6.06 PM: The Sea of Unrequited Love and Sorrow

As I watch the sunset over a raging sea, with the rocks bearing the brunt of the volatile waves, nursing my gin and tonic in company of a person who I fell in and out of love with so many times that I lost count. However this was a definitive good-bye, farewell not to him but the wild hope of that unrequited love coming to life tugged at my heart, and pulled tears to the corner of my well trained eyes. My breath wavers, as I watch my necklace glint on his neck in the amber light of the setting sun and take in his skin, which I know all too well and not at all at the same time, washed in the delicate orange, I let go of the hope.

I pick a tissue and use his wobbling ball point pen to write something on the lines of:

Not all perfect endings are happy,

Not all painful endings are violent

Some are like a slow pain of healing wound in the comfort of sadness and nostalgia

Where you just touch their forehead with your lips for one last time

Where you just gaze in their rich whiskey brown eyes, seeing your solo sorrow reflected in theirs,

Just holding on to their face between your hands taking one eternal second too long just to remember how it feels,

Just a second longer than your usual embrace to remember how they felt in your arms

Just taking one last longing second before you truly let go

Before you accept that your arms won’t ever hold them again

Just one longing look into their glinting eyes in the sun, with a sea of sorrow of their own, matching the rage of yours

And you walk away with peaceful tears

Tears drop down on the fragile tissue as I look up from the paper, the sea is the same however it's darker, surrounded by city lights, in the city of love; the irony makes me smile. As I get up from the pavement of Marine Drive, my necklace trickles down to the unruly rocks near the sea. Fitting. I smirk and walk away with the lines, isi shauq ka inthaha zindagi hai, blaring in my ears.

The Altar of Dead Roses

It’s some hour of the day or night. I lie on my mattress in a matchbox-sized room with an orange wall, brown almirahs, and two windows. Yet still, it feels like there isn’t enough oxygen to get by. The door to the room is wide open, but I lie still, trying to find enough air in the stagnant space. I turn over somehow, and there it is—the altar of dead roses.

The once-bright, passionate red roses are withering and rotting away beneath the window. I sigh as the will to throw them out comes and goes, just like the will to escape this claustrophobic entrapment that barely qualifies as a room.

Tears escape my eyes, unwarranted. One part of me struggles to snap out of it, to push away the weight of two army tanks crushing and choking me. But another, more powerful part holds me hostage in pure fury. The weight of the pain crushes me as I struggle to move even an arm. Worst of all, I can’t tell where my own pain begins and the pain poured into me ends.

Blood slowly creeps down my forearm, jolting me back to reality. My memory betrays me as I notice a small, deep gash—just enough to pass off as a clumsy accident. Disgust ravages me as I take pride in how easy it will be to hide. Somehow, that gash makes it easier to pinpoint the pain, to locate the source of the darkness seeping through me. The bunch of dead roses glare at me, awaiting their funeral, ready to return to the soil that was once their home before they were cruelly displaced without consent.

I try to get up, but the pain shoots through me like molten lead.

As someone who has always been the SOS—the one who helps others get back on their feet, fighting through my own pain with a blatant god complex—the irony isn’t lost on me. I can’t even bring myself to get up and tend to my own wounds. The realization sends a disgusted laugh through my throat. I feel pity for the 26-year-old woman lying helpless, laughing maniacally. Before the pity turns to misery and anger, my brain saves me by pondering: how did I become the vase that holds this altar of dead roses? Why can’t I let go of the pain I take in for the ones I love and discard it?

As my brain searches for answers, my phone rings—once, twice...

I pick it up. The voice on the other end quivers.

Suddenly, the lead in my veins disappears, and I rise from the bed with the ease of a gazelle. I sigh and listen. As I move away, I light the candle at the Altar of Dead Roses. The water in the vase darkens, becoming a rotting concentration of foul memories. The roses beg me to throw them out. But instead, I walk away, leaving them to rot for just a little longer.

6:45 PM Graveyard Flowers and Hope

As I sit in a cab, stuck in traffic in a city I’ve come to loath, watching the rain pouring down ruthlessly from the angry grey skies, I notice the trees by the footpath drooping low yet the beautiful blossoms glistening gracefully. My mind wanders off to a distant memory of a summer afternoon sitting in the Mumbai local, where the only respite from the claustrophobic air was the window seat which would bring a rare joy to anyone who has ever sat in these live beasts. There was this one halt of about 5 seconds on the route I traveled where if one were in the right carriage, you’d spot a graveyard the one which overflowed with flora and fauna as if the people laying their long forgotten, it had the most hauntingly beautiful aura. Usually one would never be on the lookout for a graveyard but there was something so calming about an eerily quiet graveyard when compared to the mass of people breathing down your neck every second.

