My Funny Valentine

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“Open your eyes. Right about now will be good.”

She felt the warning signals before she could entirely leave sleep behind. It was like her mind had been fleeing, cluttered and troubled as it would've been, before her body could arrest it with the ruse of caffeine. As soon as she woke up, without habitually drawing the curtains to usher the morning sun in, with some degree of comic agility, she went into the kitchen.

Her skin tightened as she took in the frosty sight. First, she hears her voice. Tall and trembling, it seemed as if it belonged to a stranger. “Is that what you want? “Cos I've been waiting to walk out that door!” Did she mean it? Then she heard his. A pleading, calm voice. A voice that in its evenness bore resemblance to reason. Well, until you heard the words that escaped his mouth. “Fuck the roses. Fuck Pre-valentine’s. You always wanted it this way, didn't you, you fuckin’ control freak.”

Broken shards of glass. Liberated, lone petals slow-dancing in the wind with glass crystals. Roses on the table, still perfectly wrapped in their smug prettiness. Aha, these silent roses. Aren't they a perfect weapon of mass destruction? He’d got them for her, holding them by his teeth. “Pre-valentine’s is it? Do you have any idea how much this hideous bouquet cost me? No, you don’t! Cos you think you’re entitled to them, especially on days when they’re selling at airline prices, don’t you my precious?” She briefly thinks of the alarming frequency with which she went for his face with them. “How many times have you lied to me, you lyin’ piece of shit?”

She broke into a chuckle. A startlingly self-assured, upside-down kind of giggle. Before she knew it, she was laughing so hard that she collapsed on the floor with one hand on her jiggling belly, her knees scraping through the jagged broken glass. She was oblivious to the pain, to the oozing blood. She continued sitting there in a kneeling position, very still, in a brown lace negligee that was falling out of her slouched shoulders. Her brain often sent her signals of levity under intense pressure — didn't her therapist call it fear-grinning — as a voluptuous, unstoppable giggle. One that got her into trouble at funerals or on stage when speaking about something as morbid as sexual predators at the workplace. And there she was now, pretending this whole situation is just really a giggle explosion and it’ll pass. How long should she laugh about it, not moving from that ridiculous prayer position, not addressing the bleed, not pulling up her negligee, and not feeling anything? She could very well be sitting right there eating canned beans or frozen pizzas without a care in the world.

“The good news is I don’t have to clear this mess,” she announced to an invisible audience. The kitchen floor now resembled a crime scene with intermingled spats of blood, roses and broken glass, all the no-brainers to a crime of passion in a deserted, untidy apartment.

Three nights ago, over coffee, her friend had brightly suggested the idea of them spending Pre-valentine’s together. A couples’ soiree at her house. Valentine’s Day could be their private thing then. A fetching idea.
The conniving whore! Oh, she’d been so blind. The stolen glances between them, the morning shower humming, the sudden cell phone secrecy, the inexplicably vacant conversations and mood swings…He was having an affair with her, you dim wit.

Of course, she was no saint either. But she still held a shred of sanctity to chain all her possible betrayals in her mind. Fantasies, possibilities….wasn't that what separated romance from reality? If at right this moment, her ex-lover was to walk in and hold her in his arms, planting her with soft, comforting kisses, whispering carelessly-soothing words, wouldn't she have fallen sloppily back in love with him? Even if he had, a really long time ago, in a badly-fused moment, broken her heart into tiny, crystallized pieces? Would time matter? Does the space between her and her ex, with whom she’s not had a single exchange of endearment, for a decade, still hold true? Time and space — aren't they just optical illusions?

But she had loved him then. And she loves her long-time husband now. A little less today probably. And as she walks out that door, she’ll have wavering indices of love reserved for either of them with each passing day, and maybe just like that, one day she’ll snap out of it for both.

