draftsfromthebin-blog

[draftsfromthebin-blog]

All we can do is say goodbye

Hey you.

How have you been? I haven’t written to you for a long time. I wonder how things are with you.

Has that nagging ache in your wrist eased up?

Has your hair grown out?

Do you still smoke as much as you did?

Do you still hate the smell of fresh scotch with ice?

So much has changed.

I haven’t turned back to you in a long time and I doubted if I ever will. In our little play, the director, whoever he is, threw in a crossroad- a little conspiracy you were privy to.

I saw you walk away, steady and resolute. You didn’t turn back, I think. I was too proud to turn around, teary-eyed, anyway.

Winds blew and the month pages in my calendar flew by with it. Sand settled on that open wound, covering it up, whether I liked it or not. The occasional raw burn made its way through my veins but it had become second nature, the sand keeping the blood in.

It was time to leave. My bags were packed. A room that once wore my life and the people I love on its wall were now bare. It was as if I had never even come to stay. It was as if my life, my moments of joy and sorrow had never unfolded within the peripheries of this space.

I looked around.

I remember struggling to fit in with you in that single bed. I would always wake up with a few frozen toes and find the quilt under your belly. It wouldn’t matter because you would clumsily put your arm around me and snuggle in any way.

I remember those countless hours spent watching the most random things on Netflix. You would watch The Fresh Prince of Bel Air on loop and accuse me of not understanding black comedy. I would blissfully disagree and that banter would end in a compromise that usually swung a little in my favour. We would order pizzas and munch on them, a joint by the side to blur the world into oblivion.

Nothing mattered in this strange land as much as having you by my side did.

It wasn’t because we were in love. I don’t think we ever were. Unfortunate circumstances and some sort of comfort brought us together as friends and well-wishers after two years of knowing each other. Paths crossed awkwardly long before we decided to formalise it with a label but never one that had anything called love woven into it.

We spent a year in University together, as family, going through the ups and downs of each other’s love lives. I was afraid to give it a name or set down my peripheries. Life and love had taught me otherwise. When I said goodbye to you on that bus two summers ago, I didn’t realise that the book had closed right there. Everything after that just felt like a sad attempt to draw out a brittle plot.

I would often think of this when you slept peacefully by my side. In the process of nursing our wounds together, I stitched you into my heart as my own. I had only known us to be friends, friends who after a point felt something somewhere for each other.

Not love perhaps, but just something.

We both had struggles with our respective relationships, blocks that somehow untangled later in each other’s company, or so I thought. Maybe talking from the centre of a Gordian knot doesn’t give you the right perspective.

Near my Uni hostel, there is this road that leads to the local supermarket. On the way, by the sidewalk, there is this row of trees. They lay bare during the winter months as if almost foreshadowing our destiny. We would often walk by, sometimes lifelessly holding hands, sometimes freezing inside our sweaters. One of those trees was a creeper, struggling to find a branch strong enough to hold on to. As I stood at the end of our road, I felt a lot like that creeper. I was trying to hold onto something that had died aeons ago.

I did not know how to let go, I didn’t know how to give up. How could I?

When I saw you walk away, without as much as a twitch to turn back and set things right, our book had been clasped shut, sealed with wax. I still sat there, the fool that I was, trying to desperately open it and keep the story going. You see, I had a lot to lose here — a member of my pack, a fireplace in a cold country, my best friend.

I stood there, by my kitchen window as your silhouette made its way out of my sight. This same silhouette that I once saw against the setting Goa sun. Back then, we rode around discovering the quaint highways of Panjim with no care for the world. You promised me companionship till the end of our days. Companionship at each other’s weddings, companionship if those weddings didn’t work out.

I remember once, we were swimming in the waters of Anjuna. The world was a few feet away from us but we had those waves all to ourselves. We weren’t lovers then either, but we had an odd warmth keeping us together in those cold 7 pm November waters. We turned away from the horizon and looked at our friends and colleagues, all tiny specks on the shore now. You said to me, “If nothing works out for us, we’ll live together and open up a dog hotel. You can take care of the dogs, I’ll exercise them and handle the business.” You were lazy even here but this brought a smile to my face. I had worn an unexplained kaftan of melancholy that day as if knowing that our days in the sun were numbered. That little dream undid the garment’s string a little. The claustrophobia felt a little less lethal.

Back in the erstwhile present, lying down with your hand tightly around my waist, that claustrophobia often came back.

I had given myself a December deadline to work out what this was or just go back to our companionship. I couldn’t lose you for the rest of my life over the bitterness of a failed romantic compatibility. However, you seemed to be sure we could work things out while simultaneously telling me how you didn’t have it in you to invest in relationships and trust anymore.

It broke my heart, tore through it like mobs tear controversial pieces of art. The blood drenched what was left of the canvas but I couldn’t let it show.

You bought a vest in Goa, black with skulls that subsequently came to me. I carried it around with a lot of love, wearing it on the nights we spoke and the days I missed you. My dog oddly loved the smell of that vest, even though it was the same washing powder every other garment was washed with. An idiot I was with at the time decided to take it away from me when he knew I was treasuring you in its threads.

Suddenly, the only thing I had from you, I lost.

When we reconnected here, you gave me a jacket you loved to wear. It wasn’t warm enough when the snow came belting down on the city, but warm enough to feel you here when our going got tough. During the times I used to see you for a rare weekend, this jacket brought me closer to you. I did everything I could to make sure your scent didn’t fade. Time though showed no mercy.

A few weeks ago, I packed up your jacket with a letter. It took me close to a fortnight to muster the courage to take it to the post office. When the lady at the post office sealed the box and stamped it, it felt like a limb being taken away. A weird vacuum filled me up as I walked back home, the thought of returning and getting it back crossed my head more than once.

When we kissed on New Year’s day, it felt like maybe there was a chance. How sure your grip felt and everything you said sounded gave me hope.

I would eventually realise that I was expecting a bonfire from a candle wick. When I did, the fire went off altogether, not even a splinter remained.

Packed and ready to leave, I asked my roommate for one last minute with my room.

One last minute with what I had left of you.

I realised that I had lost everything I had that reminded me of you. I had thrown away our alcohol bottles. I had no cards, notes or gifts from you, perhaps a sign, that here was a man who wasn’t meant to fit into my puzzle piece. All that was left were these four walls.

I did not know why it was so hard to lock the room and walk away. I came back multiple times just to sit there for a few minutes and try and recreate all those moments, good and bad, we shared here.

I don’t know if this was the right or wrong thing to do. It was all I could do. Say goodbye.