Chapter 6: The Knock

The Knock

The irritating and piercing sound of alarms wake me up. I remove the rough rag covering my face and rushed to throw the mobile out. Switching off the alarm, I open the mailbox, hoping at least responses. Satisfied to see no unread emails, I go to Facebook, crunch base, and a few journals, sites and magazines. There was one interesting video that stopped my scrolling. It was a leading news reader’s arguments which lauded the country, my region, religion or something that I could identify with, I don’t really remember which. I smiled with pride and moved to find the flush handle.

As I was wiping my forehead after all the hard work in there, the doorbell rings. Normally, I find it difficult to smile to any morning visitor, but, there she was standing with a large suitcase.

“How are you?”, I asked.

She smiled and signalled me for space, and I complied. I don’t know why but, this always happens when I am with her. I comply first and think later. She pushed herself in and then pulled the luggage in with both hands. Turned to give me the “chivalry is dead” look. I helped her keep the luggage in the living room.

She walked around and surveyed the house while I kept following her from room to room to kitchen to living room and then back.

“Where do I keep this?” Pointing to her luggage.

By now I had some understanding of what was going on. I won’t lie. I liked the conclusion the head was drawing, but, the heart kept telling me to calm down. “This might be something else. She must be in some trouble.” Said the heart. I said, “Possibly”

“what?”

“Nothing”

With her half perplexed half loving look, she construed an irritated face and asked, “where do I keep this” I pointed towards the living room. She pulled the bag to my bedroom and came out with a toothbrush and a bunch of other things along with the toothpaste and arranged it by the wash basin.

When I think of it now, it had actually been almost six months since our first movie and dinner together. So, this could be okay. My concern, at the time, was not that this was rather fast or that I didn’t want her move in, but, that these things don’t happen to me normally.

In the next few days every small rhythm of our lives, from the breakfast to the time she should leave for work and my part of the chores were getting set. Interestingly, when I lived alone, there was no else to share the work with, but, there were no chores, ever.

My first thought was the loss of freedom. No don’t get me wrong. Freedom is the small things: being able to throw the work clothes as soon as you are back, being able to enjoy the whole box of juicy yummy pizza and just pushing the box to a corner and eating at odd times, having that midnight coffee, times which do not have any pattern or make any sense.

Soon I realised, I was more organised than her. She could sleep with her clothes: clothes she wore yesterday and the ones who were on the waiting list for yesterday and sometimes even the shortlists for the next day. She was super cute in that sense. It was difficult to not just lower your lips and plant a soft kiss on that lovely face. A nice peaceful view, it was, her sleeping with so many clothes, her bag, her phones, tabs, a laptop and their respective chargers. Only I know the beauty in that.

Spending a lot of time together

It seems weird, something that should stay our secret. If you had seen us then, I mean, let’s say you could, you could have mistaken us for childhood sweethearts. We needed no entertainment or much friends: I never had many, she didn’t seem to have any. We could discuss Calvin and Hobbes, Harry and Salley, Allie and Noah, Dorian Gray and Sybil Vane, the love letters of Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas. I didn’t know of most of these people before I had met her. I had to google them to recollect their names again. But, she knew them like you know people you have met in real life, all their adventures, and misadventures. To me, it was always fun to relive those moments with her, moments that I never known before, from others’ lives. We looked at people and thought and romanticised the romance that could have been.

“ …I am reduced to a thing that wants (you)…” She said. I pulled my eyes away from the book I was reading and looked into her eyes. It was one of these: She was a poet who didn’t know it yet or she really meant it.

“ I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way” “ I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is really just a squeal of pain.”

“These were the words in the letters Vita wrote to her lover.”

“Interesting” I said, composing myself, not bothering to ask who Vita was.

But she knew she had to answer, “She was in love with Virginia Woolf”. Isn’t it interesting how whom you love becomes part of your identity.

My reaction couldn’t have been hidden, nor did I feel the need to hiding anything from her. “Interesting, Isn’t it that just revealing a bit about the lovers, colours the love right or wrong?”

I smiled.

“Today Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf would not have to hide their love because of the gender of their lovers.” She said.

We knew that this wasn’t entirely true, but, there was a hope, a little more than before. Historically, we have always taken two steps forward, one step backward. But, we move forward even if a single small step. I don’t see technology or infrastructure as any development. It just makes it easier to do something. We do something with it or not, has been up to us. This freedom of intent for good is as old as the time itself. In my myopic view, freedom is development. A few economist-philosophers have also studied this in detail. This freedom they say has two parts: one the choice and the other is the means to practice it. I do not claim to know as much as them, but, freedom to love can never be wrong. It can just pour-in more love into this world, something that this world badly needs.

I have always been searching for any good sign in people. And that one good sign was enough for me find that person good. I am a little too optimist about people and feel hurt and stupid when I go wrong. And this choice could have been about a friend, a work-partner, or my political leader or even the person that I fall in love with. Her ideas and ideals had taken me to another romantic world. To me, by now, she was the most beautiful person in the world and this, these moments, are all I needed to live now.

