Author: Harpreet Chhachhia

Just me and nothing else but.

Collateral Beauty

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It’s been a while since a movie moved me to tears. I remember it happening when Meryl Streep sang The Winner Takes It All. Today, it happened – not so intensely, but it would have if I wasn’t sitting with a stranger to my left – because I was so deeply moved by the movie. I guess I realise why a movie is called a movie, and I know I speak figuratively, because otherwise it does derive itself literally from moving pictures.

The story was well-written. I loved the personifications of Love, Death and Time. They were surreal and brilliant. Kiera was effervescent as Love, Helen was fantastic as Death, and there was a new boy who played Time, I don’t quite remember his name.

Before the movie, something happened to put me in a melancholy mood. I had come out from a bath and so had Anand and all I asked him to do was lie down beside me and cuddle. Well, it so happened that it was just me cuddling. He couldn’t even bother to put his arms around me. You know, how they say life flashes before you, moments before you die? Well, love flashed before my eyes, and I realised that he truly doesn’t want me anymore.

It’s a bitter thing to swallow. He may need me for various reasons, but I think we are both pulling this through because we are just so used to each other now, we don’t seem to see a world where the other doesn’t feature – and ever since we opened the relationship any semblance of intimacy we had is truly dead. At least on his behalf. I keep trying to touch him, but then again, that’s just me. For him, he couldn’t even be bothered to try.

It’s not a sexual thing, love never was with me… And I have only just realised that – I always would equate making love with love and that is not true. There is a saying that Helen Mirren, as Death, mentions to a parent at the loss of their child, “Just make sure you notice the collateral beauty.”

That is what I have been doing… every time something little dies in me, I try and think of why I am carrying on. What pulls me to another day. What gets me to work at night. What makes me think of another Christmas. Writing this I feel I may just burst into tears, but all I am doing is think about the collateral beauty of it all. I just keep gathering it, and gathering it and gathering…

Post Porn

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You know post porn, and a shag, that feeling that comes to you: do people really have sex like that? I mean, is this what I will be missing my whole life through? There are times when there is a guy who meets you and says, I am coming over, meet me at the door nude. And you think of all the things that could possibly go wrong. Then all those insecurities of your body that shoot through your mind like a hurricane… And you go to the door wearing a vest and boxers and the lover sees you, disappointed and you think of an excuse.

Post porn you get the courage, but then post porn you are also sated. You feel like getting into bed and going to sleep – thinking, oh, yes, tomorrow will be the day I meet the pizza delivery boy with a hard-on and then turn him on, too.  And all you actually end up doing is making love to the pizza.

The weekend was a good one. Had a lovely time at the party. Anand was at the counter, and I danced the night away with Yash and Anil. Of course, I found out later via Yash that he had come to the party to lend Gaurav moral support. Dee banned Puneet from the parties, and Gaurav and Niyaz came to the party and danced away. Anil tells me, after being manhandled by Gaurav, that this is why Gaurav gets beaten up. And I look at him and wonder what he must be saying about me…

The meet on HIV that Jay conducted the following day, today, was exceptional. Two guys in the meet actually came out in the course of the meet as being Poz and it was such a fantastic discussion. We talked of everything so very openly, and got a lot of advice from Jay and he says that A should start up with ART immediately. That was the protocol used by doctors abroad, and he was insistent that this happen as soon as possible.

So we come to another turning point in our lives… I am not worried, but it’s another new trip, but hey, that is what keeps life interesting and going in a different fashion… Hopefully we succeed in getting a good doctor. Jay will help with the regimen as well. He will be coming to the ‘Xmas party as well. Hopefully, the party goes well… I haven’t called anyone in particular. Let’s see who shows up.

Summer Day

Published on by Harpreet Chhachhia4 Comments

Good things do not last long, it’s the truth;
They fade out, they vanish, they end;
I keep thinking they will last, last through time;
I cling on to hope, I grasp, I even pretend.

The good is relative, the wise ones say;
The good comes and goes only to come again.
The wise ones nod their wise heads and ask:
What is it that I really hope to retain?

I do not like the wise, they instil doubt;
They make the good not seem so good;
And I wonder if I hope, for what was that?
And if I hope again, if I really should?

I think and I think and wisdom surfaces;
I can almost feel the wise ones smile;
I see myself a little clearer, the same truth,
That I disregarded for a little while.

It is a sign of a deep seeded analysis,
Of some jargon from freudian slips,
Of hurt that male figures left behind,
On my doubtful soul, on my hungry lips.

I see this truth again, and feel the scorn
Of all those who claim to be so very wise;
I see myself as I forever have,
Through the ones I want, their very eyes.

I wish I knew how to make peace
With this clueless boy within me.
How do I make him understand
All that is but what he cannot see?

The perspective of self, mirror and eyes,
Will always wary, so maybe stick to one?
The wise ones will always say, perhaps,
There is no choice, when there is but one sun.

So as wisdom prevails I must tell him
Look to self, let mirror and eyes shatter;
Men will come and go, come and go,
It’s only you that will, in the end, matter.