Pubtales: A Short write-up we usually do in a pub/hangout while waiting for beloveds to turn up. Mostly based on the interesting people seen around in the pub.Can also be seen in the movie ‘ Wonder Boys’.

She sat at the window table and watched the dusk invade the sky. Rains had stopped; people had started to move out in a sort of agitated celebration, a hustle, either to make up for the time lost or to avoid the next wave of showers. Or both.

She just gazed, not watching anything in particular. Once in a while she turned to sip her tea. After about half an hour, she opened a few pages from an envelope and signed her name at the bottom. She now was officially divorced. It felt different  but not relief - a prickly heaviness and a sense of lightness. After a moment of indecisiveness, she tried to remove her ring, but it had gotten used to her finger too long.

She left it as it was and walked out collecting her coat from the hanger. The sky looked impending; she opened her umbrella and walked in haste, to make up for time lost or to avoid the next wave of showers. Or both.

One couldn’t really tell.

How did the conference go? Did she have a good flight? Has she eaten? Would she want him to run a bath ?

She knows him well. Or does she? But she cant miss the nervousness he is hiding. His forced concern, so artificial. The mystery collects. The unknown and the anxiety it causes. She walks to the kitchen, him in the tow; her mind gushing with hundred half thoughts that struggle to become a single coherent thought. She walks to the wine rack and pours herself a drink. And, at that very instant she knows. Suddenly, it becomes clear. Two wine glasses are missing and he never drinks wine. She feels neither sadness nor anger. She is, at that instant overcome by a strange relief.

She casually walks back and sits on a chair. She looks at him, her eyes intense but not furious. She asks in a calm voice - Is it someone I know?

He stands stunned. His heart sinks and his eyelids droop. He heaves an audible sigh. He cant talk. Is it the shame of it? Or the embarrassment of being found out? Or the unexpected abruptness of it? He is too agitated to know. His heart races in his throat. He wants to sit down, but his legs are too heavy. After a brief moment, he manages a quick What?

She says hurriedly, her tone slightly irritated Don’t try to make a bigger fool out of me than I already am , you know …WHAT … Is it someone I Know?

He stands mute, staring at her.

How long?
Listen Laura…..
HOW LONG? David…. I don’t want to hear anything more…..how long?
I’m …..
David I’ve been trying not to lose my….FUCK… Do you love her?……. Forget it. I don’t want to know….

He tries to come closer but she pulls away.

She hurries and picks up the coat she had left on the chair and tells him without looking at him, I’m going to go now and stay at Jenny. I want you take all your stuff and be gone by noon. You can take the bed if you want.

On her way to the car she removes the ring that had adorned her finger for three years.

+++

Men! Well, they are simple. Their idea of love is a boat set afloat to reach the other side of the river. But women, ah! there, what complicated creatures they can be. They’ll dress themselves in all the sails and float away, without a compass at hand or a port in mind, all by themselves in an ocean of their own. Because,  for a woman love is not a fulfillment, it is a memory of a sensation. It is to sail. It is to hold someone else as precious, to feel the other as a part of herself, to merge the spark of her soul with his.

+++

So it wasn’t surprising that in less than two days of meeting her, I found myself wondering if I was falling in love with her. But then you don’t give yourself away so easily. First I dismissed the idea as a ridiculous fancy; then I said to myself, maybe I just love her but am not in love with her. See, the problem with such thinking is, the more you do it, the more unsure you become. Finally, after three days and two nights of torturing myself with such thoughts I asked her.We were playing our weekly game of squash on the Tuesday when, without taking my eyes off the ball I asked her as casually as I could, if she fancied going out with me on Thursday. She laughed, an accomplished feminine laugh – a wave that starts as jest and ends in wonder. All I remember after that was hitting the ball harder than ever through the rest of the game. But, when we had changed after the game, she held me in her gaze, and informed with a zany smile to pick her up at 7:00 pm on Thursday. So that’s how it was.

+++

Porch light flickers for about half a minute and dies down. I want to replace the bulb but she hollers through the window not to touch it.

