dhruv-tara

"You have my words, maybe that's why I'm incapable of writing this year, all my stories begin and end at you. You have my soul, maybe that's why i'm incapable of baking this year, for baking was my meditation and i no longer have the soul for it. You have me, pieces of me and maybe my whole, so I've spent this entire year trying to find myself, piece by piece, day by day, most at night."

~ nine

Dhruv and Tara met each other when they had both begun to accept defeat. He was afraid to love, afraid of opening himself up to hurt again, and for what, for whom? For yet another failed attempt at finding his soulmate? Did he even believe in that anymore? What was love? A bunch of bullshit that american television had subjected us to? This picture-perfect visual of love between two perfect people in perfect circumstances, does that ever happen in real life?  Isn't that the reason for all these false expectations then? The standards we all hold ourselves to, the standards we compare our relationships to ? Did he question for the sake of questioning while actually secretly believing in this dream-making factory and secretly hoping that the day is not far when he will meet her and know that it's her. The one he'd been waiting for. The one who was taking her own sweet time to meet him. She must be somewhere going through her own struggles on his way to him....to them.

Tara, ah, what does one say about Tara. She was a dreamer, through and through. She believed too much, she thought too much, she felt too much. She fell too soon, she trusted too soon, and she knew with every aching bit of hers that her soulmate was right behind that corner. That corner has been 'right around' for the last so many years. She was just coming out of a year of heartbreak, a heart that she'd given unquestioningly to the man she truly believed was the One. She'd fallen so fast and so strong that it had taken an entire year to realise that it was all over. The fact that she kept seeing him around, and that he was still a very close friend made it impossible to let him go. How could she, life made it so hard, and throughout the year, she hoped and prayed that he realised what they were and he'd come back and this would all be a nightmare and life would be happy again. She'd read somewhere, the most beautiful thing about being happy was that you never think you will be unhappy again. She was so happy when she was with him that she'd forgotten what it was to be unhappy. And now, she was so unhappy, that she'd forgotten how it felt to be happy.

The year had gone by, she hadn't written on her personal blog, she hadn't updated her cooking blog, she hadn't made an effort to reach out to friends, she had forgotten birthdays and anniversaries, she had lost count of the number of nights she walked by the sea at midnight, lost in a world where time as a concept didn't exist. And then time seemed to stop existing altogether in the real world as well, days turned to weeks to months and an entire year went by. When the man she had loved was leaving town, and told her so, that's when she truly took stock of everything that had happened, and when she realised the year was ending and he was leaving, a sense of loss flooded her being. She knew not if she was mourning for the time she had lost, or  that the hope she had clung to so unconsciously was soon to leave her as well. She oscillated between moments of disbelief and grief. Was this how one went insane? Slowly? What was this she was feeling ? Was it anger or was it sadness, then why was she laughing, mocking her own state?

On one such insane moment she was sitting by herself and staring out into the ocean. Surrounded by Christmas cheer and carols and glitter. Oh how long she had waited for these days to come, so she could reminisce and let the atmosphere take her where her mind wanted to live throughout this year. Where he was by her side. But when Christmas did come along and brought with it decorated streets, baubles hanging over roads, snowflakes hanging over trees, she looked at it all and wanted to run, as far away as she could. And as she sat on the steps of the esplanade, she was far away from all the joy that seemed to exist. Her reverie was broken when she felt someone else come and sit by her side. She looked to her right, and saw a familiar face and unknowingly heard herself say "Hi".

Dhruv was staring at the ocean himself and trying to get away from all these stupidly happy people around him. Happy for what, he thought, a crazy commercialized holiday that meant little to everyone around, other than spending more money on things we didn't really need in life? When he heard her 'hi', he groaned inside, all he wanted was to be alone with his thoughts, why was that too much to ask for. Who was this woman anyway? He recognized her  from work, he had seen her around the coffee corner a quite a bit. He heard himself saying hi as well. They introduced each other.

They began by talking about the weather, as everyone else, and then Christmas, as much as it pained her to be in this time of the year, her love for it made her only say good things, and he of course shared his disdain of the festivities. They found many differences, but also found core commonalities in life and the things they liked. They both at some point thought to themselves : how did I not see her/him before? A random chat extended to a Thai dinner to a teh/kopi and they found themselves talking endlessly. By the end of the night, she knew of his fears, he knew of her dreams, they knew of a connection. She weirdly wanted to continue talking to him, but it was 1 am, and time to go home for sure. She unwillingly said bye to him, only after exchanging phone numbers. He messaged her on Whatsapp, as soon as she had boarded her bus home.

