It was one of those days when you wanted to stay alone, think and re-think your thoughts,amend them and regret them.It was a deadly aesthetic day,dead but still enthralling.Your pen was the mirror of your addled thoughts.You were fascinated by the sound of the papers shuffling, and the scratching sound of the pens. The people were busy,the wind was breezy,swooning through your hair,playing with the strands of your hair .You wrote down each details of the sky you took in from your window, scratched it down, bit your lips. All these thoughts came to a halt when Mr.Biswas knocked on my door.
“Come in”, I said.
‘’Mam, I was told to submit these manuscripts to you, they are good to go to the press” , he bit his lips and looked down.
“ Alright, I will see to that” , I picked up the telephone and dialled Anil’s number. He is my assistant and an intern here. He is a nonchalant guy, having ample knowledge in literature,perfect for the job.
It was never easy to be here. I had to work my nose off to get here, and be the Editor of one of the most popular newspapers in India.I had fame,connections and money. And as the once writer said ‘ A woman must have money and a room of one’s own to write fiction’. I had no barriers materialistically. But there are shadows to light, nights to days and blacks to whites. There are several grooves, several metaphorical tunnels a human has to go through. No one can ever have enough. Everyone has their own poison-ivy (s) attached to their selves. And I had too. I was this one melancholic human being who had no acquaintances outside her publishing job. I was one hell of an irony.I was an editor myself, who could not edit her life, give a perfect shape to it.
This mundane situation came to an end the day Ratri stepped into our office. She was this delightful girl, who could be described as a gush of fresh air, a light breeze, a floral shirt on a sultry summer. She joined in the PR team as the Assistant Marketing executive. We bonded over literature and the love for Byomkesh. She unfurled my layers in no time, and I let her. Maybe I was in this dire need of a friendship, a friendship that did not need much effort, a friendship that could be destroyed in seconds, yet will be cherished for a lifetime. I wanted it, she wanted it.
Ratri was an interesting person. Though she was an Assistant Marketing executive,she had varied interests outside her job. She loved football, she was a hardcore Real Madrid fanatic, whereas I was a strict Liverpool fan. We had several discussions about it over tea. She loved Tagore, whereas I loved Sarat Chandra more. We had wild discussions on literature, discussions I cherished. But what amalgamated our friendship was our mutual love for detective novels, especially Byomkesh.We both loved how we found an uncanny resemblance between Byomkesh Bakshi and Sherlock Holmes.
You know, how we trifle with friendships, how we instil this fear of losing a person inside us, garnish it with anxiety and serve it with a pinch of despair. I, as a person did not have enough friends, never did. Hence, when I finally got one, I wanted to embrace it as I tightly as I could, I wanted her to be my confidante, my coffee-partner, and my best friend, and maybe, maybe that was the death of me. You could never find everything in a single person. Every person in your life is assigned to play a specific role, and the moment you try to assign EVERYTHING to a single person, you are doomed. The idea of losing someone haunts us more, than the actual event of parting.
It was Fall, as far as I can remember, the pumpkin juices, the rusty leaves, all were whirling amidst the chaos of nature. With an anticipation to what was going to unfurl , Ratri and myself took up a venture. A venture to visit all the infamous places in Kolkata. We assigned the job of jotting down our favourite spots to ourself.
“ So, are we excited Meera?”
“Hell yes, we are Ratri. I can’t wait to present my list to you. I have some really interesting spots in my pocket”, I grinned while I savoured the cookies Ratri had brought for me.
“ So do I”, Ratri grinned back at me.
There is a saying that there is always a part of the person we love inside us. How much we try to forget, how much we try to not care,we just go back to them, no matter what. No matter how much they have scarred us, we keep reflecting their silhouettes in our lives. There is this thing with love, there is this specific thing with the many relationships I encountered in my Twenty eight years of life, that I never let go. I never let go the idea of the person, I have wrapped the memories in a bell jar, and kept them in the back of my mind. That was the thing with Saumya. He was a metaphor,a metaphor that messed me up, and I knew I was stuck. He left me years ago. Yes, he left me years ago, but I never did. I leaned on him so heavily, that when the pillar broke down, I could not recover, suddenly I did not know where to lean on. Hell, I didn’t know if I could ever lean anymore.
