10/04/2016

Letter to Chhuti XXIII

Hi!

Ambitiously, and thoughtlessly, regardless of what you may have to say, I had merely pulled the curtains on you. How happy I am to be proved wrong, to find you lurking, innocuously, like a forgotten torn button inside a pocket. And how faithfully you have stayed, an endless dreams where holidays never end.

The sturdy carrots that usher in the warmth of a sweet winter, the snacky oranges that unpeel last year's thoughts, the fog that stands victorious over the dawn, jingles that you are around. Sweetheart, there are hours at a stretch when I am not me -- when you are only to speed on a highway and cannot press the brakes -- such moments reveal a disastrous side of me, a bitter one where I yell and yield to things which have never earlier bothered me.

And then we are greeted with "alert." Such signals are strange Chhuti, they reverse the entire grandiose of embittered living. The absence of next is so stark that one gives in to the pleasant now. To think of it, how misleading I have been, to think that I have embarked on a new chapter of life, without you. I shied away I think, embarrassed when I felt the red pangs of my cheek to people's "You are on an eternal holiday!"

Bloody hell, yes I am. My unattended dark circles and long lists need not cancel that. The racing heartbeats too, can mute themselves to the banter of the crowd. I forgot I have you all the time and any time I wish to. It took me a while to go through all the letters addressed to you, which you may not read, to look for you in the lurks of the dust-borne curtains, and there you were, eyes shining like a reverie.

You were the past years rolled into a motion photograph, with the power to highlight in my hands. You are the past years rolled into a motion photograph, smiling out of ordinary frames.

No wonder, you never went anywhere.

Love,
K.


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