Queen’s Cross
We were at a café having casual conversation over coffee and
cake when it suddenly hit me!
‘We are in a café having casual conversation over coffee and
cake!’ I shrieked!
‘So?’ she enquired,
cool as a body in a morgue. ‘That’s a perfectly
normal thing to do when you’re out with your girlfriend, right?’
‘Let me break it down for you,’ I replied, ticking points
off my fingers. ‘(a) we broke up 12 years ago, (b) you got married, (c) and
moved to another continent, and (d) as per our last conversation about a decade
ago, you don’t remember that I ever happened in your life.’
‘Interesting…’ she
replied, totally unfazed by my response. ‘You
still haven’t learnt anything better to do with those fingers.’
We considered each other for a minute. Now that I thought
about it, Anjali looked very familiar to her 20-year old self. Just as cute. As
puffy. On the other hand, I had streaks of whitening hair, darker dark circles,
and an older beard. But why was I seeing my own dark circles?
‘So what you’re saying
is - (a) that I’m not actually here, (b) you’re either hallucinating or
dreaming, (c) your sub-conscious is so self-aware that you actually know that
you’re talking to your sub-conscious, and (d) after all this time, your mind
still thinks of me when you need to have an actual conversation. Either you’re
seriously screwed up in the head or you need to tell me what you’ve been
smoking.’
My eyes opened as soon as she said this. I woke up in my bed
and there she was, sitting on my study table; as real as the Sun shining
through my roof.
‘So we’re obviously
having an inception sort-of moment here. Nice. I’ve never been in someone
else’s sub-conscious before,’ she opened. ‘And for the record, I moved to another continent and then got married. Big difference.’
‘Thanks for setting the record straight. My readers would’ve
really cared! But more importantly, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE?’ I
countered.
‘You tell me. I’m
simply a figment of your imagination. What are you trying to work through?’
‘So I’m just imagining this? If this is all in my
imagination, then why are you dressed so plainly. We could be having the same
conversation with you in something more… objectionable. And why are we in my
room?’
‘So that you’re not
distracted,’ she said. But even as she said the words, her kurti-jeans
attire turned to a dress short enough to keep my attention but long enough to
not bother my chauvinism. She looked at herself and chuckled, ‘good work. But let’s not get carried away
from the issue at hand. What’s up with you?’
I looked at her for a moment. Nothing that I hadn’t seen
before. But perhaps it was best to get to the point. After all, if she was just
my imagination, this was nothing more than some mental foreplay. I could do
better with my sub-conscious.
‘I can’t find the last chapter to this series I’ve been
writing,’ I said.
‘You’re writing again?
Nice. What is it about?’ she asked.
‘It’s about my disastrous dating escapades. I’ve even come
up with a clever title. It’s called “Vedika, Vinita, What the f…!” Like the
Latin phrase Ve…’
‘Is this like the post
you wrote about me back in the day?’ she interjected twinkling with mischief.
She usually didn’t do that.
‘Um yeah, about that…’
‘And that’s why you’ve
skirted through the series without mentioning any real long-term relationships
and just random chicks you met on one or two dates.’
‘Yeah but…’
‘And that’s why you’ve
refrained from really offending anyone, just in case anyone feels as bad as I
did.’
‘You’re not supposed to remember this, remember?’
‘Dumb question. One,
how would I remember that I’m not supposed to remember. And two, I’m not really
here you idiot. This is you talking to you.’
We sat in silence for what seemed like a long time, while
the Sun continued to shine through my roof with a light breeze making its way
through the closed windows. She really did have a point. 12 years ago, I had
written a similar series on my college days which had a whole chapter of me
making fun of her. Our relationship wasn’t doing too well anyway. And with that
one post on my blog I might have put the final nail in the coffin. In my
stubbornness I did not take the chapter down till
years later, when it was already too late.
‘What are you thinking
about,’ she interrupted my chain of thought.
‘Aren’t you already supposed to know that? You are in my
head after all.’
‘Good point! You’re
finally getting the hang of it. So you’re thinking why didn’t you mention any
of the more serious relationships in your series. On the off chance that you’d
end up offending them, you didn’t take the chance at all. Instead you went with
the easy targets. The ones who would weigh light on your conscience. But guess
what, if you choose to write about dating misadventures, you’re going to offend
people. You wouldn’t be much of a writer if you didn’t offend anyone.’
‘And the ones who get offended would leave me…’
‘Like I did.’
‘I crossed a line.’
‘We were done long
before that ever happened.’
So what is this, I thought to myself. Some self-induced
therapy session? Or was my brain finally melting up. And as clear as crystal as
meth, I could hear her voice, without her moving her lips at all, ‘so how have you been all this while?’
I told her about the many many (many) dating
disappointments. How I discovered girls use guys for emotional (ab)use as much
as guys use girls for physical (ab)use. I discovered how even I was capable of ghosting
someone. I told her about the girl from MBA with whom I was on-and-off for 6
years and how each time felt like the definite last time and how this was
definitely the lastest last time. I told her about the one that got away, the
one which ended in divorce, and the ones who didn’t make it past the first or
second dates. I told her how I was wronged by the universe, and I was unwilling
to play by its rules again. I told her how I feared trusting anyone again,
because I didn’t have it in me to fail one more time. I told her how I decided
that if I could just manage to stay fit and rich, the women will keep coming.
And if not anything else, there’s always Kasol.
‘So what you’re
telling me is… you’re done.’
‘Definitely not. Else you wouldn’t be here.’
‘So what do you want?’
I considered this for a moment, grappling with the weight of
her question. What the fuck did I want. Love? Redemption? Apology? A lifetime
supply of pizza?
‘I just want my last chapter.’
‘I mean in life. What
the fuck do you want in life?’
‘I want to go back 12 years or 8 years or 4 years or however
long it takes to fix one of my mistakes.’
‘I can’t turn back
time for you. But think about this - if you have made mistakes with me, and
after me, and after that, and after that… aren’t you due for your next mistake
soon? Maybe try not to screw that up?’
‘And what if I’m too afraid to commit to a mistake again.’
‘As someone very close
to both of us once said, “It is impossible to live without failing at
something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived
at all—in which case, you fail by default.”’
We sat without talking for a long time. The realization of
what would happen next settled gradually over me in the long minutes, life
softly falling snow.
‘I’ve got to wake up, haven’t I?’
‘That’s up to you.’
‘I’ve got a choice?’
‘Oh yes,’ she
smiled at me. ‘We’re in your room right?
I think you can decide to stay here, create more fiction, stay on your
computer, and do the things you’ve been doing.’
Silence again.
‘But you want me to go back.’
‘I think,’ she
said, ‘that you want to return. That you
want to find someone. I cannot promise that you will find her. But I know this,
that you have more to offer than you think you do.’
I nodded and sighed. Waking up would not be nearly as hard
as committing to someone had been, but it was sunny and windy in here, and
waking up would be heading back to paid and the fear of more loss. I stood up,
and she did the same, and we looked for a long moment into each other’s faces.
‘Tell me one last thing,’ I said. ‘Is this real? Or has this
been happening inside my head?’
She beamed at me, and her voice sounded loud and musical in
my ears even though the Sun was getting dimmer, obscuring her figure.
‘Of course it is happening inside your head. But why on Earth should that mean it is not real?’
