You, in Mid-air

Love has a way of becoming comfortable. When it becomes comfortable, it gets lazy. It rests on the couch and it watches movies. It feeds you pastries and chocolates. It shields you from the world outside. Friends either follow you into this haven, or they shun you to maintain their independent lifestyles. No one can really say which friend is doing the right thing.

Life is a series of phases. You get the sad phases, the happy phases, the quiet phases, the combustive phases. Love can bring in an amalgamation of all. Though eventually love becomes comfortable. But I have already said that. Of course, as I also said that life is a phase and with it, love adapts, too.

Isn’t it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air,
Where are the clowns?

Sometimes, the dynamic of the relationship changes. Someone in love realizes his sense of duty. Sometimes, it so happens that being comfortable isn’t what a lover wants. Like the independent friends, the mind exerts control over the heart and one wants to hit the gym, pursue further studies, spend more time on himself or herself, regain a certain independence, appreciate the inner spirit.

Isn’t it bliss?
Don’t you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can’t move,
Where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns…

So love is shaken off from the couch. The movies end. The parties become strictly a weekend thing. Food, duty, studies, jobs, family and the independent friends are looked on with greater priority. It all varies naturally. Lifestyles don’t necessarily remain the same. Promises cannot always follow a strict path (a fact which is again highly debatable: people make vows before what they consider to be God and then they go and get the messiest divorces).

Just when I’d stopped opening doors,
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours
Making my entrance again with my usual flair
Sure of my lines
No one is there

Everything is fair. It happens. Everyone should be given their space to be. Definitions of ‘I love you’ and ‘I am no longer in love with you’ and ‘I love you but I do not like you’ and ‘I love you, but…’ begin to take shape. The tragedy happens when there used to be two on a couch and then there is just one.

Don’t you love farce?
My fault, I fear
I thought that you’d want what I want
Sorry, my dear!
But where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns…
Don’t bother, they’re here.

Life doesn’t follow the same speed for everyone involved in relationships. The other is then supposed to be supportive. Supposed to understand. Supposed to be as mature as the other has now become. Growing up and out should happen simultaneously – in an ideal world. But we do not live in an ideal world now, do we? Ergo, one gets left behind. One changes the rules of the game. One breaks the pact. One says he will return, but he never does and the other chooses the path of least resistance. At times, both resist and the link shatters.

Isn’t it rich?
Isn’t it queer?
Losing my timing this late in my career
But where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns…
Well, maybe next year…

 

You Couldn’t Tell

When we were young and when we loved,
I believed it all to be true,
And maybe you believed it, too.

When you left and when you promised,
Fidelity was not deceit,
Spanning oceans seemed no great feat.

But society had concerns,
Ambition had its own power,
Love became matter of past’s hour.

If I could say something to you,
Following two and twenty years,
I still could not without these tears.

I’m too old to call this weakness,
I guess I loved and much too well,
It was just tragic you couldn’t tell.

Depression

It doesn’t come with a hello
It sneaks up behind
And pushes you into a dark alley
With broken lights under your feet
And suddenly you have no shoes
Memories scream towards you
Like a freight train
Out of control
You fall to your knees
Trapped
Forgetting about the broken glass
It swarms before you
And you can’t see
Blinded, and this choking sensation, as though you never knew light.

A smile reaches out, you reach out and you see people moving,
just where you had been a moment ago,
there is the thing you were doing,
you remember where you were going,
but that is a flash.

You are in that freight train, speeding,
And you want to fight
But light is such a fleeting thing
And smiles are too rare to be saviours…