This one is for you ApoorvaKushwah
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When I first hear the news of him coming back to India, I literally freeze, unable to believe it to be true, thinking it to be another piece of my wild imagination. The cup of tea I am currently holding in my hands stills and I am breathless for a second as I try to act nonchalant and pretend to focus on the task on hand but my attention has never been more captivated by someone's words and the smile I try so hard to stifle makes an appearance nonetheless.
Standing by the side of the door, I listen minutely and try to catch snippets of the conversation taking place between the two elders, incapable to constrain the overwhelming mix of joy, excitement and absolute disbelief that takes over every inch of my being and expands through my chest and find its rightful place in my heart.
He is coming back, Shravan Malhotra is coming back. He is returning to India, to his home, among his people. After a prolonged absence that lasted ten long years for him and his acquaintances but never felt less than a century to me. I have spent long days and even longer and lonelier nights, looking at his pictures and noticing with astonishment and a childlike amazement the changes time brought along.
And the more I look, I find myself growing curious with each new post and drawn towards this person I have claimed to know for the better part of my life but who in reality is a stranger and I, a mere spectator who secretly wishes to be part of his life, to be the center of his universe.
He may strive to dissimulate himself behind the façade of immense masculinity and flares of cynicism. He may succeed in deceiving the whole world with the veil of clouded intimidation he has draped around himself and his tongue of steel that never wavers from threading harsh truths and blunt realities but neither am I blind, deaf or blinded by blinkers.
Reading his silence is a language I have learnt by heart.
He may be invisible to everyone else but I recognize the bespectacled sweet boy who always wore his heart on his sleeve. I see him through his discreet smiles and sad, heartbroken eyes.
I have never harboured great love for books – I can't remember the last time I finished one in its entirety, they made me feel sleepy more than anything else.
Years later, as I read to Dabboo bed time stories of adventures and happily ever after, I realize that the only books I have completed were the ones, he read to me when sleep refused to cocoon me in its abyss of tranquillity.
Back then, it weren't the heavy words that made me dizzy with lethargy but his voice soft as a whisper lulling me into a peaceful slumber. Unknown to me, as my eyelids became heavy and dropped, he would let me use his shoulder as my pillow and drape his arm around me as my blanket of safety, only for the time of a night. For me to wrest away my exhaustion and for him to ebb away his worries.
If there is one thing that will never change about Shravan, one thing I am absolutely sure of, it's his love for books. He has always loved to breathe in that perfume of paper and magic - like the scent of the mud after it rains, books' perfume reminded him of the home he never had.
To be honest, I have never really felt beautiful or pretty in my own skin. I find myself to be quite average looking —years of insecurities plagued me and like a spider entangled in its web, I fall prey to my own prejudices and to the worldly notions of beauty.
But, it doesn't matter to me. I don't aspire to look like everyone's definition of pretty, I only want to be his definition of pretty.
Sometimes, in reality, most of the times, I feel like an old soul trapped in the body of a young woman who is meant to embody delicate femininity and soft innocence but only exudes rare strength and clumsy wisdom.
