Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Without You



It is amazing how much void you leave on my window sill although you had never really filled it in the first place. As the soft winter sunlight pours into my room every morning, I gather up a few of my fresh clothes and dump them in a heap on the window sill and leave them there till sunset. It feels nice to wrap a sunny shawl around after a bath, it feels like you. I cannot explain how, but the winter sun is your closest proxy. It is warm, it is bright, it smiles in an easy comfort… and most of all, it always disappears before time. All it leaves behind is the trail of a mellow, orange afternoon of unreasonable sighs and closed windows.

Winter afternoons bring phlegm and melancholy and the over familiar image of you leaning out of a taxi window to wave goodbye for as long as I don’t disappear amidst the crowd, the traffic and the general din of this city. I remain static of course, trying to burp the time spent with you out of my throat so that I can shout, “Auto!” and be on my way back home again. It always feels a little dreamy right after you leave, almost like I am still with you, walking along busy streets or seeping a latte in that quaint brown coffee shop or sitting on the grass silently watching dragonflies play in the water. It takes me many a honk and speedbreaker to descend to the mediocrity of reality every time, every goddamn time.

So of course I hate it after sunset, especially if it’s January. My clothes grow from warm to icy, my feet freezes inside my socks and my dirty hair hangs callously around my ears like a smelly, soggy mop. I know, I am a mess, I need the sun; I know.

But again, there is nothing to do but wait, for the sun never obliges anyone out of schedule. The wait, mostly, is long, cold, forlorn and even unbearable at times. Do you know what keeps me going then? What makes me survive till the next morning when sunlight would rush into my window sill again like dopamine and sweep me off my feet? The answer is simple— rest and motion. You bring me a dream every time and it remains with me like the sensation of your sweaty fingers around mine. The rest of the world is just a blur of tuni bulbs in the background. It stays with me, for a long, long time. For as long as you don’t come in like another dream next time, there is nothing to stop the previous one.

You are my inertia. And without you, there is only vacuum within. Of course, you may not believe me. After all, I did fail more physics exams in my time than I admit.