A Stranger in the mirror

   

 

Want me till I need you

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,

And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind”.

                                                                                                       -William Shakespeare 

 

 

 

In high school, she was known as “Malaika” named after a famous model turned actress of bollywood; tall, dark complexioned, glamorous face, charming personality and powerful body language. She was perfect at that time… well if I think about her today, she wasn’t perfect enough, at least when it came to her choice of men…

I had just joined my chemistry tuition classes and she followed. Then I had to take tuition from my mathematics teacher. Coincidentally she was there too. This was in fact the beginning of coincidences. Sometimes I suspected that she was stalking me. But then I would laugh it out by the thought that she was way beyond my league, least not to mention we would have made the worst couple ever! But then one day my doubt had turned into certainty when she decided to change her physics tuitions soon after I did.

 Years went by; I had joined college. And my room mate turned out to be her close friend. One fine evening we were chatting about our good old school days, the pranks we committed and the girls he dated. Suddenly for some unexplained reason I felt an unflinching desperation. As if, I had been traversing a dark tunnel of assumptions all this while but it was time for me to see the light. As I narrated the happenings, he listened carefully. I expected him to burst out in laughter and mock me. Surprisingly, no such thing happened. He was silent for a while, then smiled apologetically and revealed the truth.

 She was crazy about me and used to haunt my friend for my phone number. And when he declined, she decided to follow me everywhere. Now if I remember those moments, I can imagine myself as a blind and deaf person. Those profound eyes emanating the desire to love, those ineffable smiles she gave me every time I looked at her…

 Soon after, the friend fell asleep while his room mate was awake the rest of the night. He stood in front of the mirror again. It was a different face this time, a face of regret… not because he had missed out on the opportunity of love but because he had no choice.

 

 

 

Love me till I hate you

 

 “Revenge is a dish best served cold”

-  Pierre Ambroise Francois

 

“What goes around comes around”. Ironically the only person who made me realize that was a girl. I met her in my technical school. She was undoubtedly the most beautiful girl in our year but there was a lot more about her than her bright eyes, cascading long black hair and the enigmatic smile. She reminded me of Sidney Sheldon’s heroines who embodied the perfect combination of dignity, ambition and most importantly power. As a woman of substance, she intimidated all my friends, except me. It had started on our annual function day when she invited me to her house and never stopped praising me in front of her parents. This was followed by seldom calls, gifts on my birthday and new years. She knew that I didn’t socialize much and hence always insisted on my presence in every college get-together.

 Then she left the country to continue her studies in Sydney. As she departed everyone requested for gifts. A month had passed by, everyone forgot about her including me until I received a courier containing 130 photographs of the most exotic locations she had been to. That was the gift I had requested for…

 For a year she kept sending me emails but I seldom replied. Whenever she complained for my non responsiveness I would make excuses like “Sorry I was busy” or “I forgot!”

 One day she was back in town and invited me to her house. This time my friends were included. The entire day at her house, she never spoke to me. They all discussed about our final year projects and her life abroad. Every time our eyes met, all I saw was rage, hopelessness and revenge. Yes, silence is golden but this time it was killing me.. At the dinner table, there was an unusual commotion as if the truth was slowly seeping into everybody else’s mind. She served the main dish to everyone until she thumped the serving bowl in front of me. As all my friends glared at the massacre, her mom rebuked her for the uncouth behavior. There was not even the slightest tinge of apology or frenzy or even embarrassment on her face. All she said looking at me was “Sorry I forgot!”

 Before we departed her father announced the good news. “My daughter is getting married next year”. As the words came out from his mouth, once again for some unexplained reason I felt the pangs of regret. Everyone shouted in joy and congratulated her. Every soul was happy except for someone….

 That evening once again he stood in front of the mirror lamenting the day gone by. This time he saw a complete stranger who was humming a poem:

 

“Yes, loving is a painful thrill,
  And not to love more painful still;
    But oh, it is the worst of pain,
      To love and not be loved again.”

