Confessions of an infidel mind

Well what do we write upon today? I guess it’s been a long time since my last post. As much as I have been guilty of neglecting this part of my life and being too involved with the new job, yet for the past few months, I have been debating as to what is it that I’d like to write upon.

Perhaps, in the past I have written basically on human nature and relationships and perhaps on the vulnerability of the human mind. Walking in the evening after the rain, I was just brooding on the angle of things that I have written. I have often written on how we as humans justify our own actions and at times we have relationships that are more to satisfy our personal and physical needs or perhaps that at times, there are relationships that have no names and yet they do exist. Not getting into the debate of morality and right or wrong, I decided to look into the issue from a different angle. What happens when you are at the receiving end? How do you deal with it? What happens when you are the one who is not part of something but you have to bear the brunt. The burnt taste that makes you squirm in disgust. The confession. The betrayal. How do you face the Judas of your relationship.

Well I promise I wouldn’t give some long drawn philosophy but I’d say that the betrayal is the toughest part to handle. Coming to accept the fact that your partner has cheated on you is what perhaps makes you fall like a castle of cards intricately balanced over the years. All relationships exist on some basic trust and understanding and one of the implicit meanings of any relationship is commitment, a commitment of staying together and not straying over and crossing the line. While crossing the line itself has its own parameters and boundaries and the line is vague and abstract, often it starts with some thing we all think of as harmless and friendly, but somewhere, the faith and trust is breached.

I often, at one point of time used to believe in things such as honesty, trust, truthfulness. Like people say in bollywood and surprisingly Hollywood flicks as well, on how a relationships should be based out of trust and honesty. At one point of time, I thought that perhaps these are the correct measures to gauge a relationship and keep it going stable. I felt that as a partner in a relationship, I should know everything. However, not getting into the series of events that later changed my perception on the matter, I soon realized that we often say these things to show how open and understanding we are. Perhaps they sound good on movies or as theories and to some extent in reality, but in the end and in the long run, it depends. I’d say that in our bid to be the so called good human being, the one who is so amicable and correct, we try and cover up our real feelings and try to put a lid on them. Another reason why we say things such as honesty trust etc is to safeguard ourselves from something we don’t want to hear something in the long run or perhaps at a later stage. Or, the fact of learning something about our partner from some other source, that puts in an embarrassing position and so we say that in such cases, its better to hear the news of infidelity right from the horses mouth.

I did feel that way but perhaps after a few events, I realized that it indeed is tough to take the news and gulp it down, be it before or after. It’s not just about sexual promiscuousness but rather about unfaithfulness. Yet, coitus-aduterinus is most hard to accept.

The fact remains that I some how feel it is difficult to accept the fact that your partner cheated on you. When you remain committed to a relationship and the partner cheats, it creates havoc in your mind and emotions. Like the waves that crash across the rocky sea shore, it keeps on making you ponder on questions like why, what for, bringing in a nauseating feeling about the whole issue. Your partner may some time feel that he or she has done the right thing by letting you know and accepting his or her mistake, and getting off the hook and guilt. Doing what is correct perhaps, for whatsoever reason, once you are on the receiving end, of the news, makes it difficult for you. And perhaps considering the male ego, it makes it all the more difficult for men to accept if their women have cheated on them. While I don’t want not sound like a male chauvinist, and I do understand that perhaps in the Indian society, men get undue advantage, and it does happen at times that a man committing adultery or cheating on his partner is still something that gets to be a mere mistake on part of men, but when a women has an illegitimate affair, it is considered as a heinous sin, often leading to a ostracization socially or in the relationship in itself. A woman is looked upon in a derogatory manner. Unfair but yes, for most parts of the Indian society it does happen that way.

However, not getting into this aspect, I’d say that irrespective of the gender, it is a very natural human emotion of being hurt and not coming to terms with the fact that your partner cheated on you. Perhaps the partner might be doing the right thing by telling you the truth and asking for forgiveness or whatever, and logically you should be saying its ok but it doesn’t happen that way many a times. You just can’t get to terms with this fact.

