chaandaniya to barse
phir kyu mere haath andhere lagde ne / an open letter to you, you and also you. maybe you'll get it, maybe you won't
mentions of food and eating in the paragraph just before the first line divide
It is 18:52 and I am losing my mind in my room. I have had the pleasure to live alone in a space that I usually share with two more people. I cleaned the entire room today, and then I sat on my bed and ate. Co-star, that wretched app told me no crumbs on bed today, and I couldn’t care less. You are gone for now, a little farther than usual, so why should I care about these damned apps when there is no one to laugh with about them.
I have been listening to music non-stop and it seems like I have heard every song in the universe that was made for me. I like putting on musical glasses and letting beautiful lyrics bite me and stab me and throw me across the stairs every once in a while. Sure, I am the most horrible person in the world, but I still deserve to have my hair tucked back with gentleness and have nicknames that create a force field of affection between me and the whole world, barring you of course. You and me against the world, inside the world, aligned with the workings of the world but in our own rudimentary ways that no one can understand.
I have been rereading Joan Didion over and over because I have my own mourning to go through. So much is slipping through my fingers so fast so painfully that I don’t know what to do. Maybe my entire soul is a sieve and every beautiful thing is sand before it gets turned into glass so it all passes through me. All that’s left is a hollow memory and some shells. Well, I will put them to my ear and hope they call your name.
Yesterday I cogitated over things over and over until the meaning dissolved and all I could think about was how much I really want you, and how it surpasses all meaning, and hence it is not feasible. That is what you have been telling me, day in and day out, punctuated with confessions of love. I like it. I like it so much. But it’s not enough. I am trying to not get swayed by emotions, but then you come in my field of vision and you knock me out of the park into the ocean and I don’t know how to swim so I sit on the ocean bed and wait to get fucked by all my decisions and you are my biggest decision of all.
I stepped out of my room about an hour ago and the sky was blue pink lavender and then red. It was the most beautiful thing I saw today, and it made me feel clean. I thought of all my people in different cities doing different things and I hoped for them, and prayed a little prayer. It is raining right now and I am wearing a pretty dress but I have nowhere to go. I will probably wear this dress when I see you next.
Now, coming to you, again. Whenever I feel like you are unkind to me, not mean, merely unkind, I think of the conversation we had on that sunken bench and how earnest you sounded. I keep that conversation and day close to me. And such is my nature that I feel guilty, like I used up more than my share of you and now we need to compensate. Here’s a string of words we can use to hang ourselves with – compensation, accommodation, convenience, thankfulness, making do, making up.
It is raining, didn’t I mention it a while ago? It rained the last time we met, and you kissed me and you kissed me and you kissed me. I don’t remember what I was telling you, I remember I was nervous. It could have gone ten different ways. It went that one way. And now what? I am not going to ask; I am not going to be that person.
Things I have been feeling like – a bag of chips that you opened from the wrong end, the last stale doughnut that everyone expects a lot from but then walks away upon close inspection, the yellow beautiful last mango of the season that is a little rotten on the inside. Other similar things. All of them related to food because I have been eating whatever I can get my hands on and it is horrible. My stomach hurts, there’s the shell of the teenage hunger hauntings that are coming back, and I feel like I am gaining all wrong things in all wrong ways.
The point is, the hurt comes and goes, but always leaves something behind.
It is August 1st today. Seven months have passed and now all the ache and hurt is beginning to curdle. It is raining right now. My roommate has opened the window; she is waiting to catch a glimpse of the guy she is seeing. He walks around at night like some weirdo. But then, I just got back from walking around in the rain at midnight like a weirdo myself. We are all freaks of nature, and we should embrace it as much as you can. I am not asking you to get fucked in public, nor am I asking you to pee in a flowerpot, but that is a scale you can use. You can go beyond, or stay within the limits.
I have suddenly felt things in my life wither away and it is making me want to jump off one of the numerous cliffs and hills around me. Straight into the water, gone forever. It will solve nothing. Frankly speaking, I don’t know how to get through this week. I have a lot of things to do, people who have authority to talk to, and run around. I think I will explode soon. I hope I explode soon. In similar vein, I was trying to sleep a couple hours ago and everyone was being too loud and all I wanted as for everyone to disappear and explode and die maybe. It is not a good thought, but I feel very childish lately.
Some lighter updates – my roommate got me a cute dress that makes me look like a white vegan woman who weirdly doesn’t believe in sunscreen. I washed all my sheets. I walked around late at night and it was nice. The old man who irons around the corner is getting his house painted and he sits on his porch with a cigarette and his radio – in a decade, I will be him, except I’d like to be a barber or a fisherman; and I’d like to be dead. My skin is acting up but I am not too bothered. I got my period at the wrong time and so did both my roommates and we had a good laugh about it. I am about to be done with On the Road by Jack Kerouac and I am really liking it; lots of time has been spent on the road and the book has proved to be a worthy companion.
Make a list of things. It’s high time.
I have been allowing myself to get hurt over and over. When the hurt strikes my chest and the aftermath settles in, I am like, how could I possibly let myself go through that? And then I look at the person who has been hurting me (Hot Knife, people who have been reading the issues might remember) and I am like, okay let’s do this again tomorrow. Anything to be connected. Anything to have you do things to me, no matter what the things are.
Something that resonated with me this week is this excerpt from Katy Kelleher’s The Face That Replicates –
“I had hoped for more, for some evidence that my face is out there, living and breathing, moving through some city I’ve never visited, kissing people I have never met, maybe even smoke a brand of cigarettes I’ve never smoked. I wanted there to be someone who, despite looking just like me, isn’t.”
While this is about doppelgangers, I like to think that this is about all my future versions, and how one day I will get absorbed by them. Cannot wait to disappear and re-emerge someone new. Maybe then I will be lovable. Okay, the last part wasn’t necessary.
Thank you for reading. This wasn’t a newsletter, this was you and I in whatever place we found open on this rainy night, and I just talked for the first time in weeks. See you in better shape soon. Hopefully. You’ll never know either ways.
Love,
Heera
ps- this was edited so badly I'm sorry used the phone for it!!!
i read and reread this because you wrote with so much *feeling* (a word that doesn't do it justice) that it's almost like you're sitting across from me at my dining table. maybe you are.
(i envy how you're able to wrangle the things you feel into a few words. and maybe this is the beautiful part of having a sieve as a soul: being able to filter messy things into a marble that can be swallowed—i think the reflections in it are lovely by the way)
💛 you the bomb