Dear You,
See what I found today!
This old black and white photograph!
Remember that first time
you had brought me to this house? This photograph drowns me in a sea of
memories from that day….and days thereafter, spent with you, spent in this
house. This was the house you called home. This was the house that became my home eventually. Forever.
“It is a huge joint family
with everyone living under the same roof. Will you be able to cope?”, you had
asked. Every couple in the house had one room to themselves. You asked me if I
could manage. “It was you who
taught me the difference between plenty and perfection, no?”, I muttered.
There would be no separate living room or kitchen and not even a separate bathroom
for our exclusive use, you reminded me. There would be no privacy.
I smiled. Homes are not
made of kitchens and bathrooms, silly. They are made of love, memories and
dreams.
This was home. Home where you belonged. Home where I belonged to you.
As I lay my eyes on this
photograph, I see the huge open space beyond our main gate. A rectangular patch
of soft green grass where you and I would spend several sunny afternoons,
breezy evenings and rainy nights sitting or standing next to each other, doing
nothing. We would not hold hands or kiss, remember? We would let our eyes make
love to each other. We would melt into each other’s existence, drenched in the
sunlight, soaked in the rain. Yes, this space meant so much. This was our space. This was a hushed interval in
between the clatter and clamour of this huge building and the huge family it
homed. We would stop here and breathe.
The green patch merged
into the building. It was a sturdy, colourless structure straight from the
yellowish pages of old novels. I used to believe, you know, that houses like this were
living beings. The wink of green peeping from the crevasses of the old building
reaffirmed my belief. Have you ever wondered, how could plants grow from those
discoloured, old bricks plastered in cement? I figured out the reason. The
house breathed. It breathed life into those green little creatures growing from
its walls. Yes, this house was like a human being for me (more precisely, a
close relative). Every time I placed my cheek against its cold walls or the
colder floors, I could feel mother’s warmth.
I flip the pages of my memory’s
album. The picture of that first time I stepped into the house gushes into my
eyes. The house caught me in an eternal reverie.
The main door to the house
opened itself slightly as we entered, making a V-shaped gesture which looked
like someone ushering us in with folded hands. Two small steps led us to a long
corridor. Black and white chessboard floor fascinated me to no ends. “We would
play chess here”, was my first reaction. “Or may be, play scrabble, cross and nots or cross word puzzles?”,
I laughed. (This was the first signal of
falling in love with this house). The corridor led to the thakurdalan which resembled the shape of one
half of an ’eight’, cut longitudinally. A huge triangular chandelier dangled
from the ceiling which seemed like a handful of stars gathered from up above
the world so high. The house rested itself on huge pillars which guarded the courtyard
from all its sides. I held a pillar and swayed my body in a semi-circular
motion (like heroines would do in Hindi movies!) I was so excited! As you led
me towards the staircase, I saw that the chess-board pattern of the floor has
changed into a crisscross design. There was a little white cross each on little
black squares. And then there was the stairway! Stairway to heaven, I joked. Such
huge steps they were!
“Are we climbing up the
Eifel tower? Infinite”, I complained teasingly. Believe me, I had never seen
such a stairway before. Steep, sudden and serpentine towards the end. At the
end of the flight of stairs, we stepped onto a crescent-shaped verandah. On one
side of the balcony, stood rows of rooms. These were the bedrooms and they were
the only rooms that were allotted on a per
couple basis. You started introducing me to each and every family member, one
by one. I could make a mental grouping, a grouping where I was somehow the odd
one out. I could not figure out why I was different. But I was. Like, if you
club M, N, P, Q, R together, O will be left out. They were like consonants
amidst whom ‘I’ was the only vowel. Much needed, yet somewhat different from
all of them. (Did I take pride in that? I cannot remember now). As my eyes
meandered into the nooks and corners of the long corridor, I started wondering which
room would belong to me. Six rooms stood one after the other. All of them had
occupants. Where would we stay once we got married? You pointed your finger to
the terrace.
We climbed another flight
of stairs to reach the topmost floor of the house. “Disadvantages of being the
youngest bachelor! I am allotted the chilekothhar
ghor”, you told me. “Advantages of getting married to the youngest
bachelor. I am allotted the chilekothhar
ghor!”, I excitedly told myself. (This was the second and the last signal
of my falling in love with this house). I had always longed for a room that
looks at the sky straight into its eyes. I always longed for a room which would
be the first one to hear the pitter-patter of the rain. I always longed for a
room which the rays of the morning sun chose to kiss first. You gifted me one.
There was this huge
terrace at one corner of which, I spotted our room. I looked away shyly and
gazed here and there. I saw a big round-bellied cat (with a terribly tiny tail)
observing us with keen green eyes. Two potted plants sat next to the cat, with
a full bloomed flower each. I wondered if the flowers had a fight. They just
refused to look at each other, with their heads tilted towards opposite
directions. The TV antenna stood helpless and half broken. The easy chair sat
lazily in the warm sun with a pillow rested on its shoulder, basking itself in
the morning glory. The
clothesline stood there empty. And then, there was our room! Did you notice
that from the very first day, I had referred it as “ours”? As I look back at
the days spent in that 8’ by 10’ cloud 9, I see the world of our own. “Just the
two of us” was all that we needed (yes that is why I insisted on not having kids
to which, of course, you gladly agreed). And there it was….the ‘I’ stirred and
blended in the ‘You’. Like cubes of sugar in your morning coffee. YUIO was a
name I coined for the two of us. All our books, diaries, suitcases, boxes and
common belongings were marked with that word. YUIO…a password for our
joint savings account, called life! YUIO was how we would make love, soaked in
the rain or soaked in the moonlight or may be, soaked in the dust from violent Norwesters.
Remember, we would never pull curtains? On clear nights, we two would lie
lazily on the bed and count the stars….1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and then there
would be that big round silver moon ogling at us wide-eyed.
We were one single soul in
two different bodies. At times
talking to you was like talking to myself. Likewise, when you would talk to me,
it would seem like reading my own diary. YUIO!! Entwined, engrossed and
engulfed by each other.
“I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of
loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon
my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
P.S: You always wondered
why during fights, I would try to tickle myself and then make you tickle me
right after that. They say, biologically it is impossible to get tickled by
one’s own self. It was the only way I could take the ‘I’ out of ‘YOU’ and scare
you. :)
P.P.S: Can we frame this
photograph?
P.P.P.S: I love you. But,
more than that, I love YUIO.
Love,
P.
(This was my entry for
the Rupa Romance Contest. And, no, I did not make it to the top entries. I had
taken it off the blog in terms of the rules of the contest. Now that the
results are out, I am re-posting it).