It is easy to tell others that the positive side of such a confession to others as I have done innumerable time, saving my friends who more than once used my services. Little did I know how difficult it would be for them. Ironically, when the winds of change started and I found myself in a desert storm, hell turned lose. I realized that doing everything right was just not right enough, and the fact that despite the near perfect relationship, I couldn’t come to taking it properly and aptly. I found it to difficult to practice what I had once upon a time preached. Moving on and thinking that time would make me get through this phase, but it was indeed difficult. Perhaps the first time being ambushed with such a situation, you realize that the real devil lies in your own mind which doesn’t let you rest in peace and ignore. Even if you compromise, it makes you realize everyday for a long time on the fact that how expensive that compromise may have been. The weakness is to accept what you hate accepting. Its like you being violated repeatedly everyday and the facts being thrust on your face. You can squirm or turn your back but it just refuses to leave.

When you love a person but at the same time you can’t make it as your weakness to compromise. Perhaps, one of the partners feel better and for once they think they did the right thing, but being at the receiving end, you come up with issues like why, the reason for justification and then the thought of betrayal. Somewhere in reality, even if these issues are not the actual issues, it’s the core human thought of self centeredness that doesn’t allow one to move on. I wouldn’t know if it is case of male ego or rather simply something very primeval in both men and women, but its was more as one partner was more relaxed and had abruptly transferred the entire burden onto the other. You just have to live with it. You either compromise or you change the equation of your relationship but I guess in very few and rare cases, the relationship moves as before.

Today, I think that perhaps somewhere deep down, I don’t want to know the reality. Call it a coward thing but perhaps it saves me and safeguards me from things which might happen and I don’t want to know. You just come to terms to the fact that at the end of every such storm, it just wrecks havoc on your mind making you all the more weaker and distraught.

Just go there and enjoy. I guess, there are things you just cant control, but whatever you can, do that.

I gotta feeling that you just avoid and as they at times, Ignorance is bliss.

Sex & the (so)ci(e)ty

Another evening as usual, away at home away from the scorching heat of Delhi, lazing away to glory and wondering how to get a respite and perform something constructively. I call up a friend of mine and after a few minutes of tête-à-tête, somehow we end up discussing about social networking platforms like Orkut. My friend, informs me innocently about the darker side such forums and how she accidentally stumbled upon a few profiles that ranged from nudity to pornography to obscenity. With a quite little smirk on my face, I reply her that yes, it happens and such things do exist and the fact that you just don’t get so paranoid about it. None the same, as in cases with a number of women, she got all the more paranoid (pun intended!!!!), she mentioned that there were severe consequences , that how the society is degrading towards ruins and how something should be done. While I kept quite for some time and I encouraged her to go on and express more freely, she informed me how children for one may be affected and further how all these mediums should be banned. As thought out, it was a discussion on sex and morality. Mediums not only like social networking but further other things as pornography and nudity related. While I wouldn’t be formulating an opinion on these issues in terms of endorsing right or wrong, but there were things I did wanted to express but was failing to link them up in a string.

To begin with I did agree with the fact that these issues have dire consequences on the minds of children. Agreed. They do. But perhaps, out rightly banning things doesn’t make things better. While we take children as an excuse, I also believe that it’s the so called values instilled in children from their parents that determine their future and not the so called legislations or bans. Parents have to play the right role to look after their children. I’m sure its not much to ask.

At the end of the day, one has to realize that the only reason why such darker sides of medium exist is because they have a demand. Whether it is the minds of a pervert or a psychopath as you might think but these things exist in the minds of lots of people like you and me, but perhaps to some extent. Nudist, voyeuristic images are things that lot of people do look into. Similarly, pornography also has its buyers. The lines to demarcate issues is usually difficult and I for one would not do that. We, as a society in India make a fuss about lots of things. Whether it is FTV showing nudity or it is AXN showing adult content or perhaps Shilpa Shetty getting infamous for the kiss from Richard Gere.

