Us

Can’t bear the pain…don’t come back.



Time is of no essence. Minutes tick by, the breathing does not even out. The pit of the stomach is like a snake-pit…with curling and uncurling vipers hissing their anger and despair. I do not know how to live without you. Please don’t come back. Please come back. Please don’t call. Please call.


When romance blooms, it is the most beautiful of emotions. We give so much importance to every aspect of the relationship. Can’t breathe without you. How? Why? Why this change? You call 30 times a day…and talk 20 minutes each. If he does not call, you do. Over-familiarity? I don’t know. The experts may know what they are talking of…but the rush of adrenalin from the heels upwards does not recognize this. I wait. So do you. Little things make everything beautiful. Like staying awake till 2 and talking…long back.


He created picture perfect memories for me. Candles, chocolates, creative gifts, carefully chosen books...no no…none of these…He made a perfect “C” out of me. Somewhere along this path, we changed. Other things crowded in “Us”…and we allowed them to. Priorities became choices and then secondary choices. I became one of those too.


There is nothing worse than a relationship dying. It sinks ill…gradually.Greys...starts rotting in a corner of the mind and struggles to emerge into open conversation. It chokes the life out of life. Ours did not die that way.


How would you like to get a phone call from a woman who claims to be his wife? How would you like to explain to her that you were nothing to him? That he valued you less than a chance-encounter-prostitute? That every word was a testimonial to how low truth can get? That there never really was an Us.


I don’t know anything. Except that I’m an ass.To trust. To believe. To pray .To walk for miles to ask for you to be mine…barefoot. I called you mannat. A woman who casually prays once in a while became a religious freak. You name it, I’ve done it. Fasts? Gurudwara Chaliyas? Hail Mary’s? Every temple, church, gurudwara for miles and miles…I laugh as I write this. My gut twists. Again?? How many times in a day is it supposed to do this? Intense, shooting pains in the stomach-pit. No tears…something is so frozen…I shiver and can’t get warm whatever I do.


Love laughs at me, again. Two years of hopeless realization that no other man matches up-you call again. And the snakes start uncurling again. They stretch lazily and create a wonderful web for me…your words. Desperate hope rears its head. Maybe…just once…you’ll value what is being given…my heart. It’s just Baba…playing “Temp-Temp” with me.


You toss it around. Experiment. All the while checking to see if it fits an imaginary bill. It does not. Why? I don’t know. All I know is that I pledged my life behind a voice that sweetly said “Trust me “and “Soon” and “Soonest”. I do. The web pulls tight. Tighter. Until practicality hangs dead. Reason blacks out. No answer to simple questions. I need you to stand…once next to me. Just once. In a crazy situation,taunted…sneered at for believing in you…I beg you..to once reach out and claim that I belong to you.


Fine honed and raw,with years of practice behind you,you use the one weapon that you knew would work for you.Silence. Silence…killing…neither conveying a yes…nor a no.Just grating on tender nerves.


Did you look at what you held in your hand then?


Lazily…with a flick of a cruel wrist, you release what you hold in your fist… the fine spun glass ball of my heart one last time. It spins crazily, hungrily for more space…for you to reach out… and then speeds down…just when your hand should’ve caught it back, safe; you fold your hands and watch. Silently. Time stands still too. The ball hits the cold, granite floor of reason. And splits into a thousand smithereens that smash back into where they originated from.Me.The silence.Always your silence.Always…


The heart-cavity takes one look at the tiny-screaming-still-alive pieces and curls up in shock. Twice? In one lifetime? The other systems reel and murmur pain and “you-deserved-this-you-bitch” like sarcastic relatives. And laugh, hysterically, as I stare in quiet shock. I look at the shining, jagged bits and in a daze, touch one of the broken, pulsating pieces on the floor. I reel; such is the raw, “someone-peeling-your-skin” pain. There are no tears. None.