However, another thing that struck me each time was this one tree with the most beautiful pink blossoms which looked so delicate and innocent that no mortal would dare to touch them lest you hurt them. I always wondered why such heartbreaking beauty would exist in such a solemn place, why did these graveyard flowers exist and moreover for whom did they bloom each day, unfurling their delicate petals and smiling through the heat and rains of Mumbai. Moreover, doesn’t the gloom of the graveyard slowly seep into their soul making them wither? While they provide solace to the solemn visitors giving them peace that their loved ones lie safely, soaking in the pain and memories of these visitors, don’t the graveyard flowers feel like fixtures of relief for strangers?

As a 19-year-old who was yet to feel grief and pain, these flowers were a source of respite on burning hot summer evenings in the city of love, but now as I sit stuck in the never-ending traffic of Bengaluru with unannounced downpours on a spring evening those flowers seem like the only ones who’d understand silent screams and sleepless nights I’d spent. The only ones who know what it is like to be a temporary companion in someone’s pain and silently take it all in, making it your own and forgotten once the ordeal is over. As the darkness resurfaced threatening to pour through my eyes, all I could for was to be 19 again watching the graveyard flowers at 6:30 PM with a rare breeze running through my hair. The air suddenly seemed thinner as I sat silently gasping through the cold that took over my blood fighting the urge to reach for the lighter in my bag and light up one smoke.

The cab driver took me out of my misery notifying me that we’d arrived at our destination, as I struggled out of the cab and entered yet another run-of-the-mill brewery in Bengaluru, I looked with horror at the time, it was 6:45 PM way too late for the actual rendezvous time. As I spotted the table I was supposed to be seated on 45 minutes ago, I saw them, dressed in all black with the most beautiful smile patiently sitting and nursing a sangria, looking as stunning as those flowers. The darkness melted away from my veins, as I felt hope replacing it dressed in black smiling at me the same smile those graveyard flowers gave me. As I sipped on Jamesons through the evening I finally understood for whom those graveyard flowers blossomed, they did for those smiles for those brief moments of respite in the hope that someday a visitor would stay and just look at them for a second longer and then they wither away in peace.

5.45 PM: Death and Resurrection

Death and Resurrection 

As I sit alone in one of the prettiest places I have ever come across in Bangalore, watching rain pattering outside and listening to the humdrum of the crowd, my mind wanders off as it often does when I have the rare company of my mind and music. Rains and monsoons often just lazily make your mind creep into the darkest corners of your head and deliciously make you realize the many trials and tribulations you’ve been through or are going through.

I reached for the caffeine relief to get my mind back to the present. A statement by one dear friend I finally met after three years flicked through my mind, the bottom line of which was how much I had changed in the past few months. Now, on a typical non-gloomy day, this statement would’ve made me proud of how far I’ve come. Still, thinking and overthinking statements are some masochistic pleasures that my mind enjoys, along with the caffeine only accelerating the same. 

My hands reaching out for the caffeine freeze instantaneous, Hazelnut Latte - no sugar, my now regular order at any place seemed like a habit from another lifetime, I vaguely remember that person, her memories, dreams, and most importantly, the hope she held in people seem buried under a giant black tombstone, long dead and their screams lost in the cold air of the graveyard. She feels like an actual human being capable of living, while I feel like a hollow apparition haunting the world in her carcass as she silently screams in my head with all the memories bursting with light that I know will burn me and the armor; I have built so intricately, away. 

Now, mind you, the cost of burying voices from the past in the head, however, used you become to it, burns right through you; even when you’re sitting in a small beautiful cafe surrounded by humans, you feel something scratching at the center of your chest full of screams and pain trying to cut you open from inside. However, when you have wilfully stifled and killed yourself in the past, its haunting becomes a brown noise you can tune out, and the pain is a potent reminder of why you killed her in the first place.

Teary-eyed as I grab my umbrella and get out of the cafe, I see her across the road with a bunch of sunflowers and a white sundress holding on to her umbrella, too bright for the gloom that surrounds her, before I can tear my eyes away she waves at me with a heart-melting smile. I wave back as my grey jacket, and black trousers are drenched in the rain. She runs across the street and holds her umbrella out, and right before she melts into the gloom, I see a sunflower lying stranded on the pavement, a reminder of death and resurrection. 