The so called darker side exists in all most everyone to some extent and it is a matter of perception how we look at things. For some FTV may appear to be a matter of nudity and obscenity while others may take it as fashion. Every one has different levels of acceptance for different things.Further, as I rambled on explaining things, I couldn’t help getting a view about various moral policing factions such as Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal and the likes. While I also did feel that the so called “aping the west” is perhaps more dominant in metros due to the greater level of exposure, and the fact that in typical smaller cities of the country, the so called orthodox thinking exists due to the non exposure and perhaps acceptability. All the same, another contrary thought was that why do we need to blame and discriminate cities just because of being not so adapt and accepting. It would be incorrect if we were to say that tier II and III cities are backward. Today the media has penetrated to an extent that in far flung villages with remote infrastructure, you have the satellite beaming channel V and the likes. To look at it from a different sight, morality is a thin line based on the perception of people. Is it that smaller cities are more moral than the metros. Acts of so called immorality exist their as much as it exists in bigger cities. Perhaps the only difference is that it is pretty much under the shields, whispers and garbs where as it is not so in the metros. Perhaps that in bigger cities, people are more accepting and adapting. But let’s leave aside the war of the cities for a moment. The point I was saying is that it is not a matter of where you hail from. Things exist everywhere, be it a big city or a small city. To explain my friend, I took the example of swinging and how it is a rampant practice that exists in the society. That doesn’t imply that swingers should be banished. Yet at the same time I don’t exactly endorse them as well.

The enforcement of will of a few people extrapolated to a generalization as the will for the collective benefit of the society is not the definitive arrangement for the sustenance of the general well being of any society. Talking about society, if we come to think about it, the Indian society is a suppressed society. We are the land of Kama Sutra, but we dare not speak about sexual escapades. Sex is a taboo that is kept under the sheets. Call it hypocrisy but we prefer to indulge in all the sexual adventures but we prefer to keep tight lipped about it. This is the so called hypocrisy. In our country, you would probably have people shouting on top of their voices on issues in public, that they personally take part in. This is the irony.

People, at times, just need their two minutes of fame at times. At other instances, people want to be in accordance with the so called moral standards formulated by the society. To bask in the warmth of the satisfaction derived from being in consonance with the will and might of the majority. People would so ardently burn effigies and do extreme things and formulate opinion in public, but perhaps when it comes to irregularities exposed upon a personal introspection, we either , make an exception or conveniently distort the truth. This is the irony and the hypocrisy that exists.

We need to understand as a society that merely by banning or social ostracization of people, we can’t bring an end to the various morality related issues. Somehow the society tends to unfold and bring around ways to resurface. The more we suppress, the more it tends to emerge from a different corner in a different form, perhaps in an evolved matter.

At times, a few people and specifically referring to the moral policing entities mistaken themselves that they have a great task at hand to guide the people in our country and society at large in a manner that they deem correct. Further, they mistaken themselves to be the custodians of the so called great Indian culture which they deem is fading away into oblivion due to the increasing exposure to the so called western influx. Like a specie, on the verge of extinction, they take dire steps to safeguard and protect the values of Indian culture. But then my mind says, why do we need to do that in the first place and secondly, who are these people. Who gave them a right to benchmark as the standard for Indian moral values. Since time immemorial, every society has evolved. This evolution takes place only when different cultures mix and there is a cultural amalgamation or a potpourri. A stagnation in a society leads to gradual degradation. On a challenging note to the moral policemen and the morally virtuous people, are we so insecure about our own culture and values and ethics that we need to safeguard to prevent it from extinction. If we are so strong, why do we need conformance? Or is it that since you can’t be a part of certain practices, that is why no one should.

What I believe is that different things, aspects, practices exist in the society but we live with them. At the end of the day people should decide for them selves what is write and wrong. Why make a moral judgment about any such issues. Are we so sensitive as individuals that we are psychologically damaged to see a celebrity kissing on stage. Or we are perhaps traumatized to see any aspect of public display of affection. The Operation Majnu that occurred in Meerut, where couple having there moments of privacy at parks were lathi-charged, abused, publicly disgraced are only images of a weak democracy and society that we send out to the world. Perhaps people have to much of free time for all this. I’d say that even if they did, why form an opinion at all. Regarding the harm aspect, I believe regarding the harm aspect, let people decide what is correct for them rather than factions of political factions deciding it. Nudity on FTV or any other channel is just a click of the remote to avoid. We as a society find it too painful to press that button, but we find it easier to take out morchas and andolans, disrupting traffic and creating legislations. I wonder when we would act like matured people and accept things the way they are. When would we be given the right to decide the good for us. When would personal opinion be respected and more importantly, difference of opinion would be accepted...

