Let's Leave.

Everything changes from now on. Things will be different.

Let’s leave. Let’s go to places we’ve never seen. You get your camera, I’ll get my giggles. We can pack our clothes in a backpack. I know I like more, but this time, less is more. Let’s camp under the stars, wake up in a cold desert, and cook in the wilderness. I’ll give you a book if you have nothing to read. And I’ll write you a poem or two every day. Let’s cross towns we’ve only heard of, places we’ve spotted only on a map. We’ll have lattes and black coffees in nondescript cafes and pick food only to eat on the road. Hold me if I cry looking at the sunset, and I’ll hold you when you tell me stories you’ve never told anyone else. Let’s get drunk on cheap wine and laugh at silly jokes. We’ll stop at every bookstore and music store on our way. Let’s call ourselves a flawed piece of art that seeks no validation. Let the stars, the Sun and the Moon witness our madness.

Trust me, it’ll be different this time.

We’ll do things we haven’t done before.

Trust me, you wouldn’t want to miss a single thing.

But first, let’s leave.

Tune for the day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io9ivuo4r6Q

Distances and Proximity.

She lived out of suitcases while he built his home, carefully.

She measured her life with the number of places her feet took her to, and he did his while reading books in the cozy corner of his room.

She traveled to various parts of different countries in the pursuit of finding a meaningful story, as he moved from one page to the other, breathing into the lives of thousand characters.

The lipstick stains on her coffee cups and the little notes on the takeaway boxes made her life a mantel of memories, but to him, collecting memories meant something more tangible.

She sent him little postcards and lovely polaroids from the towns she visited and he sent her long emails about his days, weeks and sometimes, months.

During their rare phone calls, they ran into the wee hours of the night talking about the desserts that troubled her and the writer that made him go weak in the knees, about the coffee she enjoyed at the end of a forgotten lane and about the drawings and poetry he wrote in the margins of his notebook.

She narrated how sunrise looked poles apart in different parts of the world, and he described how sunsets weren’t the same without her.

Every time she moved from one place to the other, the desire to be with her grew deep in him.

Her feet might have taken her to places she called her own and beaches that she felt like home, but her heart? Her heart stayed with him, no matter where her feet traveled.

Words Versus Silence.

Words come easy to me.

But when I'm with you, I don't fill the silence with words.

As we sit at the corner of a coffee shop away from the world,

The darkness of the place, the pretty lights dangling up above,

Everything is perfect, but I don't try to fill the silence with words.

We laugh over the things that remain unsaid, we smile over the

thoughts that run in our heads.

You ask me to spill them out loud, but I don't feel the need to fill the

silence with words.

As I circle my fingers over a cup of coffee, I know your eyes are on me.

You look like you mean to say something but your lips twitch into a smile instead.

Neither do you fill the silence with words nor do I.

Words do come easy to me.

But when I'm with you, it's mostly silence that engulfs me.

Give Up, Romantic.

I am your regular girl.

I want to be in the sort of love that I can swoon about on Instagram. Yet I want the sort of love that I want to hide from the rest of the world.

I am your regular girl. I am confused about the sort of love I want.

Contrary to the popular belief, I am not really a huge fan of good looking men. Not that I really mind them, and I don't really disapprove of a wonderful man with brains at the right place and has a beautiful face too. Some perks are good. 

My idea of the perfect man is the one who could woo me with his words. As a writer, I love soaking into the splendour of words that sometimes ruin me. I sign up for things like that - men who are all about words. Unfortunately, about no action.

No, I don't like the mysterious danger that lurks along with that sort of love. Because that isn't the kind that goes on Instagram, remember? For years, I tormented myself looking for the grand, maddening, I-will-kill-you-with-my-love sort of love only to realize it was too bad for me. So, one fine morning I wiped my slate clean.

I wrote, no expectations. Zilch. Nada.

The days turned sunnier and rosy. That's when I met him. In the beginning, he seemed like a person I could easily avoid. But, he ended up being in my face most of the time, and no matter where I went, he was available at every nook and corner of the earth. Maybe he made himself available for me. Maybe he did not. I hated him for reasons I could not even fathom but hating him was easy. So, I hated. Avoided. Ignored. Hid. Ran.

Things changed, of course. You must have watched enough romantic comedies to figure out what happens when a mysterious guy walks into the life of a girl smoothly and glides away just the way he walks in. He didn't even belong to the section of guys I liked, and no don't remind me about wiping my slate clean. I could give a lot of reasons, but the fact was that I was heartbroken again because the words I fell for were the ones that drowned me in the end. Now, I would blame all the movies and books I've devoured, and sometimes went overboard with picturing what if my life would be like if I was a character from a book. Fiction ruined me, just the way I ruined my expectations with the most unrealistic forms of love.

The sort of love I was looking for did not happen to me though it happened to a lot of people around me. I stopped believing in the sheer presence of love and the ways it could alter the definition of my life. What was I thinking anyway? My life wasn't like 'Notting Hill' and it definitely is never going to be like 'Say Anything.' So, I had to separate love from my love life and live my life.

Sadly, some things are not meant to be. If I was Taylor Swift, I would have sung a sad melody for you, but I am not and don’t fancy Taylor much, so I figured I must Instagram the heck out of my life and never bother about a guy I’d put on Instagram. The clouds seem blue all over again.

The Storyteller Ring.

