Inter-caste

In this country of imposed Hinduism, I was fiercely in love with a Muslim.


I have got nothing against Hinduism. I have got nothing against religion.
I have, however got everything against the vandalism circling it.

I had just joined a course where I chanced upon this guy. A muslim, an announced anti-nationalist who'd been through prison only because he refused to stand up for national anthem in a movie theatre; because patriotism is real, only when it is shoved down your throat.
A muslim, I didn’t realise when I fell in love with.
A human, who the world doesn’t realise the Muslims to be.

We were in our own world, a room in Santiniketan, a roof with windows on all sides when it rained.
I was trying to stare at the rainclouds when he brushed my hair off my face and said, ' You know what our love is like?'

I said, 'Rain?'

He smiled, 'No. Petrichor. Rain is usual. Petrichor is the smell that the soil gives out as a thank you for saving it from breaking down. Rain saves the soil. Petrichor is the announcement.’

I smiled.

He murmured randomly, 'Can we name our daughter, Petrichor?'

I sat, jumped up on the bed,' Are you thinking of..?'

He cut me short, 'A future? Yes. So?'

And I remember I broke down. I cried and told him, 'We can't. Maybe in a parallel universe where there is no religion, where there is no riot when a Hindu and a Muslim marries, there we will have a petrichor and let her thrive.’

He didn’t say anything. He held me and kept staring at the rain.
________________________________

I had just joined as an intern in a company, a friend of mine worked there. We had been friends for a long time and she knew of my lover; she knew all the insecurities I was trespassing on to be in love.

It was my first day in that office. She took me out with her colleagues to a coffee shop, and dare me call that a mental abuse, made me say the name of my lover, and repeat his surname like thrice, so she can ridicule me infront of her colleagues; people I was meeting for the first time in my life.


This same friend, called me on my birthday, and even before wishing me, asked, 'Is your lover with you? Will your father get a heart attack when he comes to know of him?'

Now I don’t know if I am patient or self demeaning, I still didn’t cut her off from life, only before a month.
______________________________

I still remember the first night I stayed at my lover's place. We were sloshed, very close and I remember he pressed my face into his chest and cried.

When I asked, he said, 'Why did you have to be from another religion? Why can’t we be together?'

I don’t remember what I said, only that I pressed my face deeper into his chest and cried.

______________________________

I had a classmate, the kind of guy who’d say I'm sinful if I had pork, who'd say I'm going to go hell, if I fancied having beef.

That same classmate, I hated with all my might, not for being ridiculously religious, but for priding upon his pea-sized mentality; he told me once I'll die painfully if I am in love with a Muslim, being a Hindu.

When I asked him to give me a elaborate explanation on his stupidity, he couldn’t.
Mind you, he holds a Masters degree from the same Central University I studied in.

Guess you can’t judge education in degrees or universities.

_____________________________

In this country of failed Hindus who preach of the religion and don’t even understand any bit of its meaning, I was fiercely in love with a Muslim.

Bolpur Blues: Episode 15

Next day was Holi.

I had done the usual, played along, got crushed on a crowd-choked street, faced food crisis, and felt absolutely lonely. The quirk was at home all this while, completing his quota of sleep.

We met in the evening, and he took out a half bottle of Fenny from his bag.

'All the way from Goa. It took me a lot of self-control to save this much for you.’

We drank the fenny sitting on the porch, with chilly pickle as the side dish.

Malayalis, I tell you!

Anyway, few gulps later, and with red eyes, thanks to the chilli, I got a phonecall from a friend.

'You want Bhaang?'

I turned to him and repeated the question in the same tone.

'Yes, ofcourse', he looked at me as if that's some sin to even ask that question.

A hour later, it was already starting to get dark. We met my friends in the Poush Mela ground. The moon was vermillion red and the horizon with its silhouettes looked right out of a Picasso painting.

Me and the quirk were already high on the Fenny, and we held hands and kept looking at the moon. He came out with Nietzsche references, and I with Neruda.

After a hour from then, we saw a lean guy walking in circles to us, he was trying and still couldn’t reach. I didn’t know the guy.

I brought that to my friend's notice, and she said suddenly, 'Arey, he is the one who was supposed to bring us the Bhang an hour back. Let me get that.’

She came back with a big bottle with white drink and laughed out, 'You know why he is walking in circles? He's ten glasses down on the same Bhang. Good luck to us,' and took a large gulp and passed the bottle around.

We took gulps in turn and kept talking.

Aftersome time, me and the quirk couldn’t feel a thing and decided to leave.
We needed some time for ourselves.

We were sitting in a ramshackle hotel and waiting for dinner when suddenly I felt my head was spinning, and it was nit a good kind of spin. I grabbed quirk's hand and tried to say something, but I couldn’t.

The quirk crossed his fingers with mine and laughed, 'It has started, hasn’t it?'

