Curtain

The brutal pants of the sea drifted into my ears as that inevitable silence crept into the conversation, like an awkwardly hungry stranger waiting for you to leave your seat in a restaurant. She looked at me fondly for a moment and then encircled her arms around me. “I might never see you again.” That was it. Goodbye. I stiffened instinctively within her warm embrace, like blood congealing within a throbbing bruise. The trailing red tape of Goodbye was gagging me shut with its usual armory - indefatigable silence and an overwhelming blankness. It was the certain consciousness of drowning as your arms flail about, painting desperate survival strokes that tar the canvas of Goodbye. I stuttered, waited for her to complete my incomplete sentences, and to mouth the inanities of Farewell. With a perfunctory wave the embrace broke.

I’m bad at Goodbyes. They remind me of those fancy scissors with jagged zigzag edges. “They lend a nice look to the edges of decorative paper- patterned and rhythmic.” My sister used to defend their use while making charts. “Why don’t you snip the paper of in one go, with regular scissors- you don’t need to waltz around with that plastic nightmare.” But the world, like my sister seems to prefer the latter.

I leapt into the bus at the last minute, as the signal flicked from red to green in a casual instant. I was leaving another friend, after discussing the possibility that we might not meet in a year. At least it’s better than “I might never meet you again.”

Goodbyes are like earthworms- every time you get done with the decapitation of one parting, a different head emerges almost instantly. Though it doesn’t actually have multiple avatars, this sneaky little earthworm has burrowed so deep into my mind, leaving behind earthen suds of phantasmal fears, the fear of separation being the least monstrous. And its sting seeps in long after the actual moment passes, when you’re bereft of words and tears. It hurts in the most improbable places, at the most improbable moments.

In the raspy creak of a broken-down bicycle. In the casual reminiscence of the everlastingly inexplicable tears of a hot dusty Sunday morning. In the wrinkled disgust of my eyelids when I screw my eyes shut while making my way through the debris of a demolished intimacy (meaning: hesitant glimpses of heated e-mail tantrums, tears, threats, conversations from the past.) Or was it an intimacy that was demolished before it was born? Right now I’m building a econd castle on the rubble of the first. Its certain collapse lies in my muted compliance with the uncertain terms of torture that intimacy establishes.

Goodbye, till had been the intermittent glip-glop sound of hesitant water drops making their leap into the communal safety of a bucket from a metallic cliff. Now it seemed like an incessant rush of water from a conked-out tap that I’d to have deal with. A presence that would henceforth be a constant, like a sporadic spook becoming a full-fledged ghost.

The muck- green colored ticket hopped across a multitude of coarse alien palms before landing gently into my pocket. It was just a tiny piece of brittle paper dripping with the dilute ink of economized printing. Rs.4.50. Goodbyes extract more punishing tolls. The change went into the other pocket with a jingle- it kept clinking throughout the journey- the insistent protests of unshed tears, the frozen tears of Goodbye. I remembered a conversation with my mother.

“Goodbyes seem to be cascading on me in multi-packs, Amma, like Pears soap, you get more than you actually bargained for. I don’t know how to handle it. I have very little time to negotiate terms of peace with these transitions. And it takes so long to get rid of that unending plastic packaging. ”

My mother dismisses my maudlin leaps of self-pity with a tact that doesn’t leave me feeling sheepish.

“Listen people will keep entering and leaving your life. People you know will leave college. You’ll leave people you know behind when you graduate. It’s unavoidable.” And after an inspired pause. “Have you traveled on a 29C?”

I was bemused. “Obviously.”

“How many people purchase tickets from Besant Nagar to Perambur? The full stretch? Two? Three? If people get on at Adyar, they might leave at Sterling. The people who sat through the Mylapore Stretch might be missing while the Bus passes Stella. You’re the bus. Remember that, you cannot control departures, you’ve just got to keep halting at places to watch periodic reshuffles in the positions and numbers of passengers happen.”

“That’s depressing. But you know what, it isn’t that simple. Sometimes they deceive you. They purchase four rupee tickets for Adyar to Chola and then they get down at Mandaveli. Or they jump off the stairhold when then bus is still moving. Or they vanish without warning before buying tickets. Or they make dents on the body of the bus, they plug the grooves on sills so that the windows stay open forever, they cover every inch on the walls with the permanent scars of graffiti. Or they puncture the tires so that bus deflates into diseased immobility. Or they burn down the bus.”

“Addicted to melancholy. You sound like you’ve had a romantic disappointment.”

I resisted the ribbing. Some disappointments run deeper than the shallow distress of romantic caprice. I wonder why that’s everybody’s favorite form of tragedy. Romantic disappointments are err… well romantic. The rites of a break-up have a certain beauty. Ever since I’ve read Helen Spalding’s “Curtain” (blame CBSE.) that clichéd dream of youth- Prince Charming-coming-down-on-his-knees-with-a-ring assumed second place (where obsessive might is concerned) to that dark brooding possibility that I might be one of the “Two Hamlets? Two soliloquies, Two worlds apart? Tomorrow” Ah. I’ve been under the spell of that impossibly romantic break-up fantasy for ages. Sigh. But then you have to fall in love first. This must be the most-repeated sentence ever, with its clauses, order of words, tense, everything intact. But then, you’ll have to fall in love first. That’s probably why half the shelves are filled with romance-self help in every book store/festival I visit. This is probably why awfully repetitive books like ‘Osho speaks on love.” “Osho speaks on intimacy” are stocked in hundreds while the two sole copies of "All quiet on the western front" have to be hunted down from the bottom of endless stacks on Kekan Dajuwala or whatever that astrologer's name might be.

I’ll post the poem here someday.