only to abandon them,
for reasons you cannot explain?
Have you ever watched your family,
who once shared the greatest of loves,
suffer an unforgettable and unforgivable tragedy,
that will slowly, painfully, and inevitably,
tear them all apart?
Do you know, firsthand,
the evil that resides deep within the heart of every man,
every woman, and every child?
Have you seen its face as it randomly seeks,
a soul to torment and destroy?
Do you know the darker side of life,
the one that awakens you,
in the still of the night,
crying to the unknowable God's,
'Save me from myself. '?
and felt the simplistic joy,
of feeling them become reality,
only to abandon them,
for reasons you cannot explain?
Have you ever watched your family,
who once shared the greatest of loves,
suffer an unforgettable and unforgivable tragedy,
that will slowly, painfully, and inevitably,
tear them all apart?
Do you know, firsthand,
the evil that resides deep within the heart of every man,
every woman, and every child?
Have you seen its face as it randomly seeks,
a soul to torment and destroy?
Do you know the darker side of life,
the one that awakens you,
in the still of the night,
crying to the unknowable God's,
'Save me from myself. '?
Does your heart constantly question,
whether humanity is obtainable,
in a world corrupted with suffering,
and where war,
is the favoured solution for peace?
If you really want to know me,
and understand the forces that compel me to move on,
then take these questions,
and take this pain,
for this who I am.
Friday, June 8, 2007
WE ARE
These days go by,
Witout rhyme or reason.
The sun rises as it sets
And has done forever so
Who are we to find a pattern
Some recognition of divinity.
It is our lot to believe,
To have faith when there is darkness.
Maybe the light will shine
And chase away demons.
Maybe you will find solace,
An atonement of sorts.
Or maybe we will fade away
Ashes evaporated to dust.
But this is the time we are given,
To live and breathe.
In pain we survive
To find joy in nothingness.
In us we build our world,
A house of twigs and castles of dreams.
We live in ourselves,
Complete in you and me.
Witout rhyme or reason.
The sun rises as it sets
And has done forever so
Who are we to find a pattern
Some recognition of divinity.
It is our lot to believe,
To have faith when there is darkness.
Maybe the light will shine
And chase away demons.
Maybe you will find solace,
An atonement of sorts.
Or maybe we will fade away
Ashes evaporated to dust.
But this is the time we are given,
To live and breathe.
In pain we survive
To find joy in nothingness.
In us we build our world,
A house of twigs and castles of dreams.
We live in ourselves,
Complete in you and me.
HURTING RITA
We never realized how much we could hurt another human being with so little. They didn’t seem to care, it killed me. Somehow they grew on this power, I hated my self. She didn’t deserve this, it had happened to them before; they had learnt to get over it. Time healed it or something, but there was a part deep inside me that ached, some organ that nobody knew of, no doctor could prescribe for which was there only to pain. I hardly knew her but I had hurt her, I owed her something. All I knew were words, words were too rudimentary for something like this.
Animals had it figured out, sometime way back during the evolution changeover everyone had to fill in a form, humans were the dumb ones who ticked language. Words can hurt so easily and heal so little.
I would like to believe that the moment had pregnant atmosphere about it, as if the entire world stood still for the second the bell was pressed, waiting, anticipating. The building seemed empty, silence filling air with a overwhelming presence. I imagined behind the closed doors people pressed against trying to hear life being lived.
Maybe at this moment I should have paid more attention because she had already opened the door and was standing in front of me.
Then I was at her door, the air felt so heavy and it was too quiet. The bell was pressed and it was too cheerful. It should have been quiet, it should have tolled or rung like a gong, not bingled merrily. Didn’t it understand how wrong it was, everybody was mourning even the door was silent as a tombstone and there it was bingling merrily, didn’t it feel my sadness and the pain of the one who was going to answer it.
She opened it, she wasn’t crying, she wasn’t lying distraught in bed waitng for me to comfort her., the curtains were not billowing and the shade of sunlight wasn’t peach.
She wasn’t wearing white. She wasn’t angry, she just stood there, eyes sunken, hair tied back, slightly hunched, looking into my eyes. I wasn’t afraid of letting her look, maybe she would see me, maybe they would tell her what my screeches would have if we were dolphins, maybe the ocean would have been big enough to just swim away and just be, not live or exist, just be a dolphin.
I wanted to hold her
“Why have you come here”, she said, more a protest than a question.
My eyes had told her nothing; I had stopped talking with them long time ago, a dolphin who never sang. She should have asked me in, I would have told her.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you”, it sounded weaker than it should have, clichés poured through my mind, I felt every one of them, I couldn’t say even one because they will never speak like I wanted them to. A dolphin who knew only nursery rhymes
“But you did”
That was all there was to it. there was everything left to say, but no one said it. Where were all the refereeing uncles and sagely grandfathers, they should have stopped us. I should have stopped me. But nothing was said.
I turned around I left. I felt something leave me; it would be a long time before I find it.
I had hurt Rita. She had said it herself.
Animals had it figured out, sometime way back during the evolution changeover everyone had to fill in a form, humans were the dumb ones who ticked language. Words can hurt so easily and heal so little.
I would like to believe that the moment had pregnant atmosphere about it, as if the entire world stood still for the second the bell was pressed, waiting, anticipating. The building seemed empty, silence filling air with a overwhelming presence. I imagined behind the closed doors people pressed against trying to hear life being lived.
Maybe at this moment I should have paid more attention because she had already opened the door and was standing in front of me.
Then I was at her door, the air felt so heavy and it was too quiet. The bell was pressed and it was too cheerful. It should have been quiet, it should have tolled or rung like a gong, not bingled merrily. Didn’t it understand how wrong it was, everybody was mourning even the door was silent as a tombstone and there it was bingling merrily, didn’t it feel my sadness and the pain of the one who was going to answer it.
She opened it, she wasn’t crying, she wasn’t lying distraught in bed waitng for me to comfort her., the curtains were not billowing and the shade of sunlight wasn’t peach.
She wasn’t wearing white. She wasn’t angry, she just stood there, eyes sunken, hair tied back, slightly hunched, looking into my eyes. I wasn’t afraid of letting her look, maybe she would see me, maybe they would tell her what my screeches would have if we were dolphins, maybe the ocean would have been big enough to just swim away and just be, not live or exist, just be a dolphin.
I wanted to hold her
“Why have you come here”, she said, more a protest than a question.
My eyes had told her nothing; I had stopped talking with them long time ago, a dolphin who never sang. She should have asked me in, I would have told her.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you”, it sounded weaker than it should have, clichés poured through my mind, I felt every one of them, I couldn’t say even one because they will never speak like I wanted them to. A dolphin who knew only nursery rhymes
“But you did”
That was all there was to it. there was everything left to say, but no one said it. Where were all the refereeing uncles and sagely grandfathers, they should have stopped us. I should have stopped me. But nothing was said.
I turned around I left. I felt something leave me; it would be a long time before I find it.
I had hurt Rita. She had said it herself.
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