It was just another typical day for me. It began the usual way, but I shone a little less bright than every day. That was when I noticed him. He cupped his palms together, and rushed into the store, tugging his jacket closer to his body to keep himself warm. A look at him told me that he must have walked here in the brutal rain. He walked from one end of the store to the other, gasping and sighing in between. He took his own sweet time before he set his eyes on me. It was love at first sight. I could tell. He took me into his arms, caressed me softly, and said, “Pack this for me.” As he counted the notes of denominations 100, and few coins, I wanted to urge the manager to give a lavish discount on me, but I couldn't. A little later, he collected the amount. It looked like he could afford me. It looked like he saved up for me. I still remember the candid tone of his voice when he said, “I am going to propose to my girlfriend. This ring is perfect." I was the perfect ring. I loved that I was going to be a part of a journey which would begin with me. I walked out of the store snuggling in the cozy corner of his pocket. With a pride in his heart and a glint in his eye, he talked a great deal about me with his friends. A week later, he got down on his knees and proposed to her. I still remember the tears that trickled out of her eyes. I still remember how well I fit on her finger as if I was cut to beautify her finger. It was blissful. It was funny how the initial years passed in a fleeting moment. The nights they stayed up late sharing the deepest of the secrets, or the walks they took clasping each other's arms, and the mornings they spent making coffee together have soon become a part of my life. I began to take pride in the fact that I bound them together. Even in the moments of despair, she tugged me closer to her heart. Seldom I would lend her my ear, hearing a tale or two about her day. In due course, I realized things were changing. I realized I was held by fingers that weren't his. I realized I was inhaling the scent of a different man. I realized this man did not touch the contours of my body, neither did he kiss me when he kissed her. I realized I meant nothing to this man. I tugged even closer to her, trying to remind her of the moments she spent with him, trying hard to make her understand that she was meant to be with him. I tried, but everything went in vain. Every evening, as I returned home with her, I felt like a culprit. I felt like I was hiding a gory secret deep down my chest. One morning when she left me on his bedside table and walked out of the room leaving behind void and distress, I could not fathom how many days he and I spent in utter darkness wallowing ourselves in sorrow and loneliness. 12 monsoon seasons later, he walked into a store to pawn me for something useful. This store did not look as swanky as the one I was built in, it did not even feel as warm as the home I lived in, but it felt safe here. And as he walked out of the store, he set his eyes on me for one last time. I could tell, that he would never choose another ring over me.

Oh, Please, No Relationships!

“I mean, if the relationship can't survive the long term, why on earth would it be worth my time and energy for the short term?” 

― Nicholas Sparks

Long gone are the days when lovers would make everlasting promises, vows of their undying, unfathomably immortal love. 

Long gone are the days when a man and a woman wrote letters to each other, distance never mattered, and no problem was bigger than their relationship.

We are in 2014 now. Welcome to the world of commitment phobia!

While you all are free to roll your eyes, I would like to present a closer, and to be precise, a much clearer picture to you.

The man:

It is indeed a challenging phase for a man to make a woman fall in love with him. He will possibly do everything to impress her, he will ditch his friends momentarily and spend all his time, energy, and talent on wooing the girl.

He will travel twenty kilometers to get her an ice-cream because she has a craving. 

You look like you have been bitten by the Aphrodite. You are perfect. (Oh come on, even Aamir Khan isn't perfect.)

I will do anything for you, you are worth every risk, he says. I will make sure you never shed a tear, you will be treated like the most precious thing, he says.

There you go, the woman falls in love. The following two months are so ethereal, they are SO Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts that you might wonder if your life was based on your favourite romantic comedy.

If only life was a movie!

Reality hits you, son. 

You want to crawl out of the relationship so badly that you want your gorgeous one to drop dead. You want to go back to the days of being single, where a beer can with your guy friends gave you more joy than the supposedly most beautiful woman in the world.

All of a sudden, you want your life to be Indian Jones. And not some filthy romantic comedy. 

Love eventually fades, you say that, and you walk away. It is alright to be selfish.

You deserve better things. It is not you, it is me. (If she was so good in the first place, why would you let her pass?)

And then, you turn into a freak who becomes notoriously serious about career overnight. *Slow claps*

The woman:

I have no clue why the world says that women turn prettier and rosier when in love.

We basically don a pair of rose tinted glasses and go oblivious to all the things happening around us. In a relationship, a man and a woman function differently. 

In the initial stages of a relationship, while a man showers a woman with an obscene amount of attention, the woman does not. And she turns insanely, neurotically obsessed with you in the later stages, and the man simply wants to play FIFA or whatever with his male fraternity.

In the initial stages, you take an effort to dress up for your man, laugh at this eternally stupid jokes, and think he is utterly intelligent, and sometimes, you tend to give in to men with an IQ way lower than yours. 

Happens! You've put on your tinted glasses, didn't you? You did not just turn almost blind, you have turned deaf as well.

Days pass, and you regain your wits little by little.

You don't dress up for him any longer. Yet, your whole world orbits around him. How ridiculous is that? You do not give him any space. You scare him off.

You have a problem with everything he does. His jokes turn lame, his habits annoy you. 

My love has not turned obsolete. I need to save the relationship, you say it yourself and to that best friend between tearful sobs.

You give another shot at trying to reform the man. The poor soul does almost everything to turn into an image that he is not. Because he loves you, and your obnoxiously self centered habits do not annoy him yet.

Finally, you break up with him saying he is not the man you fell in love with. CLASSIC!

Why don't you just save yourself the heart-ache and avoid this eternally messed up thing? For we are in the era of commitment phobia where we let go of our relationships because of petty things which would not have mattered to lovers decades ago.

Disclaimer: Folks who are leading the fairy tale love story, this post isn't for you. The earth is still revolving around the Sun because of awesome people like you.