HABIT

“ Tears over crosswords…..” That’s how it began. Can’t remember a word beyond that. Ten days of my life that changed everything. It had started with a declaration. And then, the tears. Then came the hug that I can still feel after all these years. And then the kiss that sealed my fate. And finally a marriage.

These ten days have a lifetime of it’s own.

There has never been a day since, when I haven’t relived those ten days. And after thirty months of invisibility and twenty months of silence, it is amazing that these memories are still afresh. Its seems like a moment ago and it seems like millenniums ago! the architecture of my heaven is made of these memories. The landscape of her smile spreads out to the horizon. Her “hello” echoes like the primal word across, from horizon to horizon. Her song runs through my veins.

I wake up everyday with her thought and go to bed thinking of her. And then there are the prayers. I go through all my motions imagining her around me. Am I schizophrenic? Aren’t all lovers? Thankfully my schizophrenia is under my control. My mind, in fact, is totally under control unlike my heart.

My heart is a habitual offender at pulling strings. Keeps on pulling the strings of my emotions. That spring in my walk, where did I get that from? It also makes me become her once a while. Like last night I was out for dinner. And I suddenly felt I was her. Every expression, every gesture, every movement I made was hers. For a while I was even lost in it. I could touch her soul wherever she was. It’s a strange out of body experience where I could see myself as her!

Normally my heart delights in doing this when I am alone. But last night, it happened in front of people. I somehow survived it with a smile. Later that night, back home, I laughed my self to sleep.