It is sometimes weird how life intertwines and takes twists and turns and bends and then presents before us people and situations that would have seemed so unlikely some days, some years, some decades ago.
It is weird how fates of some people are attached with those of yours and at the same time how things are so out of your control. How when you meet people in some way you could never have imagined! How people you had lost hope of meeting again, turn up unannounced, at the time you needed the most but wanted the least or wanted the most but needed the least or needed and wanted the most at the same time. How you lose people you could never have thought of losing and they remain lost forever!
What remains of them is a memory, which again is a tricky thing. After all when the memory fades away what is left-the silhouttes that change constantly, the fading smell of the body that once was, or the voice that once soothed your inner senses. Your face ages but your voice doesn't.
He heard her voice across the table in the cafe where he was a regular, he knew at once it was her. Who else could it be? He didn't even need to turn around to assure it was her. As hard as he could have tried to run away from her, he knew one day he will have to return to the place where he had left a major part of himself, only more exhausted. With broken pieces of himself he had covered a long distance, but still found himself where he started.
Time is a bitch. It eats away all the memories and leaves you with nothing. And you remain restless until that nothing is filled with something. Until you come across that dried rose which smells of a past you can't erase, or that mug whose handle has broken but still finds a place in your closet, or that note, the ink of which has faded away but the writings are engraved in your heart. And then suddenly like a high tide, your heart is filled and overwhelmed with those memories again, leaving you even more restless.
The memories that are broken and faded but are there. The memories that are distant, battered and distorted by time. You can't even remember that the way you remember a person or a situation, is the actual way it was and the way it happened or is it something you would like it to be remembered as, in your head. No matter how hard you try to preserve them in those little spaces in your brain, they slip away, like sand in hourglass, grain by grain.
There comes one point in life where you want to fill that nothing, not with distorted memories but with actual people, a real touch, something more tangible. That's when you go and clean that closet. Burn those rose petals, throw that mug in the trash, tear the note away. Get rid of everything that may crawl in through some crevice that was left open unintentionally or intentionally.
But today she was sitting at the table behind his. It had been 7 years. He had tried to wipe her existence from everything in his life that had been touched by her, even his soul. He had tried to find solace in someone else's bosom. When she had gone, he had tried to find answers to many questions. He got answers, but then answers may not always be what you expect them to be. They can be ugly sometimes.
The woman he was now with had given all she could to him but he could never bring himself to feel the same way as he did, for that voice across the table. That voice, that sounded like pitpatting of rainfall on the tin shade, the voice that smelled like water on parched earth, the voice that felt like meditation to a disturbed soul, a mother's touch.
He is torn whether or not to look back and see how she is doing. May be go up and say hello, for ol' time sake. Or may be he should just go away and pretend as if nothing ever happened or was heard, something that he had aced, ever since she had left- to pretend. Pretension comes easy to him now. To not be what he is and be covered in layers and layers and more layers, in that cocoon, cause he knew that there are very few who can understand, process and absorb the melee of emotions that go inside him like she did, so effortlessly.
He turned around and looked at her. She had changed, only got better. Those extra pounds she was always very conscious about, were lost. The jawline was much sharper, the calves much leaner, the jeans and shirt had been replaced by a printed dress and the sneakers had given way to stilletos.
Her little finger was curled in that guy's index finger. Tall, lean, handsome. They were getting up to leave. They laughed, snuggled, stole little pecks on the cheek. He felt like an onlooker. He turned away but it was too late. Dice was rolled, the next thing he knew she was looking at him. Awkward exchange of looks, followed by even more awkward smiles to fill those 7 years.
Overwhelmed by a sea of emotions, he got up and walked away. She walked away in the opposite direction. She turned twice to look at him; he could see that in the mirror in front. He just stood there. He was engulfed in emotions so strong that all his sense would burst out it seemed. Her figure kept becoming smaller and smaller in that mirror till she faded away in time, but her memories came alive again, dancing in front of him, teasing him a couple of times but sharing his heaviness. Like when almost all the grains of memories were getting emptied finally, someone turned the hourglass over again.
