The Unnamed Story... Part 3...

“We shall never understand one another until we reduce the language to seven words” - Kahlil Gibran

I was holding her note in my hand. I had read the content many times over, but still it had not sunk in yet, the note, the message, her absence, everything seemed like a dream, a dreadful dream, and I was hoping that any second now I will wake up and find her sleeping beside me, in my bed, in our bed, sleeping like a princess, looking beautiful and radiant even when she had dark circles under her eyes from reading the detective novels she used to read, even when her hair was a mess, even when she used to snore, ever so softly, in a way only she could. She never understood why I could never picture her as anything but beautiful. To me she was perfect. Maybe it was love, maybe I was blind. But I loved every minute of this blindness, and wished and prayed that I be blind for the rest of my life only to she her as nothing but beautiful.

They say it happens to everyone, first you are blind in love, you think she is perfect, you do not notice any imperfections, any faults in her, but slowly you the initial euphoria tends to wear off, and then you see the real person behind the mask of perfection, that you thought she was wearing, then you notice her imperfections, the small but significant faults in her personality. But it was different for me. I saw her imperfections, but I loved these imperfections more than her perfections and the sum total of these small but significant faults, as they call it, which was her personality, signified to me perfection, a perfection far more beautiful than the ideal perfection in which there is no fault, and her imperfections become perfections in my eyes. For me she could do no wrong.

I looked again at the note. Those seven words, written on the back of the restaurant bill, written with her favourite green pen, written in her charming yet tired handwriting, seemed to me like an accusation, something akin to the seven deadly sins, which I might have committed, when I drove her away. Why did she write only seven words? She was an expressive person, terseness never appealed to her. She always used to say that words are meant to be spoken; language is a gift to be used. I never understood this fuss about communication, I used my quota of my words to write, to write short stories, to create magic with words, to go away to distant places where life was different, where everyday was an adventure, where you could save the world and die honourably, where you could kill someone and walk away, where you could make new friends, where you could be popular, where you could have the whole world at your feet as your slave, where you could slay a dragon and rescue a princess, where you could go to distant galaxies and live with aliens, where you could speak Chinese fluently, where you could love and be loved. Maybe because I used up all my words in my stories, I was not left with enough words for her. Maybe she decided to punish me for my terseness with her laconic message.

But why seven words? Did the number seven signify something? Did she hint at the seven deadly sins? Of all the sins, maybe sloth is the only thing I could have committed. I am a failed writer living in a desolate quarter in a forsaken neighbourhood, surely I have no pride. I am too undernourished to be accused of gluttony. I am a loner; I have no one to envy or to unleash my wrath at, even greed does not touch me, I am a man of few needs, and as such lust is not one of them. But that takes me back to the original question. Why seven? Maybe the seven colours of the rainbow, the seven spots on a ladybug, the number of bones in my neck, the seven saints in the sky, a phone number, the seven logic gates, the seven hills of Rome, the seven wonders of the world, the seven virtues, the number of heavens and earths, yang, the number of steps Buddha took at his birth, sa re ga ma pa dha ni, the seven rounds of the holy fire in a marriage, the number of islands of Atlantis. And like Atlantis, she left me without a trace, what good was a seven word message to me, when there was no key to read the message.

But maybe it was not the number of words, but the words themselves. The words that she wrote, formed a code, a complex cryptic code that she wanted me to break to get to her. She was always fond of riddles and puzzles. Once she hid my birthday gift somewhere in the house, and then gave me a treasure map, along with subtle hints to read the map and find the treasure, which was to be my birthday gift, a gift I would learn to treasure, a gift more valuable than all that the pirate’s could muster, more valuable than all the gold in the world, more valuable than all the breaths that I now take without her. Of course, I could not solve the puzzle, I moved around in my house for the whole day, going one way then the other, looking into every conceivable nook and corner, turning the whole house upside down and I was nowhere close to finding out my treasure and my house was in a mess. After a few hours of back breaking and positively enervating search for my treasure, I did what all pirates used to do when they did not find the treasure they were looking for, I gave up, I raised my white flag, meaning to surrender and wishing to communicate with the victor, and there she was, standing in front of me, smiling as only a conqueror can smile, a conqueror of hearts. She said that she was the treasure that I was supposed to find and in view of my unconditional surrender, she had won the right of unconditional love from me and that from that day on, I shall become her hostage, her captive, her prisoner-of-love. With my head held high, I accepted my sentence, and just as Heer had done so many centuries ago when Ranjha played his flute, I agreed to love.