When love and hate collide

Aah! You’ll probably gasp in joy as you read the title and for an instance close your eyes and go through the Def Leppard song. I remember being an ardent listener of this song way back 2000, the year when I finished school and stepped out in to the outside world. The cold and chilling, practical and hostile world where every man should learn to survive. Over the years of engineering and MBA, while innumerable lessons have been learnt, I today preach the sermon on the vulnerability of the human mind once again. No, I don’t sit with dreamy eyes on the edge of my bed with a flower in my hand and whispering nervously like a virgin, “she loves me! she loves me not!”. I’m sure and sorry to disappoint you but I did turn out to be smarter at birth and perhaps that virtue stuck on with me through my adolescence and maturity( “ If so, I may rightly proclaim).

Well, coming back to the title, I was just wondering on whether the human mind is fragile and fray enough to succumb to the love of a person to an extent that he has to forget the follies of the person. Can you love a person and yet hate them as well. Good lord, people would probably think of my as one to be stored away in an asylum. Yet, all the same, out of all the so called wisdom that has been emanating from my beard, I presume, this one has taken a lot of my time and analysis.

On one hand we have people to whom you talk about love and they have a picture of hearts falling from the sky and cupids dancing and everything is so idealistic. People are ready to sacrifice their entire past and present for one go at the so called fantasy land, a place where there is something called true love. Pardon my intended sarcasm and mockery of such souls, due to my personal biases, but nonetheless, they dream and hope for the state of perfect contentment. For these individuals, life is like a movie, perhaps notting hill and these people no less than Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, they wish for one, where commitment leads to contentment. Aptly, the title “And they lived Happily ever after” fits perfectly into the picture like the last page of fairy tales we read as children.

But that is perhaps what lot of people dream for and very few achieve. While I don’t believe in any form of arbitrary generalization, yet, in most cases, the stark reality is different. People meet and see the best sides of each other. We see any what we want to see and based on our requirements, aptly create a match between what we want to see and what we see at that time. Later, when there is everything we need in order to make ourselves happy, we realize that despite the commitment, the so called contentment is not there. Why? Simply because there is a mismatch between the perceived and the actual reality. We simply don’t try to see the other side of the person. Every individual has shades of grey, a set of virtues and vices. While we are in love with a person initially, we see only the good things of that person. We are so attuned to the virtues about the person we love is that later when we get into a long term commitment or an institution like marriage, we are not in a position to handle the grim reality that the person you love so much has a different side which you were perhaps unaware of or rater you conveniently turned cold shoulder to.

If I tell you now that the people whom I love the most are the ones I hate most as well at times, how would you react. Accept it, not react to it or simply deny it. But somewhere down the line there is some truth in what I say. We think that the people we love are subjected to unconditional love of specific intensity irrespective of what situation may arise. We exult chants of magical and undying love, where we’d do anything. But when it really comes to the long run, when you are talking about not just day or nights but years or an entire lifetime, there are times that the person you love so much is the one you’d probably despise and loath at times. These are the people on whom you may be angered, or perhaps hate them.

While hate may be a harsh term at times and in certain cases, yet what I’d say is that my liking for people fluctuate daily. One instance I really like a person and another instance I might not. My liking for a person changes. At times, I remembered the quote “The fun is in the chase”. Come to think about it but perhaps the lady love you were crazy about no longer appeals to you. Why do marriages lose charm at times. Why do we have so many discussions on reigniting passions in a marriage that is failing.

Perhaps a slight indication towards what I’m saying and the fact that I’m not abnormal when I say that I get bored of my girl friend. While this is definitely not an acceptance speech of my commitment, disappointing all the young beautiful single ladies, and I still maintain that I'm pretty much single, yet, I’d say that this really happens. Your liking for your girl friend, wife, or family relatives changes and we are perhaps not aware of this ourselves. Happens with me. In my limited interaction with women, my fascination for them ends very soon. My best friend has to incur my wrath at times and at times so do I. There are innumerable things in her that I probably hate and want to change. There are times when simply dislike her for everything and yet somehow, we sustain.

Think of it, the people whom you love are the ones whom you know the most intimately and closely. While there may be some facets that you may love, there may be equal number of things that you may find repulsive or irritating at times. At times, this becomes prolonged which may be lead to severe personality disorders at times. Harsh irritation, violent behavior, undue aggressiveness are all facets that occur and usually unknowingly.

I guess part of human nature, people whom we love most are the people from whom we expect most and at times get angry upon. In fact I’d say, when we talk about long term relationships and institutions, it is not the ability to love a person continuously with same intensity that counts, rather it is the ability to sustain the journey through all the ups and downs that matters. Knowing that your partners may have his days of sunshine and gloom in context of his or her liking for you. Going on despite everything is what really matters.

