Cursed.

A couple after getting married in Mumbai realised that they suffered a curse where they could not love each other at the same time. The wife could love husband for 12 hours while the husband could love the wife for the remaining 12 hours. They were deeply bothered for their love was not mutual at any particular instant of time.

When they googled and found that several couples in India had suffered same problem. And few of them could get it resolved through a Baba sitting in Himalayas. The couple immediately rushed to Himalayas to meet the Baba. The Baba asked certain questions and diagnosed that this was a curse given by an ex-lover of the wife. The wife after a quick thinking decided that it must have been Ravi. Ravi had loved her a lot and had also got a tattoo of her name in his arm. Baba told them to get Ravi to him and then he would suggest a cure for it.

The couple rushed to Delhi where Ravi lived and Ravi was happy to see the girl he had deeply loved. The three traveled to Himalayas where Baba suggested that if the wife kissed Ravi, the curse would vanish and couple could love each other for full 24 hours. The couple had a long discussion where wife convinced the reluctant husband that it was a one time pain for a long time gain. The husband, with a deep sadness, allowed the wife to kiss Ravi.

Post the Himalayan kiss, the couple left for Mumbai happily, but they realised that the Baba's cure had worked but only for 4 hours. They still could not love each other for 20 hours at the same time. They waited for some time and again rushed to Baba. Baba suggested that the wife had not kissed Ravi properly. Ravi was called again and after a long debate between wife and husband, husband allowed his wife to kiss Ravi. Afterall, it was a one time pain for a long time gain. After a long kiss, the couple went back to Mumabi and realised that the curse had gone off only for 10 hours (still 14 hours were not mutual). Again they went to Baba and Ravi was called and long kiss happened after the debate. It was only after three intimate kisses, the curse went off for 24 hours.

But while in Mumbai, the wife realised that Ravi was a much better kisser than her husband. Probably he was a better lover too. She started exchanging whatsapp messages with Ravi and more she tried to know Ravi, more she regretted of having rejected Ravi. Ravi was also happy to interact with his old love. Slowly the whatsapp exchanges grew and phone calls also increased. It was then Ravi started visiting Mumbai often and met his ex-lover. The affair started and they were convinced that they were in love with each other. Finally, one day the wife told the husband about her love for Ravi and asked for divorce so that she could marry Ravi. The husband was devastated for he loved his wife a lot. But he had no other choice but to divorce his wife.

After the divorce, Ravi married his ex-lover and the wife became his wife. But then after the marriage, they realised that they could not love each other at the same time. The same 12 hour curse curse had now hit Ravi and wife. Both ran to the baba and baba told that someone had cursed them. It was the husband. Finally husband was called and he was asked to kiss. Same story of Ravi and wife repeated between husband and wife. And after 3 rounds of kissing, the curse went off and wife shifted to Delhi. But then the wife realised that the husband was a better kisser.  She started exchanging whatsapp messages with her ex-husband.  Finally the same process of whatsapp-phonecall-meetings-divorce-curse-baba-kisses-marriage happened between husband and wife.

The life of the wife juggled between Delhi and Mumbai, between Ravi and husband. It was only  that the kissing in the Himalayas, facilitated by the Baba, which proved to be a rare brief crack of light in her life while she juggled between curses.

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness"- Nabokov, Speak Memory

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The fall and the rise

Part 1: The fall

He prepared very hard for this interview, mugged up even the last 3 years profit margins of his dream company, researched on the interviewer's LinkedIN profile, dressed up in his lucky suit. 

He was doing well in his interview, solving all the cases, answering about how-he-will-change-the-world and failures-that-taught-him-a-lot. But then alas, something happened. The interviewer who was arrogantly swiveling on his chair fell. The interviewer's fall was so comic, that he could not help but chuckle. But soon he gathered that it was his interview and thus he rushed to help the interviewer get up.

Obviously, he was not selected for the job because the interviewer did not want someone in his office who reminded him of his ludicrous fall....

Part 2: The rise

His college time ex-girlfriend went on to become an internet obsession after she wrote an article titled '10 best guys I slept with'. This article was seen as the rise of a feminist movement where Indian girls could speak freely about their sexual encounters. She had mentioned him at the number one rank (the best guy she slept with) and had been very explicit in her description (she needed to justify why was he best). 

His wife got this article forwarded to her from her colleague, packaged with a sarcastic comment that she was a lucky woman. The wife choked reading the article and could not read ahead of the midway as everything was so explicitly written.

The husband also got to know about the article from a colleague. He read the article but found his past too explicit for his taste. He even contemplated taking the girl to the court but feared due to the number of retweets and number of likes  the article had got. The world was praising the rise of new bold womanhood who talked about her experiences so openly....

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In that very circle

We both ran behind each other
In that very circle
At times I was ahead, at times she
But we kept running in that very circle.

