A Handbook For My Lover Read online

  On the verge of my return, I tried to pack in as much as I could. A salad strainer, three little clay mugs I picked up from a flea market, five cloth pouches containing lavender, and copies of Anne Carson’s The Beauty of the Husband and Men in the Off Hours that I’d bought at The Shakespeare and Company bookstore (which I was frankly quite disappointed by; I had expected a more intense inventory). My suitcase wouldn’t clamp down, stuffed as it was with all the clothes I’d worn, all of which had imbibed the nostalgic scent of the Parisian air, and were lined with intangible, libidinous memories from all our many visits to museums and galleries. You would wrap one arm around my bust so that your fingers were perched precisely over one of my breasts. Then, while I was lost in a Caravaggio, you would lightly, almost incidentally stroke me until my body started to exude heat. If we were watching video art, you would sit on the bench while I sat on the floor with your arms placed around my shoulders and my head perched upon your crotch. The act of viewing art had never been as erotically charged.

  Like that navy blue dress I’d worn on my birthday when, all day, I’d expected some kind of wildly romantic gesture. It was undoubtedly one of the best days of my life. And yet, on our way back in the metro, I accosted you about the absence of a gift. I realised later how it is so much in my passive-aggressive nature to expect too much on my birthday and set myself up for disappointment and resentment. You took great offence to my badgering, and finally hung your head down in some mixed version of despair and shame, and then, rattled by the look of disappointment that had colonised your face, I confessed that all I really wanted was for you to hold me and wish me‘Happy birthday’. The next few stations rolled by as we settled into a wild embrace, red-wine induced tears streaming down my face. We walked out of the Félix Faure metro station and about fifty metres into our stride, collapsed into each other like a pair of long-lost lovers who had finally been reunited.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ you said at the climax of our spontaneous embrace.

  ‘I love you,’ I replied.

  ‘And I do too, more than I care to admit.’

  That cotton dress, like the rest of my clothes, is adorned with these invisible imprints that sit upon the fabric like secrets.

  In Casablanca, when Rick convinces Ilsa that she must leave with her husband Victor, despite the fact of their love, because he’s ‘no good at being noble’, because it ‘doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world’, because if that plane leaves the ground and she’s not with him, she’ll regret it, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of her life, he uses an argument that has now been immortalised in film history. We’ll always have Paris. We didn’t have, we, we lost it, until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night. He seeks solace in the persistence of memory, and hopes that she too may find succour in the act of remembering that brief historic time they spent together, years ago, that had sealed their fate as lovers.

  The line is the equivalent of a souvenir, the kind that one picks up en route in the course of one’s travels, one that is charged with emotional currency. Over time, this innocent souvenir assumes the equivalence of a charmed object, a talisman, one that we begin to rely on not so much to aid the process of remembering but to counter our human proclivity towards the act of forgetting.

  That we must one day renounce our status as lovers is perhaps inevitable. The uncertainty of whether that will or will not come to pass is something we cannot control, despite our best intentions. If and when we part, there will be too many things I may have to surrender because they are so intrinsically linked to our affair. But Paris I will always retain.

  Maps and Places to Visit

  Botton, in The Romantic Movement, makes a compelling statement attesting to the multi-dimensional nature of the act of travelling. Travel may more interestingly be read as a psychological rather than a geographic effort. Given your appetite for cartography, for needing to compulsively know your location within the confines of a Google map, I’m not sure it’s necessarily wise to dismiss the ‘geographic effort’ that travelling entails.

  In my early twenties, I was self-diagnosed with cartographic dyslexia, a relentless incapacity to locate oneself on the latitudinal and longitudinal dictates of a map, a helpless incompetence with following directions, and an inability to mentally chart the contours of any geographical space visited or even inhabited.

  You have never shown any sympathy for my topographical disorder. If anything, you have berated it, relegating it to being a symptom of a mere phobia, one that you are adamant I resolve.

  Using a combination of memory, mnemonics and Google Maps, you navigated us through the streets of Arles, Nimes, and Paris. You were the conduit, and I was the willing follower. You led the way while I focused on losing myself in the imagery, the paraphernalia that made each of these cities so unique.

  Mid-way through our French intercourse, we made a trip to Kassel, a German town on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, to visit the thirteenth edition of documenta. After Kassel, we would return to Paris where you were to spend just two more days with me before heading to London for the opening of the group show you were part of. I was to be on my own for at least a week before I returned to Delhi.

  It was when we arrived in Kassel and got off the Deutsche Bahn that I felt, for the first time, that I was indeed in a foreign land. France, though unfamiliar, never felt alien since I could speak the language, however brokenly, which meant I could converse with strangers, read restaurant menus, understand the signs and figure out announcements made in trains. Unlike you who can count from one to ten, I knew no German, never had the ear for it, and had never even accidentally learned a word or two. We got off the train and headed to the tourist office to pick up some maps and guides.

