Love Stories In Berlin

 

His second Christmas in Berlin was much better than the first one. During that week-long break from Christmas till Sylvester, he wrote a love story. It is the twenty-first entry in a big notebook. For five days he wrote, fourteen hours a day, without stepping out of the apartment, living on bread, rice, yoghurt, leftover curry and ready-to-heat-and-eat packs.

That notebook has a queer feature that stands out. In spite of being handwritten, each and every piece remains in its pristine untitled first draft, unedited, without a single correction, with all the typos and other glaring errors. There is an irritating aspect too. At least half of that lot has a melancholic character recurring in some guise, always brooding about a painful memory.  These cathartic traits tend to put off readers. But an effort to break free of the past and the dear-diary genre is also evident.

This love story was supposed to be his Escape From Alcatraz moment. It has a melancholic guy with a painful memory, but thankfully that past is mentioned in passing and not spelt out in any great detail. To redeem himself or the story, the ‘hero’ metamorphoses into a less pathetic character but only after plodding around for long enough making a mess of the reader’s interest. There is a married woman without her husband, as it should be for a story not to lose steam. And the two have their Roman Holiday in a hill resort. When the holiday is ready to end, the husband appears on the scene, and without any grand speech or confrontation the two main protagonists live happily ever after separately with a memory good for future rainy days.

Many years later, with very different motives, he would rewrite that story, give it a title, add avoidable doggerel and make the marital status of the woman ambiguous. When he wrote that first draft of his twenty-first story, it must have been meant to remain in the realms of his daydreams especially because that notebook had always enjoyed the status of a personal diary. But like a dream, he got a reader. In fact, he got the reader of his daydreams.

He returned to office on the first Monday after Sylvester. She came back two days later, after a Christmas at home with her folks in the erstwhile Eastern bloc. They used to be the early birds in the department. As was their custom every morning, they chatted after she made her morning cup of coffee, standing near his office door. She told him about her ‘lovely’ vacation. He suspected that she made the picture rosier than it truly was. He let it be. He did not even rub her wrong for not bringing goodies for him. Christmas had never been good to him that way.

‘What did you do?’ she asked him.

‘Nothing much,’ he said.

‘Stayed at home?’ she made it sound half-tease, half-reproach.

‘Yes.’ Till that stage, he could have been evading.

 ‘And did nothing?’ she persisted.

‘I wrote.’

‘Novels…?’ That came as a full-tease.

‘Story.’ Now, one suspects if he had been laying the trap all the while.

‘Really… a story…?’ she asked.

He gave a polite shrug. She had no way out. Check-mate!

‘Can I read it?’ she asked politely. She had to, right?

He nodded.

Next day, he gave her the notebook. He bookmarked his last entry, his magnum opus, the love story. He had initially kept a bookmark with a picture of a young boy holding out a rose to a little girl-love. To seem reasonably sane, he replaced that with a plain piece of paper.

A day later, she used a greeting in the story, ‘Abhey, saala…’ and asked him what that means. He told her a polite version of the meaning. He noted that she had used a greeting between the male protagonist and his male friend. He hid his disappointment well. It took her a weekend to finish reading the story. The Monday after that, she returned the notebook and used the heroine’s greeting, ‘ah, my knight who refuses to fight…’ and he replied with, ‘yes, milady in shining armor…’ His spirits perked up.

She said little else about that story. It is a long story after all.

But she asked, ‘Can I read the other stories?’

‘Yes,’ he handed that notebook back to her.

A week went by, and another week too. She reached half-way through the book.

She accosted him one morning with, ‘Is this me?’

He shrugged his same old shrug. He did not have to ask her which story she was referring to.

She continued, ‘Is that what you think I think?’

He smiled, shrugged and then gave an ambiguous shake of his head. He knew that if that scene had happened in his fiction, his protagonist would have given one of many smart-ass replies.

The entry she was referring to was the following:

‘I am in the mood to write about something of no consequence. There is a difference between that and the ordinary. One might remember the latter for being a reassuring boredom or a melancholic treat of self-pity. Reading novels; flirting with friends; watching the searching looks of males that nearly strip you as you flick your hair or, knowingly chose to wear a dress of daring décolletage; or even the laughter at lunchtime, a trick that you learned to stay on top of men who usually associate laughter with submission and abysmal intellect. But all that is ordinary. I do it every day (nearly) and it is just sweet survival. But that is not what I want to think about right now. I want to think about a matter of no consequence. Let me define it as something which needs a bloody effort to be remembered. And in my diary why can’t I call it bloody though it seems to be a word raped by male domination over the centuries?

I joined this department few weeks back. I happen to be the only gal around. Even the stuck-up wallowing in self-importance has noticed my existence. And it helps to be a social animal. I go to the canteen with the group. For a few laughs and criticism about the state of my country, they keep the conversation centered round me. There are a few in the group who go for lunch separately – they look like misfits. One of them is ideal as a matter of no consequence.