I don’t remember if I said anything, but things started turning blur, the streetlamps were blurred tiny lights twinkling, dancing around. The world around me started spinning in good speed and the next thing I remember was I was in quirk's bed.

I woke up to see the quirk walking. I checked my phone.
2:30 AM. Fifteen missed calls.

'Why are you walking? Come sleep.’ I was feeling better.

'I can’t. I feel haunted. I feel sick if the bed touches me', he turned and I saw his blood shot eyes.

I was scared. Too damn scared to think of anything to do.

I got down from the bed and hugged him. I didn’t know what else to do.

I brought him to the bed and made him lie down. Closed the lights and tried to talk to him, so he could sleep midway.

But I was forgetting that the worst thing about Bhang is, it’s high is recurring. It would fool you that the trip is gone and right when you're comfortable, it’d come back.

I was still talking and I think I've talked him into sleeping, when the world started spinning again. I wriggled on the bed, I wanted to puke, I wanted to scream and cure it but I couldn’t do a thing.


When I woke up again, it was 6AM. The quirk was walking in his lawn.

He looked at me, 'We're never having Bhang. Promise me?'

'Never. I hate this trip.'

We held each other and sat down in the yawning morning light.

I still don’t remember what happened for the next 24 hours.

To be continued...

Bolpur Blues: Episode 14

I was counting days.

You know when you're excited for something and the bloody time just wont pass?

Goddamn relativity!

Anyway so,on the morning his train reached, I was already on the platform.

It was March already, and next day was Holi.
Santiniketan, for world famous reasons celebrates holi in a gigantic format. People from all over come and usually the roads are blocked, the totos won’t move, you find crisis in getting food, vehicles charge three times their usual rates, and it’s a misery for the dwellers.


Anyway, the platform was swarming with people. I saw him coming from far, and I didn’t know how to behave.

You know that strange feeling when you feel miles of distance with the person you're most close with?

I stared into the crowd and pretended to have not seen him.

He came right beside and hugged me sideways.

That smile. I had melted. All distances have shrunk.

I looked into his eyes. He held my both hands and faced me, 'Let me see you.’

I laughed.

He let out a sigh, 'It's been so long.’

'It has', I looked away.

'I'm sorry for being such an asshole. You know I'm like this.’

'Like what? Asshole? I know, bro.’ I pushed my palm on his face.

'Hungry! Let’s get breakfast. I didn’t sleep for two days. The train was so congested.’

'Come.’

We got food for us and he went to his room to sleep, I went to class.


He didn’t wake up for the most of the day, and called me at night, just when I was coming back to my room.

'Can you come to my room once?'

'Its late, I'll see you tomorrow?' I was in hurry. My PG shut its doors by 10.

'Please? For just few minutes? I have something important to tell you.’

So I rushed. I reached his room and was banging his door, 'Tell me what. Tell me what. I've to go to my PG.’

He came outside. He had a packet of gulal in his hand.

He smeared red gulal on my cheeks and kissed my forehead. 'Just wanted to wish you Holi. Go run now, you're getting late.’

I hugged him and rushed back, and I'm sure the blush on my cheeks was giving a good competition to the red gulal smeared.

To be continued...

Bolpur Blues: Episode 13

By the end of the month, strangely I was doing fine. The lingering aftertaste was strongly there of that short-lived love and the togetherness of the days you could literally count of your fingers, but I was doing fine.

By the end of the month, I was doing quite fine.

I got back to Santiniketan by the beginning of the next month. I didn't want to. I never had reasons to go back to that place, and with the quirk away, literally, I had strong reasons to not to. But the course, projects and whatevers push you to do stuff sometimes.

I was no less a victim of deadlines, having to shut my heart down and pack my bags and leave for the place.

And surprisingly, he kept shifting his return. Sometimes with the excuse of hating the place, and rest of the times for staying at home for some more time.

Never, for once did the excuses overshadow his reason of meeting me, and made him change his decision.

I stopped complaining. I was done with pushing stuffs and forcing people do things when they clearly showed no efforts.


'Know when to leave the table, when love is no longer being served'.


After a month, I was alone in my room.

A nyctophobiac, a flickering night bulb, an otherwise dark room and a winter night.

I contemplated of things, train of thoughts that forgot where it started from and ended at somewhere totally irrelevant, and I don't know when I slept.

I woke up around 3:45am, the last few minutes left of the devil's hour, with a hauntingly loud phonecall and a strange sound above my head.

I squinted at my phone and the quirk was calling. I looked up and there was a small bat in my room, batting with the stagnant blades of the fan and flying around.

I could literally feel my heart stop, when I picked up the call, and came down, ran to my bathroom and locked the door.

'There was a mob violence on one of my friends', he said in a low tone.

'There is a bat in my room', I screamed.

'I am coming. I hate this place', he was not listening.

'There is a fucking bat in my room', I cried out.

'What?'

'Whatever. Bye', I cut the call, and peeped through my bathroom door, still ignorant of what he said.