                                                                                      -Thomas Moore

 

Yes both these special women had relished the taste of this pain in their teenage years and had probably healed by now. But for him, it was time to pay back…

 

 

 

Trust me till I betray you

 

“I’m not upset that you lied to me; I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you”

-    Friedrich Nietzche

                                                                        

 

I was introduced to him by my friend Pavan. For months we chatted and spoke on the phone as we were located in 2 different corners of the country. We had also exchanged several pictures. As days turned to months our friendship matured into love. At least a dozen messages and at least one call a day. I still remember the days standing in the pigeon-hole like telephone booths, sweating and hungry desperately trying to pamper my first gay love. I would repeatedly check my wallet and the call meter running faster than ever. But I had to continue since he despised the idea of cutting short the call for the sake of money. Everyday I would start the conversation with the hope of hearing from him those three forbidden and undoubtedly expensive words, but it never happened until the midnight of New Year 2006. It was a long wait but a wait worth living for.

 After almost a year, the day had finally come. He was in my town and I was cajoling the cab driver to speed up. He was standing in front of a college gate in white pin striped shirt and blue jeans; a handsome, gorgeous young man. Although he was 20, there was an inexplicable charm and maturity in him. He kept wavering his long beautiful hair while his magnificent eyes continually scanned the passers by…hoping to meet his man. I stood in stealth and thanked God for everything. I was falling in love with him once again…

 That entire evening we kept admiring each other and reiterating our past conversations. I felt as if we were strangers in the rain standing under one umbrella. At times my shoulder would get wet and sometimes his. Nevertheless we were happy because we both loved the rain as much as we loved each other. I wanted to hug him and wished the time would come to a standstill. As I tried to do that, there was an initial hesitance in him but then he obliged. For some untold reason I didn’t feel the pressure of his arms around me…

 After a week, he had to return back to his home town. Once he was gone I called him several times but there was no answer. After a day’s silence he returned my call. I asked him about his future plans and he replied “Sorry I am not gay”. The words struck me like a thunder as if someone had poured acid on my body. After he hung up, I reverted back and it was his straight school friend who picked the call. He accused me of being a gay and pedophile, since I was 26 and he was just 20.

A week before I was happy thinking that I would no longer be alone having found the special man who would stand behind me at times of travesty and whisper in my ears “Don’t worry dear, I am there to hold you if you fall”. And today all my dreams had come crashing down. As I sat in the public bus, I kept staring out of the window so that no one could fathom the ‘worst of my pain’. I blinked my eyes as hard as I could, trying to stop my tears…but as luck would have it, even they decided to betray me. I cried the rest of the night and never realized when I had fallen asleep. There were so many questions I wanted to ask him. If you aren’t gay why did you play with my emotions? Being gay was a forfeit not less enough to endure and now this betrayal? Was it someone else in your life?  The very thought of his naked body making love to a woman, their orgasm as they fornicated made me feel sick to the core. Finally one day he confessed. He said that he was gay but he hated my appearance. These were his words:

 

“You are the ugliest shit face on this planet and you are so girly. Don’t expect that no one will ever hurt you”

 

In defense to my ego, I told him “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder”. And he immediately replied “Yes, provided there is something called beauty in you”. That evening I once again stood in front of the mirror. It was the same man staring at me. His eyes were swollen and had grown older. He was trying to remind me of those two girls who had become victims of forbidden love. As I looked at my reflection I noticed everything had changed… there was a scar all over it. The mirror had finally cracked!

 Yes, it is a fact which many of us know: everything that goes around will come around one day but what many of us do not know is that it comes around only when you have least expected.

 That day onwards he had stopped admiring himself on the mirror. It was the very image that reminded of a love lost and desires orphaned.

 

 

Remember me before I forget you

 

“Don’t cry for a man who has left you, the next one may fall for your smile.”

                                                                                  -Mae West

                                                                                      

19^th May 2007, Paris. I was back in my city of dreams, the same place where I fell in love with myself a year ago…and was about to rise in it again. My American colleague-friend and I were on board the metro headed to the Musee d’Orsay, a former railway station turned into a world renowned institution of art of the Impressionist and post-impressionist era. As we sat in the train, she could read the burgeoning excitement in me. After a few stops a mother and son boarded the train and they sat in the next row. The young man was facing me and her mother facing him. At first I overlooked him; too busy planning the events that lay ahead. But when I did, my heart froze. I was blindfolded all the while and brought to the edge of the mountain. As I open my eyes I could not speak or breathe or even scream. It was undoubtedly the most breath taking creation of nature. Azure than the sky above, deeper than the ocean below, purer and pristine than the dews glistening under the morning sun…In life I have seen beauty, sometimes I wanted to possess it, to love it, to ravage it but today I wanted to worship it.