“ It’ ll be hot and I don’t want to spend the evening dressing up your hand ”.

I mutely nod.

“Off for a quick shower, shall be back in 10 minutes, don’t bother looking for the bulb in the storeroom. You wouldn’t find it”.

She returns wearing a mauve gown smelling all citrus and tangerine, her hair still wet and dripping. A packaged bulb rests in her hand. I offer to fix it, but she dismisses with a smile.

“First , always read the specifications” she says and reads aloud.

Wattage 100W

Voltage 240V

Cap Description 27mm Edison Screw (ES/E27)

Finish pearl

Length 105mm

Diameter 60mm

She cups the bulb carefully and throws her arms around me, softly whispering into my ear “ Lift”. I lift her and let her twist the Edison screw looser. I guess now even I must be smelling of wet citrus and tangerine. Done she says. I let her slide down. Now , face to face – she pouts a slow thank you.

The wind jingles the charms hanging outside – gently nudging the other to produce a soft clinking rhythm. We hold each other and dance, mirroring each other’s movements, floating away in this imaginary rhythm. The breeze ceases. We don’t hear the music anymore but we continue dancing to our laughter. The music in our hearts.

+++

So after eight days of regular love making, lying in his bed, she asked the question he had anticipated all along , Do You love me?

He had thought about it before; no, not about her but about the question. What does it mean to love someone? And to declare that you love someone? It did not bother him that he could not answer it for himself but that no one seemed to know what they meant when they said it. He thought it was supremely arrogant of someone to announce that they loved another someone. It was at its best a unilateral assumption.

She was waiting, curious about his lengthy silence.He said, yes I do love you. And you know it. But still I am far more careful with you for you to ask it. But now that you have, I don’t think it is going to help me to be any less careful. So I don’t know if that answers your question, may be you can just ignore all of this – you asking the question and my supposed answer as a mindfucking charade of our vanities.

For the lack of better verb, she loved him. She had fallen in love with him for exactly this. His ability to make a misery out of even the most simplest of feelings, to see him reflect on himself as though he was someone else. Okay, sure, I’ll ask tomorrow she said with a smile.

+++

Close your eyes, and think of this..

How many conversations you had in your life you still remember?
Hmm…Hardly a few, and this one, a few summers back, on a silent night, was on a tiled terrace. I remember this almost verbatim, because I laid myself open to a girl who dared to understand me, probably because she wanted to understand herself. We were, like anyone of that age, two lone-rangers, on our own, searching for answers, in the big big world that was opened to us; may be that is what brought us together.

‘Why’? I whispered , placing her lovely tresses behind her ear. She had just told me she hadn’t yet made her peace with God.
She continued, as though floating in her own words ‘Hmm, I guess I’m not prepared, as if there’s something wrong somewhere and I feel responsible. I’ve even tried to overcome that why even get around, but you know its just there’.

‘Would you know when you have had your peace’? She stared intently into my eyes, ‘How do you mean’?
That’s the first shot of defence, of anyone, any given day. ‘Would you be happy’? I paused, taking time to study her expressions ‘or perhaps sad’? I added almost suggesting the latter. She was too clever for a denial.

I went on ‘Are you afraid? That all these intense excursions may lead to a destiny, so trivial, where you feel you rather not be. Do you fear drifting into ordinary, being a wife, into a family, and blaming yourself for everything you wanted to do but couldn’t’??
I stopped there, ours was a relationship built on the interest of understanding, not what people call trust or sharing; we both knew that couldn’t exist.
‘You know, this is what I hate about you, you make me feel like I am trivial, a non-entity, doing this to me.. reading my mind like a newspaper; when I look into your eyes it’s as if you have figured out everything, from A to Z, and every time you speak, I hear a Dean Moriarty [1] inside me saying yes.. yes.. yes, this is it. Why?  There’s a party going on over there and I’m here with you, I love listening to you? I love you and why’?