When I ran behind her, she became a woman
When she ran behind me, she became a girl
But I was always a boy running in that very circle

We never stood still at one silly point
We never changed the radius of our very circle
while she kept modulating her speed,
At times the woman faster and the girl slower
But I kept running at the same speed in that very circle.

I wondered who made us run behind each other.
And in the center thus sat the love
Which made us both run wild
In that very circle.....

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Who is sure?

Why am I not a star?
Why am I not a sun?
I am just a point, running and running, 

a random point on a random circle.

Just whirling around.
Less or more, I don't know.
Questions are huge, who is sure?

Running away from real, escaping towards life.
Blissful sensations of positive sadness or the hollow joy of victory.
What is the centre of your circle?
Questions are huge, who is sure?

The souls worn out of mediocrity.
In the race of tangibles, losing on intangibles.
Better or worse, its relative.
Where is the absolute?
Questions are huge, who is sure?

-vC

(Dedicated to a friend who is shivering in the minus 12 degrees of Annandale, Washington DC)

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An artist and a monk

He was a complete microcosm in himself.  He was the watcher and he was also the watched. He sat in the woods where he mocked, doubted and laughed at himself. He loved himself and simultaneously hated himself (for both have similar intensity). In short he was both: an artist and a monk.

Artist: Do you have to try hard to keep yourself happy? 
Monk: I don't know happy. But life is easy. Its like sea waves. Leave your body in it. Enjoy the waves. Don't try to fight the waves. I mean I don't. Its the nature of the waves to take you to the shore. So one day I will also reach, for sure. Just leave yourself in the sea and enjoy. So much beauty around. Trees, animals, kids, clouds, stars. Aah its amazing. For if you try to fight the waves you might win the ephemeral battle but you will lose the long lasting war.
People have a tendency to fight the waves. And worst is that they end up fighting the wave which is calmer for they can't fight the strong waves. That's a mistake because it is in a calm wave you notice things more around you. The octopus, the dolphin, the starfish, the walrus,the turtle. I mean when life is slow people get bothered and want to quicken the pace. That's why they discovered video games, cars and tv while ignoring simple pleasures like playing outdoors, watching the stars.

Artist: You are right I feel I am always in a hurry wanting to reach somewhere I don't know where! Just to avoid where I am.
Monk: You are right, we are the only creatures who refuse to be what we are, how we are and where we are. Don't fight the waves. Flow with it. One of the ideas involved with the concept of entropy is that nature tends from order to disorder systems in isolated systems. Which means that mind will go towards chaos if left alone. Hence your hurry. So you need to control your mind. And through what is more important. I think art is the best solution. Nature is the best art. Try poetry, magic ,painting, fiction, aesthetics, any piece of art. Now you will say that art is a lie, its a fiction and hence not the truth. Isn't it ironical it is the lie which is setting you free? While men have the curse that they refuse to be what they are, they also have this gift of imagination.  Its the imagination which sets him free. And when you sit in the most beautiful surroundings of those hills, you have that infinite imagination which dissolves you, divides you (a finite) and makes you feel zero. Don't you aspire for that?

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Circle

“Three non-collinear points are enough to draw/define one and only one circle”

Point One

Let me introduce myself, I am a fool. I really really like this girl. We study in the same class and she asks lots and lots of questions, but only to this one professor.

Anyways, after much deliberation she agreed to give me a fair valuation, the valuation that I was capable of her. We went outside, I drank some beer and she some wine. I showed her my smart phone to which she was a bit impressed. Then I showed her pictures of another girl who was deeply in love with me. I described about how much this another girl had love me and all. But I did not love another girl, I loved the girl sitting in front. She saw the pictures with quiet and interesting look. Then she suddenly got up saying that that girl was much better than anyone I deserved. That was really a mean thing to say. How can I force myself to love someone? You can't force dude, love happens with the weirdest of people.

Point Two

Let me introduce myself, I am a teacher. I teach this crazy subject. Today, I gave my students this difficult question as group assignment. I am excited to read what they will write. The question goes like this:

“Mr. Mehta (A) chasing Miss Malini (B) and Miss Malini (B) chasing Mr. Mehta (A) for love was plotted graphically and in two dimensions, it was found to be a circle. At any given point in time, they both were always diametrically opposite to each other. If Mr. Mehta ran towards Miss Malini by some distance, Miss Malini also ran towards Mr. Mehta by the same distance. The displacement between A and B is always equal to the diameter of the circle while distance is always equal to the pie multiplied by the radius between them. Please find out the radius of the circle.”

I just want them to know through this assignment that a circle cannot be drawn with just 2 points (A and B).  A minimum of three points is a must.