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.

The Still Unnamed Novel I am writing...

This is the start of a story that i hope will some day turn into a novel... so that's why i have put it up here... to remind myself that i have things to write, a novel to finish... i will be only putting up the odd chapters of the novel, because they form a homogeneous story. You ask what about the even chapters, well, that's a mystery...

I woke up. Winter had not set in yet, yet I felt cold. I looked around trying to figure out why I felt so cold. I checked my forehead and throat with the back of my hand. I did not have a fever, not yet. The window was open, it was night already. A soft, gentle breeze was blowing, a breeze which carried it with a peculiar smell, a smell which carried it with memories, memories of long nights spent with her, memories of cold winter nights, memories of distant times and places, memories which reminded me of my stark loneliness. I got up. I put on a sweater, not just any sweater, but the red one, the one which she got me for our anniversary. Why did I put it on? I never liked it. I remember her face when she gave me that sweater; she was nervous, expectant, and anxious. I smiled at her, but something was missing, and she knew that. She realised that I was not very happy, she did not say a thing, neither did I. But something changed that day. We knew that the honeymoon was over; we knew that it will not be easy anymore.

I closed the window. I looked outside at the empty park benches, gleaming in the moonlight. It must be the metallic paint that they use, I thought. I tried moving away from the window, but I could not. I was under the spell cast by those silvery park benches. I saw myself sitting with her on one of the benches; it was another full moon night. Her face looked so radiant in the moonlight, so angelic, so pure, that I was afraid. I was listening to her, but I was lost, lost in her beauty, so unreal that I ran my hands over her face just to make sure that she was there. And she was, she was there, right beside me, smiling, talking, and laughing. I felt a burning sensation inside me, I did not know if I was sad or happy or if I was supposed to be one or the other. I was happy as well as sad. I felt pain through pleasure and pleasure through pain. There no longer was any boundary, or any partition between the different emotions. I felt all the various emotions at the same time, and at times none at all. Sometimes I would be burning with passion and at other times I would be numb.

I felt a strange sensation in my stomach, a sensation so familiar that I ought to know what it was but the fact that I did not, made it strange. I thought about it a while and then it dawned on me that it was hunger, one of the primal instincts. I felt a faint sense of joy on realising this, the kind of joy you feel when you solve a very difficult problem and are amazed and exhilarated by the beauty of the solution and your ingenuity. I must be losing my mind, I thought. I tried remembering the last time I had a meal. Was it this morning, yesterday night, yesterday morning, I did not know. I went to the kitchen. It was a in a mess, but then so was my life, so I felt at home. It was comforting to find a place where I could fit, easily and discreetly. I made myself a sandwich, not the chicken one that I liked but the tuna that she was devoted to. As I ate the sandwich, I could hear her munching her tuna sandwich, a faint smile on her lips, contentment writ large on her face, the strand of hair falling carelessly over her eyes.

I was back in our bedroom, my bedroom. Dark clouds were starting to take over the sky, dark clouds with silver lining. Silver was her favourite colour, not red, blue, pink, green, black or even orange. No, no rainbow could entice her; hers was silver, silver with its brilliant white metallic lustre, silver with its untarnished and pure radiance, silver with all the pomp and splendour of royalty, silver to fight thunderstorms, silver to relive memories, silver that symbolised the moon now hidden behind the dark clouds. I once tried to figure out the reasons behind her fascination for silver, I asked her questions, questions about her childhood, her parents, the house she lived in, the school she went to, her first love, her favourite TV series, her favourite plaything, her first car, her first job, even the colour of the condom to which she lost her virginity, trying to understand the choice of silver, and with it understand her. It was during this time in our relationship that I knew that something was not right, we were still the same but something was missing and I wanted to know her better, know her every move, her every whim and fancy, to find that missing something in her.I never realised that maybe the missing something was missing in me.