Watermark.

She couldn’t sleep that night, as it was terribly cold for a tropical countryside. High hopes by Floyd was floating through the speakers of her Noachian laptop as the chilling winds blew though the window giving the white curtains a phantom like appearance. She anxiously kept checking her mail every 5 minutes and kept logging out in anguish. She sat on her four poster bed stared blankly at the wall, though the mosquito nets. She kept thinking to herself, more like, she made herself believe, that he had just sent her some portion of the book he was working on. She kept re reading his mail, trying to make out the cryptic message he sent half way round the world.

“you cant put your arms around a memory. When wounds actually bled instead of clotting immediately under cynicisms gauze. As Neruda once wrote, we of that time are no longer the same”

 She went over to the cupboard and opened her locker to pull out a cookie box that housed Danish cookies once upon a time. It contained a thousand irregular bits of colored paper she could never bring herself to get rid of. It was her box of memories, snaps of their better times she shredded when they parted ways. Painstakingly she put together the pieces to make an elaborate jigsaw puzzle of the man who enticed her. Who gave her sleepless nights like this one. 

After minutes of brain teasing jigsawing she went on to check her mail and her pensive face broke into a sigh of relief. He had replied. The content of the mail was less cryptic; he came up with a request to hear her voice in his ever charming poetic style. She replied, picking and choosing her words, and asked him to call the following morning by 9. 

She popped in a sedative as she knew she’d be awake the long night anticipating his call. The dawn broke to a pleasant and sunny Saturday morning  when the rest of the world planned on the weekend nonchalant to her mind boggling thoughts. It has been quite some time, and still she thinks of him sometimes. Not thoughts tinged with nostalgia, as she consciously blacks them out. She remembers the weirdest of things, his bad taste of food, his mad love for football, the smoke rings he made while exhaling Davioff. She had moved on, put the pieces of life back together, only that they don’t fit neatly as they did once. 

Phone calls from former lovers result in a long walk down the nostalgia avenue. After a couple of hours she heard his voice on the other end of the line, his accomplished British accent and broken Malayalam. They exchanged the usual pleasantries. His upcoming book. Her writing. His girl friends. Her sister. Manchester United. Liverpool. The phone hacking scandal in the UK. Rafael Nadal. 

“its really good to hear you voice say my name, it sounds so sweet” he broke in after there was enough polite conversation for one day.

There was a long lull before she replied. “ummm, same here. The british air has altered your vocal chord though” she brought in.” so what was it in that cryptic mail”

 “ do you still think about us?” an uneasy silence followed this question.

“yeah, I do. Mostly during the EPL matches ”

“I listen to lips of an angel, and I think of you”. He cut in. “ I see an Indian girl, and I wish  its you. when  I read Neruda i hear your voice reading it out to me.  I see a Liverpool fan I think of how much you would hate him,  I think of you when I make love, I think of you when I drink bad coffee” he paused, panting.” You make it hard to be faithful”

 She listened to him dumbfounded, unable to pick out the most appropriate words to respond. Her breathing had increased; she held the phone with trembling hands. All that was audible were their synchronous breathing. 

“look, you are with rita. She loves you. Then why are these concussive thoughts coming by. It’s not right” she replied gasping.

“life took me to UK, and I cheated on you for the 1st time. But I tried to rationalize it by thinking that you’d leave me eventually. It didn’t work, so I had to tell you the truth. “

He heard slight sobs from the other end of the line. “I know I’ve given you terrible times, I was deteriorating in all aspects”

“how do you expect me to respond. To say that I forgive you for all what you have done, to forget everything? My parents have found me a guy, a Stanford grad, and I believe you’ve come to know of it, and hence why the call”

“yes, I heard that, I don’t want that to happen to you. I don’t want to see you mother a bunch of kids and be a wife to some tech saavy guy. You aren’t meant for all that, at least for now. You are still a kid, how can you agree to some random guy who was auctioned from the marriage market.”

“it’s the most practical thing in front of me. I’ve been very insecure all my life, and I’ve jumped into a few mistakes, but not anymore. I’ve decided to leave my past behind and start something afresh” she said 

“you are killing yourself. You are not meant to be caged. And you’re killing that part of me who still yearns for you. I can still sense your skin touching mine, your husky voice. It keeps me going. I never had the courage to let you know all that after I cheated on you”

“I hate you D, I really do” she remarked slowly

She knew he could make her dance to his tunes. She knew that he has done it before. She knew that she’d rather be with him than Mr Stanford. She knew it would create havoc at home. She knew she wanted to run away, but only to reach to him. She knew the life ahead would be uncertain as before. She just couldn’t put up a cynical voice for long, for that’s something she’s not good at. She cut the call saying she’s got to think about it. But she knew the answer already. She didn’t have to think. Later that day she got this mail from him.

You were different and same, I was different and same, I knew that is how things happen. And yet, I’d met you because I wanted something more. We are all different threads, I told myself, and once we had woven others threads into something like a bow. Once. As I remember you, I define you, I choose bits of you and like a child with a coloring book, I fill you out. Once it was desire i filled you out with, not memory. You were a blown up photograph to me. But I chose, I was arbitrary, I took what I wanted..i took some and left the rest.  Didn’t know what the rest meant. I plead guilty but ignorant; I didn’t know what women meant. 

He had written, this was his favorite extract from the book she had given him on his birthday, A Night in Tunisia by Neil Jordan. It made a lot of sense to him, and to her.