There was what is often referred to as a pregnant silence. It was our graduation party and she’s not the type who demands attention by confessing love, that too never so banally. I noticed the so much emotions in the talk which is so unlike both of us.
‘Hmm, what’s with all these emotion ? Where does it take us’? I tried to consolidate.
‘You tell me you stoic bastard, why are we here speaking nonsense, and not like others over there- eating, drinking, smiling, getting our photos taken, and blah, blah blah…’ she was hitting me on my forearm.
‘Hey stop, I’m no stoic, it hurts’ I said pointing to my forearm. She smiled, I smiled too.‘ Now tell me’? she quipped point blank.
‘Hmmmm, I began tentatively..Well, let me tell you just this, I’m not the one who has everything figured out, just that I haven’t got a self or may be I have and I want to lose it. Even if I succeed its just another moment like any other; its just a choice not an end by itself.Why do you want to listen to all these, most of this is unrealistic anyway’?
‘Oh! Dear Sir, let me be the judge of that, how do you mean by no self? Is that what makes you, so detached from everyone and everything around? To me that’s rather shallow, we are invariably in a premise to be held accountable, if not for others at least for ourselves’.

‘True……. but there’s more beyond that, to be held accountable even to oneself is a choice and have you wondered who chooses that, it’s you, your ego, your sense of self, that you are unique from others. Picture this…every second, every minute, every hour of our lives we are our best, there’s no second best, the way we smile, eat, converse, make love, at any given moment we are already our best, because there is no other way we want to smile, eat, converse or make love at that moment. Probably we may learn our’s is not the best smile but we’ll realise that is our best smile.We are here because we wanted to be here. Every drop of blood, every cell, every proton, every will in us wanted to be here than anywhere else in the universe. It’s a choice, which otherwise means we have an ego, small, big doesn’t matter. We have one and you just cant escape that.I became aware. Now, which is why I don’t resist, I don’t whine, I just adapt, I flow. And I know I cant be battered or bruised, I can’t be changed, neither do people nor circumstances affect me, I just know of a choice and am waiting for the next one.. call it choice, ego, shit, god, blah whatever. It doesn’t mean a penny. That’s what I meant by no self’.

She had moved close to me, listening obediently devouring every word.‘Interesting, you mean its not the same as self surrender spoken of in religions is it? I see many parallels. Has someone or somewhere said this before’?

‘It would be a mistake if you start thinking about this as a big deal. It’s just a choice in want of a better choice. As I said there’s no question of surrender involved, that’s a joke nobody wants to laugh at, I think Nietzsche [2] came close, in his aphorisms he said there’s no sacrifice anywhere, you give up something here to have something there …to that effect. So if your Mother says that she sacrificed a lot to bring you up, it means she had something more in bringing you up than doing something else somewhere else at that moment. Which, plainly put it is ego, a sense of self and not sacrifice, in other words it means there are no room for emotions in this world’.

‘No’ ?

‘No. Not in the sense we know emotions’.
‘Then how do you explain the entire world? Then are all the feelings a delusion, a fanciful reaction?? Nobody says don’t value your emotions’?
‘Right, we believe in our emotions with religious conviction because we are governed by our choices, we as a species are defined by what we feel that’s what gives us identity as humans.It’s hard for anyone to look beyond emotion, that’s the human limit, well, almost. Nietzsche didn’t realise that or may be he did it too well; he had moved so far he wanted to laugh about all these. If you put some of his and some of Kierkegaard [3] together you have most answers, for most of the time, but not all. Hindus probably formed an extreme, Islam was a reformation movement and Buddha realised too much that he was forced to lie. Romans invented lifestyle while Christians invented propaganda’.

She was thinking furiously, the silver moonlight flowed through her tresses, painting her lovely face in shades of grey and white. She looked elegant, like an impressionist painting. Sublime.

Now add to that a tinge of anger,
‘That can’t be true, if you don’t have a self, then what makes me like you and what makes you like me, there has to be something in there which wants to like and be liked. There has to be some value in this moment’?

 
‘Of course, but this moment is not an excuse, it’s not an end, it’s only a means to an end, or may be there’s no end. So are you and I, choices, it’s only at this moment that you discover a part of my choice and me your’s. And the liking is inherent in the choice too. We do not like something beyond ourselves, beyond our very own choices; we like something we always wanted to like about ourselves’.

