Fixed

It’s twelve in the afternoon, but I’ve already called it a day, though I’ve done nothing except lie in bed and stare at the ceiling. It’s my day off, after all, I tell myself.

It’s a pleasant feeling to have a Monday off, when everyone else is working. I can hear the rushed footsteps outside my door, as my next-door neighbour is running to pick up her six-year-old son from school.

She’s late as usual.

The kabaadi fellow has rung the bell twice, but I don’t feel like getting out of the blanket. The neighbourhood cat is meowing rather morosely. The people living in the house opposite must have forgotten to feed her.

My phone beeps continuously. There’s probably a calamity at office, but it’s my day off.

I look at my phone, from a distance. The screen is cracked due to the numerous times I’ve dropped it on the ground.

I trace my finger gingerly on the glass cracks. I can see my distorted reflection in the phone.

There is clear indication of seepage in the ceiling. It needs fixing, but I haven’t gotten around to it. My cupboard is open, and there are piles of clothes heaped unceremoniously. I can hear my flatmate’s voice in my head already, telling me to clear it.

It’s quite a mess. I finally get up, but not to clean the cupboard. I open one of the drawers and it gets stuck. I can’t seem to push it back. Already exhausted, I move back.

There is just too much to fix.

I can see that some pile of clothes have fallen at the back. I find an old t shirt that I used to wear at the age of twelve.

And that’s when I think of you. I haven’t thought about you for a long time. In fact, you don’t cross my mind at all, except for some Facebook photos and comments here and there.

But today, I remember you clearly, while I try to fix the drawer.

The first crush. I smile to myself.

I close my eyes and find myself back in the school. I had blotted out of my memory for good. But I see it clearly now, just as it was ten years ago.

I run past the cafeteria, which is bustling with people as usual. There is that fresh smell of samosas and the sound of plates clanking.

But I can’t linger for too long. I have to see the stage where we used to rehearse for our plays.

And there, I see you performing. I see myself as the wide-eyed 12-year-old, who is mesmerized by your smile and acting. My adoration is obvious to everyone else, and they’re not hiding their laughs.

Like a film in fast-forward, I recall some mortifying memories of how I used to run after you and purposely ask for the meanings of words in literary classics (that I already knew), and how you answered my questions every time, patiently. And of course, when it became too overwhelming for you, you had to tell me, “I only see you as a friend.”

How heartbroken I pretended to be then. And now, apart from cringing, I laugh so much when I think of those days.

We met years later and laughed about those silly days too.

Those easy and happy days of childhood crushes.

I open my eyes.

The drawer is still stuck.

But I’m not thinking about the drawer right now.

For once.

I’m thinking of you. Before we came to being so distant and frigid with each other, I think back to a time when we were inseparable.

My first real relationship, and my first understanding of love. At 17, this love was perfect and heavenly. To love, and to be loved, was something beyond my wildest dreams.

And it came true with you, or so I thought.

At the age of 17, I was sure that you and I would be happily married in a few years. I remember all of our beautiful moments, though you seem to think that I don’t.

I still remember the adrenaline rush of secretly holding hands with you in a concert. It was the first time I had held hands with anyone.

I haven’t forgotten when you told me that you loved me. It was the first time in my life that anyone told me that. You were there for me during dreary school years.

I can’t forget that.

But that glow was slowly fading. The Bollywood films had no advice for me on how to deal with situations that crop up after the happily-ever-after.

And so, things went terribly wrong. You did things that upset me, and I was not mature enough to handle it at that time. So I said hurtful things to you. I’m sorry about that. I wish I could tell you that.

We could’ve handled it better.

Time healed some wounds, while others were still left gaping.

It has been years.

We are as far away from each other as possible. You insist that I hate you. I get irritated with trying to tell you that I don’t.

I can’t. I can never come close to even disliking you, even.

I get back to the drawer. I try to pull it out again.

And then my finger gets caught on an iron nail.

It’s just a small cut, and I know that the pain will ebb away after the initial sting.

The small cut. The first and actual bruise. I think of you.

The first of many heartbreaks.

The first time I realised that relationships weren’t just about losing someone you love. You lost your best friend too.

Our friendship grew over two years, and you became the most important person in my life, at that time. It was healing.

I don’t know when I fell for you, but I knew that I had fallen strongly.

We have met exactly seven times in our lives. Yet, we fought to keep in touch, across boundaries.

My heart would give a queer beat whenever you messaged. For some reason, we didn’t speak on the phone that much, and the times that we did, I would make sure that we didn’t put down the phone for a long time.

In a strange moment of daring, I told you about my feelings.

Months later, you felt the same. We were not even in the same country. But that didn’t stop us. I recall those days of memorable text messages and Skype conversations.

Those precious few moments we spent together were etched in my mind. I remember the way we held hands and walked around Amsterdam.

That little kiss on the cheek near the pastry shop.

I realised till what extent my life revolved around you. To the extent, I was devastated when my phone didn’t work, because all I could think of was, how would I talk to you? It had crossed my mind few times whether it was healthy to be so dependent on someone. But I dismissed those thoughts.

And then, it came as a rude shock when you found someone else.

I was desperate to keep you in my life at any cost, even if we weren’t going to be together. I didn’t want to lose my friend. That was how desperate I was.

But then you had to let go.

You felt guilty, and you promised to settle things and come back.

But we both knew you couldn’t.

And you didn’t.

In a year, I finally let go of you for good and never turned back.

Six years later, we talk about that time. We laugh about it. How childish we were.

