If you are about to
read further, let me warn you that these words will reek of desperate longing.
I have a recurring nightmare.
I am running on a vacant platform and I have missed the last train home. Mozart’s
symphony is playing in the backdrop and my eyes are brimming with nothingness. Is
nothingness synonymous to pain? I know not. I know not why pain demands to be felt.
It’s a strange feeling, the one I wish to un-feel. I do not
know what these ramblings mean. Probably that will tell you about my state of
mind. I cannot simplify myself. All I know is that I yearned for someone until
there was no yearning left to be done. I am the only passenger waiting
on a platform where trains no longer arrive.
The most ironic word
that I have ever come across is “love”. I am ashing this cigar and watching you
drift away with every puff of smoke. I am scribbling bad poetry. I am a madman wishing
upon dead stars, unsure about everything that is scattered before me. Hints,
answers, evidence, everything probing me to believe that we were always and
only meant to share this ending. That is what forever had always meant.
“Pain is a strange
thing. It arrives and sits on your chest and it demands to be felt.” Not
exactly my words but drawn from several encounters with writers. Pain comes to
our lives in different forms and what surprises me is how ‘you’ are incapable
of experiencing the emotion at all. It is a negativity you say. But you caused
it! Pain is the shock, the tremor when the worst of your fears come true. When
the nightmares shape into reality and you watch your world crumble and fall
apart before your eyes and you can’t bat an eyelid. I wonder why I am drenched
in this self pity when all I did was love until there was nothing left to love,
I gave until there was nothing left in me to give. Perhaps they were right.
Pain demands to be felt. If I had an option wouldn’t I chose it? But that would
mean missing out on this privilege to know that someone can matter so much to
me. So much so that even after years they control the strings of my heart. I
think when an important connection is formed between two people and one of them
tries to break it in every way possible, it is the beginning of something
terrible. It is the process of turning into strangers that drains us out. Why
are these ties severed? Because one of them doesn’t understand what pain is,
one of them doesn’t wish to hold on to the love that is being thrown their way
effortlessly. All of us love the chase, don’t we? Why would you settle for
something, no matter how precious it is, if it is given to you unconditionally
or to rephrase it, without a price? Yes, this world has a way of rewarding
those who dare to love in silence, between the pages of the books and as a
flower that never blooms. It’s foolishness, madness, the way we let love
destroy us. Didn’t I tell you that love is the most ironical word ever? I am
glad and yet I wish I didn’t understand why pain demands to be felt.
I have taken the
shortest route to your lane. Your number is on my fingertips. Your name hasn’t
flashed on my phone screen for days and I have begun to think that you do not ‘need’
me anymore. I chant your name on the beads of rosary. You can’t fathom the
longing that you have left in my heart. I will never tell you and maybe soon
you’ll wonder Why? You’ll not see me anymore and you’ll wonder some more. You’ll
watch me amongst a pool of strangers and despite of the history and the
familiarity, despite of how our bodies and hearts once fitted like jigsaw
puzzles, you won’t take a step towards me because your ego is bigger than the
love that you once held for me and well, I am tired. I won’t take a step
towards you either. I am afraid, you fool. Obviously? But you won’t know. You
always had a thing for staying blissfully unaware. So much for escaping from
the pain that comes from accepting the consequences of your actions and
inactions. Maybe that split second where it will dawn upon you that we are
turning into strangers, you’ll realize that what we had hasn’t ended, it will
never be replaced, that you can still make things alright, that I am just
waiting on the shore for you to come back home, that you’ll never find the same
love twice. But well, I forget. You treasure your rationality more than you will
ever treasure me. Sorry, I forgot. I was just a habit, a distraction.
You remember I used to
weep at nights sometimes, write sad things even when we were together? For I
knew, someday you would be taken away from me. And I am standing in midst of
the street, watching you as you pretend that you haven’t noticed me. My insides
are screeching out your name and yet I am pretending to look away and you don’t
know how it feels because you can’t fathom the restlessness inside your heart
and mine, the million escape routes that you’ve dug out for yourself in form of
shallow company amongst people who don’t understand the marrow of your bones.
How will you know me when you have never experienced pain? How will you
remember the one who has always loved you in silence? How will you know when
everything was thrown your way at a dirt cheap rate?
You see, you do not know
yet but someday you’ll know. Someday you’ll look into my eyes and see the
scars, someday you’ll try to understand me, someday you’ll know about the
nightmares in which I have loved you, the dark places where I have hidden you.
Someday you’ll know that pain demands to be felt. Someday you’ll know that even
when there was nothing, I had stood by you, waiting for you to simplify
yourself.
© Copyright Reserved,
Ayushee Ghoshal 2016.
