The Nightmare

Finding a flat to rent can be a real task. Movies, catalogs, websites, they've been training you your entire life to search for the perfect living space. So with every tiled backyard design you see in glossy pages and every sensationally breathtaking view from a french window a housing website throws in your face, you begin to weave your own dream.

However, after the first time a flat broker leads you through a dingy alley and shows you into a tiny crevice that he's trying to peddle off for a flat, you begin to readjust your expectations. Fast.

So you begin looking for the basics. Good rooms, cupboards, and windows. 

When I began searching for a flat more than a year ago, I went through all these phases. From expecting the castle of my dreams to be on the market to lease, I went to looking for durable plumbing. However, despite cutting my expectations significantly, I still wanted some of the things I'd grown up with. 

I wanted sunlight but not so much that it would scathe the plants that I intended to grow. I wanted ample of kitchen space, enough for both my oven and me. I needed to know that Internet lines could be drawn to whichever desolate corner I chanced on this housing arrangement. 

A few brokers and after visiting houses across sewer lines and below bridges I hit the jackpot of little houses. Windows, enough wardrobe space to satiate my shopping addiction and heck even a balcony! It was a match made in heaven. I knew then and there I'd sign the lease in blood if the situation called for it.

So a proud lease owner, I settled into my cosy abode the next day. Making use of every type of cleaner known to man I erased any remnants of the previous owner and even eliminated every radioactive life form that had spread thinly across the space.

But unknown to me a source of great annoyance was waiting. Biding its chance till it could spring upon me and scare the living daylights out of me. And it made it's appearance promptly next morning.

A bell, that sang an eclectic mix of Hindi  trucking songs, intermittently throwing hisses and static my way. Oh the tragedy! You cannot image the terror. 

I sprang out of bed, my fingers searching for a makeshift  weapon to protect myself. It was only the maid, and it was only the bell.

It's been over a year in this flat and I can assure you that bells like that don't grow on you. You don't get used to it and you don't begin to enjoy it. In fact, it's like repeatedly having a the scab torn off a wound. It festers and becomes worse.

Driven to the edge of insanity, I have been forced to look high and low for the power point, so I can dismember the bell that now is the sound track to most of my nightmares. But it's a cunning rival. Always hidden. Always missing. 

And over the span of the year, it has bred. Little spawns have cropped up all over the neighbourhood, screeching their own tracks through the night as I continue to sit defenseless in my flat with paper-thin walls. 

So, I now am the girl who embraces power cuts. For when it's pitch black and I'm all alone, I know the bell won't ring. It just can't. And at that thought, the corners of my mouth begin quivering. Ever so slightly. There's a smile rising from my gut and it can't wait to surface.

A Bottle of Courage

It’s taken me years and a spoilt liver to realise that I never wanted to get over you. I always wanted to stay your lover. The hickies you so loving lay on my bare skin might have faded but my fingers still search for the slight bruise. It’s taken my deathbed to show me that our love is eternal. It’s taken a lifetime without you to not be afraid anymore and say that I stopped living the day you stopped breathing.

The moment is still clearly etched in my brain. You were lying still on the floor, your back to me, as a pool of blood began to sprawl outwards. I never wanted to kill you; I just wanted to stop you. I saw you that day with a suitcase in hand, ready to leave me for another man, a real man and I panicked. I saw in the bundle you had packed, flashes of the life we would never have. I remembered the names for children we had decided together as we lay entwined in bed and all I could think of were the unborn foetuses that we never would have a chance to nurture. I must have been hallucinating, for I can swear that your blood ran along the contours their little feet would have made on our floor. But the floor of just bricks and steel, it never really had a chance to become a home.

Ironically, even over your dead body, the wind chime you had hung played musically with my feelings. There was guilt, but it was overpowered by the effervescence of relief. If you had left I would have never known family dinners, I would have never known home cooked meals and instead I would have known just the panties of strange women and a venereal disease or two.

In that one moment that I struck your head with the bat we’d bought for our kids to play with, you saved me from a life of degeneration. I would have seen little and sensed little if only I had missed your head and you had swiftly run away. It might surprise you and if you had known maybe you might not have wanted to leave, but I remember when we bought the bat.

It was a week after our marriage, a hurried affair much like our courtship had been. For me you were a girl who could tolerate me and for you I was nothing like your ex-boyfriend. It was a match made in heaven. You thought I needed repair, I never did understand what made you feel I was broken in the first place. But after the first time you led me to your bed and let me explore you between the sheets, I was ready to ditch the truth and say I was broken just to keep you around.

It was a good few months when you first came into my life. Your excitement was infectious and I was interested not only your negligee but also of the long talks that you engaged me in. My world of books had till that point permitted little time for human interaction. Your destiny brought you to me like a much needed bookmark. Coincidentally, the bookmark you gave me was the first and last I ever owned. I never did finish the book I had left in it.