4:20 a.m: Love and Other Drugs

 Casablanca. A Walk to Remember. Me Before You. 

3 Movies, all three have 2 of my favorite concepts, Love and Tragedy. As a hopeless romantic, the idea of unrequited love and the eternal sacrifice of the protagonist are two key things that make a love story great. I know walking into the sunset holding hands is fantastic but watching the love of your life fly away from you with another man, ah, the beauty of that unadulterated love and sacrifice fades any other romantic gesture to a mere parlor trick.

It’s 4:20 am, Louisa Clark is reading the letter from Will Traynor at a cafe in Paris in the penultimate scene of Me Before You; and my mind wanders off to how all the tragic unrequited love stories end with a letter, quote, or memory but what happens after is never shown. What does Louisa Clark do after Will dies? Or what happens to Rick Blaine after Ilsa leaves Casablanca? What happens after you walk away with a broken heart? After the person, you trusted more than yourself betrays you entirely and leaves you amongst the shattered shrapnels of a bond you once shared, and all you are left with are memories and a pure unadulterated shot of pain?

Withdrawal.

Just like any other drug, love makes your body and soul crave the safety and comfort of that person and the high, the rush of oxytocin through your veins as you see them walk through your doorway or the instant shot of dopamine the comfort of their arms provided. Still, once they are gone, the pain creeps through your bloodstream, burning through it, and soon your body screams and suffers in pain. The pain isolates you in your hell made of memories, the song which reminded you of them, the favorite coffee shop you sat at, the notes, the texts, all the bloody things which you cherished now rip out your heart one tiny piece at a time, crippling you one day at a time.

But the worst part is the hope, the hope you lose each time you go through a heartbreak.

As you sit there on a date, sipping on wine slowly, watching and marking every moment, your brain is already in overdrive, driving the situation in fifth gear, knowing that it’s going to be a car crash because that hopeless romantic is sitting in the back too busy hiding in shame and tending its wounds. But after enough car crashes, as you tire out and listen to that song which you wiped from your memory and tears make their way, somewhere you realize that the pain is bearable, your heartaches but not that bad, relief floods you. However, you still hold onto the pain because that is the only thing left of love you felt and shared, and you cling to it for dear life. By this point, the hope that pain has provided has gone, and all that is left is the void numb and cold, which takes away both despair and hope and leaves you empty.

But as you feel the numbness taking over you, waiting for another car crash to walk in, you suddenly feel your heartbeat again. They walk in with a black turtleneck and black-rimmed glasses. As they hold their phone in one hand and a bunch of sunflowers in the other, their eyes searching for you, something deep in your heart tells you maybe this time this car crash would end up differently. 

Funeral of Sunflowers

Bright yellow sunflowers lie on the hardwood table where I wait for you. It’s a gloomy day; the brief winter chill in the air and low hanging clouds make it almost blasphemous for the bouquet of the flower to look so bloody beautiful. As I tap my fingers against the table waiting for you, I see them. Us. Sitting on the same hardwood bench we first met, sharing their embarrassing stories over coffees, one expresso, and the other latte. A sad smile takes over my face as I reminiscence the afternoons of spring and evenings of monsoon we spent here, talking for hours, almost forgetting the coffee and cigarettes.

Now, I sit here alone, sipping the coffee, while my heart aches as it finds something to fill the void you left. My eyes betray me as they steal a glance now and then towards the small blue door of the café, hoping you’ll walk in and I’ll get to see your scotch brown eyes light up once more as they catch my glimpse, but alas, my brain knows better than for those doors to swing open.

Hour after hour passes, the box of cigarettes in my bag is almost over, and my coffee is long gone. The evening sun already bid its farewell and now twinkling bulbs of the café shine over my head as I still wait, wait for you to come back, wait for chaos, the memories play in my head to go away. My fingers hurt now as they keep tapping the table out of habit but then without the purpose and hope of an impending visitor. I remember the last time I met you here, the warmth of your hand in mine intertwined in an almost ironclad grip; you didn’t want to let go, and neither did I. But as the last call for orders is announced, I realize you’re long gone, and I am the one holding on, holding on to the empty hope and promises.

