Little Less Love Part II

She had met him at her best friend’s marriage. Upasana’s marriage.

Upasana’s marriage had come as a surprise to her. Upasana had never been the marrying kind. Or at least that’s what Shailaja had believed of her. They had been very thick form the start. One of the few female friends Shailaja had had. Somehow Shailaja never had too many girlfriends, but the few that she had she was very close to them.  Upasana had been one of those, they had come close in school and had managed to salvage their friendship through two decades and across continents for most of the time. They had a lot of stuff common but on very fundamental issues they were poles apart. Upasana was the glamorous, garrulous one. She was the one who would always be the center of attention at any social gathering. At the forefront of everything in life. Though she had been confused about a lot of things in life, she had always been clear of one thing though that the men in her  life would serve only one purpose, to sexually gratify her. She was not looking for emotional or financial support from any man. She had learnt her lessons from her mother’s life. Her father had been a serial alduterer , a philanderer. The nights she had seen her mother lie awake all night for her father who never came. She could hear her mother crying from her bedroom not that her mother made any attempt to hide it from her only daughter. Upasana had hated her mother for being such a wimp. For not fighting with her dad, for being such a push over and mostly for putting up with all the crap her dad gave her. Her mother was a beauty and she came from a very rich family. Her dad had very humble background compared to that of her mother and was the one who had chased her mother like a man on a mission and finally got her strict father to say yes to the marriage. Upasana’s mother had fallen badly for him and that had been the bane of her life. She had lost her heart and so also her dignity. Her life had been a series of never ending nights of wait, when her husband came home in the wee hours and sometimes not at all. She had borne it all silently. Upasana hadn’t ever understood her mother’s behavior. It was only later when she grew up to understand her mother better that she realized her mother had been a victim of a devious, wicked and hopeless love for her husband from which she never quite recovered her entire life.

And Shailaja had known all this about her friend. Shailaja hadn’t really liked Upasana in their first meeting in school. She had found her very loud. And had taken an instant dislike to her, it was only later she had discovered that the loud voice and the high pitched laughter were all a façade, a defense mechanism. They had come close slowly and steadily. And her friendship with Upasana was one of the touchstones of Shailaja’s life.

And from all these years of meaningless flings, one after the other in quick succession, Shailaja had come to accept that her friend was emotionally incapable of having any relationship that went beyond sex and for a period longer than 6 weeks at a stretch. Yeah 6 weeks had been a personal record for Upasana.

So when Upasana called her up two weeks back saying that she was getting married, Shailaja had refused to believe her. She was sure it was a prank or some silly joke Upasana found hilarious. It took Upasana quite some time to finally convince Shailaja that she was tying the knot, that too with a guy and for real. It had all happened too soon and she would fill her in on all the details when they caught up for the wedding. Shailaja had been barely able to make it to Upasana’s wedding. She was in US at that time and in the middle of her all critical project delivery and had lied through her teeth to get her boss to agree to let her go to India for a week.

She had reached Delhi at 2am in the night and had taken a cab at 5am the very next morning to Jaipur to attend Upasana’s mehndi.

She had been standing in the hotel lobby waiting for the receptionist to sort out the formalities when she noticed this guy walking upto the reception, charging like a bull. She thought this guy probably evolved overnight from a bull to a man so he had yet to refine his walk and chuckled to herself. He was lanky and dark. He came upto the reception and asked for a spare key for his room. He introduced himself as Vasu in room 203, right next to 202, the one she had just been given. As she began to lift her bag, Upasana breezed into the lobby shrieking at the top of her voice when she saw Shailaja. She ran towards her , gave her a big squeeze and then said, Shelly Now that you have finally had a chance to see my groom-to-be what do you think of him, the love of my life, My Vasu?”

A little Less Love

She woke up wide eyed. As if she had never gone to sleep. As if there had been no interlude between the two stages of consciousness. As if someone had wiped the sleep clean off the plate of her memory. Just like that. She sat on the bed for sometime. Unmoving, Unblinking, maybe Unthinking even. She didn’t know how long she sat there. She knew her mind had arrested her body. It had in the process also fallen prey to its own plans. Her mind too felt arrested. As if her brain cells were afraid to move. To be Active. They collectively stood frozen.

Till Vasu entered the room. Vasu. His entrance jolted her out of the self imposed cell arrest. Vasu. She kept saying the name again and again to herself. Under her breath, slowly muttering it, so slowly that even her own ears couldn’t hear what her lips were uttering. She pulled her lower lip in saying va- and then rolled her tongue in unison with both her upper and lower lip for the su.

He had come into the room looking for his phone. It had been ringing incessantly for sometime she realized now. He would have been as usual out on the terrace smoking. His ultra mild cigarette. He walked like a charging bull. She realized then. He always had. And she was the matador, baiting him, provoking him, playing him, priming him for the kill. The thought made her laugh out. He looked at her while still talking on the phone. Their eyes met. Hers drinking in every little nuance of his and his unseeing everything about her.

And that is how it had always been. She read him like an open book. She knew him so well, she could even sense what would be in store for him. He would ask her for advice about everything and her advice never failed him, not even once.

