Chapter 2

I had invented a game for myself of flirting with luck in the name of my angel.When I needed something even as simple as a medium of transport or a kind fellow traveler, I would say to myself “If he loves me, I…”. Rarely if ever, did this charm fail. And I grew to believe in it so strongly and feel blessed in his love so soon that when I walked away, I took this wishing charm with me. And like I have been walking with his love, my charm remains as if his love for me will remain a cornerstone. And ever, shall it somehow fail him, this unquestioning unrequisitioning love of his, my charm shall break that day.

So strong was this belief, that I lived through each day with a sense of calm comfort, a feeling which can only come with absolute feeling of security, that all could be right with the world, that its ugliness could transform into inherent beauty if beheld with care, a little more. I have never been able to adjust to reality. I hold the key to the magical vortex of my imagination build through snippets from fairy tales from Europe, Indian America (For the lack of a better expression to refer to American Indian folklore), Asia and Africa. My grandfather had travelled widely and this led to a well stocked library for us. My parents shared the same love for books and I grew up absorbed in tales from home and beyond. I was awkward amongst people. I tried the required singing and dancing routine but the attempts always left me feeling intensely self conscious and embarrassed unseen beneath layers of false bravado. I would take the key and slip out of the reality into my vortex. As I grew older, the vortex became darker…as if someone had begun to paint the windowpanes black…and instead of slipping into it, I would now have to fall back into it and feel it instead of watch it around me sketch itself into reality.

I was, as indicated earlier not a very healthy child. I would have the oddest of maladies. One of this was a perforated eardrum which gradually healed creating strangely heightened sensitivity to sound, tone and texture of voices. The only way to not listen to even the most whispered conversation was to distract myself deeper into the vortex. I called this ‘being polite’. My assumed alter ego called it ‘cheating’. Vehicular sound was a pain. The sound of the machine became dominant to everything else that would go around. But this helped me to pick up the whispers in the vortex - the stifled elegant laughter of the gentlemen and ladies in masked garden parties, the gentle buzz of the butterflies or the breathing of my angel. I was surprised the first time I heard it. I thought he did not breathe. But breathe he did, very gently as if breathing on glass to draw his name on a monsoon evening. And on this discovery, I began to listen to him. I would hear him move, closing my eyes. I would hear him draw open the curtains to let the soft morning or evening light in. He was a creature of the light, and I of darkness. I burned in the daylight- no amount of sophisticated lotion could prevent or control that. Only twice in a day, could I let myself feel the light and he drew open the curtains then and stood by me as I soaked in the moonlight. I would hear him walk by me, the rustle of his silence. I would hear his words, but more importantly listen deeply to his tone, the texture of his voice. The different textures and tones colouring what his words said, the tilt of the accent, the lilt of the tone, the final cursive and the sub-textual stroke. And then, these colours began to rip me apart.

Each of what I listened remained etched in my memory, like etchings on glass which I could now hold in my hand, (carefully, lest it broke) ;turn to the twilight or to dawn and read, again and again. The meanings formed from the smoke of his absinthe voice with the rising smoke of the ashes of his tone and texture began to take a vise like grip around first my heart and transcended to my soul and clouded my existence. The grip tightened with every passing moment of conversation and slipped into my consciousness while silent. At first I pushed it away and fell back into the vortex. But slowly the vortex spiraled uncontrollably away and the grip held me locked in reality. The key had slipped away and I writhed in abysmal pain. I felt the poison throbbing in my temple, my veins and my heart was turning purple…and then blue. I struggled with the bonds. I lashed out. As a child I had been disturbing…I was never a silent weeper and my sobs would be heart rendering and I fought back whenever I was given instructions or boundaries. I reached out to these moments to draw strength to fight back and in turn I stabbed at the heart of my angel. I watched in mute sadistic fascination as it bled into his golden white self and two gentle tears slipped out silently from his eyes. I did nothing. I did not hold him. The grip was tightening around my heart. My heart was now fading into white. And, suddenly the vortex opened and swallowed me in, closing upon him as he stood mute, his wingspan open against the window with the drawn curtains, pale against the brilliant orange sunset.

When I returned, he was standing beside me. He had managed to stitch up his heart and offered a weak smile. I recoiled in horror. I could not accept this. The guilt came in small waves first. And then it hit in huge waves which refused to ebb and only accumulated with infinite salt deposits coating my burning heart. I rummaged for a way to compensate. “I would be good”, I said to myself like I would do as a child on failing an elder, a friend or a dying butterfly. But I could not…and one day while my angel was crouching after one after another seemingly infinitesimal stab had left him incapacitated, I looked into the mirrored lake of the magical swans and saw what I had become.

And that is the day, I decided to run away from him and never come back.

Chapter 1

Some people have everything. Some people have something. And then, there are some people who have my Angel. I am not a man. And this is not about a woman. I don’t even know what this is about, to tell you the truth…and I am not a writer, so I cannot really imagine and craft my fantasy from letters to words to phrases to sentences and paragraphs. All I write nowadays are notesheets, anyways.

