To my wife

Hi,

Sorry I was late. Rather late. But not you, oh no, you were right on time as always, and waiting! Don't ask me why, but I felt like writing another letter to you. And yes you can imagine this conversation in whispers under a sheet, I'll give you that, being a wife and all that. Knowing me as you do, you may duly imagine my snorts of shrill laughter at places you deem appropriate.

I don't know how to break this to you, but, I love you. Let that sink in. I love you.

Now, I am not one of those who love like they were born to love. Or the ones who live to be able to love, and love to be able to live. I think I just live our love, and I don't think I can live without our love. They have enough lunatic lovers on the planet to last them another IMDB. But I am fine with letting Romeo breathe easy in his grave about his legacy, no insecure competition here. I just love you the way I love you. But let me explain that.

I don't mean I'm not cupid-eyed stupid, or truly, madly, deeply yours. I am, I am in love like God made love. But I love you better than crazy, I love you mind-and-soul. I love you water-and-fish, not ship-and-iceberg. I love you heart-and-heartbeat, not die-and-live-forever. I belong to you like prayer belongs to gods, like wind belongs to poets, like Krsna belongs to Radha. I am cruelly, badly, cheekily yours.

I can grab stars and crystals for you, I can catch fire burning in your intensity, and I can sure as hell write the cheesiest poem about your black tresses made of the night. But I guess what would really make it worthwhile for me is that stolen look of yours from above the coffee mug, at a late hour really late in life. Or the better hours of a grey-haired, sleepyhead morning in a wood cabin by the river. Or a chirpy home full of grand-children talking trash about their parents to us. Yeah, that about completes it. Given the sex on the rooftop later that year.

I'm a big man in my head. With a tiny, minuscule sense of responsibility, little patience, and a rather compulsive thing for cheap, insensitive humor. But one couldn't call me emotionless, for my feelings are frozen tears. Instead of emotional, call me heartfelt. Instead of cheesy, cheeky. And you? You, my dove, are my warm chocolate fudge! You are the fire to my freeze, the cheese in my cheeks, the freedom in my fumble.

More than made for each other, I think we were made together. You know how questions and answers are made together? How the river and the shore are made together, how a man and woman must have been made together. More than two pieces of a puzzle, I think we are two broken halves of a piece lost on the floor.

The way you look at me hasn't changed since the first time I looked into your eyes. Wait, scratch that, too cheesy. Let me rephrase. The way you check me out hasn't changed since the first time I caught you ogling at me. Hah, better.

I love eating fruits, I love going to the gym, I love waking up early, and I love cribbing about it all. Calling you names in the morning when you poke holes in my head like a woodpecker cuckoo, making stinky faces when you kiss me all chirpy, threatening an apple for its life that you gave me to eat, I wouldn't know how to show my love if not for these little gestures. And you stand there smiling, sit there in satisfaction, as I make a fantastic fool out of myself.

I don't love you because I like you. I barely like you only because I love you. God save you if I didn't have this fuzzy, filling, fudge in my heart every time I thought of you. If only our gazes weren't lock and key... sigh.

My emotional, sensitive, loving wife, I will always love you. My brilliant, beautiful, balanced wife, I want to make babies with you.

Talking of babies, do you want to try the balcony, or the roof tonight?

A Queer Tree

Full unedited version:

I am a queer tree. I mean I'm straight but, you know, just eccentric. Like I can sometimes sway opposite to the wind just to confuse the other trees around me. Or start dropping my leaves way before autumn, gives them a real bad scare. And I love it, my eccentricities, my freedom, my sense of self. But, there's another side to me.

There's another side. A flat one. Like its not even there. Its not. Its surprising but it just never was. I simply never had in me whatever I was supposed to, on that side of my personality. Its as if some really sharp lightning just came and cut me in half right down the trunk, and removed the other half clean. It could totally have been so, except I don't remember the lightning. And there's no other side effect that would favor this theory, I'm pretty much normal otherwise. Really. Pretty much.

During childhood, with those other little plants around me, friends and otherwise, all trying to grow and become strong meaningful trees, I didn't even notice. I was too small, maybe. Or there was just not enough information. Whatever, I just didn't know that it wasn't how you were supposed to be. But a little bigger I grew, and I could say that there was something clearly different. Between me and them. Between me and everybody. Everybody else was normal. Ofcourse they had their eccentricities and differences and peculiarities, but they were still, in their basic selves inside, normal. And I somehow, just wasn't. There was one difference for sure that I never clearly acknowledged, but looking back, it definitely was real. I was weak, though just a little bit, but weaker than, say, normal. But I didn't know it then because I was taken care of well without any effort on my part. So strength apart, I still found myself a deviant, and the feeling only rose with years passing. It corresponded one to one with another feeling in me, that too, similarly, grew harder and more real as the years passed. It was the feeling of loneliness.

