sooni tanha raaton mein

raat din ki meri dilkashi

When you work a shitty job (no, no, grateful for the employment) in a city that is far away from everything else in the world, and especially far away from love, you tend to go a little insane. Sometimes I sit at my desk wondering if I can somehow peel the plaster off and eat it like flaky chips. Last night it took everything in me to not get up and try eating the highlighters on my desk. I stand around by the windows a lot, looking outside, hoping somebody would see the dead look on my face and come rescue me.

The biggest dream I harbour is that I get really, extremely sick, weak to the point my bones seem to melt — and there is somebody to care for me. I lie down on a bed with soft sheets that are cool, preferably plain or dotted all over with small flowers. Preferably pink.

The reason for that is — no, I shan’t deviate. Let me finish this first.

In this dream, somebody tends to me all the time, and leaves me alone when I ask for it. I raise one hand and everybody retreats, and I stare out the window (a huge one with glass panes and no grills, so that the world looks like a painting on my wall) dolefully, besotted with woe. Blackbird on my shoulder, river of unhappiness.

I think about this all day at work, me, a bed, a hand tending to me with care.

I remember reading Murakami when I was fourteen, and in Norwegian Wood, Midori says she wants somebody who would drop everything and rush out to get her the strawberry shortcake she wants, and then she would throw it out the window citing she doesn’t want it anymore. This would be followed by the man apologising, saying what a fool he has been, and he should have understood her. She would then give him all her loving.

I understood something in this even then, I sensed a feeling of being recognised. I want to be a spoilt little girl with all the cake, yet again.

I remember expressing it to somebody once and then feeling like an evil little girl (which I was, in a way). I always felt guilty about wanting so much on my plate, and what makes it funny is my relationship with food. I eat until I don’t, and then I try to stretch it out until I try to get up to pee at night and feel like I will collapse on the ugly bathroom floor.

Recently at work I got the sweats and felt like my heart was a drum crying out for war. A chair had to be pulled. Concerned faces of children all around me, they thought I was about to pass away perhaps. I told them it’s fineI am fine don’t worry it is okay I am okay! and then it repeated until I reached home and passed out after a twenty minute phone call with Ma. I hadn’t called her in days and felt guilty. I wish to see her. I want a vacation, father away on one of his trips, brother out with his friends, my mother and I in silence until she says or asks something that collapses everything. Only she finds it funny — making me lose my footing. I am the one with scraped knees and anger issues.

Another dream of mine is I get sick, and I move to the hills to rest and I walk around in rich coloured shawls, my nails painted and my hair tied loosely. Last year when a doctor said the only permanent cure for my allergies is to move to the hills and get all the fresh, clean air in me, I felt so pleased internally. I am the sick woman in the films who needs to be sent to the hills.

Can a husband arrange all of this please? I will work in a hotel or as a teacher or run away and become a cook at a monastery.

Coming back to the deviation, the reason I want a soft pink cool bedsheet with small flowers is because that’s the one I got sick of when I moved here. God, I think about those days so much, I feel like I have talked about it many times.

Three days of blacked out nausea, room smelling of body heat, blood dried on my thighs. I don’t remember anything from those three days. I had to throw the bedsheet out. I remember the inwardness of my organs, physical sleep but a thicket in my head through which I waded. Sunderbans.

Today I heard Kabhi Shaam Dhale To in passing, and I felt the world slowing down around me. For a minute, I was aware of the rhythm more than the 9-5 noise around me.

Kabhi shaam dhale to mere dil mein aa jaana, kabhi chaand khile to mere dil mein aa jana.

One of these dusks, please visit my heart. One of these nights when the moon blooms, please visit my heart.

When the song stopped, I realised how shivery I felt. My palpitations were back. I needed to sit.

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images are - aya takano, ikumi nakada, dhoop mein chaanv, lakshminarayana sattiraju