Dear friend/Priya Suhurthu,
Onam Ashamsakal to you if you’re celebrating!
For years, I’ve had people tell me that I need to start writing stories, make a collection of my poetry and publish them as books. Some have already reserved the first copy of my book in advance. Their words have often motivated me to keep writing, even though I’m a person with major self-doubt issues.
And though I’m nowhere near to coming up with a full fledged novel, I did start dipping my feet into the waters of fiction recently, writing short stories of sorts. The following is one such attempt of mine, which I wish to share with you here.
Also, I’m attaching an audio recording of the story read in my voice, for people that enjoy listening to stories much more than reading them, because I am one such creature as well! I have included this audio so that you might be able to listen to it during your busy schedule and find a little solace in my voice and my writing. Also because, I want my content to be enjoyed by visually impaired people as well.
But before you start reading or listening, I want you to keep in mind that I’m still a budding writer learning the ropes of writing, especially fiction writing and voice-overing. So please be gentle with your judgements. Better yet, turn them into constructive criticism and I will be grateful to you for all of eternity! 🌻
Gentle reminder: The below text is a fictional story written by me. NOT a real life incident. Please don't text me asking if it's based on my own life. Because it's really, really NOT.
The Weight of the Sky
With a cup of hot tea in my hands, I place myself on the chair in my balcony. After immersing myself too much in work and pulling two all nighters lately, I have needed this time at home, with myself. Or at least, that’s what my HR said.
She advised me to rest up during the first half of the day and go out with friends during the second half. I think I’ve got the first part right, doing my laundry, cleaning the house and napping for three hours at noon. For the rest, I’ve decided to stick with tea and some alone time, even though I get plenty of the latter each night at home.
The sky is in contrast with itself, orange on one side and grey on the other, with thick clouds gathering at the edge of the horizon. I close my eyes for a few moments, slowly breathing in the crispy monsoon evening air. At first, I see nothing and feel nothing, except for my breathing. In, out, in, out, in, out..
Then slowly, a face comes into view behind my closed eyelids.
A face with a sharp jaw covered in a stubble, high cheekbones, a nose bent slightly at the ridge, a smirk plastered over full lips and deep set eyes that twinkle with mischief.
Anyone who sees this face would realise immediately that the eyes are the most important feature on it. Neither too big, nor too small, they fit perfectly. With my own eyes still closed, I concentrate on the shade of these dreamy eyes, trying to detect it. But the colour seems to change each moment, from light caramel to dark espresso. As if they can shift from one to another depending on their owner’s mood.
I know that face. I once used to see it almost every day, at work. Sometimes on weekends too. It used to throw a smirk in my direction quite often. On some rare, special occasions, it gave me a smile that lit up my day. I have seen the shift in the moods followed by the shift in the eye shades too, up close even.
That smile, combined with those killer eyes can be as deadly as pulling an all nighter right after a hangover. This killer combo, sent in my direction at the right timing, could have me floating above ground for all of eternity. But right now, the image doesn’t make me float. It makes me shudder instead.
Deep inside, I think I miss that combo, along with the person it belongs to. Because right now, the sea of emotions that I had kept at bay for so long, break free and meet me at the surface. They threaten to squeeze my heart. So I need to spill them out somewhere, somehow. Starting with anger and ending with pain. I have to convert these emotions into words. Not really to record them for future reference. But more for the sake of channelling my energy somewhere, to take control over my racing heart and not to let myself get into a far-off zone. I need words right now, since I no longer own any tears inside me.
Inside the apartment, I find my diary under a pile of other things, since I hadn’t touched it in months. I make my way back to my balcony, where it feels like the temperature has dropped in degrees within minutes. Below, the street picks up the pace for the evening, with noises from vehicles and vendors filling the air. They don’t help my aching heart much.
I hadn’t thought about you in a while, haven’t felt this ache in weeks, if not months. But suddenly, it’s right there in the middle of my being and I have to fill pages of my notebook with it as a way of coping.
I expect a very sad sentence to spill out of my pen but something sweet sprouts instead: “Dear Prithvi”, like I’m writing a letter to you. As if you'd be interested in hearing anything that I have to say. I stare at those words for a bit, waiting for more words to follow them but no such luck. I hate how everything I say these days sounds like it is directed at you. Because as fate would have it, you’re not on the other side, listening.
Outside, the western sky loses its orange glow, slowly fading into a dull peach shade as the grey clouds chase after the sun. A quick, cool breeze lifts the pages of my diary before I could stop it. The notebook displays a different page now, towards the front. A diary entry from about three years ago.
I don’t use my diary like a regular journal. I write in it when I feel like I need to, documenting only a few select moments that I either want to hold on to for long or have been trying to let go for a while. And over the past three years, I’ve mostly used it to document our moments, hoping to save them for nostalgia purposes. So I know that each entry has some emotional value to it, either sweet or really sour.
The fourth line on the open page reads “He smiled at me before the briefing this morning and I've been smiling since. His one smile at the beginning of the day has me grinning all day and well into the depths of the night. How and why is this even possible?”
