I dont know whats with me and posting incomplete blogs these days.... it almost looks like I consciously try to leave them unfinished. Anyhows, this was written just before they burnt up the Taj.
A pair of extremely dirty socks lie at the corner of the bed. A worm, a silverfish if you were to ask me is exploring the contours of the sock. Clothes are strewn about in a disarray. A pair of stilettos, sandals with a strap missing in one of them, flats and the laptop bag are to the right of the bed. To the left you have two huge pillows with dust patterns, a VIP skybag with a layer of dust and a suitcase that has no claimant. The bed houses clothes, towels, a face scrub, a comb, a mobile phone with its charger, a purse, a handbag, a clutchbag, Virginia Woolf’s greatest literary classics, a Rajastani bedspread, a half eaten bar of chocolate, a cigarette lighter adorned with a voluptuous Minnie Mouse and a girl who is blowing spit bubbles.
There must be some intelligibility even in this anarchy as the girl seems to be thinking. Smile just flirting with the corners of the mouth, she is counting the number of times He used the word, “pedantic”. I used to be a part of her but now the thought of being inside her and watch her bite one more nail is unbearably odious. What would you call me? Her conscience? Maybe Yes. Maybe No.
I am the voice that keeps talking inside her head. I laugh sometimes when she is in the company of the pompous and the vain, cry out loudly when she experiences injustice, weep when she sees a dog and a man sharing a make shift blanket in the footpath and nag when she passes the slum school where she intends to teach one day but never brings herself to. I was strangely quiet today when she met this man. I observed the décor, recognized the fact that she was dining in Taj Mahal, my observations were more directed towards the woman who had dreadlocks and was immersed in a Thomas Hardy classic sitting alone in the restaurant, when I got bored of the ambience, I started obsessing about every new entrant into the “Masala Kraft”. I didn’t say anything to her……..the evening was perfect, He was perfect and here I am sick to the core with her commitment to the non committal.
I stand in front of her and yell. “You brazen hussy! Slut! Unfeeling, indifferent debauched woman! How many more times are you going to do this? Don’t you want to be happy? Why the hullabaloo about marriage when all you can manage every single time with uncanny precision is an, “I am not ready for a commitment yet!” Doesn’t she want the love of a good, kind, principled, honest man who is ready to do everything in his might to make her happy?
“Why do you do this to people, to men, talk to them, lure them, make the heady concoction of resist and yield, yield and resist, implore and argue, beseech and squabble, bat the eyelashes, thrust the breast, pay rapt attention to any gibberish that comes out their mouths, till any man in his sane, red blooded, dick driven mind is ready to assume heck conclude that this woman is mine. And then, Phatt comes the realization that Her Highness just cannot settle because she doesn’t feel anything for the guy. Why go out of the way to please them then, you excuse for a human being? What perverted paroxysms drive you to such manipulations? Is this your vengeance on the emptiness in your life? Is this how you shroud loneliness? Or is this escapism from wanting to accept reality?”
“You will end up rejected, desolate, hopeless, indifferent, sad, sad, sad. You know you will.”
She doesn’t say anything. The eyes that stare back at me are vacant and resigned. Suddenly I know that it’s my fault. It’s completely and irrevocably my fault. I had a liaison with hope and imagination to acquaint themselves with her. When love came, I shrieked, I sobbed, I laughed, I hated, I envied, I distrusted, I seduced- with her, through her to such an extent that upheaval meant solace to her. I asked passion to come sit by her. I tricked restraint, comfortable mundanity, modesty, practicality (oh she is the most odious of all, practicality) and the arcane to associate themselves with some other looser.
It was my hand that painted pictures of mountains and beaches and sunsets and sunrises. I got pleasure and advocated its presence. I talked her into seeing the magic that can exist between man and woman. I got her the intoxicating adulation and adoration of men. I made her love and I made her loose. I made her want and want till she hurt. Never even realizing it myself I always made her put herself before anything else. To be loved, to be wooed, to be sought, to be helped……Selflessness is so modest, she never comes by if you don’t beseech her to. I never did and the girl never learnt.
I am the reason she judges every guy with a microscope…. I made her equate dependable with mundane. I come up with a gazillion reasons to not like a guy. I made Him seem larger than life. I filled so much hate in her. And now look at her. I pity her. She shops likes crazy before every family wedding she attends, tries to play nonchalant only to expose her obvious vulnerability, smiles and congratulates every colleague on his/her engagement or marriage (the smile doesn’t reach the eyes though), starts planning her wedding trousseau and quickly erases away the image, looks at herself every morning in the mirror eyes illuminated with unanswerable questions, unfair questions. This is how she will be, if she cannot befriend the ordinary. She wont befriend the ordinary. So she will live, unhappily untill God knows when.
