When you stir two teaspoons of Coffee in the cup of boiling milk and it slowly creates whirls of dark, changing the bland white milk to cream first and then dark brown, that, that is her color. She laughs at their jokes and I feel as if the wind chime in my balcony is rejoicing with the soft cool breeze. She ties her hair into a bun which I fancy loosening gently. The bridge of her nose tapers so elegantly that even a droplet of water will slide over it, as if it were a pearl. What authority! What grace!
I can never tell her and she should never know, because the world hasn’t become that benevolent of a place to accept me and my distorted concept of love. And there is absolutely no hope of this happening because, I am; well, I am a girl too. Isn’t that, more than enough? It’s not even about me being the conservative Iyer, not about me being a vegan, just about me being a “girl too”. I mean, there even could have been hope, for a 32 year old woman and a 26 year old man in love to be with each other, that too from different castes, but not us, Nada, Shunya. (Now I become the woman who knows impossibility).
Yes, it is unfair of me to frolic further in my dreamland without even so much as of a hint from her. But hearts are like wild fairies, once they are enchanted, they throw sensibilities to the wind. Being me, the fool, I am dreaming of hanging my swing to a branch of an imaginary tree, and I am going to have the Humpty Dumpty fall, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, wouldn’t be able to put Humpty Dumpty together at all. Still, being fair, I am giving myself this medium of expression for my unrequited, forbidden, passionate, heart-wrenching romance no matter how much homophobic my surrounding is. Who knows, she herself could be, scorning, and detesting at the thought of same sex couples. But I have felt her stealing glances at me, sometimes even staring.
Now the real puzzle arises!
Women stare at other women, so much that even men cannot compete. And they keep on staring even when they get to know that she is staring back. Women have all the impunity in the world to stare at each other. Now here I will be weaving a tiara of sweet smelling white flowers for her (I am bad at botany), delighted at how she loves to look at me; there she would be, observing with dismissal, actually at my gaudy floral printed tops or worn out jeans. Why does it have to be so boggling?
Someday, I know I will leave this behind after having offered my tears as a closure. Before which, I wish for this one moment to happen, where she would be engrossed in her paperwork, fiddling with that little silver cross in her neck, casually looks up and spots me going as usual to my desk; and passes a smile at me with those amazing eyes, like of Queen Sitadevi of Kapurthala – A special effect in a prosaic feature film, lasting on her wonderful face for at least five seconds. An enigma, would happen in this universe, because and for me. That would be all.
After that, to all my stupid little dreams of- Us cooking breakfast together on December Sundays, rolling her curls at my finger while she talks on the phone, or singing songs to her while she sleeps, I will put to rest and let my pathetic self to bed. Like always, embrace the hopelessness that comes free with my fatal disease and try to move ahead. And douse another potential love frantically, calling it just a crush.