The bat was right beside my pillow, dead. I, sure and also cringing at the sight, came and cleaned the body off my bed.

When I had set my bed again and was preparing for another round of sleep, that's when I realised what he had said over the phone.

I called back.

'You're coming? When?'

'So now happy hormone has understood. Where is the bat?'

'Dead. Right beside my damn pillow. When are you coming?'

'Train's tomorrow. What should I get you from Kerala?'

'Just yourself.’

He laughed from the other side of the phone, and literally from the other side of the country and said good night.


I slept that night like I hadn't slept for a very long time.

To be continued...

Bolpur Blues : Episode 12

I was drunk in love, tripping on fingers entangled together, drugged on kisses, sloshed in lust.

So, when in no time came our time to part, though temporarily, at least that's what it looked like, we were hardly ready.

It was pre-Christmas and I had to leave for home to attend my family, he had to leave for his home, too. And our homes, funnily were miles apart.

I usually used to bring this in our conversations how our families will never even be able to communicate with each other if they were to talk only in their own dialect.

And he’d reply, it had never been about the conversations, it has always been about the silence.

And I’d frown at him for disturbingly philosophical all the time, which he would dilute in no time with his smile.


Anyway, it was Christmas, and we were parting in Santiniketan railway station. He came to see me off, and I stood infront of the door, while he stood on the platform.

Weirdly, when the train picked up speed, we both mouthed 'I love you' at the same time.
And then he started getting tiny with distance and home started getting closer.


I didn't know if it implied something but few days from then, we were not two people in love, anymore.
Long distance seemed to not work for us.

What started with missing each other took terrible forms by the end of the night. What used to be healthy debates earlier became arguments in loud voices. What used to be making fun of each other became taken as offence. What used to look like love was outgrown by insecurities.

And I clearly remember my intuition whispering me to let go; to cut the string than stretch it and let it tear itself.

But I was still in the hangover of that short-lived, raw, form of love.
Phonecalls started getting less, texts started getting shorter, video calls became extinct, and it was hurting no less.


And I thought to myself that maybe this was it, this love was short lived but it wasn't like it was not love.

We had just spent eighteen days together and felt so strongly, and I knew I had to get it off my chest.

That's when I took to blogging, because when I used to be a kid and I used to be sad, my father used to pat my back and tell me, 'write it out’.

And I realized, more than a lover, I have a story and a muse.

To be continued...

Bolpur Blues : Episode 11

Winter Dream
to ... Her

"One winter, we'll take a train, a little rose-colored car
Upholstered blue.
We'll be so comfortable. A nest
Of wild kisses awaits in every cushioned corner.
You'll close your eyes to shadows
Grimacing through windows
This belligerent nocturnal realm, inhabited
By black demons and black wolves.
Then you'll feel a tickle on your cheek ...
A little kiss like a crazed spider
Fleeing down your neck ...
Bending your head backwards, you'll say: "Get it!"
-And we'll take our time finding the beast
-While it roams ..."

-Rimbaud


The quirk had escorted me to my rented home in Santiniketan some fifteen minutes back, and I was just standing in my bare essentials, midday through changing my clothes, when he called me to read to me this poem.

I had no chance of telling him that in no poetic dimension is this a good time to listen to a poem, because he heard my 'Hello’ and got going.

Anyway, things have always been like this with the quirk, clearly wrong timed and too sweet to pause him in between to make him conscious of this crisis.

I let him complete his poem;

“Do you understand I was in the middle of something when you called?”

“You have to read Rimbaud. His poems are too beautiful to be true.” He was too excited again.

“I will. Ofcourse. But I'd like some clothes on me when I read him”, I laughed.

“Poems have no rules that they are to be read only wearing clothes”

“God you're impossible”, I was still laughing.

“You know what is the success of a poem?”

“What?” I could not wait for him to come up with another of his genius answers.

“It must make you feel naked, your feelings bare infront of it, emotions outbursting, and it must hit you where it needs the most healing.”

I didn't say anything. I had nothing so say. I could not come up with something in reply to that. I smiled across the phone and I guess he understood.

He stayed silent for some seconds and said good night.

For the rest of the night, I read that poem over and over again and fell asleep.


I woke up from a knock on my door at around 11 in the morning.
For someone like me for whom no morning exists, it was little too early, that too in winter.

I opened the door and there was the quirk standing, with ice cream and lunch.

He smiled sheepishly, “Thought you might be hungry.”

“Ice cream in winter?” I exclaimed.

“I read about that last night. Actually it is quite healthy to have ice cream in winter. Don't worry I'll have it with you. In that case, if something happens, we both will get sick.”

“I don't like sharing my ice cream” I rubbed my eyes.

The quirk smiled,  kissed my forehead and came inside.

I spent the rest of the afternoon lying, with my head on his belly, reading Rimbaud and listening to old Hindi songs with both of us singing along.

To be continued...