I wrote this just a few months after I met you. Which seems like ages ago. I flip through a few more pages and come across the word smile once again. God, I have always been addicted to your smile.
This entry is from two summers ago, right about the time I discovered that this was not a mere crush, but that I was actually falling for you. From the first two paragraphs, I can gather that I had had a bad day at work, which you helped make better.
“Just now, P dropped me at home and promised that it was all going to be fine. He knows how stressed I’ve been lately, between work and Appa, and is helping me cope through it. He smiled at me for a long moment before driving away. I keep reliving that smile because it helps me calm down, no matter the situation. Sometimes, I have a sudden longing to touch that smile and that face. But I don’t have the guts to do it. Because who knows what P will think!”
A crow swoops in and lands on the balcony railing. He watches me for a moment, then moves to the water bowl I keep at the side. His brethren are cawing all around, getting ready to settle in for the night. I wonder what you might be doing right now. Probably jogging through Central Park. Or on your way to work already.
On this side of the globe, the sun is just about to set on our my city. I know this for a fact because from somewhere nearby comes the evening call for prayer. Arabic words sung over loudspeakers fill the air along with the fragrance of fresh fried pakoda from the snacks shop downstairs.
I empty the remaining tea in one gulp and leave the cup by the sink inside. Then, I do something for the sake of my late mother rather than my own. Something that she insisted that I do every evening that I was home.
I wash my face, place a fresh bindi in between my brows and light up a diya. The portraits of both my parents smile at me from the mantle, along with the family picture of Ganesha, Shiva, Parvathi and Murugan with the little statues of goddesses Saraswathi and Lakshmi on the sides. I don’t say a prayer to any one of them, but press a little thiruneer above my bindi instead. I wouldn’t know what to ask for, anyway.
It’s been three months since I lost my last blood relation, my father. And three months since I have cried. Some people tried consoling me saying that it’s just due to shock, that the tears will come at their own time. But I felt them judging me behind my back for not crying as much as I should have. As they might have, had they lost everyone close to them within the span of two years.
But they couldn’t understand that once you get used to losing everything, you become numb deep down. And that you opt to drown yourself deep in work life because it is all that is left now.
I return to my diary which is now open on a page from about a year ago, when I still had one family member alive in this realm and one man who was in love with me.
“Dear P, I’m not sure when my diary entries turned into confessions and conversations directed towards you, but that’s what they are now. Maybe because I hope that one day (soon, hopefully) you and I would be a “thing”. I feel silly saying that, but yeah. You and I might be together and I might be brave enough to show you these bits and pieces of what my mind looks like. And maybe, just maybe, you wouldn’t cringe at the sight of my naked heart, so brazen yet vulnerable. Maybe I’m subconsciously hoping that you’d see the real me here and fall deeper in love with me. Because honestly, I am so in love with you, Prithu. Sometimes I think I had always been in love with you, only had taken so long to realise and come to terms with it.
“The other day you caught me staring at you and I had to look away immediately, feeling all foolish inside. I felt your eyes on me for minutes after that, smirking at me and challenging me to look up at you. You didn’t even show me any mercy when I had to do the presentation for the new clients. The way you kept trying to catch my eye and distract me, not cool at all! But I couldn’t even confront you about that. Because then.. one thing might lead to the other and you might confront me about my feelings. And.. I’m just not ready for that yet.
“I have a perfect plan for how to convey my feelings to you in the near future. A plan that I’m hoping is foolproof because I want to do it the right way. But I’m not going to write about it here, because you’ll know it soon. You will see it for yourself first hand and you might even turn it into a bedtime story for our kids someday. Or I’m hoping.
“Kadavule, I hope it goes well. I really do. Because I love you so much Prithu. I even told Appa about you last week, during the auto ride home from the hospital. His sugar levels are okay for now. His heart condition is better too, the doctor assured us. Appa promised to maintain his health this way, let’s see. He’s promised to do better this ti-”
I stop reading right there because my vision has gone blurry. Words float around in my head. Appa. Hospital. Love. Sugar level. Feelings. Heart. My heart. Appa’s heart. Appa. Appa. Appa.
Closing my eyes, I force the world and my brain to quiet down. Appa, Appa, Appa. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in.. Prithu, Prithu, Prithu.
Your face flashes behind my closed eyelids once again. My heart constricts at the sight of your smile but if I don’t focus on that right now, I’m afraid I might have an anxiety attack within seconds.
I can’t remember how or when you went from being the prospect of a happy future to becoming a comforting memory from the past that I now use to hold tight like a child’s teddy bear to keep myself from falling apart.
Once again, I start from your jaw and build the rest of your face in my memory. I think about ruffling the dark mess of your hair and my fingers curl on their own. I can feel the tingling sensation stop and my breathing slow.
Your face smiles at me from a memory we built last winter. You had just bought your first car and were taking me out for a night ride. I was so happy for you. You were all smiles that night. So much happier than the usual high spirits you carried around with you.