She looked at me and slowly pulled her eyes away; I saw them vacant and askew. May be that was too much for her. I wanted to stop. But she surprised me.
‘You mean there is something for you and me here than in that party and they have something important there than elsewhere’? That relieved me; I knew she was not lost and grappled unable to fathom. If she did she didn’t pretend; she was not of such types, probably which is why I was stupidly telling her all these.
‘Right, try to see it as just a choice, not with the weight of value system’.
‘But that’s hardly possible isn’t it’?
‘It’s hard yes. Not impossible. I thought and believed that for a long time too, lot of it depends on the way we are brought up, but with a bit of will, that can be changed. Like most of us I believed in an absolute end point, then one night on a treetop in a forest, while I was reading Bergson [4]’s concept of élan vital, it came to me in all force, the absolute contradiction of the absolute, I sat there gazing at the woods and the mountains, I saw all the faces, thoughts, feelings and patterns and me sauntering through all. And the choice’.
‘Was it something mystical, a sort of volcano, ineffable’?
‘Bollocks, nothing like that, it was no special than this very moment, but it had some rare power there was no more fear onwards, or I don’t know if it was fear. But anyway, I was not stupid enough to deny, project, or rationalise it into an experience of a superhuman or of a spiritual nature. Imagine, you tie yourself by choice to a thread and rotate around in time, space and matter and by consciousness come in contact with many other adjacent choices. Some you hate, some you like, some you admire, some you desire, and when you have worn out the choice you had made, you then choose from your accumulated desires and cognition - the next locus to tie yourself and so on so forth, you give, you take…. its dynamic . And in one frame, in that moment I saw all the choices, in the form of tiny modules, made, unmade, dying growing, fulfilled, influencing’. First I was skeptical, but I figured, if I wanted to understand it, I should try it, to go through it, slowly it dawned and affirmed, for the first time there were no exceptions.

‘Well, you see, I wont be able to know about that. Probably not as you described, may be it’s my choice, may be it’s the same or may be we want it not to be the same. Geeeez! I’m sounding like you, you know, this is what makes me dig you; you seem to be very convincing in explaining. How is that? This is what I wanted all my life, to be someone like you’.

I said, ‘ Well, frankly, that applies to me as well. You are all I seek, you see, you are like a Clarice Starling [5], you need plight. That’s your fuel. That explains your fear, your need to for approval. There could be a silence but it’s only momentary. I am like a Jack Crawford [6], plight has no value to me, I’m just driving straight into an opportunity, which means nothing to me, but we need each other. Has it occurred to you, though being so intimate, privy for all our, thoughts, secrets we haven’t spoken of marriage? In all chances we might not find a better partner to spend the rest of our lives, yet we are not worried about that; we don’t give a damn, we are ourselves, in other words we have no insight about future life. Give me a reason or an explanation’?

‘How I wish I was married to you and had kids and went out for dinner together, but come to reflect on it, that’s not appealing, me and you are not like that. Gosh its hard to even picture that, I don’t want us to go dull, quarrelling over who should pay the bills or pick up the kids from school etc. Imagine me and you rationalizing the whole process as love, are we really that desperate?’  Thoughtfully she giggled, like she does. I couldn’t have agreed more.

The night was slightly chilly but soft. Side by side, we lay on our backs, gazing at the lights from million and millions years away, and the moon was divine. She pointed out to me, ‘Look, how even if the moon dominates the night sky, it’s only a second-hand light, a borrowed beauty… while the real light are distant, barely making their presence felt’.
‘Life’s like this it’s never fair, I said. ‘In fact its not fair to expect it to be fair. We care for each other too much, because we want to find out? We don’t want it to end, we don’t want to undervalue anything precious, it’s for our own reasons, you may say it’s not appealing, I may say it’s only a choice. But beyond that, we know we love each other, I guess we know more than that, we know we always love each other, anywhere, anytime, and may be we know that too well to be bothered by marriage. We don’t want to be a moon, we want to know, even if it’s hurt and pain, we want to learn, we want to be stars, distant and far away, but still trying to make light on our own’.
I didn’t notice she had moved closer, may be I was too occupied with what I was saying. Her eyes were sharp and bright, she leaned over me and said,‘ Did Clarice ever make love to Crawford  in the silence of the lambs’? I was taken aback by the sudden change of topic, I replied promptly ‘ err..No why?’.
‘Ah! She forgot’ she quipped back climbing over me and I felt her lips over mine and soon, her tongue.