I bought a book of love stories from a bookstore last week. It’s edited by Jeffrey Eugenides. I was steadily plodding through the stories with the stupid smile, tremulous mouth and sparkling eyes as is wrought to happen while reading love stories till I stepped into “The Hitchhiking Game” by Milan Kundera and Lord, how I hated it. It was this corroding despise rising from my navel and worming its way up my throat till it tasted like an aftertaste of bile. Yet, I could not skip the story and move on to the next. I tried skipping pages first. Then I tried skipping paragraphs. Then conjunctives followed by punctuations, the random article. Nothing worked. It was as if I was doomed to read it, line by line and recoil further and further away from my erstwhile feeling of calm, sheltered, gently swaying ecstasy. So, I kept the book aside and broke another cube of dark chocolate.

My angel had gifted me chocolates. There are many ‘best’ things about my Angel. Let’s begin from the beginning. Although, I am not sure where the beginning is, but since this is a not kiss but tell all account, let us attempt to find one end of the string.

When we were children, we had a popular game. It was to act as gypsies and fortune tellers. We would try to gather our knowledge, most of it drawn from fictitious rendering of palmistry by seniors at school, elders who deigned to spend time with us and siblings who passed on tit-bits of ‘stuff’ learnt at school during lunch breaks. Once, such knowledge was gathered we would attempt to discern the details of the future and believe with utmost commitment that can only come to a child. We always drew girl angels with golden hair, in a white frilly dress, a straight halo and a lop sided wand. Who knew then, that my angel would be a man? Indeed, a beautiful man who would wake up in my mind and traverse across my soul and hold me while I laughed and wept and sink into my sleep, never letting me go.

So, I had a letter. The first letter of the name of the man I would love (the concept of being able to really love a woman was not very clear to us then) and I tucked this precious letter away in the folds of my mind. Over the years, this letter never really peeped out although I often believed myself to be absolutely in love and even named my imaginary friend with the letter. And then one day around 6 years ago, it did. And without making the connections, I was absolutely, wonderfully in love. So much so, that I realized that all my earlier liaisons had meant nothing. They were meaningless trysts with destiny, a sort of preparatory ritual to pass into this one.

My angel often travels with me. He says he enjoys it. I have a curious tendency to fall asleep whenever there is any intensity of emotion at the offing. I have been known hence to slip into deep sleep after illness, disturbing incidences, declaration of love, hatred, problematic situations, desperate attempts at the pursuit of happiness and so on. I fall asleep every time I am with my angel. The deep sleep of the alive punctuated by dreams in Technicolor, none of which I can ever remember. Probably because, in my half sleep, I know, I always know I am waking up beside my angel. It is pure joy watching my angel sleep, with his wings folded beneath him, his face a calm mask of self containment, smooth supple skin strained over features so different and yet so perfectly aligned that it makes him look only closely human. He sleeps straight with his hands folded over his chest, as if ready to hold, to love and to protect. His love is a bottomless pit where you never really hit the ground, just an ethereal feeling of falling forever.

I often fall ill. I am not frail, infact I look disgustingly healthy. I believe that coupled with my mind, my body has also learnt the art of absolute eclipse of the real. I also fall ill while asleep. Strange things happen to my body. I turn cold, sometimes bluish but mostly just cold or unbearably hot. My muscles stiffen and I am about allergic to most things you would encounter and set aside with not as much as a sniffle. My angel often remains awake beside me. He rarely sleeps. And he holds on, as if afraid I would let go. In my sleep, while with him, as I grow ill, I have tugged at him, involuntarily as my spasms have taken over. It is only during retrospect that I wonder what led me to reach out to him while over years of sharing my room, I have never in my sleep, while falling ill reached out for the person beside me. It is somehow with utmost trust and faith that I believe he can heal me. No medicinal plant and certainly not the constant drugs that would course through my veins till I finally decided to put a stop to it.

My angel moves in a symphony of silence. His grace is not haunting, it is comforting. He despises staying still and he constantly moves, fixing this here and that there, as if it is all his to heal, to mend, to protect. I enjoy watching him. When he is not aware of being watched, his face transforms from polite disinterest to a portrait of moving shadows, flitting emotions and hooded eyes, looking inward as if in deep introspection of the autumn rain. This introspection fascinates me, and all I want to do is reach out and touch his face. But, I am afraid that the moment, so very fragile will shatter and the shards I will loose forever and even if I find some, I will be unable to put it all together again, for the sake of the missing pieces. So I stand back and watch with awe as the shadows flit across and my angel throws back himself and by mercy of the sweet Lord, he feels and holds close to his heart, the secrets surrendered to him.

And then one day, I left my angel and walked away, and have been walking since. As, I said before…some people have everything, some people have something. And then, there are some people who have my Angel.