The relationship between nature and human has always been that of love-hate. Nature, much like human, has its way of tricking souls into assurances that carry all probabilities of getting shattered any day, on the call of a superior force. News flashes reporting an avalanche, or a hurricane, or an earthquake are quick reminders of the only lie that we have grown up believing in; hope. Thousands of husbands wake up to find their wives having slept their restless nights off, eternally, or mothers, whose children never returned home from their adventurous road trips. Humans, nevertheless, bite back, as we’ve studied in our ever scoring Environmental Education courses. There, though, we’ve learnt about the give and take relationship where we’ve exploited every natural resource we laid our hands on. I believe that’s a general relationship we establish with abundance, time and again, when we’re hardly able to value whatever has been provided. It is only crisis where regret creeps in, reminding us how much of a situation we can actually take for granted. Advocating the love part, who says that human race isn’t grateful? Ever since evolution, much like a bunch of non-romantic twenty-something year olds, we have reserved small gestures to convey a vote of gratitude towards nature. We call them festivals.
Like the rest of human race that believes that a new year brings in a new beginning, I too, had learnt that his giving me no reason to stay, gave a good reason to go. Relationships often have the most random beginnings, but it takes a lot to end something that couldn’t make its way to be felt like a relationship. As I waited for the sky above me to fill my life with new, better ventures, I looked at him and wondered how I got back to the same cycle of having the need to be around him just two weeks after taking an oath to stay away from toxic addictions. It left me feeling like that part of a therapy where you relapse after a fortnight, this time with full conscience about the lack of benefits you derive from the drug. Nature, with its classic composition of light, air and rain, has a way of helping us reflect our deepest thoughts and truest selves, which we’re too scared to expose otherwise. Something there is, in dawns, that we often neglect. As we await the break of a new day, we forget to tie the loose ends of ourselves that we’ve scattered over the night. In India, Makar Sankranti marks the dawn of spring onto winter sky, reminding our farmer families that the sun is up, and the harvest season is approaching. Different cultures of the country celebrate the festival with regional food varieties, and yet, are unified by the strings of the kites they fly high, nation-wide. Kite flying is a way to acknowledge the importance of the presence of wind in the air that we harvest to provide electricity to rural fragments of the Earth. That led me to thinking, should I harvest the wind in my neighboring air to ignite the suppressed fragments of my heart? Or should I leave way for a hurricane to strike and make peace with its aftermath?
We, as twenty-something year old romantics, spread out our wings, much like a kite, and venture into a sky of opportunities, competing and fighting to survive. Once broken, we mend our kite-hearts with hope, the biggest lie, and send them to soar again. With every venture we lose, we submit a part of our kite-heart, much like with every victory. As a romantic, I can tell you, when we have the right conviction, we try our best, fail, and try again. As many times as it takes to realize that an end has to be brought to a relationship. Consistency in trial, ergo, irrespective of every situation that speaks otherwise, constitutes a romantic at heart.
“This is my favorite time of the year”, he whispered into my ear, assuming that I am deep asleep. It was something past four in the morning, and the festive excitement kept him from sleeping. The lack of knowledge in my head of the whole situation had kept me from sleep as well. I turned, facing him; eyes closed, and mumbled, “This indeed is a beautiful time. Why are you shivering?” “I am coming back from the terrace, I went to check the wind”, he muttered, still shaking. Offering him my single blanket that I carried 267kms to save myself from the misery that a shared blanket always brings with it, I thought to myself, how chilly can the wind be. We’re all checking our winds here, or maybe, negotiating a little with the wind, to establish what we have is the best that we can offer.
“We ended it too abruptly, don’t you think? Don’t you agree we need closure?” he asked, pulling the blanket. “Closure comes for something that had a beginning. We did not even begin the relationship. There was no relationship”, I replied, burying my face in the pillow, making my agony for the whole situation inaudible. You see, the tag of a relationship is something that is unnecessary when two partners are on the same page. Yet, the same tag acts need-fully handy when one of them reaches the understanding to want to flip the page, and the other one demanding to remain stuck. He broke the silence by saying “we decided we’d be exclusive.” Exclusively what, I wanted to ask, but like every other time, I gulped the inquisitiveness and told something to push him even far away, “until I learnt that you still flirt with other people, is that what you understand by exclusive?” “I thought you’re okay with that, oh no, I remember you saying that you’re okay with that.” “What else was I supposed to say?” In my head, there were many things I could have said that night when I found out from him, after questioning, that I’m not the only one. I could have told I’m not okay, I could have told that I had cried my eyes out to that information. Maybe I wasn’t ready for a mistrust that soon, so I never wanted to trust.
“I didn’t even know what to call you”, I whispered, pulling the blanket over my face in an attempt to cover what little memories I wanted to keep of him. Hesitant things romantics say to repair their kite-hearts before taking a flight. “Look at me, c’mon, face me”, he kept saying, only to push me deeper under the blanket. “We’re friends”, he began, and cutting him, I said, “We’re not friends. We were never friends. We don’t have a single thing that we can both agree to, do we?” He accompanied me under the blanket, pulling it over his face and answered, “Yes, we were the best sex of each other’s lives. That is why I wanted to keep it to the sex, because I knew we weren’t compatible otherwise.” That is when it dawned upon me that we agreeably found the best of ourselves when intimate physically, but what relation is that? If it really were as top-heavy as it sounds, why was it keeping the two of us from getting into other real people, or real relationships? What is it about the sexual relation we had, that made us hate each other all the time and feel something that isn’t love, isn’t a relationship? How do we end it? How do we move forward? My kite-heart had battled against his wind for so long, that when he changed his direction, it lost its way beyond tracing.
Under that single blanket lay two raging, indecisive souls that were done with one another, countless times, but could never let go. Under that blanket, even being fully clothed, they were the most naked forms of themselves, beating each time they knew their bodies were to negotiate the arguments that their lips never agreed on. Under that blanket, there was no relation, no meaning, no logic, and no explanation. Under that blanket, they created a universe of possibilities that they were both too late to explore. A universe, that consisted of no past voices, no assurances from the future, just the sound of two bodies breathing, occasionally beautified by the noise that their thoughts created. Outside that blanket, breathed the real world, the one where I was too restless and infatuated with someone who was so unavailable, emotionally. Outside that blanket was my New Year resolution of never getting into this web again, my phone reminder that rings thrice each day restricting me from texting him. Outside that blanket was an atmosphere that was always cold with the two of us together, but inside it, was an unnatural warmth that neither of us had felt before, definitely not with one another. Struggling with the silence, we fell asleep, not facing each other, but being very close to each other’s breath. That morning, I woke up to a quote he had sent me over Instagram, after a night of having felt a million oceans, and not having spoken a drop. “I end up not knowing what to feel for you, except that I know exactly how I don’t want to”, it read, looping me back to yet another multiple-connotation statement that he has always excelled in.
