Tag: relationships

My Dear Pua

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

My dear Pua,

 

Today, my family and I were going to come to your home for dinner. A couple of days ago, I had called you and I had told you of the plan we had: to have dinner at your place, once a week, every Tuesday, I said. I could feel your smile through the phone, I know how much the idea pleased you. I know you were so terribly lonely and though we popped in – at my odd hours – to check in on you and check up on your tablets and your visits to your doctors and discuss your ailments – I know you missed people around you.

 

I always called you a social butterfly. You used to wave me off and say, I just like people. And you really did. In the family, we had this joke, that Munni Pua on leaving her home would always look around her to see which people were around so that she could stop and have a conversation with them. You were a people’s person and people sure did love you.

 

I know I certainly do – using the past tense seems almost irrelevant. Love for me doesn’t really die – not if it truly existed. And I do love you. I am more like you than you will ever know. I love things neat and tidy. I love beiges and browns. I love sweets. I love entertaining. And I love my family enough to be entirely honest with them about how I feel – which at many times, is construed negatively. I get you though…I really do.

 

I didn’t really know all those years ago – twenty-five years ago to be exact – why I wrote you that letter. You were the first person in the family, after my mother, I decided to come out to, in regards to my sexuality. You wrote me a letter in reply. “It doesn’t matter to me whether you are gay or straight,” you wrote, “you are my nephew, Harpreet, and nothing will ever change that fact, or the fact that I love you.”

 

Though I have tried many times, I will never be able to fully convey what it means for someone in the family to say that to a young man of eighteen. You and I have had heart to heart conversations, a million times, and, in more ways than one, I find you to be more progressive in thought than most women your age. I will never forget how you opened the doors of your home, to over twenty gay boys, who were ousted from MacDonald’s, for having a GB meeting there. For me, it was so natural, that my aunt would do so, because I was raised in an environment which afforded me that security. And you had a great role to play in providing me with that security.

 

I remember all the times I stayed with you, in your beautiful house in Chowpatty. I remember always breaking our sojourns to the British Council Library, at your home. Goan prawn curries. Cheese pulao. Frankies. Kada. I shall never be able to eat these without thinking of you, Pua. I don’t think anyone who knows you ever can.

 

You will forever remain in my life as this goddess who bestowed shelter and food to all who came to your door. You are a generous being and I mean that in every sense of the word. Thank you for being there for me, whenever I need you. Your love has been a beacon of support in my life, and though it doesn’t burn anymore, the memory of your shining light will be enough to sustain a life time.

 

I am glad you are at peace now. Having left us, in the most Munni-Pua-like way, with nothing left to chance, everything rounded up, your loved ones met, your instructions drawn out, and your loose ends all tied up in a lovely conclusion.

 

You will be loved forever,

 

Harpreet.

Where the lost things go

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

Mary Poppins was a wonderful movie. It took me to a place where the lost things go. It reminded me of why I was called Peter Pan by a friend so many years ago.

In the middle of life, I grew up somewhere, some time, and I lost perspective of the things that mattered.

Friends and siblings have grown up. The conundrum is that I look for independence and maturity in people I choose to build bonds with. I look down upon the ones who don’t think, who hope extensively. But I’ve also realized, especially when faced with people who are alien to emotion and responses based on the heart, I do not think that they will be happy in life.

I set a lot of score in things that have no real tangible source of happiness. A good wad of cash gets good things that are wanted, tangible, things that can be touched and – perhaps even loved. But these things, along with the cash, do not really matter, in the end. We are human beings – unfortunately – and we need love and we need the succour provided by the Other.

Death becomes final, if there is no love. Memory makes the person immortal. Experience and history are what carries you into the future, into existence forever. The poets and the writers and the painters tried to capture this into art and transcribe it into the tangible. I have known people who have moved away from sensibility and into sense, but I have also seen them despondent and eventually, I have seen them float into the sphere of feeling, sometimes unwittingly, sometimes deliberately and sometimes, fighting tooth and nail.

I have seen how sense takes flight and sensibility takes over, with a vengeance. It is almost as if she wants to wreck love with a violence. She seeks to punish, and she feels it is right as is her wont. But I have dealt with emotion my entire life. I grow weary of her. Sense has come to me while sensibility has been told to wait in the corner. I haven’t discarded her. I just wanted to talk a bit with her sister. It is as Mary Poppins says, it is the time between the dark and light. And sensibility hides quietly.

Some people I loved died, and some, tragically, have grown up. Yes. These elite have no need now of sensibility. They haven’t just taken a break from her… or so they like to think. They wish to do without her. They wish to draw boundaries. They wish for rules. Lines. Space. Independence. Finding themselves. But they do not realise that sense isn’t the only thing that will lead them to peace and fruition.

I know that when my child died in the middle of my home, she left for good. The floor she lay on is just a floor. The home she breathed her last is just a house. Sense asks me to know that death is final. Dreams are dreams and fears are unfounded. But somewhere from the dark within, sensibility whispers, gone but not forgotten. Trust, she says. Love, she reminds. And I turn to the dark, searching for the place where the lost things go. And I trust and I love and find her in me – sitting right next to Peter.

Thief

Published on by Harpreet Chhachhia1 Comment

Holding his phone
Quietly.
So that he doesn’t wake.
Putting in a password
He was confident of giving:
Our kid’s identity.
I feed it in, hidden in the dark.
I steal through the apps.
I leaf through the gallery,
Like an album of old.
I see what I expected.
I see conversations
I used to dream of,
Fantasies I wanted but
Never could be a part of.
I read, willing,
Yet unwilling, and I Am
Ashamed,
Because I am aroused.
Torn,
Because I never wanted to be
A wounded, resilient, proud, foolish, turned on
Thief.