 He was in his early 20s, slim, pink, blonde, blue eyes with prominent black eyelashes and the rosiest of lips with a canon DSLR hanging on his neck. I was enjoying every bit of our silent rendezvous until my eyes fell on the windows which by then, in the darkness of the tunnel, had transformed into perfectly reflecting mirrors. I saw the same stranger on it, looking at me…the same face I had stopped loving for a longtime. But this time there was something besides the familiar face which caught my attention. It was the young blond man; he was still looking at me unaware of the fact that I was well aware of it. Every time I looked at him directly, he would turn his face away faster than the blink of an eye. 

 Engrossed at our game of hide and seek, I forgot about my friend who by then had started to dose off. I warned her that she might regret coming to Paris with me since I was fanatic about art and had a history of loosing the track of time in a museum. She nodded and said “Don’t worry I would not regret” and I said to myself “Neither shall I” looking into his eyes. As I turned towards my friend there was a flash of light followed by a click! I looked at him and he was perspiring. There was a sudden frenzy and fear in his body language as if he had committed a felony. The rest of the journey he kept looking out of the window.

 At the station, before we departed, I pretended to tie my shoelaces. As my friend went ahead I turned to have a glance at my lover boy. His eyes were riveted on me and he was smiling. Like two lovers departing at the train station, we wanted the hands of the huge clock above us to stop forever… we wanted the train to take just the two of us somewhere far and unknown.

 After a long queue at the ticket counter, we were ushered into the Great hall. I kept turning back hoping to see him once again. But it never happened. After a while I was standing by the stairs admiring one of the most celebrated artworks in history called the Madame Barbe de Rimsky-Korsakov by Xaver Winterhalter. It was my favorite, solely because of the simplicity and innocence portrayed in a woman in her transparent dress adorned with blue ribbons. I was studying her timeless beauty when suddenly I felt an inexplicable pang of fear and surprise. Someone somewhere was watching me….

Madame Barbe de Rimsky-Korsakov

 I turned my head towards the stairs and couldn’t believe my eyes. He was standing below the stairs taking my pictures. But this time he was confident in his act, desperate in his desire and honest to me. He approached with immeasurable firmness and manhood, stood beside me in the opposite direction for a while. We both were pretending to focus our cameras on the canvases, little could anyone imagine what we really were indulging into. He turned towards me with gentle softness brushing his hand on my elbow and heaved a warm breath of air into my ears. He then stood beside me focusing his camera on the same lady in the canvas. For quite sometime, I don’t remember how long, we both stood leaning on each other. For once I thought as if the lady was smiling at our mischief, celebrating our adolescent love at first sight. After that we departed in sweet sorrow; not a smile, not a word and certainly no exchange of phone numbers. He might still be having my photos to share with his lover just to make him jealous; as for me I still remember this day just to remind myself that I am beautiful. 

 The next day my friend and I were driving back from Paris listening to my favorite Irish music called “Dead can dance”. It was the perfect evening after a beautiful day. It had rained heavily and I could see the rainbow in the distance. Suddenly she lowered the volume and asked me “Hey do you remember while we were on our way to the Orsay…. There was this cute looking blond sitting opposite to us. I think he took your picture.”  For a moment I was silent and then exclaimed “No way, why didn’t you tell me!!”

 It was on that day; at that very Museum I learnt something new. If life is an art then our appearance is like a canvas. Sometimes there will be visitors who would marvel at the perfection and then there will be some who will ridicule the vulgarity. But then there are those special admirers who will relish the beauty in their own unique ways and make us feel priceless.

 That evening, on the mirror he saw the stranger once again and realized how much he missed him.

 My ex-lover and I are friends today. He is a changed man, humble, caring and more sensitive. But then he is not the person I knew once upon a time, as if he had killed the one I loved. I hate him so much for that but I never told him. I also know that it will never be the same again After all, relationships and faith are like a mirror; once broken no matter how much we try to put the pieces together… the crack shall always show up every time we perceive ourselves on it.