Not romanticising the past, just learning to breathe in the present.”

BY Pallavi Tripathi, Durg (CG)

…A rose is a rose is a rose as Stein would say it but do you smell it in those pages?

We had discovered Hitchcock, Kurusawa, Antonioni, Bunuel, Godard, Satyajit Ray, Fellini, RGV, Motwane was just making it big, Kashyap had his cult, Amit Dutta, Anand Gandhi were our gods! Sulemani keeda was our bhajan. Gulzar n Javed’s poetry was as much in our books as was Led Zeppelin and Queen’s music. We were exposed to so much of everything yet our annual meetup was with the Oscars. Selfies were breaking the internet, songs were getting out of the hands, magic tricks, and the announcement mistake, did you remember? We witnessed them all. I wish I could reveal your name in my stories but I never got around to it. Too weak, too superstitious that writing it will release the last of memories I have of you.

Why don’t you get married?

If I had a penny for everytime someone asked me that! No, I haven’t found the one.

What are you looking for in your spouse?

It’s complicated. I don’t wanna talk about it.

You do like girls don’t you? Do you have someone in your mind? Is she Muslim?

No. No. It’s nothing like that. It’ll happen when it happens. He almost caught his lie, or at least half truth. I’m not ready to come out. Not just yet, I’m not even sure I’ll ever be! I get attracted to ideas not to people and if that makes me queer so be it! 

Well, ultimately I did. I’m married now and he’ll never get to know you like I did. But I guess we’ll make memories of our own another island? No. I guess this is too big for that. Too many people involved, it’s already a nation with ministers and everything. But, but, but you’ll have the corner in my life that’ll be untouched even by my priorities. 

My clock has stopped to the moment you left. It could have stopped at our first kiss, it could have stopped the first time we looked at each other knowingly, or touched for the first time, held hands. It could very well have stopped at my first step, I took as a child or the first time I started to speak, mumble words but no the damned clock had to stop at the time you left. Etching your absence to eternity.

What do we do when clock stops though? We either replace it with new one or replace the battery. So did I. And now my clock and I are up and running just in time pointing at the right time. Someday I’ll make peace with the fact that you left the island, got busy with your life, left the dreams we weaved for each other, of making films, writing books, starting a cult. That day I’ll laugh at your jokes more openly. Create my own jokes without you, as I’ve learned to live without you and that has worked wonders. Not really complaining, no. Just acknowledging. Not romanticising, just living.

(Imagenary Creation)