In a Nutshell

She carried it with her wherever she went. The smell of ink, old paper and the not-yet-callous feel of life. It was a gift from her brother who was leaving for Oxford that day. She had with eyes brimming with tears asked him, “What should I write, Adarsh?” Adarsh had smiled at her, held her close to his chest, patted her head and said, “Write what you love and love what you write.” Ten years had passed since that afternoon when the thirteen-year-old-she had watched, unable to control her tears, Adarsh pass through the guarded automated gates of the International Terminal. It was a hard-bound book with roses on the cover.

She was at the airport then, alone. Leaving for a foreign country sans the usual crowd of family and friends hugging and wailing, the exclamations of “look at her; she has become a big girl now!” A huge trunk, a hand bag and her book; this was her luggage. She had checked in. Her trunk had been name tagged and put away. There was still a good part of an hour left for the flight.

From among the usual clutter of keys, documents, id-cards, chewing gum, chapsticks and a pile of greeting cards which had been gifted to her years back, she took out a red fountain pen, another gift. She felt the need to write something before all that were here would become ‘back there’ and everything that was home, part of the wave of nostalgia that was sure to hit her on a rainy day. She poised her pen, ready for that feeling of pen gliding on paper, but it stuck like a lump in the throat. Refused to move.

The pedestal fan seemed to favor her at that precise moment and in that artificial breeze the pages flashed by in a flurry. Names. Some in bold; some crossed out and some others smudged by tear drops. Places, photographs, stamps. ‘Mine, his’, ours, home, vacation, school, college…’ someone seemed to whisper in her ears, spreading a warm sepia tint over the black and white.  Then long slanted sentences written in that sudden fervor. Couplets scribbled down quickly lest the emotion overwhelmed one. Words, the meaning of which she should have found out, but never did. Something that some high and mighty said. Damp pages where she had poured her heart out. Ten years and yet, these pages had not yet been fully filled. A deep sigh seemed to doubt if it ever will be.

28th June. How could she forget that day? Every time she sat down to write, the memories of that day would haunt her. Death, cancer, loss, tears, goodbye, daughter, dreams… these words reverberated in each line, every paragraph.

18th September. Forbidden love. Sweet sin. Guilt. The One. “… he took that duster and wiped the blackboard clean. There are no furious scratches and scribbles on that dark plane, a few specks of chalk powder still remain; but the wind of time will take it away too.” She smiled away the shadow of a sigh.

1st February. Passing out. Friends, sweet memories, broken promises.

Then without the pretences of form and structure, a tumble of it all, memories, pictures, dreams, loss, works.

Lost she was in this flood that pushed the hands of the clock backwards in one swooping motion. She had, for once, adhered to someone’s advice. Her brother’s. She had written what she had loved and she had loved what she had written. It had become a part of her and she was the hard-bound book with roses on the cover. The weight of all that was written made it heavier than her trunk which would soon be put in somewhere in that flight that promised to propel her to sunnier climes. Much more to write. Words, are there enough of them? Enough to fill in that book, the hard-bound book with roses on the cover? Impossible.

She

It starts as a spark. A vestige of an unexpressed emotion. Then it becomes as infectious as an idea, spreading its branches far and wide, gripping those folds ever so tightly. For a moment, I wish she would give me repose. As she thunders on blinding the caws and the hoots, blurring the sweet and the sour, I wish for a moment that all was black. Dark, silent, empty.

Empty; that lack of fullness, definition, in short, the absence of everything. Empty means the overwhelming multitude of emotions associated with and the realization of loss. The perfection of that absence, that gaping hole that seems to grow wider and wider engulfing the little that was left after the impact, never fails to awe me. There are still tell-tale singes and fissures. They construct a boundary, something that defines the emptiness by. Open spaces can never be empty, it is said. But to me, emptiness is the curve of her back, that lock of her hair, the fragrance of lavender, her smile. Everything else is empty, black.

I can still hear her laughter, see her smile, that lock of her hair dancing near her ear, her step falter, her smile transform to surprise, shock, horror. There she dangled by the edge of that cliff, her eyes pleading for help. We all stood and watched. Later, I termed my inaction helplessness and slept peacefully, unperturbed by the ghosts that hovered in my chamber. There were some who watched her fall, unable to laugh and rejoice, bound by propriety; oh, how their heart ached from suppressing all that! She could reduce everyone else in the vicinity to dumb objects when she came in. Such was her aura. The air of mystery, an eternal sadness that seemed to emanate from her, perpetually. There was no way another could replicate them all. Like evil step-mothers they comforted themselves; they were the fairest on earth once again.

Nobody looked at her as she fell, save myself. That look on her eyes as she descended into the murky depths of oblivion. She did not accuse me. Those two black onyxes seemed to ask “Why aren’t you here, holding on to my hands, unwilling to let go? Was I wrong?” The fault in her was not that she fell, it was not that she did not heed to all those words of caution, her fault was her trust in me. She trusted me with her life which I saw wither away in front of my eyes. She became a symbol, something mothers would point to and say, “Do not be so”. For me she is an enigma. She was my failure, the one long yard I fell short of.

There isn’t a way to make amends. Sugar-coated or otherwise, pills do have constraints. Perhaps the gnawing pain might cease, but I doubt if the dent can ever be smoothed out and made perfect again. More than a dent, I think something has chipped off. I am sure that it is her. As I climb down into the murky emptiness where I believe she rests, all I have is a tiny, flickering light of hope. I hope that it will fall on that tear drop whose fall I witnessed from my safe perch. Maybe she will ‘shine on and never burn’ in the same hope. I will find her. I must.