In a New York minute

Dear;

Lying in the darkness of my room, I think of you and… New York. There is always solitude in darkness.

When I landed at the airport, I was filled with apprehensions. What if you don’t find me in this sea of people…? When encircled arms met people who filled the seats around me on the plane, I repeated to myself your mobile number, which I’d memorized. But when I saw you looking for me and when you wrapped me onto you, my relief was by sinking completely into you- bag and baggage. I like being found.

I liked your room. I especially loved the ledge where I could sit holding my legs near me and look out into the street. The fan that groaned in slow circles, it made me feel we were sleeping in India. Except that I couldn’t hear the traffic. Things were different and yet the same.

I sleep best when I sleep with my face in the curve of your neck… There were no nightmares and dream was a kiss away.

Do you remember how often we would turn off the alarm and go back to sleep? The alarm would be the signal for us if we were at the far ends of the bed, to come closer to each other, find comfortable nooks and curves that hold and contain. Wrapping sleep kissed bodies around each other we would go back to sleep.

New York… I think I’ve fallen in love with the place. Or maybe with you… all over again. I’ve fallen in love many times and with a lot of people. I’ve fallen out of times and with all of them people. But with you, I’ve always come back to fall in love again.

Central Park…Sheep meadow is the bestest place in the whole world. When you let me sit on your bag, so that I wont get my trousers all wet, I felt I was in college. No, not that anyone in college cared if I sat on wet grass. And when you sat down on the grass and I ran my fingers through your closely cropped hair... your hair felt softer by the way. Is this what lovers do? Apart from writing love letters, long hours on the phone and furtive gropes in dark cinema theatres?

Anyway, we weren’t lovers like that...

We were…we were the lovers who made no promises. We never talk of ‘remember-when’ and ‘what-if’…We were lovers who laughed and talked and walked and giggled at Indian taxi drivers who were rude and ate noodles in cabs in New York. We were lovers who met other people, never talked on the phone, wrote small emails and had sex when we met.

We never call sex, making love.

I liked all your friends.

I like French cheese.

When you whispered to my pressed form on the crowded subway that it was not as bad as the Chennai buses, I could feel your smile on my body. I didn’t have to look at you to see that. I’d stood there, as near as to you I could get. I could feel your breath on my hair. I never once looked up. I hope you were thinking of the past. This once we could behave like others. It is allowed.

I am happier than I ever was. Or if I was, I cannot remember when. But I am sad too. Like the time when I laced my fingers through yours and squeezed your palm at the movie theatre... I’d looked on at the lit screen pretending not to see your questioning look. Sadness sits on me at the most unexpected of times.

When the time came for me to leave and you asked me not to be sad, for we would meet again, that’s the closest to a tomorrow and a promise we’d come.

3 days...it seems like a minute now. In that New York minute, everything’s changed. I think I’ve left a part of me behind somewhere out there. Maybe in one of the avenues we walked… Maybe in one of the shops we went…Maybe in one of the benches we sat. Maybe under the pillow on your bed, a little hidden.

As always and forever;
Me.