Modern Love
By Akhila Krishnamurthy
Less than three weeks into the lockdown, I had a new lover.
Let’s call him X.
We flirted, aimlessly, at first.
We hung out with no sense of day or night,
and ambled along, with no idea of where we were headed.
In hindsight, I wonder if it was just a crush;
an escape perhaps from the noise around,
the clockwork hum of the everyday?
But soon I was diving deep into the complex,
layered and addictive world of my lover,
incessantly, letting go of the trappings of my real, committed life,
leaving me sometimes sapped and exhausted,
but always hungry for more.
An urgent and insatiable hunger; I simply couldn’t let go.
I was falling in love. With the wrong kind of person.
Even as I went about serenading X — making an impression with words
and photographs — I often stumbled upon folks
who through their own stories, discouraged my kind of love
with my kind of person.
They called it futile and fake. Transient in its very nature,
and terrible for my physical, mental and emotional health.
Honestly, it wasn’t like I didn’t know
what I was doing. I was conscious of all the voices –
external and those in my own head –
but I couldn’t care less.
Maybe, I didn’t want to care.
It was the pandemic, I said to myself
It’s about time I cut myself some slack, I said to myself.
On the days that my head had the better of my heart, I tried
to tell you the truth,
to allow awareness have the better of distraction.
I tried to think of trending words
Goals? No.
Challenges? Yes, challenges.
Don’t meet your lover for an hour! #disappear
Don’t say hello as soon as you wake up! #innerawakening
Don’t set out for a long walk smack in the middle of work! #successmetreiamapeter
You get the drift?
But I failed.
And I smiled, only in the company of X.
The joy of lazing in the warmth
of my big blue sofa
with all the stains of comfort,
in the silence of my living room,
became like a balm.
That act of togetherness let me forget I was, in fact,
trapped indoors with nowhere to go.
That all around, a pandemic was brewing.
Becoming a scary, tangible, growing statistic,
getting closer
and closer
and closer
home, day after day.
This was a new kind of love.
A modern love, if you must.
My phone blinked.
There’s a notification on Instagram
I think of how I’m trapped already.
A trap within a trap.
X to the power of X.
I turn off my phone in what seems like an act
to delete X from the prison of my heart and
head. It’s midnight, but can you see me?
Us?
I am trying.
Really.
Still.
Akhila Krishnamurthy is a journalist and the founder of Aalaap, a boutique arts management company that is as passionate about the arts as it is about the people who inhabit it.