The Twins....... Coming Soon....
www.priungkushchatterjee.blogspot.com

Emotional Coup

What do I write upon today? Often as I walk everyday in and around my house and doing the daily household chores in the markets and malls nearby, there are various perspectives that run within my mind. But the tough part is identifying them and then penning them down accurately as the moment when they first appear on the large screen, it is usually not the time when I sit down and write. So, eventually what happens is like after watching the premier show and then walking out of the movie hall, I have to constantly keep reminding my self of various facets of the thought I wish to write upon and soon after reaching home, like a critique, I sit down to write and regurgitate that what is left on my mind. Tough, doesn’t it seem so. Well, I’ll let you into the secret for remembering. I try and remember the feeling that is generated as a result of the thought and consequently, when I am writing, I try to invoke the same emotion and feeling to simulate the feelings and the thought.

You see the biggest gift for humans is their emotions and feelings. While some people totally try to keep emotions aside on top of a shelf, some people are too engrossed in their emotions and get so drowned in them that at some later point of time, they take their emotions as a weakness. How do they deal with their weakness? They try to run from them. However, after running for a prolonged period of time, like Forrest Gump, you come to a point of numbness. A point that can’t be characterized, like the empty space. Call it infinity or call it pitch dark. We run and run so hard away from our feelings and emotions and get mixed up in the rat race that eventually feel empty in our lives and have nowhere to go and nothing to do. Total blankness. A return to where we started. Essentially, it turns into another of that clichéd vicious circle. The truth is that most of us at some point of time come to the self realization that while emotions and feeling are something that we avoid as it brings all the unpleasantness and the hurt, yet we need them to survive and feel life. Its funny, all the good time we have in our lives but we don’t understand the value of emotions and feelings. And suddenly one bad incident and we suddenly realize how painful emotions and feelings can be to handle. This is when we start running from them. But in the end, you start looking at life in a different manner. Once you have been through the pain, you realize the true worth of happiness and learn to look for it around and enjoy it.

Avoiding the pain, the ego crisis and running away from the evident trauma. We run so hard and fast and get involved in the mad race I this world, that there is often no time to ponder on such issues. You wouldn’t be surprised when you see in movies that the hero has to immerse himself in work to keep himself away from thinking of the affair that didn’t work or the love of his life that ditched him for another man or the wife who walked away or died, or for the son who didn’t recognize his father. There may be innumerable of those examples and I am most certain that while we sit and talk of them in a casual manner in our dining rooms and coffee shops, branding them as a mere exaggeration of human emotions, irony is that we all do go through some of those typical feelings often in our lives at some point of time. And then we find that the things we were laughing on are actually happening to us. So you run, but eventually when you finally get tired and stop to catch a breath of air, you realize you are so empty and fake, leading a pretentious life in front of the world, but still feeling so naked and raw as you stand in front of the mirror to look at your self. You are no nude painting of Michelangelo, no aesthetics, jus a naked body in front of the mirror, who has no place to hide, just tired, burnt and bruised. Full of contempt, burning with anger and devoid of positive emotions, you look like a zombie, a victim of witchcraft. You need emotions and feelings to feel full of life. I guess at the end of the day life is a big compromise. Some people make that compromise easily and move and some people can’t and take their time. The things that hurt you are things that you either avoid by shutting your eyes like an ostrich or you just decide to remove your ego and try to change your perception on that particular issue.

Irony is that the beauty of feelings and emotions can be realized only when you have gone through the bad side once. While I don’t intend to state that as a law, and I am sure people do realize the essence of emotions and feelings, yet I could safely say that they are more pronounced once you go through the turbulence. Perhaps this is what makes you more sensitive to the other side. Too abstract! Perhaps but then I’m sure this must be the beauty and I am sure you could connect to you own examples rather than mine.

Without taking this a step too further, I'd just say . Emotions that hurt you. Emotions that make you run away and yet emotions that make you want for them all the more. I guess I myself am in mixed emotions now.

valentino memorablia

PS: All characters inthis blog are purely fictional. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is prely coincidental.