I want you to know that it wasn’t rage that made me strike you, it was compassion. I wanted for you to hear what I had to say and since you stole the literary world for me, I did it the only human way you taught me to; through physical contact.

Your death meant I was ostracised. Those dinner friends you had invited no longer gave me a reason to use the fancy cutlery we had picked out. It was never my in-laws on the other side of the phone. Even the dog you had insisted we adopt, found solace in the life of a stray. The black mutt ran off into a dark night and I never saw him again. I could have stopped him, but I had you and he didn’t matter.

It was about that time that I had to choose between cigarettes and alcohol. I had read that both were powerful intoxicants who could grant you glimpses of the life you wanted. Since my father had died of cancer I naturally gravitated towards alcohol. First it was an innocent glass or two. They made dinner seem more bearable since my cooking didn’t match up to yours and indeed even the simplest of the dishes I attempted were terrible.

Alcohol also facilitated conversations and conversations I did have. For a long time I thought I had got loony and I was talking to myself, but then the truth dawned on me. I was talking to you, for you had never left, I had stopped you. Alcohol was the bottle of courage that an introvert like me had always needed.

Your replies were always just silence, nothing more and nothing less. Although, I hadn’t expected it, your quietness made me angsty. Many times there was a growing agitation in my mind and to forget that I upped my dosage. If you ask me, I think you’d better be able to mark out the point when I graduated from few glasses to few bottles since you never did drink at any of those instances.

I guess your silence made me wonder whether you were unhappy that I had stopped you, for you never did speak about the children that you wanted and you never did unpack that suitcase. It just sat beside the door for all my years tormenting me.

Now, I’m just a beaten down man who pukes up blood, that all I have left. But I feel if there’s a world after this, then I’m heading your way. This time don’t answer. Just stay silent if you’ll have me once I’m there. 

Cleaning out the Closet

Today, I was cleaning out the closet. Behind the usual pile of humdrum episodes, I found hanging in a corner, wrapped in muslin cloth, our memories. Yes, the ones we'd woven together. It had been years, but the hauntingly beautiful sensations still cloaked it. The way you looked at me. The way I left. The warmth in my stomach.

I felt it, in that moment. The dull ache in my heart that no  amount of antacid seemed to remedy. The lump in my throat and the emptiness of my hands. I reached out and unwrapped those sensations, my fingers trembling as they touched the raw happiness that ran through them. Your hands entwined with mine, your heartbeat steady below my palm, your eyes on mine. It was all there.

I still remember the day I met you. A chance occurrence. Never in a million years would I have turned around and placed my heart in your hands. You were nothing like the man of my dreams. You were tall, too tall. You were difficult to read, and I wanted honesty. You were undependable at a time when all I needed was home. Why would I ever turn around? But I did. I did again and again, until I began turning only so that I could see you again.

I withdraw my fingers from the cloth. A thin invisible cut runs through my palm. It's almost like a paper cut, but it hurts a lot worse. I head to the kitchen to make some coffee and bread. Why leave my heart and stomach both hurting? I look at the toaster, the inferno, and the sweat scent of cinnamon covered french toasts hits my nostril.

You always did promise me breakfasts. For a boy who claimed to make the world's best french toasts, I sure did go a lot of mornings without any food at all. You stocked nothing in your fridge, nothing in your shelves, but then again, as long as you were there I couldn't care less.

All I got was some popcorn once. It wasn't salted. It was plain, simple, much like our love affair. But sometimes I wonder whether all we had needed was some drama? Would you have stuck around if I had created a few alternate personalities? Would you have fought for either of them? Or would they all have been left, as lonely as me, watching time and love pass them by?

Maybe I should have. In these coffee-for-one moments, some company would have been good. Without them here, my needless whispering confuses people. My single spoon, single fork and single heartbeat can't keep the cold out.

I look at my reflection in the clear glass of my kitchen window. There's a face there I don't recognise. There's no smile playing on those lips, no ideas mischievously dancing in those eyes. There's just a face. The girl staring back at me, she's just two eyes, a nose and a mouth. Nothing more, nothing less.

Shaky Starts

Sometimes in our drive to be the best version of ourselves we forget to take a step back and revel in what we are. We look at our reflection in the mirror, but don't really see what's smart, what's sharp, what's important, and what's great. We forget to be thankful for the little joys and we forget to do the things we love.

Writing is the greatest love affair of my life. People, situations, places. Things are always changing. Last year was all about transitions. I was trying to find my place after starting of at a new job in a new city, and I must admit I was swept away. From learning how to live independently to figuring out a billion technical tools and terms. There hasn't been a single, dull moment.

However, my whirlwind romance with financial writing has meant that other things on my to-do list, have been placed away in the attic and forgotten. No more. I've decided to take charge again. Bring back what was fashionable before share graphs and balance sheets. 

So no more pausing. No  more spaces. It's time to write.