I really liked her paintings and she my photographs. Her paintings were unlike my photos, for they were deep, complex, unresolved and poignant while mine was simple, light and enlivening. We both were deeply confused souls, my confusion was simple while hers were complex. She used to say that art is nothing but a drop of our vented out confusions.
Our relationship was borne out of the process of simplifying the complex equation of her confusion to the simple equation of my confusion. She would call me in the night and ask me questions like 'People like pain only because it makes them feel "I am", it gives solidity whereas happiness dissolves your personality. How true is that?'. I would simplify it for her. Frankly I was simplifying it for myself, and in process of getting that acknowledgement from her, near the end, I would find her sleeping peacefully on that opposite side of the phone.
There are two kind of men you love. One who would not let you sleep or should I say the one whose phone calls you would wait for. The ones who don't reply to your phone calls and messages. They are non caring, insensitive smart men. You lose them because you are tired of waiting for them to be sensitive. Other kinds are the ones who would respond to all your calls for they care and are sensitive. You would sleep to their voices. But you lose them because you take them for granted.
Love is a drug and that is what was I becoming for her. A drug who untangled the complex algebra problems of her life, for she felt better. But somehow I noticed that her paintings did not seem so beautiful then. I asked other fans about her paintings and everyone said the same that she had gone down in her canvas skills. She was not painting that well.
Love also has a habit of evaporating and artists never compromise on the intensity of their feelings. Intensity of happiness is ephemeral, that is why they prefer the intensity of sadness, it lasts and is mostly prolonged.
We fought over trivial topics. Rather I would insist that it was more of a fault of mine. I am the jealous kinds, extremely jealous I would say. But then, the puppets we are in a larger scheme of things, I had no control over my jealousy and then by the time I took control over my puppetry string, lot of damage had already been done to the intensity of our love. So we parted to the extent that I had to change the city and she went abroad.
It had been 6 years since we parted. I stumbled over social media that her painting exhibition was being displayed in the city I had shifted to. Old emotions erupted, I wanted to see her paintings, how she painted but then I did not want to meet her personally. I could look at her from a window as to how she looked but then would never want to face her. So one day, I called the reception of the exhibition to check whether the painter would be there in the exhibition. The girl picking up the phone apologetically told me that her ma'am would not be as she was a bit unwell. I was relaxed and decided to immediately go and see her paintings.
I went and saw the pictures. They were far more beautiful than what she painted 6 years back. There was one painting which touched me the most,I stood before it long and my eyes became moist. I heard a female voice from behind "That's my favourite painting: The Nowhere Man". I knew it has her standing at my back knowing I would come. I felt it was a plan, a ploy to get me here, to show me the painting, to make me feel vulnerable. I should have felt emotionally happy for she had painted me but instead I felt penetrated and weak. There was a feeling of self hatred aroused deep within me for feeling so fragile, for feeling guilty of giving her that after love pain, for being avenged by that one girl, for being spotlighted there, for being a jealous monster, for all those thoughts of her that still laid complicated..
I did not say a thing and ran from there. Something in me was lost that day. I started my car and felt the most lonely person in the world. I deeply recognised my soul's incurable loneliness. Joyce was right, we can not give ourselves, we are our own...