They met over multiple cups of teh c and kopi c peng, until the tea boy at the store downstairs that they went to started smiling every time they approached and the aunty knew exactly what their order would be.They spoke more of the things that they loved, philosophies that intrigued them, shared crazy situations with each other and wanted the other person's take on it. Intellectually there never seemed a dearth of topics that they might talk about.  They were similar in the way they suddenly switched from talking about their day to what constitutes Fear. From how they were going to go drinking with their respective friends to how they yearned to live a simple life. They spoke about mythology, about  monkey headed super heroes to elephant headed gods.

He wasn't her 'type', nothing about him was perfect, especially the things he had shared about his life and what he had been through and the man he was. Perfect men were her kind. Men who were sorted, at least on the periphery, but here was a guy who was anything but perfect, there was no semblance of order in him or his life and yet she seemed to be enjoying spending more and more time with him, to debating on the meaning of human existence and the importance of forgiveness on whatsapp and in person.

She was too impressionable for him, she believed in the things he mocked too much, and she seemed like she was still in love with the man she was with earlier. A part of her still ached for the past, he saw it in her eyes every time they crossed a Christmas tree, he felt it in her grip every time Michael Buble crooned, All I Want For Christmas Is You, he sensed it in her when she spoke of love and soulmates, he caught it floating around her when she tended to get lost in an unknown space inside her head.

But yet, when they were together, it was fierce and intense. They were curious about everything around them. It was true Tara still wasn't ready to give herself fully to this. Was it because she still loved her ex, Karthik, or was it because she was scared of letting go and afraid of getting hurt? Did she truly like Dhruv romantically or was it that she had found in him a soulmate, not all soulmates are romantic right? They were often silences between them, but the silences didn't haunt her, they comforted her, did they comfort him? There was so much she wasn't being with him though,she wasn't being the Tara that dances in the streets when she is in love, the Tara that wakes up in the morning and smiles to herself in the mirror when she is thinking of someone, the Tara that would tell her best friend Adithya everything about it. Was she afraid of jinxing it or was she just not in love. Or was she in love and not admitting it or was she she forcing herself to play it calm and be subtle about it this time around? Karthik seems to have taken away her ability to feel herself,to know her emotions to realise in her depths what she felt. Her gut-feeling and her intuition seemed to have decided to leave her after the miserable defeat that they suffered at life's hands. What was this? Was this connection usual ? It was driving her a bit mad. Her mind was already thinking about Karthik leaving and now Dhruv seemed to be seeping into a tiny corner of her mind.

Dhruv was so closed to anything of this sort happening that he didn't accept that this was truly happening for a long time. And when he did accept it, he started to freak out. And so he went back into his shell of, "let things take their course, going on dates is enough for now, no need to evaluate this for anything else". He'd been through similar situations before and they had all died, what was the guarantee that this was going to work, so why did he need to make the effort. But he knew how special this connection was, he had searched a lot and been unsuccessful. So where Tara didn't know if this was usual, Dhruv knew how unusual this was. But his demons wouldn't let his angels play. He saw the inhibition in Tara, but he also saw the purity in her efforts, whereas him, he was just too afraid, so scared of life treating him like he doesn't deserve happiness or love and picking him up and tossing him around until his broken spirit was even more broken.

Is this what modern love is then? Do we succeed in camouflaging our emotions so much that we don't know what we truly feel? Tara was so shattered after her break-up that she had lost her sixth sense and her ability to judge her own emotions and Dhruv, he was so afraid of giving life another chance that he guarded himself against something sweet being offered to him. Is this what life does to you then? Turn a believer like Tara into a cynic and turn a pure man like Dhruv into someone who had built walls around himself. Wasn't it only a matter of time until these invisible walls became visible and stood rooted between the both of them where they couldn't communicate with each other? Did they both not know that the heart was more durable than they thought, that it was meant to take multiple blows and still heal and come back, with all its passion and fury to get hurt again and again, until that one day where it meets it's twin?  Maybe they did, but for now, their experiences of the past and their fears of the future kept them from being with each other wholly.