She took one last, long breath, coming a full circle in that position, staggering to her feet. Her long yogic limbs were strong enough to pull her out of any misery. A wave of nostalgia. Last night, after a heated argument and a grislier scene on a battlefield of a bed, they lay side by side one last time, sharing smoke and flicking ash all over her brand new red-roses satin sheet. She pictured wafts of smoke from a moving train. She wondered where she would go next, what she would do for a living, how her days would inch forward…

Climbing out of her languid life, she reaches for her trench-coat on the stand. Suitcases, change of underwear, lipstick…they could wait. It was a wintry morning but she could see the beaming sun in the horizons. Dramatic much? She walked out of her house, giving one last, longing look to House № 57. As she averted her face towards the dawn, she saw him from a distance sitting outside on a sunny bench, evidently at the edge of a rough night. The last time she saw him, she wanted to strangle him. She picked a pebble from the ground and pelted it at him. He ducked, even though he was nowhere close to getting hurt. They smiled. He screamed from across the street, “Come on now. I know you want to kiss me. It’s Valentine’s.” Strangely audible words to My Funny Valentine rose above the noise of morning clatters and revving engines.

And she knew she had no choice but to kiss him one last time.

Your Love Is A Slow, Sweet Poison

Your love — it comes to me like a slow, sweet poison,
Creeping under my skin, latching itself to my bones — light, unseen,
Smoothing me with its luscious, bittersweet kiss of melancholia,
Ruffling me with liquid desire — the highs of first love, feverish and pristine.

Your love — it gives me away, bit by bit, unravelling the yarn of my existence.
Set to motion, my longings run asunder, from my soul to meet your body in midsummer.
Call you repeatedly. Kiss you in dark alleyways. What's to hold me back?
The air between us is made of fireflies, blazing with our locked lips, fulfilled then, now unremembered.

Your love— it is a potent drug; it has me living on the edge of reason,

And off your caresses, your tender words, your signatures on my body’s blank canvas.
It is a white onion, peeling away its stinging layers to reveal nothing but itself,
While undressing me slowly, stripping me of all that was mine, in a state of tingling otherness.

Your love — its first rain on me was an unexpected shower in midsummer.
The taste of it was everlasting, dripping like honey, unctuous to my quivering mouth.
It lay me gently on a bed of thorns, hooked on a feeling, wrapped up in my own arbitrary nothings.
Your love — it came to me like a slow, sweet poison; its perfume still clings to my fingers, to my black shroud.

City Girl

I sat by my window sill, in the quiet humdrum of a busy day, to the constant noise of cars, buses, motorcycles - their blaring sirens, their screeching tyres. Restrained stares greet each other.
A million dreams and aspirations whir by a narrow street in an organized madness, trying to make it through the mist of strangers to their higher purpose.
I looked on from a vantage point and wondered to myself, "The city takes so much from you everyday. To find meaning to your life here can be a fatal thing."
Faceless crowds pushing and shoving you into rapid movement when all you want to do is slow down and catch your breath.
Empty eyes in untold time follow you off-handedly until they lose sight of you in the blinding beat of the jarring city anthem.

I vividly remember walking along the streets of this city in the afternoon, as a new city girl.
Signs telling me where to turn, where to look, when to stop...
"I don't think I know how to get home." I feel the restless hustling but I don't quite know where to go.
At every turn, the city got bigger; all I carried within me is a tiny, microcosmic world of my own, a small speck in its jutting vastness.
The only thing binding me to it was the interwoven sunlight on my street, the corner Alphonso vendor and....
Ah! Just then I saw you from a distance wearing your usual flashing smile when you look at me — me, a tiny girl in her grungy tee and spacey eyes.
Almost immediately, I remember feeling hope — of knowing that I had just made it somehow.
Of course, you were just suspended on a loud billboard, coated in dirt, slowly being washed away.

Every time I step out in the city, I am flushed. I feel exposed. My rhythm is broken. My voice is muddled with anxiety. I don't want to leave home.
But for all you know, just once in a while, this city pursues you. Perhaps when you're in a rickshaw and you stop at the red-light signal long enough, let's say around twilight, and the city becomes your muse. 