  When we finally ventured into the city, I saw a tram for the first time in my life. We got on board and headed to the guesthouse we had booked. We dropped off our bags, freshened up, and headed out to get our passes and view the various installations.

  The first night, after dinner, we headed to the tram stop so we could go home. We waited for a good ten minutes before we realised we should have been standing on the other side of the road. Of course, it was you who had the epiphany, and you decided to blame me for being inattentive. How it had become my fault was something I couldn’t quite understand, so I asked you to explain. You saw my question as the perfect opportunity to lash out at me for never taking the initiative when it came to figuring out directions, or at charting our path, and for relying too much on you. One accusation led to another and not before long we found ourselves in the thick of an argument in which you threatened that from tomorrow onwards we would just part ways. All because I have difficulties reading a fucking map!

  I managed to pacify you, but you laid down a condition, that I get us back home. You would silently follow as I struggled to navigate us through a city that felt persistently alien, the few Indians and Bangladeshis we’d met notwithstanding.

  One hour later we were back at the guesthouse. My instinct had failed me multiple times and you finally had to step in and take charge. Safe in the warmth of fresh sheets, I collapsed into tears and accosted you for having put me on the spot, for having demanded too bloody much from me without having given me any time to mentally prepare myself.

  ‘But how the fuck am I supposed to feel at ease when you’re back in Paris and on your own when you can’t even find your way around?’ you demanded.

  ‘Following a map isn’t the only way to find a place,’ I replied. ‘I’ve always figured it out, asked people, read signs. I have my own methods.’

  ‘I don’t care. Tomorrow, you are going to navigate. I need to feel confident in your ability to find your way. I cannot be in London and spend half my energy wondering if you’re okay.’

  It was strangely comforting to realise that the source of all your anguish about my dyslexia stemmed from your own phobia about h
aving to worry about me. It was a thought that sunk in while I was sleeping. When I woke up in the morning, I rushed to the shower so that when you went in to bathe, I could spread the map of the city and the tram network on the breakfast table and try, desperately, to acquaint myself with the landscape. I made elaborate notes, counted the number of stops on the tramline that separated us from our destination, and placed both maps in a separate pocket within my handbag so they were close at hand.

  You were suitably impressed.

  ‘See, you’re not bad with maps, you just haven’t tried hard enough.’

  ‘Well, I can make an attempt if I prepare myself. What you did last night was horrible, though, and unforgiveable; you just put me on the spot. It’s like what my father used to do when he was teaching me math. In the middle of dinner he would ask me “problem” questions and expect me to figure it out, and I would simply shut down. I have a morbid fear of numbers as a result.’

  ‘You just have some irrational phobia about it. It’s all so simple, you just have to figure exactly where you are in relation to the street you are on, then chart out whether you need to head north or south, or east or west, and then keep rotating the map according to the direction in which you’re moving. Do the same thing with Google Maps, and as you’re walking, keep memorising landmarks; that way you can always find your way back.’

  If only memories could be mapped. If only they could be given shape and contour, definition. The other day when we were recounting our experience at Kassel to R, who had also visited, I mentioned the fact of our fight about my dyslexia and how you had given me the toughest time. What amazed me was that you had no recollection of the subject of my retelling, as if it had never happened.

  Anne Carson, in The Beauty of the Husband, her exceptional treatise on the death of a complicated relationship and the unsuspected awakening into beauty, has a stellar all-caps, run-on sentence-long section title—DO YOU SEE IT AS A ROOM OR A SPONGE OR A CARELESS SLEEVE WIPING OUT HALF THE BLACKBOARD BY MISTAKE OR A BURGUNDY MARK STAMPED ON THE BOTTLES OF OUR MINDS WHAT IS THE NATURE OF THE DANCE CALLED MEMORY. This ambiguous tease of a title is steeped in metaphors about the transient, unreliable, imaginative nature of memory, the tendency towards erasures and rewriting, its similarity to the process of selectively staining or imprinting events onto our minds such that the details slip out, like why or when the stain came to be.

  Sometimes I have no sympathy for your amnesia. It is as though you have some kind of phobia about remembering things that are most phenomenal; moments we have shared that have possibly altered the course of our being. It is as though I see memory as a room or a sponge, while for you it is a careless sleeve wiping out half the blackboard by mistake, and it makes me wonder what will remain, if anything at all will, after the dance is over.

  How will you navigate through the lifelines of this discourse between us with no Google Maps to lead the way?

  How must I reconstruct all the spaces we unravelled, all the distances we travelled with our wanderlusting feet? How do I recover those moments and pin them down, make a map of collected memories?

  Or is it at all possible that in the end, what will matter most is not what we will have remembered but all that we forgot? All the details that slipped so silently into eternity, all that vanished before we could understand, all that we can never recover first-hand, in word or thought or deed, all that passed before we learned to read with our ears and listen with our skin, all that was never spoken, all that we let in but never heard, could not feel, all that we left undone, unanswered still?

  We are all that we have lost.

  We are all that we are yet to lose.

