Quest, interrupted

November 17, 2013 by Usha Pisharody 3 Comments

What if.
What if?

Which one do I mean, I wonder at all those crossroads I’ve been down, where, from the place I’m now at, I think of the roads I did not take. Happily enough. Or wonderingly. Well, I must be honest, and say this too, unhappily enough, sometimes. And while I’ve believed in the ‘Right here, Right Now’ song and dance, and counsel all and sundry, very generously too, I get that my faith falters, occasionally.

So I slip back into the quicksand that my past is, given the heady moments I can lose myself in, on slow and lonely days like today. Barely talking at all, memories triggered by a stray line in yet another romantic nonsensical story which is just about all I can digest. I know I’m losing it, letting go of the ties of today.

Fifteen years is a long time, and it’s suddenly just a week ago as well. Damn. Wallowing in the eighteen months we had together back then… so long, and yet so short. The day I was sent to clarify the entries in that register, to the day, a month on, when we, together, found them doctored; weathered the fall-out of the company almost going under; survived, despite all the efforts to put us down, away. The close proximity of those days brings the scent of nostalgia dangerously and tangibly a breath away. Double damn.

I’ve moved on, I told you, as you did too. Those were days of sheer giddy-headed madness; probably the perceived danger added to the already cliched fires simmering. Your quick smile, the way you tilted your head when you looked, pointedly at me, daring me… oh my! How young you looked! Not that I ever felt guilty. I still don’t. I know you had no regrets either.

But I do, today. I wanted to have taken that road, all those years ago, with you. All those years would have been all the better for being with you. How does that matter, you’d ask, perhaps. Holding a figment close to one’s heart, it definitely isn’t the same as the real thing, dear one. Duh. Your response.

I find myself smiling, when I should actually have lost all that. The email I am reading, right now, tells me so. You don’t smile, do you, when a friend from all those years ago, with whom you’ve desultorily kept in touch with, informs you

remember Aditi? You two were certainly close, weren’t you? And anyway you’ve already heard I guess. She was in that accident that was all over the news channels, that bus accident in Hyderabad

So. I’ll hold that duh as well, close, as I rattle about in this empty existence.

17 November, 2013