I peered out of the rickshaw and saw little faces, breathing in the musty air, looking down from their matchbox houses.
Drafts of their evening cardamom chai-scented breeze reach out to me.
Homeless children sell balloons — they criss-cross through cars caught in a signal, moving from bumper to bumper. I follow the trail of animated balloons crowding into one another, grinning down at me from a distance.
Lovers leaned into each other in a side-walk, bright-red petals from broken flowers cling to asphalt, the smell of wet concrete in the air.
Stray dogs scavenge near garbage bins. Birds fleet home. Pedestrians rushing past the traffic, which was beginning to inch forward, let out fire with their protesting mouths, igniting a trail of city lights.

In the city, beauty lies in the ordinary, in the everyday.
I know nothing of wilderness and lush green fields. I know only of sparse trees decorating the city landscape.
I am not familiar with clear open skies and starry nights, fireflies lighting the path to constellations.  I am familiar with the dark depths of the ocean surmounted by hope springing up in the horizon as sky palaces reach for the stars.
I am at ease in the harsh anonymity of my existence in the big, bad city. I'm wary of friendly neighbours showing up at my door with casseroles and getting free baked goods at the local bread shop.
I  am  a  city  girl. I sit by my window pane, looking at life scrambling at every corner of this cramped urban jungle and I just know that this is my home — this is where I belong.

The Power of One Is to One

There are times, when you're sitting by yourself in an over-crowded restaurant, that you can't help being dragged into a small crust of other people's lives. I won't call myself an eavesdropper as such but I won't deny, on certain occasions, I've sat silently with my husband at the dinner table, gesturing him to listen on to what other couples have to say to each other. One of my uncles had once casually observed during a dinner conversation - that you can tell a lot about the age of a couple by the way they order a meal. I was blissfully single back then and that statement struck me as odd, like one of those vague, pseudo-intellectual observations one makes at a party in a happy-high state.

What do I think now? Well, still don't know a squat about that, but I do think ordering a meal inadvertently brings out one of the most significant aspects of a couple's relationship - power dynamics. A conversation I happened to pry on made me think in that direction.

My husband and I sat down at our dinner table, uncomfortably close to another couple who seemed downright jubilant to be in each other's company, lighting up at the slightest remark and holding hands from across the table. We were having one of those days when we didn't have much to say to each other but sure, we were beaming at each other at the prospect of being in a swanky restaurant on a weekday. And dining out still had its special-occasion sheen for me, more from the fact that I get to wear a dress and I don't have to cook. Anyway, so as usual, we're mocking the names of entrées in the menu list and giggling hysterically, when suddenly I overhear the husband/boyfriend/fiancée from the other table saying, "You know, I'm really not that hungry. Let's split something."

Now I've been in this interesting predicament several times before. I don't know but there's something about splitting a meal that naturally brings out the push and pull of a man-woman relationship. So again, I gesture to my husband and for the next five minutes, we decide to be that obnoxious couple who dives their ears straight into other people's conversations; you know, just for fun.

This is what I recollect of the conversation:

