Thursday, November 6, 2008

This is How the World Turns

Once upon a time, in a land all too familiar for comfort, there lived a girl who desperately and hopelessly tried to live her life by following the simple yet seemingly hard to achieve principle of live and let live.

Although cynical and jaded about most things in life, somewhere deep within her heart, she secretly harbored a small but substantial amount of unadulterated hope and optimism that helped her get through life’s seemingly unending, painful and tumultuous phases. With time however, this stream of hope eventually ran dry and what remained of a once flourishing body, was a thin, nearly depleted trickle.

Never once did she believe that she could muster the courage and willingness to abandon her reservations and insecurities that twenty three years of living in fleeting times had thrown her way. Yet there she was out for public display and scrutiny once again, almost ready and willing to possibly impose upon herself great humiliation and heart wrenching failure, all in a desperate attempt to seek a small iota of comfort and solace in an exceedingly over crowded yet terribly lonely city.


After leaving behind a life that she had grown to love and cherish in a land not quite close to the place she once considered home, she felt unsure where to begin once more. Everything had a familiar ring to it, yet when she ventured too close, she couldn’t help but experience an overwhelming sense of alienation and loss. Oh how terribly afraid she was of once again being left to fend for herself alone. In these times, fraught with great unrest and distress, she managed to once again dig deep inside of her and resurrect that thin trickle of optimism and hope that had saved her from utter despondency time and again.

This thing called time is a funny entity; a whole year can go by without you even noticing its passing or it reminding you of its definite and speedy departure. Very little that is monumental or earth shattering takes places in such a finite space of time, yet seemingly inconsequential scenarios snowball into what you later label as ‘another year of your life.’ At the end of it all, you sit back and reexamine your life with false pragmatism and all you are left with is a sour taste of defeat and a possible indigestion from the bad Chinese food you consumed in your drunken stupor the previous night.

So our nameless heroine chugged along through the motions of living, going through periodic cycles of exhilaration and desolation. A very long time ago when she was still young and he was still humane, she had met a boy she grown to understand and eventually love. Unlike most fairy tale love stories however, these two did not engage in a youthful, passionate, all consuming love affair that ravaged and consumed their bodies and minds. Before their love had a chance to blossom into one of the many fantasies that filtered through her head during countless waking and sleeping hours, she boarded a jet plane to peruse a life somewhere else, while he stayed behind.

Unlike many other juvenile romances that would have ended that very night she left the country, these two managed to stay in touch and become better friends over the next six years. Neither of them was stupid enough to think that their love could survive the grueling test of time and distance. Each of them was open about their physical and emotional needs and went through a string of partners in their respective cities to make ends meet. Yet there was a small inkling of hope and longing; at least within heart that one day, if they ever ended up in the same part of the world again, they could possibly rekindle their intimacy once more, this time as adults.

One of the greatest consolations of returning back, after a long and tedious voyage for our nameless heroine was the knowledge that she could see him and possibly be with him, in flesh. They got along wonderfully well, were uncannily similar and terribly attracted to each other, or so she thought. Hectic work schedules and competitive, demanding careers took up most of their time, yet somehow they managed to take time out for each other, one out of longing and desire and the other possibly out of obligation.

This story does not have a happy ending, happy endings start and end in the movies. The more time they spent together, the more they realized how much things had changed over time. This change wasn’t something that her love for him could overcome, for she was the only one that was in love. The painful realization that this was unfortunately a one way street wasn’t the sad tragic end that she expected.

The charade of keeping up the friendship that they both supposedly valued and cherished brought with it a fresh onslaught of unexpected and undeserving pain. Alas, the façade could not last much longer; it had already dragged past its life expectancy. The humiliation, pain and anguish weren’t something that she could stand to ignore any more. All pretenses of nobility and putting their friendship above selfish personal agendas like ‘love’ fell through the roof.

Their friendship that was already treading on a fragile surface cracked completely, when she realized that he had ‘hooked up’ with one of her supposedly good friends and was now riding the relationship high-horse, after only three days of what she assumed was some fairly rigorous copulation .

All this after pointedly telling her time and again that there was no room in his heart for anyone else after his last big romance ended in great tragedy, sometimes right after they had indulged in some steamy foreplay and following it up by sleeping with a sting of women and never seeing them again just to prove his point.

6 comments:

Jay El Bird said...

the almost never-ending foreplay is life. the all consuming ending is loving. and the never ending is love.

randomrobin said...

Really? You would think otherwise just by obeserving the world around you, at least these days.

Jay El Bird said...

the world around us has a bit of you. a bit of me. them - they don't count. our insanity keeps the madness away. and in our blogs, we come alive and who knows, they are but the stumbling blocks ere we live them ...

chaitanya mehta said...

nothing

Unknown said...

**This story does not have a happy ending, happy endings start and end in the movies. The more time they spent together, the more they realized how much things had changed over time.**

Familiar story. Isnt it? But then when we start a story, do we really wish / want a happy ending? Dont we treat on unbeathen paths in relationships knowing fully that it might not end up in a 'happy ending'.
Given a choice, most of us soak up all the happiness in the begining of our stories that there isnt much left for the end. The initial euphoria and heady feeling makes up for our fear of the inevitable ending.
And then ofcourse times evolves, people change, you outgrow the happiness and hope one day you'll outgrow the pain as well.

good writing:)

randomrobin said...

Oh but that little hopeful idiot in be wishes for that happy ending, thinking maybe this time around things may just work, of course knowing better.

Thanks for the feedback.