How do we measure
familiarity? By how many days you have known each other? Maybe how much time
has been spent in each other’s company? The nature of said company? Little
details can have incredible impact on familiarity: liking the same book, finding
the same things funny, having irrational hatred for the same condiment. Like
everything in my life that defies explanation, I attack this question with all
kinds of rationalisations. Some people, however, feel familiar from the moment
you meet them, reminding you of the prescient words of a great poet of our age:
before you came into my life I missed you so bad.
One of the crueller jokes
I think fate plays on me is burdening me with a life and disposition given to
constant movement. Most of the people I love live on my phone, and the list just
grows all the time. One constant in this random journey of receiving affection
from many quarters is how abruptly and painfully I lose the ability to see
these people. Sometimes fate is kind enough to give a few months, even a year.
Other times, the rug pull comes after just days. One of my favourite most
romantic lines I have ever seen is from the movie Casablanca. I will
admit to always tearing up watching Humphrey Bogart say “We’ll always have
Paris” to an Ingrid Bergman’s character, both fully aware they will never see
each other again. I have had to say that many times in my life: fraternally,
filially, and fortunately (?) on occasion, even romantically. What I did not
expect, however, is to have say we would always have Delhi. I arrived in a
state of emergency, against my will, with the intention of wrapping things up
as quickly as possible. I leave this city now, four and a half months later,
having contained perhaps just as many lifetimes in that duration. I cannot say
I have changed my mind about the several awful things I have to say about that
city. However, I have lived and felt what it is like to know that among the
millions of residents in the national capital are people I love and cherish and
know I am loved and cherished by in equal measure.
With little over an
hour left for my flight to start boarding, I waited outside Delhi Airport for a
man whose phone was unreachable. I stood there knowing I would always regret
not having stayed for the goodbye if he got there and did not find me. We got
our euphoric two-minute goodbye, he gave me his necklace that he had not taken
off in three years. He said he had forgot to bring his wallet in his hurry. I
did not know what to do faced with such love. I promised him I would wear that
necklace; it is the most meaningful piece of jewellery I have ever received. I don’t
understand why it makes me feel sad to feel loved. I teared up inside the
airport, and they were not happy tears.
Other familiarities
are tougher to talk about. There are words to skirt around. Concepts to be
communicated using a language not all are meant to understand. Of the things I
take from Delhi is the knowledge that I cannot play NYT Connections, use orange
zest in cooking, or even say dammit without a little pang. It is the certainty
that some movies, some songs, some drinks, and even some colours, will always
remind me of people I might never again have access to. No one bothered to
defend Delhi on the same terms that I shit talked it; they all said something
to the effect of assuring I would grow to like it anyway and that I would leave
it but with a heavy heart. I do not think I grew to like it. I did, however,
leave it with a heart much heavier than I imagined would be the case. That I
found myself trying to cheer up by telling myself this departure was something
I had wished for, and a precursor to a positive step in my life, would be
incomprehensible to the man who landed in Delhi in November desperate to get
his sister out of jail.
I like to think of
life as a collection of people I have met along the way; it is only thing that
comes close to giving it a semblance of meaning. I feel burdened by the realisation
that it will never be a collection of people I feel like I have loved enough. I
can try to convince myself these are all accidents, and not evidence of a
tendency to cut and run. For the past
few months of my life, and especially the last few weeks, I hope it is enough
to promise I will put a little too much salt in my food and walk out of an
underwhelming theatre after 10 minutes every now and then.