  Displacement

  I returned from Paris towards the end of July. Instead of going directly to my house to deposit my suitcase, you invited me to come to you. I landed around twilight. My baggage, however, would arrive the next day. Air France had messed up.

  A week later my landlord gave me and my flatmates an informal eviction notice, which meant I had to go through the tiresome drill of having to scour the city for a reasonably priced place to live. I had to give up the arrangement I had with the two other women I lived with. We had all agreed it was time to move on with our lives and part ways. S was keen to live alone so she could have her boyfriend over whenever she liked. M’s budget was too restrictive. I was tired of living like I was still in hostel. This would be the third time I’d have to move since I made Delhi home. I was enthused by the thought of new possibilities but fettered by the uncertainty that came along with it. I found myself spending more time at your house, in denial of my situation, wishing that your apartment could be a more permanent home. Until one morning, while on my way to the market, I stumbled upon an idea: couldn’t I just move closer to you?

  I was increasingly annoyed by that seven-kilometre schlep that separated me from you. Autorickshaw fares were on the rise. Besides, the whole affair was just an inconvenience for me; my clothes, my belongings always stashed away in a room I was paying for but barely living in.

  I told you about my epiphany. You were sceptical. You discouraged me, told me I was sure to find cheaper houses about two kilometres away. But I was adamant. I had already imagined the convenience of it. Despite your advice, I went and spoke to a realtor and made an appointment.

  I fell in love with the second apartment I was shown. It was on the second floor of a building located on the corner of a street that was separated from your street by 200 metres. No structural interruptions for at least 180 degrees, which meant that throughout the course of the day, sunlight streamed through like a constant revelation.

  The day after I moved in, I calculated the distance between your house and mine. Three minutes-long. The length of a song.

  What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

  Post midnight.

  We stumble through the door. I reach into the kitchen for a draught of water. I bring you a glass. Red wine is dancing within the recesses of your circulatory system. You always drink more hastily than I, so I am always mildly inebriated while you veer towards intoxication.

  I return the glass to the kitchen counter. I place an empty bottle under the RO filter. I cap it when it’s full and take it to the bedroom, along with my phone, both of which I place beside my side of the bed.

  I move towards the sofa and begin to unfurl my sari. I unhook my blouse and place both items of clothing in an untidy pile. I reach into your cupboard and pull out a T-shirt. After having clothed myself, I walk into the bathroom, lean over the sink, remove the bindi from my forehead and place it on the mirror frame, in company with the other bindis from previous occasions. I wash and dry my face, and then I lie on your bed and draw the sheet over me.

  Three months into the New Year and it seems as though winter has renewed its lease. The nights are distinctly chilly when they ought to be balmy. Which means there is no need for the respite offered by a whirring fan.

  I pick up my phone and look for the Shortyz app. I pull out the LA Times Crossword and start to decode the clues while anticipating your arrival.

  Half-way into my crossword, you enter the bedroom, shut the door behind you, undress, put on your night clothes, move towards the bathroom, brush your teeth, return towards the bed, turn off the lights, and crawl in.

  I turn off my phone and place it near the water bottle. I move towards you. I have to make an effort since you’ve veered closer towards the edge of your corner. Foreseeing your accusation the next morning implying it was I who cornered you, relegating you to a small fraction of the surface area of the bed, I urge you to move closer to the centre. In fact, playfully, I physically move you closer to what I consider to be the bridge3 between our individual sides;

  I tug at your hips with my fingers, compelling you to move closer.

  Playful laughter.

  ‘I don’t want you accosting me tomorrow.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For pushing you to the corner.’

  ‘Now kiss me,�
�� I say.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because … Because you love me.’

  ‘How can you assume that?’ you ask.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That I love you? How can you just assume?

  ‘Really?’

  ‘After five … well, almost six years of our being together, you’re still not convinced you love me?’

  ‘I may. Or may not. But how can you just assume I do?’

  ‘It’s not an assumption. It’s based on facts. You yourself have said that you do … that you love me. About four or five times since we met. To my face.’

  ‘How long ago was the last time?’ you ask.

  ‘Um. Maybe in July? In Paris? Or maybe last October? In any case, saying you do or not saying you do … it doesn’t mean anything. I used to be with someone who told me everyday for six years that he loved me, and when push came to shove, I realised that he didn’t after all … And, hello, you’re the one who pursued me in the first place!’

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘Yes, you’re the one who urged me to come to Delhi,’ I remind you.

  ‘What was the context?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I don’t see why my telling you to come was important in any way. You came here to work.’

  You entwine your legs with mine and draw me closer to you.

  ‘I’m not talking about the time I moved to Delhi. I’m talking about the first time I came to see you in Delhi,’ I say.

  Long strokes along the length of my back.

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘August 2008? Just a few days after we met. We met on the 2nd.’

  Strokes continue. I start to melt.

  ‘You’re a pretty girl. I’m sure I would have told anyone in your place to come to Delhi.’

  You do a mock imitation of a Casanova-like character.