How I came to realize my uniqueness was actually because of my abilities. These abilities that I showed a flare for, made me known and talked about, and that really made me happy. It satisfied some inner craving for completeness which I knew not the cause of. And hence I tried even harder, and got better and better at them. It wasn't all of a sudden. Like what happened first was that I, in a moody swing one day, started swaying about me, a bit musically lets say. Its not something any tree can do, or does. Its an art, really, and there are trees popular in lands far far away just for their style of swaying. So anyhow, when I was doing that thing, pretty rookily I admit but atleast I seemed like I could do that stuff, I called out to a tree nearby. She saw me, and liked it! I was doing something on my own and somebody liked it! I was excited. So I did it more, and did it well. And kept trying. I don't know how or why, but I was fast. I pick up things fast. Soon I was all poetic in my motion and got pretty popular for it, atleast in the swamp. Trees used to turn to look at me do it when I called out for them, and used to nod in agreement, I was good.

And then I heard someone whistle. I never knew trees could do that. I mean wind made noises, sure, but to trap and move it inside you as you want it to and create those sounds that mean something, that's power. It is easily the most enchanting form of creative expression we possess. Revolutions have arisen out of the whistles of a tormented tree. And I could whistle. Its the most admired of art forms, and I really saw that I had some potential.

So yes, I had a few abilities, and was proud for them. But yet when I looked at someone with a normal, full round trunk with sturdy brown branches coming out of it, I used to feel something in me. Now he can't sway like me, can't wiggle his leaves like I can, isn't intelligent in its sounds and sure can't whistle, but he has something I don't. He is still, in some really basic sense, complete. He is normal, and I'm just not. And I can't for the life of me figure out why.

I saw it clearly somewhere in my adolescence. I saw the difference, right there, sitting in perfect view as if crying for attention. Like a chopped off half, like a joke. And the other half, it was in full bloom! It was all bright flowers and shapely leaves and poetry. But one half, just right there, naked. And I had a hint why. I could guess why I was so because I had seen more of life. Seen more of the others growing up to be normal, seen why they were turning out fine. And I couldn't bloody do anything about it. It was done with, it wasn't in my hands. And I thought what the hell, its alright. I mean I got abilities here ain't I. Show me someone who sways better.

And I saw trees who swayed better. Whoa. I saw some great trees of my time when I grew. Taller I grew, the more wonderful and able the world looked. And taller and taller I grew, for I was making up in height what I didn't have in width. I don't know if my incompleteness made me or I would anyway have been, but I was strong inside. Very much. And able. And I was using my abilities, my flexibility, and the beautiful spread of my leaves on one side, to hide the other flat side. It was awkward initially, it clearly showed, but I got better. I moved like a beauty, I whistled like a philosopher, and I started to atleast look like a perfectly normal tree, from a distance, yes, but yeah. Infact, given my moody sway, my mischievous tricks, my wild whistle, I think I'm now positively hot.

And lonely. I can excite other trees, I can make them want me, touch me, sway with me. I learned the tricks overtime. But I cannot make them love my incompleteness. I cannot counter my uniqueness, only the appearance of it, only temporarily. I can act, sure. But I don't want to. I don't even want to cover it anymore. I only want the company of trees that accept the fact. I want acceptance not without, but with it. I want to be seen in complete exacting truth, and then judged. For I believe, in all totality, given all my cracks and cuts, counting all my scars and losses, I'm still worthy of the pride I hold in myself.

My incompleteness made me what I am. It drives my instincts and makes me want to grow. Its fulfillment is the source of my satisfaction. I wouldn't have fought so much had I not had this reason to. An unsatisfied being, alone, is creative. And though I have not a hair's width of a guess as to how life would have been as a satisfied, complete, normal tree, I can say with all my power of belief, that this one is way more exciting.

And hence it is that I don't blame the seed I grew out of. It was only half a seed.

The Girl with a Secret

A little girl there was who knew a big secret. A secret made of gold and glint that she kept in the depths of her heart. It made her smile with a flush when no one was looking and her eyes sparkled with the pleasure it gave her.

Her waist was thin. Her feet small. She wasn't particulary breath-taking but no one could miss her too easily if she was in the same room. Her hair wasn't messy but just about careless. They described the whole person of her with a fair accuracy. Except for the secret, and the radiance that it brought to her face.

She could barely keep from laughing aloud when someone told her he's probably seen her before. And though she could hardly keep the giggle inside when someone asked what her name was, she still told them in as ordinary a manner as she could manage. She never let them know that she knew. She wanted the game to last.

There used to be a puppy in her house. It was just a little white ball of fur with huge glass eyes that she decided were only a shiny veil. She wasn't going to be fooled. At times she looked straight into his eyes and burst out laughing, controlling it fast and turning away to smile in secret. Lest he knows that she knew.

Nobody could really understand what it was that gave her this limitless stream of liquid happiness. What gave her that spring in every step and that jump she seemed to express with all her body, without actually making it. Whatever it was, it was plenty and it was joyful. Whereas actually, it was just a secret.

She had lived with it for too long to remember what gave her the idea. But she had somehow decided it was true. That for once she knew it right. She had decided that the world around her was a setup. That it was there to watch her grow. To see how she reacts. That it wasn't so many people in the world, it was just one outside it. That One person looking at her from all the eyes around her. And judging her. Whereas she had caught the trick. She knew it now and He didn't. He kept acting like different people from inside different faces trying to trick her into life, when all the while she knew. And smiled all inside her, never letting out, never leaving a hint. Or the game might end. Though she did sometimes just for the sheer fun of it, risk a sharp swift wink to the sky.