It’s that time of the year again, when I feel absolutely drained of energy. It’s the day after Janmashtami. I guess a day without food kind of brings my entire body and spirit down. Perhaps it takes me back to an abject yesteryear, when I went months without food, trapped in one room where I couldn’t even look outside the window, reminding me of how it truly felt—as though this body meant nothing beside a crushed soul.
Or maybe it brings another severe heartache I felt on this exact day last year, the day after Janmashtami, when I awoke with a start to a call from a lover who had forgotten she loved me. Can’t believe it’s been a year since then. Anyhow, it feels bizarre, as though I am carrying the weight of someone dead and lost within my heart. I feel so drained that I am fairly certain my blood pressure has fallen terribly low, as it generally does.
That little D-day event in my life came to pass, and by “little”, I mean a “catastrophic must” from which there was no escape. An ill-fated, surefire event, fated nevertheless, to shatter every belief I had held until then about love, loyalty and promises.
And lo, here I am, trying to carve an identity out of thin air, calling myself this and that, performing all my pointless charades without knowing what for. Now I have a word for myself – depressionist. I learned it from my teacher, whom I wish well. She described Guru Dutt as one, and I realized that I was no different. But I am also a workaholic who loves creation more than anything else. And so there I am—a depressionist architect.
I still remember when I started dating that girl. I tried to express this little truth about myself, one that lay beyond all the other truths I carried within me, by making myself utterly vulnerable and hoping to be understood by this absolute stranger. She detested the very idea of my invariable pursuit of gloom, saying that she would only remain if her presence brought me gaiety, and I could envision a future that would usher in happiness. She made me dream even when dreaming felt difficult. She seemed remarkably intelligent and very mature for her age.
I remember how reluctant she was to give in to the trappings of a relationship. Somewhere within her, she believed that if she didn’t bring it to light, she could preserve her chances with some future stranger. A classic red flag, in hindsight. Not a single photograph of us was made public throughout our six years together, because keeping me hidden allowed her to keep one foot out the door. She called it “protecting me.” To top it all, my illness granted her a kind of immunity—a free get-out-of-jail card. She could now blame everything on me and leave whenever she wished. Yet, for some reason, she stayed, even beside a faceless man whose condition worsened by the day. There were days when I could not recognise myself in the mirror and had to go through hell simply to survive. Only a single thread still bound us, the adventures we had shared and the memories born of them.
Through all those tough days, she held on as my faith in us grew stronger. I began dreaming of a life with her, creating vision boards, gathering images of the future I imagined, rekindling lost faith and praying, and bending the knee both literally and figuratively. But then a pattern emerged. She would be present yet absent, while I did all the heavy lifting. I had witnessed her capricious nature often enough to recognise that she was becoming someone else. The ugliness of her lifestyle seeped into mine, and I failed to draw a line. I watched her astuteness give way to diffidence and her clever humour turn childish. It was not easy to watch an intelligent person gradually lose her maturity and intellect in the new company she had chosen to keep. I could scarcely believe that she was the same girl.
She introduced me to only two friends, worried about what others might think if they saw my face. She was so conscious of our age difference that she even asked me to deactivate my LinkedIn account, which remained hidden for years so that no one could discover my age. It was as though she were hiding my face to save her own and to keep her future open. I cannot believe how agreeable I had become, willing to overlook it all and pardon her every fault.
She had never been an honest person to begin with. She lied often and effortlessly. Never trust a liar, they say. A liar will always cheat. I experienced this firsthand when she finally broke the news I had long foreseen. The strangest part was that she hadn’t seen it coming, though I had sensed it from miles away. I knew it would be him, the man she claimed was like a brother, a sordid story repeated in God knows how many lives. But I never spoke a word against him, even as the suspicion gradually festered like a wound in my soul. The guy whose messages commanded her attention even when I was beside her, whose every word she awaited in group chats and whose every response she treasured. He was the same man from whose balcony she would call me, the man with whom she commuted everywhere, every day, the man with whom she cooked, drank, and shared an apartment.
When I joked about his father showing up and asking her to seek his blessings as though she were his daughter-in-law, she blushed instead of responding with the irritation such a joke would normally have provoked.
Now that I think about it, we had been over for a long time. It was over even as she continued to visit my home every two or three months; even as I wrote her the most thoughtful letters; chose each gift with painstaking care; even as I worried about her well-being and every minor inconvenience she faced; even as I went above and beyond to make things right, stayed up late at night for her inconsequential calls, narrated pointless bedtime stories to her, and shared my food, my bed, and all the love she failed to see. Most importantly, I had stopped being myself. Deep down, I knew it was over: she had already begun imagining herself with someone else.
She did it all in the open, without fear and absconded the moment she could no longer see a future with me. I no longer blame her. I blame the brain I have been given. I inculpate myself for my inability to move on as everyone else seems to do. It took me twelve years to forget my first love; I do not know how many years this one will take.
Instead of pointing a finger at fate, I thank the gods, for they may, in fact, have saved me from a future certain to be terrible, one whose effects I could already see seeping into my parents’ lives and uprooting their peace. Perhaps she would have left me at my worst, and it would have been far more difficult then.
Twice in this life, I have been in a relationship, and both times I was betrayed on account of distance. A smart man would blame the distance; a smarter one would recognise the restless, coquettish spirit of our times and its growing inability to remain devoted to one person. Sometimes, hurt persuades me that I do not belong in this age, that I have been placed here merely to test its people, or perhaps to have my patience tested by them until I lose it once and for all.
The worst feeling I believe is watching them turn in an instant, from epitomes of love into monsters who suddenly seem to forget the very meaning of it, unable to wait another moment to be rid of me. It is a sorry sight to watch someone become so consumed by newfound love that they clobber and kill what was. Their hatred is so fierce that you can almost see it emanating from their bodies and lancing through your own. They search so desperately for reasons to escape that you want to give them whatever they desire and set them free at once. It is this sudden, monstrous transformation that I cannot bear. There is no bringing them around to see what you want them to see; they become so recalcitrant in that moment that all you can do is give up.
I looked at her face during our final video call, knowing that it would be the last time I ever saw it. She begged me to let go—a task that seemed impossible in that moment, bound as I was by human emotion. But eventually, I understood: I regretted the day I first saw that face. I rued having pursued her even after she had clearly said no to a relationship. I had tried to build a home with someone who had always wished to remain free.
All my life, I had wished only to be understood, and for a while, she seemed like someone capable of truly understanding me. But in the final moments of our relationship, I felt as though I were speaking to a stranger when she said, “At first, I thought I had got off the hook so easily … but you continue to make it difficult.” That was it. I let go then and completely obliterated her from my life.
No line could have expressed it better than this one from Guide:
When Rosie blames Raju for counterfeiting a cheque and tells him that he could simply have asked her for more money, when, in truth, it was never really about the money, Raju replies,
“Samajhta tha, koi samjhe na samjhe, Rosie zaroor samajh jaayegi. Samajh bhi dekho, kitni naasamajh nikli.”
As for me, I cannot simply let the hurt be. This loss must feel like a person has died. That’s why I can’t communicate with the dead merely to make sense of it all. If I knew that they still existed within my orbit, perhaps I wouldn’t ache as much. But there must be no doors or windows into their lives. I cannot and would not peek. It is almost as though I have travelled back to a time when I was trapped in my room, powerless. I am deliberately choosing to stay inside the room where I was never allowed even to look out of the window.