One more thing we bonded on was food, no I meant travelling. We had been planning to travel to a beautiful location for a long time. Bangalore was a good place with quite a number of beautiful locations nearby. We had been saving up, but, we couldn’t have sacrificed good food right? Probably, I could, but, I would have missed that face, that smile and that glint of mischief in her eyes. So, finally we decided to go to a hill station nearby. This was nearly a hundred miles away. When we reached, after swirling around the beautiful falls, majestic hills and the fogs keeping them tucked. I could see her face changing like she was following the note of the hills, following every high and low with more and more excitement. She made me stop at every place she found suitable for a selfie. Damn the selfies, but, I love her selfie face. It’s weird in a nice way, the way she makes her eyes look bigger, ducks her face a bit, uncovering that cute little devil in her. It always had to be two selfies, One alone and one with me. Once the photo-shoot was over, we would resume our journey taking breaks for tea. While she had her selfies, I needed my tea too. There is nothing like a the sight of that steaming hot tea leaving behind the kettle, splashing on the bottom of the glass, jumping to hug the sides of the transparent glass tumbler, ever attracting you with it’s fresh energising fragrance. It could grow the life back in me!

I remember holding another cup of tea in one hand and holding her hand tightly with another. Has it ever happened to you. You see, feel or see something and it reminds of you some music, some tune, some notes, you half remember from a movie, a favourite tape from childhood. I whispered

“Dance?”

“You and dance?”

“Come on, Please… one dance”

I had no rhythm. I would try to follow her. But, be lost in the beauty of those movement. It was like one of those beautiful moments from the nature, completely synchronised. She snaps me back with her laugh, which would linger a tad longer in my heart than my ears. Obviously, I couldn’t match her rhythm anyway. Who dances like that. But, she matched my crazy dance, made me feel normal, probably better.

I think I liked myself when I was with her.

The confession

It was a beautiful sunset. I don’t remember whether this was before she moved in or after but, that shouldn’t matter. For record-sake, I think this must have been before. But, as she would always, insist on meeting at some place indoors. We drove past the sunset. This bewitching play of the light, colouring the world around me, couldn’t have shaken off this dream called love. Have I told you yet that I was in love with her. I wonder how her street, her home gives me a feeling of having known them forever. I wish she too belonged to me, like I belong to her. I wish she knew I do. Holding her hand I followed her through the stairs.

She unlocked the door. Apparently, there was power interruptions in her building since morning. I noticed sun peeping through the horizon and walked to the balcony. It was interesting to see how our tastes matched so much so that every colour, every view was how I liked.

The sky, like me, was undergoing a change. Unlike the sky which had accepted this change long ago and watches the sun and the moon exchange their place in its heart every day, I had fallen unrevivably in love with anyone only the first. I never could have mustered up the courage to talk to someone about how I felt. Sharing how I felt with people had always been the last on my agenda. I think it was the sheer power of love, that people often talk about, which changes you.

She tapped my shoulder handing me a drink. I didn’t care to ask what it was. Not that I never cared, I am quite picky about food and drinks, but, I was too lost in her eyes and the beauty in them. Also, the trust I had in her would have made me guilty of breaking the beautiful silence. All one could hear was the birds going back home, and my heart which was home, but, anxious.

I had to break the silence. I said, “I love you”. I know at times, these words don’t mean much. But, to me, these are the toughest three words that I have spoken since I learnt to speak.

You are like drug to me. I need you to get through life.

She smiled, the kind of smile you have, when the child in someone you love is visible, so clearly. She could see my vulnerability right though my eyes, peeping into my heart. She looked down like she was nodding with those eyelids and those beautiful long lashes. When she stepped closer and took the drink from my hand and kept it the table, I was sure that this was a mistake. She slid her hand caressing me, slid it till my back and stepped closer. All I could see were her eyes. But, I could not really decipher. In that moment, her confidence was so new, her gaze, the sight in those eyes, I felt, I didn’t know her as much as I thought. I was too scared, too confused to know what was happening. She pulled me closer and kissed me. My heart went through the roof. I was happy, but, wasn’t sure. I had to be happy, for record sake at least, right!

“I love you” I whispered again. “Do you..”

“…love me?”

I hear her chuckle while she holds me tightly. I love her touch. That warm feeling. And the fragrance, it has always driven me crazy. I don’t know if that if it’s her fragrance, but, I am, in my mind and heart, going through the toughest roller-coaster of my life. I gather myself and ask again, “do you?”

“You really should see a doctor” She says puling herself away just enough to look me right into my eyes.

I know from her smile, and that warm hug, the way she is now standing hugging my arm, the way someone would hug a pole or a tree in a storm,that she loved me. She wouldn’t say though. But, to rest all my doubts, she wrapped her arms around my neck, pull herself up a bit and touched my lips with hers. It was in that moment, I was connected to her. She and I were us.

As I lay on my bed, staring the ceiling, I couldn’t sleep. I could see her smiling face, her hair gliding through the air. I turned to bury my face in the pillow. I pulled the pillow and held it in my arms softly like it was her. I recounted every second I could in that moment which changed my life. The whole evening felt like a moment. If someone was to click a ‘before’ and ‘after’ image of my face, you could really sell love on one of the shopping TV channels.

This story is a part of the series called Alone. Please read the next chapter here: The box of assorted chocolates !