Reboot

I want to gather up all the tension, the horribly depressing emotions, guilt, sadness, miseries, etc and simply set them on fire and see them burn down to ashes and then go brush my teeth, take a hot shower, wear new clothes and go for a very long, refreshing walk in the city center.

Maybe ring the church bell, light a candle, have a Christmas cookie.

It is time to recall that there is ONE life. ONE chance. To think, to do, to love, to live. I think occasionally it is important to reboot.

Everytime they ask me where I come from in India and I say "Calcutta", they say they have heard of the place. Then they add that the other place they hear of often is Kerala.

So I do not really do anything, the shadows chase me invariably; they find a way.

I am at the Vienna Flughafen right now. It reminds me of you. All airports remind me of you. All airports remind me of the Hyderabad International Airport.

That Aeroexpress, that airport Mc Donalds, that blue striped handkerchief.

I have to give a presentation in less than 24 hrs and I am at slide zero, trying hard to concentrate.

I am awake for 28 hrs now. I want to talk to you.

This crazy delirium.

Will you come and visit me if I send you a ticket?

I have fever. I also have lots of work to do.

I just dont feel like doing anything. I have to pack my bags for Germany, my flight is tomorrow in the evening. And before that, I need to finish remaining experiments, flip flies, read 9 papers, complete a presentation and practice a speech. I also have to remember to take my towel when I am packing.

There is nobody at home. No balance in my fone. I cannot reach anybody.

I have a horror of missing my flight tomorrow. Or not being able to finish everything before I leave.

I don't know.

Feeling generally low. It's so cold outside. I can't go to the apothecary to get medicines. I was supposed to buy warm clothes because Germany is even colder now but forgot that today was a public holiday and all shops are closed. Maybe I have to rely on wearing clothes in layers and I don't even want to imagine how funny I will look when I walk across the road like a bulging bundle of something.

I need someone's help but I am too meek to ask for it. 

I also need a really tight hug.

How are you? I thought about you just now. How are you doing? Are you going to classes? Are you taking exams? Are you still full of dreams?

Or is everything back to sepia and gray again? 

I am reading and reading and reading, working and working and working. I am going crazy with daydreams and distractions. Nothing gets absorbed, everything needs to be in the working memory, nothing gets consolidated. I read and I forget. Then I think of you a little bit. Then I go set some crosses, do some assays; go to one of the three terraces in the building and smoke a few cigarettes thinking of you.

All this seems like a wild dream. Europe. States. Cambridge. 

All of it was impossible without you, without your one phone call in a winter night, on the eve of a semester-exam,  desperately persuading me to finish ONE crazy application before the deadline crossed that night. All of it, impossible without our breathless traveling back and forth the secreteriat, the passport office, the Dean's place; all of it impossible without your rock-solid support and love.

I miss breaking down. I hardly break down now. I have nobody to break down to. I want to break down NOW. Right now, as I write this, at my desk, in a snazzy air-conditioned library, at 2 AM in the morning, in the middle of reading the 1st of the 7 more papers I have to read, I have a desperate longing, to throw all this out of the window, take the next train to the airport, fly to the Asian College of Journalism, wake you up, and kiss you, and break down till I am tired enough to go to sleep.

That's all. I still love you.

There is no way I can be okay with myself, really. I just don't think of all the shit that happened, whenever they cross my mind I push them away. But there is always this suffocating, uncomfortable restlessness somewhere, the obnoxious stench of the past; and although I have closed the door, I can still hear something breathing behind it quietly.

I donot know but it was so natural, you know (I try to reason). I just had to give in, I couldn't help it. A gust of wind that came and blew me away, that wasn't under my control, that wouldn't listen to me even  if I had tried. 

The snag is here: I could have tried to resist it. I didn't and I know that. 

Why didn't I? 

It was impossible to resist.

How can anything be impossible if I were in love?

I donot know.

Was I in love?

Maybe, yes

Am I still in love?

Yes, maybe.

This is the point where this post should end. It is not going anywhere. There is no message. There is just an empty emotion trying hard to convince you that it is not empty after all. There is no take away. No wisdom. Nothing memorable about this suffocation I try to explain to you.

I just miss someone I was approximately "intense" with. He is in a different continent, completely oblivious of this piece of thought I am having right now. He is probably sleeping. I miss the way his face looked when he was asleep. He is probably having nightmares, too. He frequently has nightmares. I loved to give him solace. He loved to nurse me. I called him mongoose. He called me princess.

"Us"

I miss you sometimes with an unbearable heaviness, sometimes with a strange gentle sadness, sometimes fondly, sometimes dreamily. Some other times I just remember you, your subtlest idiosyncrasies, us and the library lawn. At other times, I am flooded by small pieces of memory, like the way you formed a plane with your hand and said "whoosh!"; or  your face when you fell asleep on the bench of the library lawn; the dimple on your cheek when you smiled the last time we said goodbye.

And then I have the picture of you in my wallet, I know it is still there, the one in which you think you look like a perfect Bollywood blockbuster hero, and I haven't dared to open my wallet since we broke up.

I remember walking with you. I remember children's park, the forest next to VC's rock, the rock at peacock lake, the Goodwill canteen, the post office, J hostel, the back gate, Lav's place, bike rides, InOrbit, Dominos, Mc Donalds and always the thought of these places floods my heart with a longing for your warm embrace, crying in your arms, saying "I don't knnnnowww!"

I have dreams about you; your eyes always look sad. I donot remember the dreams often other than the sadness in your eyes, the heaviness in the few words you say. I dream of loving you, being loved by you again.

I long for laughing with you at our silly jokes, hearing your deep voice, walking by peacock lake, holding your hand, kissing your forehead. I long for going to and fro the passport office and the secreteriat again and again with you in the MMTS trains, watching the shadows of the grilled-windows make squares on your face when you are asleep. I remember the days when you couldn't accompany me, how I looked at the seat opposite mine in the train, missing the sight of you reading the newspaper.

I hope you make it to Sports Star, I will buy them for your by-lines, to feel your name with my fingers, to nurture old days of "us". I donot know if you will forgive me ever in your life, though. I donot ask for forgiveness, this is just a confession, whether you believe this or not, I have never belonged to anybody in my life like the way I belonged to you.