As “Without Me” by Halsey blares in my ears, I walk out with the bouquet of sunflowers which gave up their façade of bright and lovely beings and now lie limp, waiting to wither away. I stand on the very pavement where I saw you last, there are still so many stories we are yet to share so many memories we need to make but not all stories, not all memories need to be shared, sometimes the stories are short for a reason, they are meant to end there even if you don’t want to, like that book you read too fast which ended too soon, and now you sit waiting for the next one, but for us, there is no next book, no next chapter. As I leave the sunflowers on the pavement, bidding them a tearful adieu, I see a lanky figure standing with a single sunflower looking at the empty road; our eyes meet for a brief second, we share a limp smile. As I ride away on my bike, I realize that he was there for the funeral of sunflowers as well.  

Home – Destination Unknown…

As I packed up the same bags for the third time in the same city which was home for the last 14 months, the sepia-tinted nostalgia tugged at the strings of my heart. Taking off the decorative flags from my window frame took more effort than putting them up did, my hands trembling with a deep-set sorrow. My tiny pink apartment now stripped completely of all the trinkets that made it feel like home; my bag strained with the weight of both the memories and all the extra knickknacks I could possibly stuff in it. When the last of the bags were packed up and my eyes gazed around the tiny 1BHK, tears pricked at my eyes but before I could delve into the never-ending pool of despair, my phone screen lit up with the flight notification, giving the final countdown to my departure. Trying to keep me from a breakdown in front of the inspecting broker, I quickly booked my cab, as I waited for my driver to arrive I sat on the bag full of memories and let my brain take nosedive into the pool of despair.

   A few months ago, if you would’ve asked me what was home I would’ve said blurted out the name of this city without missing a heartbeat but now I don’t know, what home actually feels like and what do we mean by home anyways?  As a kid, home meant the place where you are safe and happy and all your favorite people are present there. But as I grew up the apartment where I lived with my family became a trap for my soul rather than that safe warm place, my favorite people no more my favorite, I soon realized the difference between a house and home. My young adult self, found escape finally in the form of college in a totally different city, bigger and blingier than my hometown. Not realizing that I was not only leaving behind the only home I ever knew for 18 years of my life but only people who really knew me as well. As the hostel room became the new “house” for me, I decorated the blank canvas with memories and people who made the new city home but soon I realized I didn’t have any idea what home was; this new city felt like an uncomfortable blingy dress where you struggle to breathe and the hometown like a rugged hoodie you probably have tattered from wearing too long but yet again keeps you warm and comfortable but you can’t wear it forever. My 20 something self found herself lost again in the big city lights only to find a home in a few people, as I settled in my reality and home, it was time to empty the hostel room which was now home to me and say goodbye to it and shoving all the memories into a small bag, all the late-night drives, all the clubbing nights, all the brunch dates, 3 am conversations, both my bag and my mind struggled to keep this plethora of memories intact and safe.

  If my hostel and college ruined my perception of home, Mumbai shattered it completely, but soon my soul found comfort in the chaos of the city’s noise and people, as I explored the city with my own company or a random stranger, the storm inside me settled slowly and steadily as I sank in the chaos and found my new home in the people of the city of dreams. The message notification on my screen pulled me out of my reverie, it was time to leave. As I kept away the keys to yet another house I called home and got in the lift, my heart sinking with each floor we crossed, the tears finally took over. As I sat in the cab before I could put on my earphones and take a deep dive into my personal hell, the radio started playing “Iktara”, aptly enough the song which worked as my final goodbye to the city, as we drove down Western Express Highway and the city’s familiar skyline flashed by me dulled by the grey clouds hanging low, similar to the day I landed in the city for the first time ever. As T2 approached, my heart started beating faster than usual and drowning out the music from the radio and the din of the city before the second emotional breakdown of the day would start my cab driver asked, “Madam ghar kidhar hai apka?” (Where is your home?) ” I mumbled my usual response and then I asked him where he was from and I expected the cliché response but his answer surprised me, “Madam esa hai na ki koi bhi jagah ghar ho sakti hai, bas yeh humara mann nahi manta…Mumbai ne sikha diya hai jaha mann ka sukoon ho voh ghar hai chahe humari yeh taxi ho ya kholi…” (I won’t translate it in English because I think the true meaning will go away). Before I could react we pulled over into the entrance of T2 and after unloading my luggage, as I looked at the glass structure of the airport, it dawned on me how correct the driver was.  It is never about the place, it is about how it makes you feel, where your heart feels at home and maybe just maybe sometimes your heart feels better in a certain place than others. I guess I’ll never know what home is but it is definitely a mixture of that hug from your best friend, that late-night conversation with your roommate, the 3:45 am drive in the drizzle and silence of the city, that early movie show, chai dates with your parents and so many little things which I will carry in my heart forever.