During my first visit, I had an official meeting with him, a guy from the east, possibly India. He had done his homework to look a bit smart in my eyes. But I suspected that he knew of his own limitations. A typical one who liked my company because I am a woman, and I am sure he wished for friendship. He is not attractive. He does not speak well. He is not charming. He does not even have a smile I would like to look at. And the worst part is that he doesn’t seem to have qualities to dislike him either. I can never remember his name and he knows his state – he never introduces himself. I wonder how it is like to be somebody worse than ordinary, someone nearly invisible, a person of no consequence whatsoever…’

After sharing a quick laugh about their mutual acquaintance, the stuck-up wallowing in self-importance, that particular entry was laid to rest without any further discussion. She read the other entries.

They got closer. They talked more. They shared their views on books and music. They talked on the phone during weekends. He wrote another story about a girl lying in a bath tub reading that story. She did not comment on that. It was already a plot well-used. Theirs was a good friendship. He wondered if she would meet him for lunch some weekend. Theirs was just a good friendship. He never asked her. He knew that she went to church on Sundays and had lunch with other friends.

He thought about that entry in his notebook. He wrote that after he massaged her neck in his office. However crappy it might sound, for him it was actually a case of love at first touch. She had complained of a stiff neck that morning. He offered to massage her neck. Surprisingly, it worked and she looked relieved. She also looked shy and embarrassed. He kept a straight face and remained silent, quite like an accomplished masseur. That evening, or during the weekend that followed, he wrote about her.

Even a neutral observer might appreciate the fortuitous turn of events and classify the situation as rather cute, starting with that massage, then the writing and the denouement via the love story written during the second Christmas many months later. Maybe, such a person can also view the affair with a dispassionate critical eye.

For him, it was a love story that was not supposed to sound like a love story. He was quite sure of himself then, even though he presented himself as a goofy guy. And he dreamt of the day when she would read that story about her writing a story about him. He thought that his love for her was very clearly apparent, if not in the story, in the fact that he wrote about her. He should have clarified that with additional efforts, maybe, but instead he waited for her to reciprocate.

There was no chance for that because his plan had backfired. He was successful in making that love story not sound like a love story. She read it simply as a story about her writing about him. It did not cross her mind that it was supposed to be any kind of love story. And worse, she assumed that he actually thought of himself that way. She wanted him to know otherwise and became the good friend she turned out to be.

 In a sane moment much later, he reasoned that the fate of his love story could have been different if she had not read it soon after Christmas with thoughts of charity still in the air. But, even then, he did not think of writing a simple love story about her that really sounded like a love story.

They also lived happily ever after separately with their respective spouses, with a memory good for a stormy day, one of a friendship long dead and the other of a love that never sounded like love.

Before Dark

It was getting dark. I had fifteen minutes or less. She had not sounded too keen when I called this morning and requested for a meeting. But when we met, it was like always, like we had never separated, really glad to be together. We have been in touch for more than forty years, nearly all our life. I had seen her last twenty years back. Then, we separated. I went abroad to the west. She went back east to her country. She married, had three kids. We exchanged e-mails every few years, just one per person each time. We never talked about meeting. I never asked about her husband or her kids. This morning, I landed in her city, checked into a hotel and called her hospital number at the Neurology department where she works. I told her that I am in her city for a day and that I wanted to meet her, just for half an hour or so. Casual conversation lasted five minutes. We sipped Chinese tea and laughed over some old joke. I gave her my medical report. I studied her graying hair, her eyes and shamelessly let my eyes take in the rest of her. I was glad that I had not forgotten all that. When she raised her head, I was staring straight at her lovely eyes. I will try to forget the tears. It will not be difficult, I guess. But will I remember her smiling eyes then? I told her that I might forget her soon. I told her that I have always loved her. I tried to make it sound trivial and joked that I might forget that soon. She did not say anything. Or maybe she did. The darkness is creeping in and the shadows are lengthening.

I Dreamt I Was Killed

I dreamt I was killed at dusk:

Took the hit while remembering a prayer,

A bullet, a knife or a cardiac attack felt like arrows of kama,

Thought of an old laughable act, flailing-arms-crying-ma

But I stood silent till the last thought vapourized.

Those crazy eyes stared at me, massacring everyone,

I returned a crazy loving smile, recognizing my killer,

That hopping on one leg, those locks of matted hair

I should have said thank-you-o-god-you-latecomer

But I stood silent till the last thought vapourized.

That dream erased my nightmares, nearly.

I nearly forgot the lives I killed each day.

