Sweet Sorrow

I think "I" and me deserve an award. Heartiest felicitation, accolades.

Applause in most deafening quantities.

Nods of approval, pats on the back.

You see we just broke up... again. And we are friends... still.

We broke up once before. At VT station, on a train headed to Bangalore.

(A previous attempt to board this train had ended in disaster… I was only roughly 12 hours too late. How was I supposed to know that when the people over at the IRCTC said “8:00” they were referring to the AM and not the PM? I promptly declared myself to be the stupidest person I know. In fact I reconciled myself to the fact that if everyone had their own personal “stupidest person I know” awards ceremonies, I would feature on a lot of lists or at least receive heaps of “Honourable Mention”.

Fortunately for me the fates had decided that injury was punishment enough and spared me the insult aspect… No witnesses. Just me, "I" and the missing train).

So there we were… two hearts, slightly broken. The sheer simplicity of it would have made you want to empty your tear ducts of every last salty drop. But we were stoic little troopers, not to be done in by girly sentiment. We exchanged polite, stiff hugs and polite, stiff smiles, stiffened our upper lips and went our separate ways. Somewhere in the middle an envelope was misplaced and then successfully un-misplaced. It was beautiful.

We met roughly ten days later. Spent 3 blissful days in Goa. This was our least successful attempt at breaking up.

We broke up again shortly after. Not before a most fantastic week in Bombay (I discovered “paaya”, need I say more?). This time outside Churchgate station on a most un-extraordinary morning. We’d just taken a bike ride down Marine Drive (approaching it from Malabar Hills), which is surprisingly as beautiful in the morning as it is at night. This time unfortunately the flood gates of sorrow opened up with a vengeance… and then some. The tears of course were all mine ("I" claims certain parts of his heart are dead. Moreover he is a boy so lack of tears is apparently excusable) but the grief was shared. The proverbial pall of gloom descended on the three of us (bike, boy, myself). I was left with little choice but to wrap it around me and carry myself back to Bandra and then further away, much much further.

This break-up was the most hurtful. Probably because the permanence of broken-up-ness finally hit home. I searched long and hard for the source of this most debilitating pain. We’d never been great conversationalists, we didn’t read the same books, we wasted time on different websites. What we did do was occupy a certain amount of space in each other’s worlds. He occupied space across from me at a table in a fancy restaurant, I occupied space next to him in a movie hall. We collectively occupied a shapeless blob-like piece of space in bed. I occupied space between lunch at Mahim and a game of poker, he occupied space between lazy Sunday evenings and ghastly Monday mornings. We occupied a year’s worth of space in each other’s lives.

It’s strange how one grows accustomed to the sheer physical presence of another person. That you can learn to love them simply because they make the void around you seem a little less empty. That you can grow dependent on as complicated a piece of machinery as a human body, not for its thoughts, words and ideas, but simply because it is tangible. Because it is there.

I’ll always contend that the break-up took a bigger toll on me. I have a considerably larger void to fill. He’s 6’2”. Trust me to ruin a tender moment with a misplaced joke. No wait, that’s usually his job.

Subsequently, we broke up a few more times. Once (3 break-ups and counting) at smelly Bandra terminus on a most horribly hot day. Then in a slight alteration to the train theme, we broke up at the bus-station opposite Maratha Mandir. This time a phone was momentarily misplaced only to be un-misplaced shortly after. Anything to make a sad ending… well… less sad. We tried another variation (still in departure mode though) - the Delhi airport. And the last one (I’ve lost count) occurred the following week as we drove past Haji Ali. I finally asserted my relationship status.

“But you’ve been single all this while.”

“Yes, but now I’m single single.”

The tragic thing is break-ups no matter where they happen, no matter how many times they happen, no matter how cordial they are, are more often than not upsetting affairs.

And tonight? Well it doesn't really qualify as a break-up in the traditional sense of the word. It was more an acknowledgement of the fact that we are broken up. That we are “single single”. That we have, as per mutual agreement, condemned ourselves to being sad and lonely till we find someone suitable to occupy the space, across the table in a fancy restaurant, next to us in a movie hall.

That we will always be two remarkably interesting people, who if only momentarily added a lot of colour to each other’s universe.

Two hearts, slightly broken.