And one day, the wall emerged from the shadows and stood between them in full view. And it happened in an instant.

One night they decided to catch meteors falling from the sky. Even though tara meant a star, Tara had never seen a falling star. And Dhruv decided to change that. They spent a night atop her terrace gazing at stars, tracing constellations and shrieking every time they saw a falling star. This over multiple cups of chai and many strings of conversations, that began from nowhere and ended nowhere, it trailed away like the falling stars did. For their conversations didn't need to fulfill a need or a goal, their words were not said with a purpose, but because they wanted to voice their innermost thoughts and lace their feelings with words so that this other being that they were sharing this starry night with, would share their magical emotions. The night meant a lot to Tara because she could never look at stars after Karthik, without remembering that night where they stood in each others arms looking up, secure in their naive belief that they would always be protected by the stars in their journey. So for her to gaze up and watch the stars with Dhruv and not think about Karthik even once meant a change she had been meaning to bring about the last eleven months of the year.

They told each other stories about what the stars might be thinking about two crazy fools looking up at them on a school night. They assumed they were stars themselves and are lovers running away from the wrath of their families who wouldn't let them be and laughed at their own stupidity. But the stars seemed to have taken offence, for soon after they lay on the terrace with his finger on hers as they traced Orion, the stars seemed to have resolved to make them pay for their digression. Dhruv pointed to the morning clouds and Tara pouted, the night was ending. Little did she know, so was their fairy tale.

When they woke up the next morning, the daylight had brushed away any remaining magic from the skies and from their walled hearts.  An affliction of sorts gripped them and their souls. Dhruv was lost struck by the feelings he was trying to suppress about what Tara and all of this means to him and his well-being and Tara was struck by her past ghost of Karthik and her fear of being alone and not belonging to this world of humans. It was as though the year had pulled her aside and mocked her for being happy. There were still ten days to go for the year to end and it would make sure she was miserable, as miserable as she had been throughout the year. It would make sure it breaks her spirit and turns her into what time and life had turned most other people, a cynic who scoffs at the idea of love and the universe granting your wishes and guiding you to your dreams and treasure.. She fought back valiantly but the very night she spent star gazing with Dhruv, now closed on her from all sides and she couldn't seem to break away from it's hold.

While she was fighting her battle with time, Dhruv was in agony himself. He'd learnt after many experiences to protect himself and put his well-being before anything else and he knew he was close to opening up to Tara and so he shut himself down and pushed away what had the capacity to hurt him.

Tara seeked Dhruv in her moments of pain, helplessness and utter loss of hope. But she returned empty handed. Dhruv wasn't the Dhruv she had drawn Orion in the sky with and someone who had told her that from now on, Orion would always look over her and that he had commanded it to do so. This Dhruv was not interested in her pain, not willing to listen to her sense of loss, because he was protecting himself, which was all life had taught him to do. And so between what was meant and not said, Dhruv and Tara lost out.  They went from walking long roads in the middle of night, oblivious of time, to not speaking to each other for two weeks. Tara calmed herself down with whatever she was experiencing herself to reach out to Dhruv, but wasn't successful, and so it was now her time to be afraid. He was beginning to hurt her with his silences and his unwillingness to share his pain or her sorrow. And she told him she was going away for a bit because her being around didn't seem to be helping him. He likened them to the falling stars they had seen that night, a shooting star made of a few dying particles of pure light and dust, intense, bright and quick. And when she asked him if that meant that they were dead, he didn't have an answer. That's when she knew that if they weren't dead, they were beginning to die. And what was left of that shooting star, dhruv-tara, was just the tail, trailing off...

The year was ending in two days and it had kept it's promise and defeated her. She gave up hope, but she also knew that on the other side of those two days she would emerge as the winner, because the year would've ended, and she would have survived it. He had escaped, away from his life and away from her, and thoughts of her. She sat on her verandah watching a cloudy sky, and when the clouds parted, she got a glimpse of Orion. She pulled the candle she'd lit close to her and continued writing in her journal :

"Between what is said and not meant and what is meant and not said, much of love is lost ~ Khalil Gibran"

And so that's how dhruv-tara, the brightest star in the sky, faded away.