Flotsam and jetsam

It was strange... No, let me begin at the beginning.

Some relationships are too good to be true. If someone was to tell me they met over the Internet and fell in love, I'd smile an indulgent smile, patronizing nods and feel superiorly intelligent.

But it need not be only love you know...

How things change. How I change. You can have great conversation, feel warm, feel cared, care in return and you stop every once in a while feeling vaguely out of breath. A time and an evening without his voice overriding the whistling pressure cooker, the sizzling omelet or the beep of the microwave cannot be imagined.

You form various zig zagged patterns of friends, classmates and people you know. You have passed the same street signs, you've eaten in the same cafes, you've sat hours in the same beaches- but at different points of time. And even if they did intersect- you didn’t know. You talk about all that and wonder... you could've easily missed knowing this person again. He could have been just another hurrying pedestrian in one of the narrow Indian roads, whom you brushed past. He could've been just another person you shared a seat with in nameless Indian buses... You could've easily missed.

But and instead, you met. Over a surreal world of words and pictures. Of emails and phone calls.

It happened to me too. Every once in a while I'd stop and shake my head with incredulity- something as beautiful as this could not be happening in my life. Not my life surely. But it did. And those premonitions and fey feelings would firmly be brushed aside. I deserve to be happy and blissfully so- I'd convince myself.

Untouched happiness, because it happened in a way not known before. I hugged my joy- it hovered right around my fingers.

Everything ends. This did too. When you least expected it. I never saw it coming, the fool I always am. And will be. Yet another scar.

~

An hour and more, a movie which I wouldn't have watched even if someone had paid me to when back home in India and a horde of people I've never met- a spoonful of such a concoction is what I prescribed myself. A bottle of medicine labeled change. Like all medicines, it doesn’t taste too good. You have to gulp it down. I did that.

The best thing about being a pessimist is that you are either proved right or pleasantly surprised. I was proved right. Halfway through the movie, I wondered if I'd overdosed myself.

Intermission found the entire crowd out- loos and popcorn and colorful bottles of coke. Maybe it was Pepsi.

I stayed back. A polite turn down of the invitation. I am getting an expert at this.

The whole of the theatre was filled with Indians. Who else would hope against knowledge and attempt sitting through 3 hours of exaggerated emotions, fantastic situations and unbelievable romance.

Sitting in the semi dark movie hall, I firmly pushed thinking what I ran away from. I concentrated on looking for what my family told me- the elusive Mallu guy. I started when I felt someone brush my cheek. A small and perfect hand. He must've been four. Or maybe three. His mother pulled him back, profuse with apologies. I hadn't minded. I smiled at him and beckoned him over. He turned shy all of a sudden. I turned back to staring at nothing in front of me.

This time I caught the perfect hand. He wriggled his hand. No escape. Rummaging with my other hand that did not hold the perfect hand, I found what I hoped would be there.

A bar of chocolate, which I offered.
The wriggling stopped.
A questioning and hopeful look, one that both my sister and I were experts at; he threw at his mother.
His mother after a quick scrutinizing glance at me, nodded in the affirmative.

His stretched his other hand that wasn't being held by the not-so-perfect-hand.

"What's your name?” I asked.

I shouldn't have. Too many people have the same name.

Everything returns. That's the eternal hope in a beachcomber's life. And the bane of somebody else’s.