So, to reminisce, to cherish the places we ventured together, I decided to take Ratri to those places. Not because I was trying to savour the remnants of our separation, but rather to cherish the sweetness of those places, I took this decision. So, I started to jot down the places.
“Are we ready to unravel the places we have jotted down?”
“Yes we are Meera”
Surprisingly, our list of places were mostly similar. We had Princep Ghat, Coffee house and National Library in our pockets. So we began our journey, each Sunday, one new place.
Princep Ghat was a close place to my heart.I had my first heart made, and my first heart broken there. It was an alluring spot, alluring yet heart breaking.
“So, how are you really Ratri?”, I asked while munching on the infamous ‘Jhal-muri” of that place.
And as Ratri would have said in a classic Ratri style, “I am excited!”, she did.
“I am excited about this whole marriage thing you know. Two lives, intertwined together, put into a glass jar they have to call family now”, Ratri looked up, probably to take in the beauty of the sky. And I? I, found an uncanny resemblance of her words to someone. Someone who broke my heart into two, two lives that could not be amalgamated together, together they did not make any sense.
Soumya and I were high school sweethearts, we had all our firsts together, our first kiss, first gym membership to our first bike trip to Puri. It was like a dream, we sailed on a boat where nothing could ever touch us until…the row got lost. It was devastating to say the least. I shut myself down for months. This is the thing with relationships, we never imagine of breakups, we never ponder upon the word ‘parting’. This whole institution of love is flawed, and I was a victim of it.
I had a wonderful month of venturing along with Ratri to our listed places. Princep Ghat stood in solidarity with me, while Coffee house jarred all the memories carefully and the library? It had all the chapters of my life neatly woven into a majestic prose. I did not need anything more.
Ratri was bugging me with the idea of a meet-up with her fiancé. She kept on insisting me till I agreed.
“Sam is so intrigued by you. He is really looking forward to meeting you.” , Ratri exclaimed as she sipped on her cappuccino.
It was a slightly chilly November morning. I tucked my blue shirt into my faded jeans, put on a minimal lipstick and went on meeting with Ratri and her fiancé. I don’t even know why a letter I wrote kept ringing in my ears throughout the journey I had to the venue. A letter I wrote to Saumya, a letter that could not be delivered.
“Dear S,
I fight my tears. Tears that tempt and force themselves out my eyes. Eyes? Vessel of dreams. They ignite fire. So I keep them open. For closing them gives birth to a cauldron of memories.Blacks and whites. Tick and tock. They laugh in accumulation as I hover over the letters you sent me when our love blossomed? Do you remember? Do you remember the nights we stayed awake and talked for hours? It was summer, yet it felt like spring. Spring in my heart, turned to cold rusted winter, where leaves fall on the ground of misery.
There was this unprecedented fear, since the time our love was imbibed. The fear of losing you as I laid on your chest, you reading our favourite book to me, or light up the cigarette after you had kissed my forehead. Or the time when we both gushed over Kurt Cobain and how often his voice is on the verge of breaking down .Never had imagined you were talking about us.Your smile, oh your smile still is canvassed in my mind. And I feared losing you when you never were mine. I feared losing you when you never feared losing me. Like petals that turned into brown dead bodies, our eyes did not used to meet each other in the end. It was the beginning of the end, if you may. And yet I slit my throat to let you breathe. I did I did.
Yours,
Forever.
As I entered the venue, I spotted a corner and waited for Ratri and her fiancé there. They were late, fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes. I kept on checking my mobile phone. I kept on looking up every time the door opened. Who entered was a man of six feet. Clad in black, head to toe. A wild cacophony in his eyes, probably searching for someone. I knew those eyes. They were my saviour, they were my downfall. They were Saumya’s.
I felt something jittering inside me. I opened my contacts, and as soon as I was going to dial Ratri’s phone number, she entered, too, clad in black, with the same unrestness in her eyes. Suddenly she turned towards Saumya, she augmented her steps and hugged his arms from behind.
Ratri’s call, my phone vibrated. But my hands were numb.
Oh did I tell you, Saumya fell out of my love, to fall in someone else’s back in the Fall of ‘08? Did I?
The Book Monster 