Colour

Let us talk in rapid bursts of colour, you and I.

Like ripe mangoes bursting out of their skin in our hands,
the juice running streams down our
elbows.
Like the brief fury of red in the air,
when someone throws gulaal at you in the frenzy of holi.
Like the first time we kissed in a dark stairwell,
and it was crap, and I said so-
The words tumbling out of my mouth
and into your big eyes, which took no offence
but looked lazy back at me, smiling ‘Then teach me’.
So I did, and it wasn't much better-
but there were stars exploding underneath my eyelids
As i felt your warm mouth,
hesitantly touch
mine.

We have:

gnarled, veiny hands and forearms,

(and feet too, from too much walking),

an interest in the blues,

a propensity for hedonism,

a love for the written word,

an appreciation of beauty in stretches of untamed road,

contrasting views of the world,

and an unceasing fascination with each other.

- dug up an old tidbit I’d scribbled sometime earlier this year. Inspired by something Shalmi said.

Bijoya'r pronaam, Didibhai. I think about you more often than you would expect, and all I feel still is a sense of utter bewilderment.
I hope you are well and happy wherever you are.

Love,
Kachu

Number One Goal as of now:

To productively utilize my free time

On Secrets

I was talking to my boyfriend a couple of weeks back and we were speaking of secrets. I told him, a little surprised at the realization, that I barely had any secrets any longer. ‘So does that mean you’re less interesting now?’, he teased.

I don’t think it’s that though. I think I am just less ashamed now. Back in high school, even near the beginning of college, my secrets were all about things I was ashamed about.

Mental illness, a dysfunctional family, crippling anxiety and self doubt, sexual assault, OCD episodes, hooking up, my writing which was less about love-stories and more about things like a fifth grader watching her schizophrenic sister being taken away for the last time, the fact that I trained in classical music. My jealous nature, my bad temper, my desire which remained hidden behind the veil of being a ‘good girl’. The intensity of my emotions, my depression which was all but undetectable behind the ‘bubbly-smiling-pretty-girl’ facade. And so on.

I like growing up, I do. I no longer have to hide. I’m not judging myself any longer, and if people turn away from me because it is too much, then well it’s a loss, but I’ll survive. So far, they haven’t for the most part.

When I have secrets these days, it is usually about things I am waiting to come to fruition and don’t want to tell people about just yet.

Here’s to more of the same 

dropped into my life

with whiskey-blood and a mouth full of smoke.

my feet forgot the pull of gravity

for months afterward.

I should have paid more attention to what the storm was singing.

the happiest I have ever been

is struggling not to fall asleep on strange living room floors,

on make-shift beds,

beside lights strung in bottles-

losing track
of which of these limbs belong to me.

-For N who complains that I only write depressing things about him.
(And spectacularly misses the point. And is too much of an editor to love free-verse or cummings.
And is willing to admit his mistakes, and is the best friend I could have asked for.)

8-9-2013

To the best person I have ever known,

I could not see you. The consequences of choosing to leave for further shores are many, and so deep, that I could not possibly have foreseen them when I left at a naive, chirpy seventeen. So I did not see you. And the last memory I have of you is not hooked up to the dozen tubes and one half of your already barely-there frame. The last memory I have of you is of you holding my hands in yours and asking me “Kobe ashbi?”. I glibly assured you I’d be back in seven months. I’d be graduating. “Ei baar toh khoob kam shomoy, Didibhai”. In my mind seven months was nothing. Barely seven days later, you were in the hospital with poison in your blood. I wish, I wish- I wish I’d lingered then. ‘I wish’s are so useless aren’t they? So let us not speak of this now.

I wish I believed in heaven. The conventional happy-place. I really, really do, because I want to believe that you’re in the best place you could be, getting all the things you deserve, in peace, in comfort and in happiness. Now more than ever, I wish I believed in heaven- because then I could see you again. Right now, the news hasn’t registered really- and it keeps hitting me in fits and starts that next year when I return, your old familiar face, and gentle hands and constant anxiety won’t be on the bed underneath a lazy fan to greet me. It is unreal. And painful.

But let’s not speak of that. Going by what I believe, you’re bigger than your body now and you are energy, the universe(!) again- and what could be more wonderful than that? We are the only ones deprived in this situation, and you are not suffering- which is fine with me.

I don’t know if I can honestly believe in heaven. But I would really like to believe that there is a special place where souls like you go, where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.

You cannot give anymore, and perhaps that is for the best. I hope that you are being taken care of for a change. I hope that you feel strong, and free, and are finally, finally rid of chinta.

I love you and I will miss you. I will miss you next summer, and I will miss you this winter. I will miss you when I’m living in India, and I will miss you when I get my PhD. I will miss you when I stay out late and when I come home before seven. I will miss you when I get married and when I have children and when I eat, and when I sleep and when I wake. I will miss you.

I am happy that you are at peace now. Ma told me that after it all- of course you spared them from having to take a painful decision- you looked peaceful. Like Didibhai.

I am grateful that I am your granddaughter, grateful that I know that in a crazy, bad world, there is reason to hope. I know that goodness lives, and I will have faith, because I have been privileged to see it in front of me for nearly twenty two years- as has everyone who has ever known you.

Thank you for everything. 

Love,

Kachu.