Fountain pen on blotting paper: My entry for the Get Published contest

So baby here’s it.

All the times I’ve written to you has been to talk about the men I could be falling for. All those little sparks that meant nothing. Here then is what I possibly could not have penned anytime earlier.  

That day at the library, something inside me knew that you’d come. It didn’t spoil the surprise, it just assured me that I was beginning to believe in the right thing and not just riding waves of stirring apprehension.  That evening when we sat on the brine-sprayed boulders looking into the same dark sea, I knew I would never have to turn the pages of a dictionary again to know what ‘peace’ means. That day when I did not turn up for the interview for Ph.d, after travelling all that distance and missing your birthday, I just knew I was doing the right thing, even if that meant I’d never get back to academics again. All the evenings I spent dodging ‘come hither’ looks from strangers at Karunamoyee, while waiting for you, all I could think of was your ugly-teethy smile that made 8hours of time-waste/ day seem worth it.  And then all those home-making skills I tried to acquire over the four months, antagonizing my default bohemian spirit was just to tell you “I want to try”.

For all I know, you will be sleeping for the greater part of the Sundays of my life, while I’d want to go for walks, or breakfast, or just stand beside you at the balcony and look down at milkmen moving from door to door. I know I’d probably have to take an ardent, albeit circumstantial, interest in the fish market to lure you out of your bed. I know you’d have to make helicopters and hanging trains when I would want to run away to the mountains. But I still don’t want to even want to do these things without you.  I’d rather wait for you at best, at worst, snap at you, blame you for everything that could’ve gone wrong in my life and even decide to dissociate my pursuits from you and move. But that’s just for the afternoon. I will be wanting to walk-down dream-spun colonnades in the evening, holding your hand and never let go.

As ineffectual as the word ‘love’ seems to me. If I were to narrow down to a single moment, I think it’d be the night I was listening to ‘broken strings’ while working on the dissertation and you happened to hum along, as the moment when I fell for you.  Contradiction? I’m all about that. Contradictions galore.

And now every time I hear that song and Morrison goes ‘when I love you a little less than before’, I can’t help falling for you a little more. Contradiction, again? I said so.

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Thus ends my epistolary abstract.

This is my entry for the HarperCollins–IndiBlogger Get Published contest, which is run with inputs from Yashodhara Lal and HarperCollins India.