We’ve let go of that pain and those memories of crying ourselves to sleep and hiding away from the world.

I’ve pulled the drawer too much. It falls out and lands squarely on my feet. This drawer is causing more trouble than its worth.

I see some battered earphones in the drawer. They had been buried under a pile of clothes.

I hold the earphones and shudder.

I remember you buying these expensive things for me, even though I had insisted that I didn’t want them.

But you were not doing it out of any sort of love.

It was something to hold over my head.

You’re the only person I’ve cut out of my life, till date. It took me a while to move past the unforgettable things you did and said to me.

I lost myself, for a while. And when I found myself again, I didn’t want anything to do with you.

I don’t hate you now, or bear any malice towards you. I wish you well. But that’s about it.

In this strange memory of trip of recalling lost loves, I frantically look for something from you.

But there is nothing. Because we didn’t need to give each other anything, we were enough for each other.

Or so, I thought.

No clothes to remind me of you, either. Those had been tied in a bundle and kept in some other room.

You swept into my life at an age, where I had just about healed from the bruises of earlier relationships. It was a matter of a month, and we were inseparable.

I loved your quiet humour and simplicity. That smile, and laugh. The songs you would sing for me.

Within four months, I was sure that I had found my happily-ever-after.

From our car rides, to walks around monuments, I had shared the most beautiful moments with you. You knew each and every expression of mine. You knew when I was pretending to smile when I didn’t feel like it, the slightest flicker of expression, and what made my hands shake in nervousness.

Your love was overwhelming and overpowering. It consumed me.

I still remember my shock at finding you sleeping uncomfortably next to me. You said that you didn’t want to wake me up. I was afraid that you might hurt your neck.

And you might have, but you would never let me know.

Your image in my head was perfect. For me, you couldn’t do anything wrong.

And that’s my fault. I forgot that you were human, and that you had flaws. And so, when you fell from the pedestal that I had placed you on, I was shattered.

I could not connect you to the image in my head.

The perfection broke like glass in front of me, and I scrambled, trying to piece it all back together. You were leaving, but I was holding on, tightly. I didn’t know that you had clasped someone else’s hand by then.

And for the first time in my life, I was truly battered and broken. I could not see life beyond you, and I could not think of being with someone who wasn’t you.

But life had to be lived, I would tell myself every day.

True, you could have done things much better than the method you chose.

But here’s the truth. I’m sorry that I didn’t listen to what you tried to say. I’m sorry that I was so insistent on having a fairytale ending that I didn’t see anything else.

Gradually, a day at a time, I healed. Little by little. Months later, I breathed a sigh of relief.

Forgiveness is easier than corrosive resentment and anger.

We spoke about it, and we realised that there were things that we both could’ve done better.

A year later, I smile. It’s a small smile. But I’m happy for you.

I hope you get the love you deserve.

It has taken everything from me to come to this point with you.

I finally push the drawer in.

It has just a little more to go.

But this journey is far from over. There’s one more stop, or so it seems.

In the chaos and turmoil, you walked in, with your typical confident strides. I worked hard to push you away, but you found a way to my heart. Your dimpled smile and your ability to find new restaurants every time was a strong factor.

Finally, after fighting with myself, I admitted I liked you. I liked you a lot. These were not rebound-feelings, I was surprised that I could find it in me to have strong feelings again for someone, as I had pushed everyone else away before you.

It was not love. But I know, had we been together for a couple of more months, it would’ve been. I wish I had known that our time together was short. Because, for the first time, I’m filled with regrets about the things I didn’t say and didn’t do. I wanted to go back to those days when you had planned a special surprise for me. I had postponed it, and then we had just let it pass by.

I wish I knew what the surprise was.

I wish I could go back in time and cherish those moments with you, and get to know you more. I miss your companionship and songs, and how you were the only one who matched with my food habits, down to dosa and sugar and hating Chinese food.

There are so many things I want to tell you.

Closure is a tricky thing.

There are many closures before the final one. But for a long time, the wound festered and remained sore.

*****

Closure came a year later. After months of having dreams of talking to you about our short-lived relationship, we finally spoke. Healed, at last. But I was never upset with you or never cherished any bitterness towards you. I admired you for your clear honesty and was grateful for it.

I lie on the bed and think about this journey of lost loves, crushes, relationships, and flings. Even the encounters that had no specific name to them, but had yet left a mark on my memory.

I think of the fleeting flirtatious banter with men at parties only to discover with irritation the following week, that they had girlfriends. For a while, I was convinced it was bad luck.

I think of the friendships that emerged from the ashes of these broken relationships.

The friends I felt attracted to, and the ones who could not reveal their feelings to me, for fear of the world.

It has been exhausting. Draining. And there are times when I wanted to give up on the idea of romance and love. Bollywood and Hollywood lied and the fairy-tales were all wrong. Life might have been stripped of several illusions.

But I thought of the different understandings of love that I had learnt along the way. If there was something I had learnt, it was that there was no clear definition of it. It wasn't so clearly cut-out like the films showed. It had its greys, with blurred boundaries and shaky edges. It was a mess. But that was the strange beauty of it too.

Some emotions did not have a name.

The pain didn’t seem so meaningless.

The pain had faded quietly away, into an ache that would always be there. But I didn’t resent that.

That ache was a reminder of a time gone by, and the time yet to come.

I look at the drawer again. I push it in properly.

It’s no longer stuck. It's fixed.

I decide to clean up my cupboard.