Letter of apology

It’s been a month since I arrived and I’m already afraid to leave this cityofdjinns. I’ve been living in a house that’s soaked in sunlight and every morning the same silly bird makes a dash for the bedroom window, begging to be let in.

I wake up to castleton tea, vintage darjeeling, poured from a lovely, white kettle. On most mornings, I go for a brisk walk in the huge garden outside and look for the baby owls he once showed me. I’ve added my clutter to his clutter and the house is so wonderfully messy and yet everything is in its place, as it ought to be.

The evenings can be windy, stormy almost, punctuated by bouts of lightning and thunder and a light, cooling rain. The temperatures drop and everything is still, again, and beautiful.

I’m in the midst of so much movement, so much is brewing in all the minds I met, fresh caricatures, new compositions, epiphanies about line breaks and novellas and science fiction. It’s contagious… the waistline of my novel has begun to expand, slowly and steadily, spoon-fed on this intoxicating diet of passion and mystery.

I’m audacious, once more, no longer inhibited by a profession that was never meant for me. I feel un-fettered, free to live on the tail end of a violent wind.

My family worries about me. I do, too. I don’t know how much longer I can sustain this inebriated state of being. The sea calls out to me and every alternate night, I dream of the coastline speckled with pregnant clouds hanging heavy, longing for downpour. I still long for Goa, the land I inherited. Its rivers call out to me, tempt me with the promise of fish and ripples and canoes and fields of paddy stretched along the horizon. An empty house beseeches me, lures me with the promise of square feet of privacy. I long to be, saturated, isolated, pensive, solitary.

I’m trying to inch my foot forward, cross the border and head for monsoon-tossed shores. But I’m hesitating, something draws me back, lures me to stay still in this land-locked city where I first learned to breathe, where my heart learned to beat and my body learned the art of shape-shifting and moved into being.

I regret to inform you, fair, ex-city that you’ve lost me to Delhi. You tried to tame my heart, I tried to adapt to your fast-track ways, attempted to engage with your point of view. But you have no space for me. There are too many whose affections I must compete with, too many who lay claim to you, who live and lust for a piece of your core.

I’m here and I’m happy. And for this small, quiet instant, in this soft, sober moment, I want to be nowhere else but here, in this hot, dry city where the laburnum grows and the eucalpytus leaves outside the bedroom window sway sweetly as I sleep, where the ring-roads are speckled with roses, where the dust-storms sweep over and unsettle and then quell gently as I sip my Kahua tea brewed by the Kashmiri refugee at South Ex (Phase I, only seven rupees), where my lover woos me as he whistles to Miles Davis or Dizzy Gillespie.

I will be back, eventually, but I hope never again to stay. I’ve outgrown your salty charm. The flamboyant, restless part of me will remain in this city that adopted me.

An Appeal

“A man’s love is so tragic, he loses exactly what he loves the most” Albert Camus.

Last night I couldn’t bear the weight of your body. You were heavier than ever before, like a cotton blanket drenched in water. Your arms and legs held the burden of a hundred years , your heart beat slow and loud and your breath, too, was heavy, as if you had seen infinity in the breadth of a dream.

You overwhelm me, still, with your fits of kindness and your bouts of rage. I have no defence against your madness. You’ve turned me into the culprit, the smooth criminal who slays at will, Judas who betrayed with a kiss.

I’m only here to love you, to soften your antique heart that’s hardened through years of misuse. I’m here to strengthen your muscles, to thin your blood, to lighten your body and guide you into ecstasy.

Let me unravel you, unfurl you bit by bit, layer by layer till I arrive at your core. Let me nurse your open wounds. Let me cure you with my secret recipe for hunger and desire. Let me fill you that dangerous longing for excess.

Let me save you from yourself.

Statement of Purpose

I write that I may remember.

I write that I may forget…all your petty grievances, your empty anger, your lopsided temper and your foul, random moods.

I write that I may remind myself of your basic goodness, your innocence, your wounded, fragile self.

I write to chronicle my passion, to record your histrionics, to document  my profound insights about your body,  its secret chambers and its embellishments  (that shade of  indigo you wore last night or the way the light shone upon your skin while you lay dreaming in ‘technicolour’ right before your symphony of snores, as we sought refuge from summer heat through fan blades and eucalyptus leaves).

I write that I may conquer you, that I may no longer hunger for the slight touch of your feet against mine or for your arm to stride across my breasts while I’m asleep, soaked in sweat and dreams, that I may no longer be dismantled when you stare at me across a crowded room or offer me a quick drag of your rolled cigarette or when you hover around the periphery of my cunt, teasing my appetite, upsetting my calm, my quiet ease.

I write because I am helpless against you and your thirst for life, your delight in all that moves and breathes, combusts and seethes with a force unrivalled by your own,  your propensity for laughter, your mystical soul.

I write to conjure you, to mould you into shape and form, trim you down to size…

I write because I have no choice in the matter, no say in how I must feel or think or act, because you seduce me with your wide-eyed wonder and your understanding of loss.

You reduce me to silence!

I write  to cure this disease, this unbridled obsession with love and lust and all the holy madness that inflames your beastly heart.

I write, aware that everything I say or won’t can and will be used against me.

I write, knowing that nothing I write will inspire you to love me, that my words lack lustre and can never incite your passion or your curiousity.

I write in spite of me.