Another year passes and so does another valentines day, knocking and the world going down for a day with eyes drooling with love and women as usual waiting on top of their porch and penthouses, waiting to be wooed by the men from Venice aboard their gondola’s. Ah! The exasperated sigh of a lonesome man like me who has perhaps never tasted exotic wine and spent an evening with a fine and wholesome lady of stature, class and looks, just await for the best days of my life in anticipation, looking out through the window on top of the tower. Alas! I don’t even have long hair like Rapunzel, in the bedtime stories, locked on top of the tower by her evil step parents, rescued by a prince. Unfortunately, keeping aside the gender difference of Rapunzel and mine, I await year after year wondering what is so wonderful about this one day in the year when you are supposed to be, not by will or choice but by social obligation, to be in love.

I look through the windows, clearing the mist and looking at the world, drool with love on their eye lashes. The excitement is in the air, like a lightening and a waterfall from a cloud burst that has struck permanently from the sky to the earth and is perennially present till eternity. All seems to be a fantasy land. Call me a pessimist but some how I feel left out of the charade all together. While at times I convince my self that I’m above the rest of the maddening crowd and its better to be single than to mingle like the merry men of Robin-hood, and convince myself that it is a matter of choice by way of which I exist the way I do, yet there are pangs of loneliness and guilt for keeping my self locked in the cellars of loneliness, depriving myself of the worldly pleasures and earthly desires. Some where I do wish perhaps there should have been there some one. It is not self contempt or applying first aid to my self inflicted wounds, rather, it is a mere fantasy that even I can afford to live for an instance, though it might look like self pity and remorse, yet giving me the joy of flying without wings.

As I rest on a rocking chair like grandpa’s do in the library next to the fireplace with their pipe in their mouth and brooding pensively, I go back down the memory lane and recall a small instance of valentines that I try not to forget. A normal day in the life of an insignificant soul like me, lost in the oblivion and just hanging around with a special one whom I particularly wanted to say a lot to but perhaps couldn’t as I had emerged from an accident involving the heart a few months before. They say a broken heart takes a lot of time to heel and this new lady in my life was turning out to be the way of fast recuperation out of the ER. A day when the world is feeling special and yet I didn’t and felt weird if I started feeling that way. Somehow past had made me all the more conscious on this one day. Why? Because everyone in the world knew what this day was supposed to be and so my feeling would have taken as a mere wave of over-emotionalism. I felt so naked and vulnerable, cos somehow I knew the girl I approached already knew what I had in my mind and so I took extra care to be just day way I am.

Returning to this particular day, I spent the entire day with this lady and doing nothing special as the world would ordinarily do. Just making sure to be extra cautious, not doing anything out of the league that might hint her that I had something in my mind. For one, I didn’t want to lose her if she got the wrong idea and definitely not considering the bad phase of my life I was going through after my last break up. This girl was my only friend and perhaps more, but I just didn’t want to risk it.

But then this lady was not ordinary as well. She was really special and as it turned out, all the typical mediocre and routine things we did that day turned out to be all the more special and extraordinary. As the day was approaching an end, we recollected the special times we had in the past few months of our acquaintance and how time always seemed to run short when we had all the things in the world to talk about and yet, when we had the time, time froze in eternity as we simply lazed on the grass in the warn sunlight, basking like newly born cubs, devoid of the world around. We walked all day and then made each other read our diaries for one particular day that we wanted to share. As the day approached to an end, we jus didn’t want to let go of the time and wrote thing to each other, in a mortal attempt for immortality of the instance of time. Finally, the day came to an end and as I walked to say goodbye for the day, we decided to venture in towards the college building. Just to prolong the moment that seemed so golden. A moment when neither of us had to say anything as we had done through out the day. Just a silence between us. The silence of reassurance and a bond that was from the heart and an unbreakable faith. It was so surprising how at times after spending years with a person, you might not know him and how a stranger suddenly become so close to the heart as if you’ve known her all your life.