The End.

References:

[1] Dean Moriarty: protagonist in Jack Kerouac’s novel ‘On the road’.
[2] Frederich Nietzsche: German philosopher.
[3] Kierkegaard:Danish philosopher.
[4] Bergson: French philosopher
[5] Clarice Starling: FBI trainee/protagonist in Thomas Harris’ novel ‘silence of the lambs’.
[6] Jack Crawford: FBI unit chief and Clarice’s boss in the same novel.

And dangling by the moving door, through the small space formed between your overcoat collar and the freezing ear tip, you glimpse her lips move; move like a silent ship in this sea of sound - bare, definite and floating away…..as if to mean ”Call me when you get there”.

Oh! lovely
those atheist lips - vague

and receding now
trying to say
so coyly, how
your agnost lips
kissed them,
again
and again
so fervently
under so many moons
and lazy holiday afternoons.

.. and a breeze gathers in your face. A memory is born inside. In your heart there is a new sea. Hollow and filling… heavy…. heavier….
Oh! weird… this mad torrent gushing, splitting your veins one by one, melting your knees, so quick, so easy… oh!…. this haze in the eyes, this heat in the throat, this ache in the being….

And how you wish to release, from between your ears, these words -” Oh !! Love! , you sweet slayer, how cruel this belonging ” but instead you throw out a hoarse shriek of ‘I will I will’ to a growing distance.

It is something like this , isn’t it?
To fall in love- is to be invisible, to be able to vanish with one person while around everyone.

She smiles.

The breeze beckons a memory. A curl of air floats with it happily.
You know I used to love you for that; like when you turn abruptly and smile.
And those hazel eyes.

I know. She smiles.

A smile is just a number,
another count of rainbow
against the horizon of love.

He gently places the strand behind the curve that forms her ear.
Why do you do that?
I like it that way.
Why?
I like myself when I do that.

She smiles.

One of these days I must tell her that brown doesn’t look good on her, He promises himself. He knows he cant tell.He could tell what she wore only while he was driving back.

Do you remember when we met?
He thinks of so many things he could have said. Yes so many. He remembers only her smile. And a yellow windcheater, that held the bone of the conversation.

You don’t have to say it aloud.When you know, you know.And that is all there is to it, He tells himself.

And waits, in anticipation.

Isn’t it strange, this light and the moon? She wonders.
No!! She cannot convince herself outside of it . She wants to let it go and still she holds onto it so hard.
Silence grows within the heart.Slowly into a smile that aches.

Why does she do that? She asks herself until she falls asleep.
She dreams in her sleep.

Obviously there is no such thing as a favourite. How would you define favourite ?
Its what you like most?

I like different things at different times.
What do you like most?
Right now, The piano over there.

Her music floats in laughter.
Within his dreams, he could hear her. I must hold onto it , he tells himself. It slips and wafts away into a distant fragrance.But it haunts on some evenings. It still does!And there is nothing in the world he can do about it.
There is a pleasure in futility.
She smiles.

Almost everynight she fights inside herself.
I want him away from everything. From myself. It is very important.

But he would come back, at different places , in rainy crowds as someone in an yellow windcheater, in wilting roses and old favourites.

A piano sings, somewhere, very close.
She looks for it in desparation.She cant find it.

Suddenly it becomes bright, only she feels it.She must be still in love.

She can’t escape, He knows her every curve, every space.

Do you miss me?? That is all she wants to ask him.

There is a terrible ache, that flows through them, between them.
But neither of them want to leave.

What are you thinking?
Nothing.

She still smiles…..