She was rain, he was the westerly wind. Whenever he was around, she lost control and surrendered herself, so it was no surprise that she got carried away.
He liked to conceal, and she loved to bare; it was never going to work out, but they pretend played till time ran out.
She was rain, he was the westerly wind, and so one day when he left, she was the one who disappeared.
It took her days, weeks, and even months to find herself; she went looking everywhere, in psych wards and bars, workplaces and movie halls, and, sometimes, in other men.
She found herself in parts, dismembered and flailing like she was drowning.
She went looking for herself in dreams, dreams that made her sleep through the clock.
She learned to lie. “I am fine, my new job is going great.” she would say to her parents while pretending to be out and about, from the comforts of her bed.
She had learned to conceal.
She would pretend to be a food critic and frequent restaurants where she would sit for hours, while her shifting/changing workplaces sent her stinkers and termination letters. Nothing made her feel anything.
To deceive her neighbors into believing she had a day job, she would leave home early, dress up formally and take the metro to nowhere.
In the metro, she would read her co-passengers and guess their lives, the ones on the phones the entire time were the chatterboxes, the ones glued to their screens were gluttons, the ones chatting excitedly with their co-travelers were crows, but the most visceral hatred, she bestowed upon the couples.
They were easy to spot the way they held each other’s gaze, held hands, and whispered sweet nothings into each other’s eyes, reminiscent of innocent love, it made her eyebrows twitch and her thoughts dark.
Her mind would then wander back, like how they show in movies, to a sepia-toned past where he was still with her, urging her to let herself go as he chased her down the platform while people watched. But she did listen to him and turned into a fool shortly after, she was a fool for him, having fallen irrevocably in love, fallen through the veils of self-respect and self-worth.
The sepia-toned background turned smoky dark soon after, but she hardly noticed as their arguments turned meaner with each passing fight, once she had pleaded with him to not break up and she had shivered at the thought of being abandoned.
For he was yet to explore the world, for her, he was it.
But it hadn’t always been so; she had moved to this swanky new city two years back, from a city that was eternally laid back.
The new city was bursting with life, a living breathing cosmopolitan and she was addicted to its joie de vivre, making it easy for her to forget her old life.
So, what if her old life had consisted of a hundred, thousand existences that she had lived and relived to reach where she was today?
Her mother used to tell her stories about the universe back in the aging world, back when everything was a lull and when her mother had been the wisest one.
“The universe was simmering like a large, looming cauldron, frothing at the edges,” her mother’s raspy voice sang. She would listen to her mother in rapt attention as she narrated the story of the birth of the universe.
“The primordial deities, in charge of creation, rose, each with the powers of creating universes and galaxies to pour their energies into the cauldron, and the cauldron hissed and slurred, matching the energy of its benefactors.
The deities gloated at the sonorous impact of their powers. When it was Aphrodite’s turn, she was calm, her attitude mirrored by the cauldron. As she charged it with her indeterminate energy, the others sneered.
Soon, they were overpowered by a strong musky odor that dulled their heads and enveloped their hearts in a sweet, heady lull, while Aphrodite stood there smiling.
“Then what happened Ma?” the children asked, wide-eyed & restless.
“Then, we happened, all of us, her energy acted as a binding spell in bringing everything together, creating lives, small and gigantic, sentient and insentient. It was a timeless, ageless charm that will remain till the earth remains.” Her mother said while oiling her daughter’s hair.
Now, alone and listless, nursing a drink by herself, the adult her understood what her mother had meant decades ago. But the memory also gave her something else- yearning for a more powerful kind of love, her mother’s love, love so unconditional that despite unanswered calls and messages to her daughter, she hadn’t stopped.
She picked up her phone, it was time to rekindle the other kind of love.
Fingers in symphony 