Point Three

Let me introduce myself, I am the girl whom ‘the fool’ tried to impress and ‘the teacher’ gave the assignment to. There are a lot of guys who try to impress me. My whole cupboard is full of gifts, endless proposal letters which boost my confidence. But let me confide that someone I love is ‘the teacher’, I love him deeply. I am doing his assignment, struggling to find the radius of the circle with just two points (A and B) given. I will sit in the class tomorrow and I am sure that only guy getting the answer right would be that ‘fool’. ‘The fool’ is his favorite student. I am so jealous of ‘the fool’ and he is really obnoxiously bright. Anyways, I really want to find the radius of this circle for I can’t afford to get it wrong.

_________________________________________________________________________________

There are minimum three points needed to draw a circle. And three points are the girl, the fool and the teacher.  Draw a triangle with the corners plotted as the fool, the teacher and the girl. Now find the mid points of all the 3 sides of the triangle. Draw a perpendicular bisector of all 3 lines and the point where all 3 lines intersect is the center of our circle. The radius of the circle is the line joining the center of the circle to any corner of the triangle.

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Confusions

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...

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Open you heart..

Part 1: Potpourri

Every time she visited him, he plucked a flower from his garden and offered her one. She would rejoice like a butterfly at the sight of the blossoming flower. She would keep the flower with her for all the moments she stayed at his place. And before leaving, before that final hug of his, she would open 'Alice in the Wonderand', from his small library and calmly place the flower in between the pages.

When she had put the first flower, she had informed him that she would take it back with her after it had dried fully, after the colour of the flower would have turned brown. She really liked the sight of pressed-dried up flowers.

It has been six year since he had last met her.

And yesterday, I met him at his place with a couple of beers. I noticed Alice in Wonderland in his library and could not resist the urge to turn few pages of one of my favourite books. I saw eleven such flowers dried up amidst the pages of that wonderful book. I asked him that whether the flowers had belonged to 'her' to which he replied he had never given any flower to her, rather he only gave those flowers to himself.....

Part 2: Winter is coming

It was his third summer in delhi and in the previous two summers he had been with 2 different beautiful girls: one in year one and another in year 2. His every year was cyclical in matters of love. Summers, he dated them and before winters they left him.  To both the girls, he had promised that the coming winter he would take her to those old delhi monuments, take her to the thin bylanes of puraani dilli, to listen to the qawwalli in hazrat nizamuddin, to sit and talk in the ruins of Tughalaqabad, to drink by the Lodhi Garden lake, to drive by the neela gumbad, to eat kababs near chawri bazaar.

But then before winter came, they broke up due to some trivial reason. (All break ups are like that). But he did all his travelings, eatings, drinkings, drivings all by himself alone. He would eat the kebabs alone, he visited the monuments alone, drank alone. Two years, same routine, same chilling winter, shivering all alone.

And yesterday, I met him at his place with a couple of beers. And he told me that this third summer in delhi, he is dating this third girl and he has promised the same to her as well.

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Bon Voyage

Part 1
This was our third meeting and she told me that I was the most confused person she had ever met. I checked 'confused' or 'confusing'?. She insisted that I was confused. She told me 'No, actually you don't confuse me, its your own internal confusion I am talking about. I love it as your confusion is very entertaining. I enjoy being with you. Your company is like reading a captivating dialogue between two smart people trying to outsmart each other. Those two smart people are actually no one but confused-you fighting to come to a conclusion of your internal dilemma.
And you: when you have taken a decision, I find that you usually get sad. Sad in an entertaining way. Those two smart people inside you are not get sad for winning or losing but only because their duel to outsmart each other got over.'
I asked her whether she loved me. She said its too early but yes she liked me.

"And yet I adore him. I think he's quite confused, and with no place or occupation in life, and far from happy, and philosophically irresponsible- and there is absolutely nobody like him"-Nabokov

Part 2
This was our tenth or eleventh meeting or could be our thirteen meeting and she told me that I was one mad person and that my madness was very contagious. She told me 'The more I try to understand you, the less it seems. I know that one day it is going to get over: between you and me. That thought makes me sad but then I try to enjoy you every moment. Accept you as you are, probably that is the only way I will not get sad. You are absurd in true sense but magical as well.'
I asked her whether she loved me. She said she was not sure whether that feeling could be called love.

"When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained"-Twain

Part 3
This was our last meeting and she told me that I gave the best hugs in the world. She said that she had no regrets and had enjoyed with me to the largest. She told me 'I knew it would be over one day and here it is getting over. But I shall always remember it for all the positives. I shall always be happy that you happened rather than being sad that we would be no more together. I agree that its sad that it is getting over, I wish for one more moment with you, but can't help.'
I asked her whether she loved me. She said that yes she did indeed.

"Si nada nos salva de la muerte, al menos que el amor nos salve de la vida (If nothing saves us from death, atleast love will save us from life)"-Neruda

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