There was love’s death, divorce, suicide of the soul,

And a bewildering loneliness on a stage with no role,

I faced the unseeing crowd, a joker with no words, wide-eyed fool.

A tourist, a foreigner till I was a stranger in native land,

Raped, tortured, a mere plaything, forsaken and forgotten,

In solitary confinement, with emptiness, without rest,

And a fading drip-drip-drip of hope, that’s the cruelest.

I faced the unseeing crowd, a joker with no words, wide-eyed fool.

My Funny Valentine...?

MY FUNNY VALENTINE…?

Note: Last year, around this time, I wrote ‘My Funny Valentine’…this year, the same theme came with a pause and a question mark…probably, fiction is getting closer to truth.

I could have stopped my husband when he left me. Why didn’t I? Answers to that keep popping up frequently, sounding correct and true. I nearly convinced myself with one answer, the one which said that I had been praying for it. Did that help me understand why he left on Valentine’s Day six years back? He was trying to be vindictive by choosing that day. For him, it is a special day.

The six years started feeling long and tedious when the separation ended and the loneliness took over. It seemed familiar, a lot like those days after the death of a close one – there is always that day when the living bid farewell with hasty promises to be around; and, the dead are truly gone, even the memory like an old bulb fades fast lingering intermittently for a while before the final blackout. Memories and promises wilted with fading light but that decaying bouquet was comforting before the long empty days marched in.

It is not really true that the last six years were lonelier than the rest. In fact, the first few months were quite crowded. I had frequent visitors arriving at their own convenience without intimation or invitation assuming that I was free and ready to receive them. They wanted to know my story or to tell their own story. They were keen to advise or sympathize or empathize or whatever. Some did not disguise their interest in the fall from grace and some found in it a balm or an energizer for their own needs and purposes. Some were in the same state and happily welcomed me to their club - a club with members waiting to end their membership. I know that I am being harsh. I am sure I would have felt thankful if I had derived some comfort or benefit from any of them.

After that casual lot had lost interest, the insistent barged in - those who felt they had to help actively, a trouble really but nothing severe, most mildly irritating, some even amusing. One section of the ‘concerned’ lot spread the news of my apparent need for company via gossip and printed media. My reluctance, selectivity and lack of cooperation confused them. How or why could I be selective and especially in my state, they wondered. Another section took the easier way to help and advised a single life. It did sound appealing to me since maintaining status quo involved only manageable troubles on my own rather than the traumatic risks that I expected with another. That is the excitement of life – isn’t that how people brush aside such fears? When that life destroys income, security, dreams, hopes and even the will to dream or hope, is it still excitement, I would like to ask those who pontificate without experience.

Two years trudged past and I was settling down to a comfortable tedium when life suddenly changed by pure chance. I bumped into Rekha at a mall. Just like in the old days when we were inseparable best friends, she gave a whoop of joy and hugged me. I felt drab and unkempt next to her. It was always like that, even in school. In those old photos of us, I look scruffy and she appears unruffled. I knew that she was still single. I could not make out how much she knew about me. After leaving school, we used to meet at get-togethers but never managed to be together, just the two of us. We could not talk for long at the mall since she had prior engagements. But, we quickly made plans to meet for lunch at the best Chinese restaurant in town the next Sunday.

  Though we had each other’s mobile number and email address, we did not contact each other till that Sunday. I was nervous and I could not trust myself with any contact that was not face-to-face. The nervousness excited and troubled me and left me dazed and dissipated. I could do little else, restless and sleepless. I dredged through old carefully forgotten or carelessly remembered memories. In the last year at school, we used to sleep over at each other’s place after combined study for the board exams. I tried to remember how it felt having her soft body next to mine in my bed. She had kissed me once, on my cheeks and lips. She did that only once, the once that recurred in a million thoughts. I guess she expected me to reciprocate and when I could not, she must have decided not to pursue it any further.

I went for that Sunday lunch trying my best to look good and elegant. We sat at a corner table which offered privacy. We joked and laughed about irrelevant stuff and leaned towards each other while we chose from the menu. I tried to name her perfume and I watched her face closely while she smiled.

I am not too sure if I continued to watch her face when she started talked about her love, or rather, loves. She told me about how she was being torn apart by her love for a Muslim colleague and her duty towards her family. I muttered the expected questions mechanically. I listened to her and comforted her when she cried. She told me that she has to marry the man her father had chosen. A good attractive man she has learned to love in couple of meetings, she added very quickly. As soon as we shared the expenses, I used some excuse to escape from there. During the rickshaw ride back home, I could not hold back my laughter any longer. That night, I must have cried. I remember only the laughter over that joke about a love that turns out to be something worse than unrequited, nearly comical and hardly original. To say that I was not bitter then would be so evidently false. But I can say truthfully that I did not realize that bitterness till a few months later when love showed its face yet again, though in a very different avatar.

