For selfish reasons.
One: I found I was allergic to distances. My body began to break out periodically into bouts of longing, my blood began to thicken with the constant weight of your absence, my heart started to suffer for lack of permanence, and my fingers grew weary for want of your pulse throbbing over its tips.
Two: In the course of my research it became imperative that I be closer to you, my muse. So I found myself a source of employment and moved from my city-by-the-sea to your city-of-djinns.
You must have been petrified. For weeks you were in denial; you weren’t convinced I’d actually go through with it. When you gathered I was intent on moving, you tried to dissuade me. You said I ought to focus on finishing my book instead of wasting time meeting with brokers, negotiating the rent, building a new life. ‘Man does not live on words alone,’ I tried to explain. Besides, I was steadily going broke. You then offered to support me financially on the condition that I would stay put and finish what I’d started. I couldn’t decide whether you were being instinctively generous or plain cowardly.
So I took a risk and moved; collected all my things, my books, my clothes, scraps of cash that I’d earned from here and there and comprised my meagre bank account, and set up base in a one-room barsati overlooking the Hauz Khas tombs. A few weeks into my move, you sought revenge, you started to harass me about the book. You’d wield your tongue like a whip and castigate me for my lack of pace and discipline, my bohemian lifestyle and my wayward friends, none of which, you decided, were a good influence.
I began to negotiate with you for more time. ‘It’s only just getting interesting,’ I told you. In truth, I was repelled by the initial draft of my first chapter. It was induced by the most belligerent bout of longing I’d ever experienced, around the beginning of our second year together, when you’d spent at least six months away in Paris, photographing Indian émigrés. Every now and then, a few lines from that draft return to haunt me, and I cringe when I think about the pathos of lines like: ‘These pages make love to you. If you were here I’d tease you with my tongue. I’d mouth your name and listen as each syllable turns to song, and I’d roll each note along the edge of your ear … You live in the ground floor of all my songs.’ Too desperate for my own good.
It wasn’t something I could change overnight. The problem was not so much the quality of the lines but the attitude they reflected. I came across as a female Cyrano, doomed to unrequited love, which wasn’t the case. What was required was a shift in the way I processed your absence. The original blueprint demanded that I submit myself unabashedly to the intensity of my passion for you while also salvaging my dignity. It demanded a confession that I was unwilling to make. It’s so much easier to add a missable ‘love you’ at the end of a phone conversation. I was not prepared to make such a declaration face-to-face, or even within the expanse of these pages.
The book demanded a massive leap of faith, a crossing over that went beyond mere movement from my city to yours. It entailed that I come to terms with our fate, and trust, nonetheless, in the merit of the ephemeral—just because we knew we had no shot at a future didn’t mean we weren’t entitled to a present and a past.
Moreover, we hadn’t fathomed the extent of our involvement. Until I moved I was just a voice over the phone you’d grown accustomed to, and a body you would reacquaint yourself with on occasion.
You weren’t prepared for the ordinariness of everyday love.
Neither was I.
Two years later I could say for certain that the move was the best twist I could have ever conceived for this book. I’ve found, in the course of my research, that you have disabused me of every notion I ever had of a permanent home. I’ve realised that all I did when I adopted your city was exchange one form of exile for another.
At any given moment, I roam the city with two bags. The smaller one has my phone, my wallet, my cigarettes, my moleskines and some loose change. The bigger knapsack has my laptop and charger, my hard disk, my phone charger, three different books, a change of clothes, a pouch with tiny bottles of shampoo, conditioner and moisturiser; a kajol pencil and sharpener, lingerie, and accessories. It’s my overnight bag that I carry at all times because I never know for certain when you’ll ask me to come over and spend the night.
In the beginning we had a plan. We’d decide well in advance when I was to come over. There was a comfortable rhythm to our evenings together. I’d return to you after a long day of work, we’d share a glass or two of single malt over a dinner I cooked, and we’d eventually mediate the territory of your bedroom.
Over weeks, the frequency of our meetings increased. We’d find excuses to spend the night together. I’d abandon all prior engagements and run to you, vegetables in tow, and we’d revel in each other’s company. By now you’d made peace with my move. You had enough exposure to the convenience of having me around to recognise it was a good thing.
Until work intervened and demanded you travel, often for between two weeks to a month. I began to lead two lives; one when you were out of town, and one when you returned.
When you were away, I’d work hard on disengaging from you. I’d hack away at the roots that entwined us. I’d attempt an escape. I’d sample other men, other tongues, other lives, and I’d convince myself that I was cured, that I had finally outgrown my lust for you, that I could indeed survive, hell, thrive in your absence. The tone of my writing changed for the better. It finally had that tinge of self-respect that it lacked before.
Then you’d return and I’d regress into love again. We’d revive our little rituals and, as your skin renewed contact with mine, we’d renew our lust.
You held all the cards. You made all the rules. I could only meet you if I was willing to schedule you as priority, which meant I had to place on hold the life I’d invented for myself in your absence and, once again, ensure that my plans revolved around you. I had to show up at your door latest by eight, else you’d claim ‘it didn’t make sense’. I had to choose between you and the ten million other things that the city regularly hosts. At some point my early morning work schedule got to you, so you decided we should reserve our meetings for the weekend instead. We tried it for a few weeks until we lapsed and everything went haywire all over again. A few months later, I quit my job. It seemed to come in the way of my novelistic pursuit.
If only you could leave me your keys!
A year passed. By now, we’d evolved our own systems. By now, I’d colonised your kitchen. By now, you’d already tricked me into believing I shared your house when, in fact, I was and remain a frequently visiting guest. Your only houseguest.
There were two options at hand.
One: you could leave me your keys so I could visit when I wanted and park myself in your house at will.
Two: you could make room for me in your already crowded house, nothing flamboyant, just a shelf or two to keep my things.
We veered towards option two, but too many episodes got in the way. I couldn’t deal with your sudden tantrums, when, for no concrete reason you’d tell me to ‘Get out’. So I’d leave, despite the lateness of the hour, and then I’d find myself returning because I had grown roots in your house. I had too many things all over the place, and they kept bringing me back.
So I decided I wouldn’t leave my belongings with you, despite the many times you pleaded that I should. I had to preserve my dignity. I needed to have the option of leaving you at any given hour without having to worry about the ‘Chinese cigarette case’1.
But I slowly became part of your neighbourhood, part of the ecosystem of your house. You had to rely on me for grocery lists, for lost items, for details of leftovers. You came to depend on my spare pair of eyes to read the expiry dates on Gelusil bottles and Crocin strips, and on my spare pair of hands to scratch the itch on your back or smoothen the bundle of nerves along your right thigh when your sciatica acted up.
Which brings us to the second twist in this narrative for which there is no easy resolution: how do we confront the fact of our interdependent yet independent lives? How do we undo this mess we’ve found ourselves in?
And here you are asking me to quicken the pace of this treatise, begging me to seek answers to questions I’m still unable to frame, coaxing me to reveal to you everything I promised I would, while you’re still unwilling to entrust me with your keys; those few hundred grams worth of metal that hold the secret to the future perfect.
Here’s my last offer—a book for a key. Take it or leave it. But decide now, before we proceed, for the next section is the beginning of the end. If you choose to read further, you hereby surrender all rights to a life of solitude. If you sign against the dotted line, you must make available an extra set of keys, failing which you will have made a mockery of this handbook.
Mine is a conditional love.
1‘Grounds for divorce’ (2008), Elbow (There’s a Chinese cigarette case, and the rest you can keep, and the rest you can keep)