February 15, 2008

The Unnamed Story... Part 2...

This continues from the first part which was called 'The still Unnamed Novel I am writing'. I have renamed the series 'The Unnamed Story', so as to not sound pretentious. Everything else stays the same.


“As perfume doth remain In the folds where it hath lain, So the thought of you, remaining Deeply folded in my brain, Will not leave me: all things leave me: You remain” - Arthur Symons


I lay down again, on my bed. I was tired, exhausted, and worn out by sleep. I closed my eyes and waited, waited for the memories, her memories, waiting for the bitter sweet taste that they leave in my mouth, the same taste that her lips used to leave on mine. I longed to smell her close to me, smell the perfume she used to wear, a perfume which reminded me of treks I went for in my college days, which contained the smells of the wild, the intoxicating aroma of musk, a whiff of frankincense, the tears of Boswellia tree crying out in the unforgiving desert and the long lasting fragrance of sandalwood calling with open arms. I lost myself in the woods of her smells, closing my eyes, sniffing and following my olfactory sense to take me to her, letting my nose be the beacon of my hopes. I felt her smell close to me, so close that I could reach out and touch her, hold her and keep her. I was afraid to open my eyes lest I lose her, her smell and the orgasmic joy that it gave me. I shuddered with the sheer rapture of pleasure. I opened my eyes and there was no forest, there was no grass around feet, no trees surrounding me and she was not there.

I felt a sudden urge to smell her perfume, to find out if I remembered what it smelt like, if my memories were true. I knew that she used to keep a bottle of her perfume at my place. I started a frantic search for it. I looked around, the dressing table drawers, the bedroom cupboards, the bathroom, even the kitchen, but it was not there. Despair, bordering on wretchedness, engulfed me. I felt life slowly ebbing away from my body, like the evaporation of her perfume, like the sound of her footsteps on the stairs outside whenever she used to leave, like the slow decay of memories. I wanted to puke out this melancholy from my soul, like we puke out bad whisky, and feel alive again. My head was spinning, I closed my eyes again, but no memories swamped me, this time it was pitch dark. I was starting to lose my memories, with it her smell and with it my life.

As a child, I used to steal my mother’s perfume and spray it on my stuffed tiger and then throw it away. Then I would close my eyes and sniff. I used to get down on my knees and follow my nose to find my tiger. I used to bump into a lot of things during these games, my mother never guessed the reason behind the bumps on my head that used to appear with alarming frequency. But once she asked me if I knew why her perfume never seemed to last long. I was afraid she would scold me and I kept quite. Maybe my nervousness showed on my face, but she did not stress the point. She let me be. But I have always wondered if there was something else to this incident and maybe my mother did know about all this, maybe she knew that I was stealing her perfume, to use it to play my own version of hide and seek. Maybe she knew what the perfume meant to me, maybe she knew, long before I had any inkling of the fact, that I derive a part of my life force from smells, and my olfactory sense is as vital to my life as the other senses, and that my nose breathes life into me through the smells I love. And that is why I desperately needed to find her smell back, and with it reclaim my life.

I had to find her and the only clue I had was the note she left me, when she left me. It was a hand written note, written on the back of a restaurant bill, a restaurant where we had our last dinner together, written with the green ink pen that she used, written in her charming handwriting with the confident expressiveness of forward slanting letters, the pleasing consistency of circular strokes, but there was something different, the normally optimistic upward slant of her lines was replaced by a downward slant indicating exhaustion. She was tired when she wrote this note, she was tired when she left me, and maybe she left me because she was tired of me. Clutching the note in hand, I started out on a journey, a journey which was also a pilgrimage, a pilgrimage to find love and in love, life.

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7 Comments:

At 8:16 PM, Blogger Bhakti Pattanaik said...

fabulous story.....meant for broken hearts huh!!!keep writing..........I loved it.....

 
At 5:01 AM, Blogger abhimir said...

thanks for the encouragement... will try to do justice to your praise in the next post...

 
At 6:33 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey...what a twist?!! Part 1 had that she couldnt do the magic to him that she used to before and he felt he didnt need her anymore. HEre he is desperately missing her..everything of her.. Was he trying to convnce himself that he doesnt need her anymore in the first part, and now memories making him realise his folly?..he cannot live without...his life is meaningless without her?
Hey pretty nice story nd i'm waiting for the next part!!! u have a nice style of describing moments! Keep it up :)

:) :)
Preetha!!

 
At 5:42 AM, Blogger abhimir said...

@Preetha

Well, you seemed to have understood well... i am trying here to recreate the psychology of a person who realises that his beloved had just left him...
so first there is denial, and then realisation that denial is not worth it...
i have completed the first chapter... will put it up in a few days...
thanks for reading...

 
At 6:35 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

..good story..keep up the good work....

 
At 7:13 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi!
Long time...no see??!!

 
At 5:30 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

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