I am a dust mote floating,
caught on a single ray of sunlight
that is your eyes,
and your laugh,
and your touch,
burning into my skin.
Look, goodbyes are all I know. They mean that there are more adventures to come. With me, it's always time to go. But, well...I knew right away that there was something different this time around. I didn't want to be anywhere else. Around you, my guilt seems to melt away, and time feels like an alien concept.
"Are you ever happy?"
Everyone has times when they know that they're happy for the most part, but moments of pure, crystallized happiness are another matter altogether.
"I can pinpoint certain moments in my life when I've had this pure burst of happiness. It's like- hang on, let me say this right... it's like... I was floating, suspended- a dust mote lit up by the sun. If i could explain the fierce blaze of happiness I felt with my entire being- that's what it was like. Like being tiny, tiny, tiny but so large that the happiness consumes you. In a good way. It wasn't like being overwhelmed by a flood- it's like floating, suspended, with a mind wiped clean- no, not like being high- like... I don't know. I was never much good with words. You know what I mean."
I was really, really happy that time in the fourth grade when Mrs. Gomes, my favourite teacher said that I was an asset to her class. I looked up the word 'asset' in the big green and black Oxford Dictionary we had at home, and I felt like I had something to be proud of.
When else? When we, my brother and I, were at the backseat of the family car, tired out playing Antakshari and finger chess. We'd fallen quiet and our parents were talking, laughing about grown-up things that did not include us. Not fighting. Never have I felt so happy to be excluded.
Watching cartoon after cartoon on Fox-kids, watching Spiderman with Ma and Bhai in the master bedroom made me really happy.
When else? Laughing till my skinny ten year old sides ached, my head on a kolbaalish as my Grandpa read 'Haw-jo-baw-ro-law' to me. The story about the crow(?) that I've now forgotten.
An evening on a deserted college campus, after the rain, with a cool breeze, and a few errant souls and old music playing on their phones. I wrap my arms around a lanky frame, and push my chin into the small of a back. Close is not close enough, I realize. All the time is not time enough. Kissing is not kissing enough. Too much all at once. I am startled, and taken aback by my discovery, but fiercely, fiercely happy.
Another sort of happiness- lying on a too-thin mattress with an eye peeping at me from behind skin, blurred, Neruda streaming into reality.
Almost every time I've danced un-selfconsciously, I've been very happy. Almost every time I've allowed myself to get caught in the rain, I've been happy.
Reading really, really good books, realizing that I was beginning to love them, I've been happy. Fahrenheit 451 comes to mind, curled up on a couch at a cafe, with crumbs from finished butter-tarts littering my clothes.
"Listen, you probably don't remember this. The first time I came over to your new place, when you lived by the cows-"
"I did not live by cows!', you interject.
"Uff, you did. Yes, you did! We passed them everyday on our way to your place. Before the auto and before Papon De, but after that advertisement in Bangla we couldn't read"
"Yes, but that was a good 3 minute walk away- that is not the same as living by cows".
"Okay, okay fine. That house, anyway."
"Yes, yes, carry on".
"We were supposed to go exploring. North Calcutta, and old houses touching elbows, and sweet-shops. But it started to rain buckets, so I came over instead. We had the place to ourselves because Lahiri- bless his soul-was in Sodepur. And we wanted to watch a movie about a talking lizard. Johnny Depp was a talking lizard, and I really liked Johnny Depp so we were going to watch that movie. But then you slid over to me and wrapped a long arm around my tiny waist. You bent down and put your face next to mine, and breathed into my ear. "Koto din tokey dekhini", you said with feeling. It had only been three days. "Far too long", you answered, and that was that.
Something deep inside me was singing then. Happy-happy-happy, it went, and I knew how happy I was. Who knows what strange twist of fate, or chance brings people into our lives, but how unutterably lucky, lucky, lucky when someone you could really love comes along and rubs their eyes, disbelieving, at the dumb luck of it, too.
Kissing you goodbye was not the hardest part because it did not feel real. Wanting so badly to reach out and feel your bony shoulders and bury my face in your neck- wanting to do that and not being able to- that was hard. It took me nine months to shed tears over the distance, but I did.
Dilli door nahi.
Disclaimer: Boy, if you happen to be reading this, wipe the smugness off your face, and remember 'inspired by', not about. You are not allowed to use this against me to win an argument. I put it down in writing, so there!
caught on a single ray of sunlight
that is your eyes,
and your laugh,
and your touch,
burning into my skin.
Look, goodbyes are all I know. They mean that there are more adventures to come. With me, it's always time to go. But, well...I knew right away that there was something different this time around. I didn't want to be anywhere else. Around you, my guilt seems to melt away, and time feels like an alien concept.
