Kadai: Anant writes to Kavya

Kadai/ Kadhai/ Kathai/ Kazudai continues [1].

I read your letter over and over again. Till impressions of my thumbs rubbed onto the paper and threatened to leave a gaping hole. Last few mornings, I found your letter left open on my chest when I woke in the morning. Most people they yearn for closure, I yearn for a beginning.

Sometimes I lose myself in the haze of your metaphors. You say you loved me like one loves a city. I struggled with that line. Then, last night, it hit me as I looked at a very empty road from Kishore’s balcony. The dim light with urban insects for company. A lone dog was pawing its way through the darkness and the emptiness. If that street was a city Kavya, you would would love it for its emptiness, and its history. I would love it for the dog.

You see, you love a city for its ruins. You love the ruins for their history. For their romantic morbidness. When sometimes we sat in the ruins, your fingers would by their own will trace the remains of my teenage angst, those strange running bumps that come from deep cuts of cheap blades on the forearm. You traced them like they were your map. Where were you trying to go?

Me. I love the ruins for a different reason. For their ability to harbour life. The birds nest in these ruins and poop on unsuspecting lovers’ heads. Children brave the stink of bats, and cricket balls find their way into the stairwell. These ruins, they breathe like organisms into the city. I love a city for harbouring such ancientness. Even when a small dargah is marred by a fountain of phone wires. In the city that we fell in love, our Delhi – even ruins become electric poles. Even in their decrepitness, they manage to hold together communication lines.

Foible. Such a delicate word that. In my way of loving cities, ruins and spaces you saw a foible. I couldn’t be the ruin you wanted. Accepting a city’s history is not the same as loving the city for what it is now. I am that city whose history you loved. But whose present you found crass. Like Delhi. You find its glass towers useless, and hate its satellite towns. You find change vulgar. Only the original sin is acknowledged. What do you accept more? The original or the sin? Are other sins less wonderous because they are not ancient?

The strange thing is that your capacity to love a person’s history is incredible. Most people, they try to erase their lover’s history. People like to believe that they are the first muse and only love. You on the other hand are happy to know that the person you love has loved and been loved before. Or maybe it’s the ghosts you love. Me, I need to get rid of my ghosts. I cannot have them play around in my head with you singing songs to them. Isn’t it strange that I have used the word “love” more times in this letter than I have used in my entire lifetime.

This is not to say that you are wrong or in some way adequate. We love the same things, but we love them for different reasons. When you left Delhi, you left me. Delhi was changing and so was I. You couldn’t take it. Here I was, relishing the aliveness within me which was banishing the ghosts. When the ghosts left me and the djinns found new corners in the city, you no longer knew whom to play with. My letter to you has none of the lightheartedness that your letter has. I apologize. I cannot celebrate a broken affair or a heart.

There are some cities that we live. But we cannot return to them. Because they choke us with the memory of who we were. You end up being an outsider to your own life. That dog, it wags its tail at me. My disillusionment dissolves. All ruins can be occupied. Even the ones within.

[1] Previously in the series
9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1