So as we walked towards the college building, which was empty by now. We decided to take a walk to the first floor, just on the pretext of checking out the library and having a sip of water from the water cooler n the first floor. Mind you, there was a water cooler on each floor, but the one on the first floor was inexplicably special, call it an emotional bonding, specially during after college hours as it gave all the privacy and solace to the couples. So we thought, why not just take a round before we come back and say goodbye for the day. As I climbed the stairs with her onto the first floor, and the sun setting down and the point of time when its little dark but not pitch dark. We walked innocently, holding our hands and just not letting go of each other. A few occasional hugs at the water cooler and a few pecks on the cheeks, before I realized my vulnerability. A few hugs and a drinks of water later, we just didn’t want to let go. A hug that became tighter and longer and fiercer as I tried to pull myself away for an instance, fearing that some college staff or guard might discover us in a compromising position like this. So eventually, I tried being bold and with a tight peck onto the cheek that turned into a wicked cheek bite, I separated and walked with her hand in mine, towards the exit. As I walked, a myriad of emotions engulfed me. Desire, loneliness, not wanting the moment to end and also a fear of coming so close that it might hurt later. All this preoccupied my mind as I walked until I casually started checking out the latches of the lecture halls that I was passing. Just casually until, I found one open. I stopped, took a step behind and pushed the door a bit to find it open. For that instance the naughty me took reign over the normal me, with a wicked smile. I’m sure if I had a camera, I would have resembled the devil himself, with two horns on my head, a long tail and a spear in my hand.

Unquestioningly, I looked at her, who by now was a bit dazed at what I had explored and scared of the consequences and yet desirous of what she wanted a few minutes back. A quick gesture of the hand to ask her to follow, but I could see her mind going through the dilemma of what to do. I walked into the classroom, like an anxious teenage kid and looked out for her, asking her to come in quickly before any one else knew what we were upto. Suddenly my hormonal system seemed to be going into a frenzied chaotic activity, beyond any explanations. And as she walked in, it seemed to be something that we were waiting for. A special moment for both of us alone and cut off from the world. Just the two of us with no society and no qualms. Just a moment of truth. As we walked in and bolted the door, words were an unnecessary tool for the emotionally challenged people. When an action itself could speak millions of words, who needed words. As we walked towards each other, and embraced, time froze till eternity.

No it wasn’t a typical Hollywood flick like situations where there were wilds sparks flying in the air, or like Sharon Stone said in Basic Instinct to Michael Douglas, in the discotheque with a dusky voice “lets get out of here”. It was simple quite moment that belonged to both of us.

A slow embrace and slow dance with the music in our minds and feeling of belongingness. A moment that we didn’t want to lose. As we stood, with my arms around her waist and her hands across my neck, playing with my hair, I realized this was perhaps one moment that I’d probably never want to end. Of course I also realized the height difference between the both of us as I had to stop below to reach her. Nah! That is a an exaggeration and I’m sure she would be furious as she reads this. Well no I didn’t stoop down but yes looking into the difference, I had to put my arms around and raised for an instance onto the air, and then eventually she stood over the slightly lifted slab on the ground, reaching my neck. As I felt her breath on my face and her face on my mine, gently, rubbing her lips and cheeks on my face and forehead, teasing around and I rubbed my slight beard on her shoulder, I could see the exotic look on her face, that made me hold onto her forever and preserve the look for ever. Perhaps it still is ingrained in my mind. Soon we were holding each other tighter, feeling each others body pressed hard against each other, speaking of the insecurity and the loneliness we had been facing for such a long time. A basic need emerged that needed no words of solace. As we looked at each others eyes, the naughty me kept taking control and nibbling here and there till I got a reciprocatory bite on my cheek, as if taking revenge of my past actions. At times my hands wandered here and there but were suitably punished with a pinch or a slap.

It grew darker outside but we didn’t care. Just holding on, caressing and cherishing the moment of togetherness. A few love marks for each other to make ourselves remember of the time when time froze. Seconds transcended onto minutes and eventually to an hour and more, before we heard the loud whistle of the guard outside, which seemed to bring us out of the fantasy void and the delusional trip that we were taking on each others arms. One final kiss and we opened the door to the outside world and as I walked to leave her that night, I knew something had changed. Something that I would never forget. As I walked that night with her out of the room, the world seemed to have changed. For an instance, I was drooling with my hangover. Suddenly nothing else mattered. I realized some thing so basic. I had just had my first valentines day which I would probably never forget. Neither did she. The fact that her hair pin was stuck on my head when we were entwined. Having forgotten it, I walked into the hostel and the mess, with people looking at my unkempt and shoveled hair and giving me giggles and smiles, which I initially took to be a sign of world being in love that day. She on the other hand walked into her hostel, unaware that one of my gifted love marks were right on the left side of her neck, visible to the entire world except her, until she looked at the mirror.

And for one more instance, time froze for ever, even while we were away from each other.