 I can’t remember a time without Anand. We grew up together. We kept in touch even when his family migrated to the US. The contact between us was never frequent but the friendship was always there, like a reassuring and supporting hand. When I had told him about my marriage, he had wished me well. He gave me a lovely wedding gift and then, for the first time, disappeared from my life. I did not try to reach out to him during those years even though I needed his friendship. He did not get in touch even after my husband left. I contacted him after my debacle with Rekha. During our first call, Anand confessed to me that he had never married because he had been waiting for me. He called me his soul-mate. It sounded romantic and lovely. He was doing well in Switzerland and I dreamt of living over there. Our e-mail communication increased, we talked lots on the phone too and confided nearly all. Most veterans would advise wisely that it is not a great idea to talk too much to a love before marriage. That did not seem to be true.

 It did not seem true till the edifice started crumbling. It is tough to pinpoint the source of fracture. Divergent views on rather inconsequential matters, mismatched expectations, old fears in new guise, intuition or bad omens, whatever – I have tried hard to bracket the exact cause but without success. The memory of the final act still remains quite clear. He had come to India for a brief official visit. I suggested a dinner at that favourite joint, the best Chinese restaurant in town. As if to challenge a jinx, I led him to the same corner table. It was quite romantic when we held hands. During the break between the main course and the dessert, he casually mentioned a brief and old flame which he pursued while I was still married and described that ‘the highlight of her profile was her Adam’s apple’. I interrupted his loud guffaw over his own joke with ‘and yours is a pot belly’. Even today, I do not know if that acerbic retort was pre-planned. Anyway, from that moment on, it was nearly a race to the exit. I didn’t get to laugh in a rickshaw that time because he dropped me home. But laughter did follow later that night or during the many post-mortem of that failed love.

After that, I have stayed true to an old recurring dream. He came to me first when I was thirteen. I wrote poems about him. He then came to me the night before my wedding. I wrote about him in my diary. When my husband read that diary without my permission and asked for details, I refused to divulge anything. Now, he comes to me more often. He was mine, he is mine. I will not let the bitter world without touch within our relationship.

Not Really A Story

Not Really A Story

 [click here to download]

This is a selection of short stories and ‘poetry’ from the 3 collections of Swapna & New Nonentities (Musing, Voiceless New Nonentities and Without Reason).

I would truly appreciate any feedback regarding this process of discarding, selecting, editing and arranging; and, of course, the selected stories and ‘poetry’.

Fare Thee Well

Without Reason

For once, let me be true. I am doing this without reason. I think that is true.

Without Reason

 [click here to download this third collection of stories and poems]

References:

Collection 1: Musing [click here to download]

Collection 2: Voiceless [click here to download]

Collection 3: Without Reason [click here to download]

Check This Out

Here are some photos taken during a trip.

For more on the trip, check out: http://justoneavatar.blogspot.com/2011/04/story-tellers-sabbatical.html

Office

There’s no poetry in my office.

It is ten feet by ten feet, a tight pack

Of four places – for me and another

And two love-birds that coo elsewhere.

Open windows face the shut door.

Two nameless trees wait for me

To hop on, to climb, to descent, to go

Somewhere, anywhere, but I stay.

I watch the ants perfect a straight march.

I have named the spider in the left corner.

There is plenty to do till the other arrives.

Then, I put on a busy show of being clever.

The other opens my shut door,

Standing there, quietly waiting

For me, to move, remove, my feet,

Post siesta, from the other's chair.

I glare and stare and challenge.

But, it is a duel the other refuses

With a bloody smile in those eyes,

Those eyes could see, really, see.

I could, if I stretch my arms,

Knock the other down, or touch.

When the other cried, close by,

I did not touch. I am not that kind.

The Best Thing

The Best Thing

As a baby in pink or blue, or red-faced

when dress tangled with curls or pudgy limbs;

Gurgling, shitting, smiling, spitting, suckling,

they called my wily charm sheer innocence.

As a precocious nymph at Iyengar bakery,

bread, butter, I pirouetted, cake too, I pointed;

The young men glanced, the old men drooled,

they locked me in dirty dungeons, dreams of desire.

As a pioneer late or a wordy poet, at Loharu Junction,

at desert’s edge, with the photogenic, the heat,

A lorry driver, a loud woman enter exit a shady shed,

they walked past me, a mirage biting dust, unseen.

As a lover, a partner in strange beds, homes

with half-lies, faked orgasms, true charades,

The barter for old times’ sake, to be safe, secure, I gave,

they looked at me with pleasure, that as love, I took.

As an old hag with tattered hopes, shattered defense,

easy to be cynical, bitter, wise, stoic, bloody fool,

The truth is easier – while I find, lose, misplace,

they keep their best thing in their world, not me.