I can feel myself melt into the memory. A smile traces my lips thinking about the sight I saw that night. The dimple on your left cheek seemed deeper in the orange glow of the overhead light inside the car. You asked me to be the DJ for the night and we sang along to the songs I chose, getting the lines wrong and laughing at ourselves.
Your generally neat hair was a tousled mess right then, falling over your eyebrows in clumps. But you didn’t care about looking perfect or professional in front of me. I wasn’t just a colleague or a friend anymore. I knew it. I knew it when you caught me staring and didn’t smirk anymore. I knew it when you stared at me just as much when you thought I didn’t notice. I knew right then when you took my hand and held it for a long moment before you had to let go to switch gears.
My heart overwhelms at the thought of that night, beating faster as if I’m still in that moment, beside you in that car, my hand in yours. I remember that this same heart used to skip beats here and there carelessly during those three years of working in the same office. I used to smile so much that at times I had to bite the inside of my mouth to pull myself together.
To this day, I can't scroll through my gallery without stumbling upon at least a dozen pictures of you that make my heart go haywire. Every action, every emotion going through your face in those pictures would manage to send electricity coursing through my body, as though my veins are wires that pass electrons to and fro.
With my breathing not so shallow anymore, I open my eyes and watch the sky for a moment, debating whether or not it’s safe to look at a picture of you rather than building it in my head.
The sky is a deep grey now, covered in layers of dark clouds. I get my phone and make my way through the gallery app. The folder with your name on it has 801 pictures and 137 videos in it.
Some are screenshots of our chats. One is a selfie of you smiling in a new shirt, the tag still hanging from one side, sent to me to get my opinion on it. I remember sending a text response saying you looked cute in it. I also remember typing “but you’d look cuter without it” and then backspacing it immediately.
Here’s a picture of you smirking at me on a video call. There you are looking down, grinning at a burger. In one picture, you’re amidst a group of our teammates during an office trip, me on your left, all of us laughing together at a joke someone had just cracked. In another, you’re standing in front of a neon sign at a bar. There’s a picture of you driving the new car, taken by me on that night you held my hand for the very first time. And a picture of you holding my hand on a different night, moments before you told me about your new job, on the other side of the planet.
I skim through these, not letting myself break for a boy who chose a fancy job over my love. If I didn’t crash down for the man that gave me my life, then I’m sure as hell not going to crack for a man that left me for his ambition. But then my fingers hover over something in that folder: my two favourite pictures of us, ever.
They are two very similar pictures, of us sitting together against the backdrop of a cafe we both love. In the first one, you’re grinning at the camera, clicking the picture, while I look comical with my eyes closed and my mouth half-open in mid-laugh.
In the very next picture, you’re still holding the phone, clicking the picture and I’m still laughing at whatever I was laughing at. But one thing is clearly different in it. Instead of looking at the camera, this time your face is angled at me. You’re smiling at my laughing face, your eyes wrinkled at the corners. You look content. You look like you’re at peace. You look like.. you’re in love. You were in love.
You told me that very night, while dropping me off at home. You were in love when you leaned in and kissed me in the car. You were in love the next evening when you took me on a date. You were deeply in love for the next two months, until that job offer arrived in your inbox and changed everything.
Suddenly you were in love more with the job, more with the big check that came with it and more so with the country millions of miles away from me.
The way you’re looking at me in that picture is so in contrast with the face you had made at me during the last video call we had, weeks after you had moved to the US. I remember clearly the way you held my hand at the airport, promising that we can make this work. That we can beat long distance. That our love for each other was too strong to give in to the test of time and distance.
I turn off my phone, not able to take the pain anymore. My mouth tastes like bile, like I’m about to throw up. For a moment, I think it might be nice to throw up and get the last three months out of my system. But it doesn’t work that way.
You can get rid of toxicity from your body much more easily than you can get rid of toxicity from your brain.
What hurts worst is not the fact that you broke up over a text, but that you didn’t even have the courtesy to check up on me when I lost Appa. He liked you, you know. Even the night before his last breath, he said that what we’re going through is a minor misunderstanding. He was sure that you’d come back to me and things will work out just fine. I think he counted on you to take care of me after his time.
I don’t have the stomach to tell his late memory that the last thing he hoped for me was wrong. So I don’t pray to him, or Amma. Because she might tell him. So, I keep everything to myself, focusing only on work. Hoping that one day I might understand why everyone picks a career over people these days.
I shut the diary and open my eyes. The sky is a swirly mess of dark grey now. Not black yet, but almost there. At the very brink. So are the clouds, ready to pour down any minute. To break down and unleash something that no umbrella or tarp can hold down. Something so heavy and cold, but expected by everyone around for a while now.
My breathing is shallow once again as I wait for the first drop, knowing full well that once the brimming dam broke down, the mess left behind would be too hard to clean up later. That some messes might never be cleaned up at all.
- Aarthi. 🌻
Let me know how you liked this piece in the comment section below! Don’t be too harsh, okay? 🙈
//Kadavule, I hope it goes well. I really do.//
What a beautiful, heart rendering piece you have blessed us with A! Lost for words...