MIDNIGHT THOUGHTS

I am mad at you by the way. Really, really mad. You missed my 18^th birthday, and the 19^th and the 20^th. I don’t suppose you could do much about the 21^st? Seems trivial doesn’t it, to think that I used to get mad if you were not home by 7 on my birthdays.

This would have been the time around which I would have started dropping you hints that you ought to get me something for my birthday, no demands, but it would be very nice if you did. I was surprisingly non whiny for a teenager, wasn’t I? Well what was I supposed to do? Someone had to be firm and responsible. You are not supposed to give young girls everything they ask for, someone needed to make sure that I didn’t turn into a greedy and bratty person. Left to your discretion I would have been totally undone.

Still, there is only so much I could do. Maybe I did get a little spoilt because I miss… it. Do you remember that time when you came back really late, maybe 9 or something, and dinner was very boring and I had not eaten? I told you I wanted to eat wedding food…huh. How we went through all the invitations to find one for that night, and failing at that, how we just drove around town to find a wedding party we could gate-crash. Now I think that you were not really planning to gate-crash, you just wanted to make me hungry enough so that I would settle for a pizza at ‘Hot Stuff’, but I guess I will never know, after all we never really found that wedding party, did we ?

Oh and the red pants? The one and the only time I did my diwali clothes shopping with you and we went to that new shop. You just went along with all my choices and let me buy those funny red trousers. You-know-who would have fought tooth and nail against them. Maybe they didn’t appear so horrible to you too, but if they did, you really should have given some constructive criticism.
I loved them. Love them. They just don’t fit me anymore.

It is possible to take indulgence to the level of stupidity you know. There are better ways of apologizing for leaving work late and making me wait than letting me drive the car. Okay, so what if I was a good driver, it was still very irresponsible, especially since you couldn’t have done anything about it if I had lost control.

I have a piece of good advice for you, I have learnt it firsthand.  It is not good to have only one person at the center of your life. It is certainly not healthy. You should not love a lot, just a little bit, just enough, but not a lot. Never. But if you are stupid enough to do it then you should not love just one person. There should be a number of people who know you who you can love with the same fervor. For there is nothing emptier than the space left by that one person. How can you claim that this is who you are, if you do not have corroboration from that one person who did know you? You are not sure enough yourself to make such a claim. I don’t just preach, I am trying it myself, but it is easier said than done. Instead, I settle for keeping that space filled with rubbish and stuff. It beats being perforated, beats it everyday of the week and twice on Sundays. But if you don’t even remember the old stuff, this new stuff doesn’t even have a prayer.

I don’t suppose you remember that poem I told you that night in the car when you were extremely late, as usual? Maybe you do, you always had a head for poetry. I still don’t have all the words down, just like I didn’t know that day, but I do know the part that was essential to my brilliant argument about you being 

worse than birds.

"...Bachche abhilasha mein honge

    Nido se jhank rahe honge

              Yeh soch thaka din ka panchi

              Bhi jaldi jaldi udta hai.

              Din jaldi jaldi dhalta hai..."


Yes, I am sure you don’t remember anything. Or I hope you don’t , because it doesn’t work like that anymore…the day does not fly away that quickly…not now.