Letters, bottles, broken glass

I got that inland letter. Again. Ten years, he said. We have known each other. And never met. He was Agha Shahid Ali’s friend and he made me speak with him when he was visiting Srinagar from Manhattan.

He spoke softly like the waves of the Dal Lake. He told me about the column of mine he had been reading. I cringed. It was graphic. He smiled with his voice. I said, rather defensively, that I’d send him something more appropriate. I could not think why this was inappropriate. I got a couple of pieces copied and scrawled a note, put it in an envelope, wrote down his address, bought stamps enough to make my words reach America. Then, I did not mail it.

I found it in a pile of things I preserve after he died. It was still sealed. I was afraid to open it. Often we that live haunt much more in ways we aren’t supposed to.

Back to my friend. He is hurt because I said, “Try not to call”. He does not know what he has done to offend me. I cannot keep repeating it. Somewhere in the middle of that note he said, “You would not know sincerity if it crawled over you”. I was shaken for a bit. Perhaps he is right. Perhaps I just feel terrible and it is my problem not his. I feel terrible because he said he wanted to start the note with a couplet from Faiz about unrequited love.

Ten years is a long time to care for someone you have never met. Ten years is especially a long time if one thinks about bottled emotions with expiry dates.

- - -

I used to think petty people are only those who do petty things. There are others too. They tell you about those who are hitting at you…or they patronise you, make you feel good and mislead you down alleyways and then leave you there. You walk around, trying to place yourself in alien surroundings or familiar surroundings with alien people and then they shout back, “I want to come to your rescue.”

I have always fought my own battles, fended for myself. I need emotional sustenance only from those I feel close to and not those who pretend to rush to your defence…they need to be seen with you, as a part of you. They want to sneak into your spaces. These days I am wary, for I have seen them for what they are. There are very few from my ‘past’ that I want to deal with here. That is the reason I prefer the ones who have come to me unaware of who or what I was, am or will be…

- - -

Agony. I am agony. If I did not matter it would not matter. But I am agony.

Alive, Ghost, Osmosis, Nothing…Yearning

Break me and watch yourself in the broken glass pieces. Lose yourself and you will find me.