She could read him now as well. He was talking to his mom. And was clearly not comfortable having this discussion. She was sure his mom was discussing marriage with him. She knew his mother was trying to get him married off. He was getting fidgety and angling for a way out of the conversation. And very soon he would, he would tell his mom someone was at the door and that he would call her back. His mom would no doubt see through it and still go on. Then finally he would kick the table, tell her he stumbled and disconnect. And she knew this self infliction of pain during his mother’s calls were a clear signal to her about the literal effect of her choice of conversation. But his mom refused to read any signal she didn’t like. Like mother like son, she guessed.

 The entire scene played out just the way she had envisaged and then he looked up at her again. This time he held her gaze. He walked towards her and sat down beside her on the bed. She was sitting straight. Her legs folded under her chin and her arms around her legs.

He bent on the bed and kissed her waist.  She knew what he wanted. She could read all his touches. This one meant sex. Sometimes she felt angry at herself for knowing him so well, so intimately. Sometimes she wished she were as unseeing as he was. But then that was not her only wish as far as he was concerned.

He pulled at her hair. Forcibly. Till she came down on the bed. The love making was quick and soundless, like it had always been in the mornings, when he had been hurried and she too sleepy to care.

He got up and went out for a light again.

She lay there thinking how life had gotten them both there. Two individuals so different from each other, they could have well been from different planets.

Her thoughts went back to the day they had first met.

"If the Universe had any decent management, We'd get a full refund if We weren't completely satisfied" - Calvin & Hobbes

Floating on Nothingness

Floating on nothingness

In the middle of the day

Floating out of my body

Nothing that holds me down

Nothing that keeps me sane

Nothing that is worth my while

Nothing that holds my interest

I see the world around me

People busy with banalities

People existing in meaninglessness

I see everything around me

And I ask myself

What is the point

Where are we headed

Where are we going

What is the meaning of it all?

And the only answer I get is

Silence…..

Stark and deep

Resonant and willful

Lonely and empty

And I get back to it again

Floating on nothingness…

I See You

You look into my eyes

You think I see the love

But I see you

For who you are

I see you eyes

I see what is lying there

In the deep recesses

Hidden from plain sight

Hidden from scrutiny

You have cloaked it well

Masked it right

You can’t fool me though

I see you through and through

I know your plans

Plans for me

I know all that you want

Sweep me off my feet

Toss me in the air

Swirl me around

Have your moment

Moment of fun

Ecstasy, exhilaration

Glee, of gay abandon

Joy, unadulterated and pure

And then when I come down

Down from the heights

I know there will be nothing

Nothing to hold me

Safe and secure

Warm and wanted

I know you

I see it in your eyes

I see you

Another Chance

Ahmed Faiyaz’s Another chance promises a lot on its back cover. An intriguing saga about the intertwined lives of 5 people and the good part is it delivers.

Another Chance makes no pretense of being a literary miracle. It is a fast paced tale about relationships and here Faiyaz proves that he knows his field too well. The story starts off with the main protagonist on a flight to Amsterdam from Mumbai to meet the only woman he has ever loved and whom he has lost twice. Once to circumstances and once to his career. It starts in the present, builds the curiosity of the reader sufficiently and takes on a journey back in time to find out the reason behind the pain in Aditya’s eyes and the reason why the pristine beauty Ruheen has left him for another man.

The journey that Faiyaz takes the reader on after that is something every person who has ever been in a relationship can relate to.

The dilemmas that a young couple each pursuing his/her own career goes through.

The times when no one is wring and no one is right. When both need to put a lot of effort to save a relationship.

The novel is a refreshing and realistic take on love and relationships and Faiyaz handles the subject well without slipping into clichés.

The novel ends smoothly and is quite pacy for its genre.

Read it if relationships interest you. It was a good read for me. Hope you will like it too.

He looked into her eyes. He had always liked looking into them, whenever he got the chance. It was not as if she didn’t let him, it was just that she was very shy, terribly shy. He would coax her for hours to let him look into his eyes for a minute. And then she would. Like she always did. He always won with her. She could never resist him. She, of the iron will, just melted whenever he was around. She had weathered a lot of storms in life. She said that's what had made her strong. He said, I don’t think so. You were not meant to be strong. God didn’t create you that way. He created you with a soft core and then he sent me take care of you. To guard you, shield you, hold you close and tight. Hold you in my arms and look into your eyes.

He held her close that night. He looked into her eyes. It had again taken coaxing since the morning for her to finally agree to meet him in the evening, after work and let him look into her yes.

He had parked the car under the streetlight, two lanes away from her house. The yellow light cast a warm glow on her face. It made her look breathtakingly beautiful. But then he never looked at her face. He looked into her eyes. They always looked like pools of a thousand myriad whirring emotions. But today was different; He could see that something was amiss. That her eyes had one predominant emotion, which drowned out all the rest of them. And what killed him was he didn’t know what it was. Or maybe he did and he didn’t want to face it. It was in that very moment, he could actually feel his heart turn into a deadweight. He could feel it turning into a drowning mass of stone. He could feel it choking him. He could feel life slipping out of his lungs. He started grasping for air. She sat there paralyzed. She just kept looking at him. It was guilt now. He saw it. And he knew the time had come for him to die. The time when all he had ever dreamt of, all the dreams he had ever seen, the very reason of his existence would come crashing down and would take him down with them. He kept looking into her eyes still, it was the last thing he wanted to d before he closed his. And then he smiled. After all, this is how he wanted to die, looking into her eyes.