"Are you ever happy?"
Everyone has times when they know that they're happy for the most part, but moments of pure, crystallized happiness are another matter altogether.
"I can pinpoint certain moments in my life when I've had this pure burst of happiness. It's like- hang on, let me say this right... it's like... I was floating, suspended- a dust mote lit up by the sun. If i could explain the fierce blaze of happiness I felt with my entire being- that's what it was like. Like being tiny, tiny, tiny but so large that the happiness consumes you. In a good way. It wasn't like being overwhelmed by a flood- it's like floating, suspended, with a mind wiped clean- no, not like being high- like... I don't know. I was never much good with words. You know what I mean."
I was really, really happy that time in the fourth grade when Mrs. Gomes, my favourite teacher said that I was an asset to her class. I looked up the word 'asset' in the big green and black Oxford Dictionary we had at home, and I felt like I had something to be proud of.
When else? When we, my brother and I, were at the backseat of the family car, tired out playing Antakshari and finger chess. We'd fallen quiet and our parents were talking, laughing about grown-up things that did not include us. Not fighting. Never have I felt so happy to be excluded.
Watching cartoon after cartoon on Fox-kids, watching Spiderman with Ma and Bhai in the master bedroom made me really happy.
When else? Laughing till my skinny ten year old sides ached, my head on a kolbaalish as my Grandpa read 'Haw-jo-baw-ro-law' to me. The story about the crow(?) that I've now forgotten.
An evening on a deserted college campus, after the rain, with a cool breeze, and a few errant souls and old music playing on their phones. I wrap my arms around a lanky frame, and push my chin into the small of a back. Close is not close enough, I realize. All the time is not time enough. Kissing is not kissing enough. Too much all at once. I am startled, and taken aback by my discovery, but fiercely, fiercely happy.
Another sort of happiness- lying on a too-thin mattress with an eye peeping at me from behind skin, blurred, Neruda streaming into reality.
Almost every time I've danced un-selfconsciously, I've been very happy. Almost every time I've allowed myself to get caught in the rain, I've been happy.
Reading really, really good books, realizing that I was beginning to love them, I've been happy. Fahrenheit 451 comes to mind, curled up on a couch at a cafe, with crumbs from finished butter-tarts littering my clothes.
"Listen, you probably don't remember this. The first time I came over to your new place, when you lived by the cows-"
"I did not live by cows!', you interject.
"Uff, you did. Yes, you did! We passed them everyday on our way to your place. Before the auto and before Papon De, but after that advertisement in Bangla we couldn't read"
"Yes, but that was a good 3 minute walk away- that is not the same as living by cows".
"Okay, okay fine. That house, anyway."
"Yes, yes, carry on".
"We were supposed to go exploring. North Calcutta, and old houses touching elbows, and sweet-shops. But it started to rain buckets, so I came over instead. We had the place to ourselves because Lahiri- bless his soul-was in Sodepur. And we wanted to watch a movie about a talking lizard. Johnny Depp was a talking lizard, and I really liked Johnny Depp so we were going to watch that movie. But then you slid over to me and wrapped a long arm around my tiny waist. You bent down and put your face next to mine, and breathed into my ear. "Koto din tokey dekhini", you said with feeling. It had only been three days. "Far too long", you answered, and that was that.
Something deep inside me was singing then. Happy-happy-happy, it went, and I knew how happy I was. Who knows what strange twist of fate, or chance brings people into our lives, but how unutterably lucky, lucky, lucky when someone you could really love comes along and rubs their eyes, disbelieving, at the dumb luck of it, too.
Kissing you goodbye was not the hardest part because it did not feel real. Wanting so badly to reach out and feel your bony shoulders and bury my face in your neck- wanting to do that and not being able to- that was hard. It took me nine months to shed tears over the distance, but I did.
Dilli door nahi.
Disclaimer: Boy, if you happen to be reading this, wipe the smugness off your face, and remember 'inspired by', not about. You are not allowed to use this against me to win an argument. I put it down in writing, so there!
2 comments:
i wish i could go beyond aww.
there arent too many times when i cant go beyond aww.
but aww.
and yes, Dilli must happen soon.you know who else to meet :)
on another note,i was my happiest when i ran and everything around me became a blur of lines and the only sound that i could hear was the rhythmic thudding of my soles on the ground.sigh!
Oh man, I feel you *so* hard on the running thing. It's probably one of the only times I'm not thinking or worrying or anything. I love it, should do it more often really.
And thank you. I kind of roll my eyes at myself when I say aww-able things but ohwell. Much enthusiasm to meeting in Dilli. I will be meeting Sohini so tokhon perhaps?p
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