Man: You know I'm really not that hungry right now. You want to split something?
Woman: Oh! Well, if you're not that hungry.
Man: Anything you want my love!
Woman: You want to split..you decide.
Man [looking furiously into the menu card]: Ok, how about some aubergine parmigiana?
Woman: Ha! Baingan. Predictable! Like we don't have enough of it at your mum's house. Get over it...
Man: It just sounds interesting. Ok, your turn.
Woman:  I'm sick of deciding meals. Give me a break today na, baby.
Man: Fine.  How about your favorite pasta and a soup?
Woman [pursing her lips]: Boring, vanilla pasta! OK, how about some Fois Gras de Canard?
Man: Ya! Pick the most pretentious sounding item on the menu and cough it out loud. Do you even know the meaning of Blah Blah?
Woman: Your ****!
Man: That's all yours to have, baby. [smirking]
Woman: You forget that I took French in school. Besides they have descriptions. See! [gesturing to the menu]
Man: Ohhhh....Miss "I was born French"...Let's be safe and just get some pasta and soup.
Woman [launching into a speech]: So just cos I asked you to decide, you take the easiest choice and shove it on my face. Should I give you dal rice everyday and be done with it? Why should I take the pains to think up a new dish everyday?
Man [ looking utterly confused]: Huh? But I was just....
Woman: Pasta in red sauce...Fine I'll choose. We're going to have Fois Grad de Canard and Risotto di Zuccha. There you are!
Man [looking defeated]: Alright, alright..Either way, I'm not that hungry. I'll just get a soup.
Woman: Oh, don't be such a bore. You'll have what I'm having. And you'll like it!
Man: Mommy?
Woman [smiling]: Waiter!
Man: Hey, I want soup!!!

All this while, we sat with our heads buried in the menu pretending to make some light conversation and giggling to ourselves. You may think this is such an inconsequential, overblown argument but you'll be surprised at the number of times you've been there before, neck-deep in the battle of power over who resigns first. Over who does more than their share of contribution to domestic chores than the other. Over who makes the infallible mistake of checking Facebook in the middle of a conversation. Over who succumbs into letting the other watch what he/she wants on TV and many such mundane, on-the-surface trivial power struggles that take up a good part of coupledom. I recall the first year of my marriage, where I dished out the silent treatment to my husband probably way more than I should. The first year felt like Groundhog Day; we were having the same fights, tugging at each other's personal space. We took turns to being a stuck-up nag or an overgrown goofball, for seemingly no legit reason at all (OK, sometimes reasons took the shape of biscuit crumbs on the couch, wet towels on the bed or new dresses.)

The thing about marriage is that you see each other everyday - when you're having a bad hair day, when you're sick, when you're feeling blue. Even when you're gritting your teeth, cussing like a sailor while downloading a movie on a slow connection. It sure gets difficult to see each other in the perfect context all the time.

It's no wonder that we're tempted to reform the other. Sooner or later, you start resorting to some harmless power-play indulgences that may start with a passive-aggressive "You can't wear this to my boss's dinner". However, you don't realize that they come with a disclaimer. They can take a pretty ugly turn, spiralling down fast the vile path of pointing fingers at each other, layering arguments with counter-views, working up your individual emotions to a point where the other will be cornered into saying, "Fine, I give up. You're right." But it doesn't stop there. You brainstorm other age-old manipulation tactics to have the upper hand in the relationship. You blow hot and cold to test your partner's devotion to you. I know of couples who withhold intimacy to get even with their spouses. Some delay responses to urgent texts deliberately. And let's face it. Haven't you ever felt tempted, maybe in vexation, to use one of your partner's pet peeves, say wearing an old raggedy tee, merely to exert your pester-power over him/her?

To have power in a relationship is a heady feeling. We vow to share our lives with our better halves in eternal happiness but at times, we also feel the need of fending for our individual desires. At any cost. We defend our interests with all our might. We play the victim, we throw snide comments and we scheme.

And of course, we try in vain to reform the other.  Is it OK for you to try to change the other in a relationship if you're doing it for the greater good?

Maybe. But sometimes it's that tug of 'you vs me' that makes you miss the bigger picture - one that many older, wiser couples talk about. That you're on the same team. That it's not about winning or losing.

This year will be my fifth year of marriage. I can't say I am an expert on the subject. But if there's anything I've learned about marriage in these years is that whether your power-play tricks are aimed at winning an argument, getting TV control, or making your spouse feel guilty, the victory is only short-lived. So the next time you're tempted to try out your genius little schemes into getting your way, try this instead.

Freeze your grey cells right there. Give in. Lay down your weapons. An hour later, it's not going to matter who won.

Take one for the team.