TO WINNIE, WITH LOVE

August 1st, 2002

The Banks
Prospect Cottage
84 Charing Cross
Kent, England- 133001

Dear Winnie

Skipped sleeping again. Missed you. Again. Three nights in a row now
Often, lying on my back, staring at my off white ceiling,
I would think about you, in my insomniac nights
And I would often wonder, “Why were you so cold in the end?”
“In the end”, sounds so melodramatic, I know
Winnie, what can I say?
Our ending was perhaps inevitable and perhaps even necessary.
For one has to, I suppose, get over their first love, in order to be free.
Such connections as ours are rare and maybe happen just that once
Maybe it is better that we drifted apart.
Maybe we were only good at fleeting, short term memories
I already forget how I used to feel about you
Who am I deluding?
Am I in denial?
Am I sad?
You think I’m mad?
But I’m telling you, I want someone so bad to come kidnap me.
You kept going by in my dreams


And then one Thursday, you went away
But I guess you can love someone without it being like that.
You keep them a stranger- a stranger who’s a friend
You kept going by in my dreams
Once, I knew you. At least I thought I did but I didn’t.
I wanted to write that masterpiece, you wanted to paint and travel
One day, you went away
And I wrote a car and a house with a swimming pool.
I could never write a home.
I could never write the book I wanted to
You stopped painting. The colors faded. The canvas lay unused
You kept going by in my dreams
My writings became very scholarly, very verbose and very dry.
I started hating them one by one
All the while, you kept going by and going by in my dreams


It’s started to rain outside. It’s that same eerie, howling sound you used to love
But it’s not the same
Copenhagen is a nice place. Very cold, in fact it snows often. The whole of Scandinavia is like a small island just north of Europe
The creed here is to be brisk and busy. Everyone says, “How’re you?” but then you eventually realize that nothing ever follows that “How’re you?”
Often, on my way to my apartment, I got lost
Every man is ultimately an Island
Everyone wants to be saved
Whither shall I wander?
And still, you kept going by in my dreams. Going by and going by


It’s funny how you miss the most trivial of things about a person
For example, last Tuesday, I suddenly remembered your face and it flashed before me: your tiny, microscopic cut, just above your right eyebrow. Then, I remembered that I never asked you about it
I looked into your eyes so many times and yet I never asked you
Is it possible, Winnie, that I just didn’t see you?
For I took your gaze for granted
And now, I miss it like hell
Sometimes here, I take nostalgia to embarrassing extremes
Winnie, you know, near my apartment boulevard, there’s a beautiful fountain and an old railway bridge over it. You’d have loved it
It’s around three hundred yards and one of those that have an echo effect
I often go and stand at the edge of the bridge- it feels as though the bridge joins the past from the present- the beginning to the end. Sometimes, I feel I could touch you if I were to my hand in the mist. What am I afraid of?
That it can never happen again
And yet, you kept going by in my dreams


I watched my watch again. Time had stopped there
And here
The second hand of the watch was parading on its dreamy dial.
Again, the pendulum swung
Sixty seconds deep
On so many cold, sleepless nights, I wanted to shout out aloud:-
“You have played a lot with this rubber soul!”
Then I’d remember how you had looked at me with those aquamarine eyes and then, I would hear the beat of his eyes, along with the raindrops, as if they had a life of their own
They were large eyes, a little blue, a little green- shining beneath the sunlight in your hair
With your poignant eyes (and, um, your gigantic bosom too :) you were too much
And you kept going by in my dreams like……


Butterflies
Delicate, fragile, fluttering, colorful; like dreams and memories….. Somehow you want to pin them down on a board or something but actually you don’t. It’s a stream of consciousness thing. And the butterfly effect- one thought leads to another and another and another…..
My greatest regret is that you decided to love someone else
But I always hope to run into you someday
One day when you become this incredible bewitching woman with two kids in tow
And I this bestselling author, going grey around the edges of hair that never grows
We’ll meet somewhere, in the rain
I’d still fall for you- Cellulite and all
You’d look sexy as hell
I smile as I think of what you would’ve said to that?
“But why do you always mean that in a good way. I would have become fat and repulsive and annoying in a few years and with my constant nagging, you would never have been able to write your books”
The thing Winnie is, I never want to write again. It’s been kind of a terrible experience. I don’t even want to work again so I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t want to do anything. That’s the problem.
What does that mean?
You kept going by in my dreams…..


So many dreams we had…
Oh by the way, I’m seeing someone. Her name is Tania. She’s pretty, simple and nice- basically, just opposite of you. You’d have hated her. I know you.
So, tell me, what’s up with you? What’s happening to your salsa lessons? Did you finally go for that interview with O&M? Do you still buy eleven pairs of high heels on gruesome Mondays? And are you happy?
In other things, what’s happening to this world, in this world? Children are dying in Sudan, Pakistan is falling to pieces and we are on the verge of a nuclear apocalypse. Even our love was not THIS complicated. Slowly but surely, the world, as we know it, is coming to an end. One day, you’d close your eyes and snap your fingers and it’ll be all over. Just like that.
And you kept going by……


Winnie, I know I’m never going to be able to send this letter to you but you know, I wanted to tell you about so many things. That HB has come back from London. He didn’t finish his thesis- the bugger says he wants to become a musician. That Aniruddha is getting married to Meera. Remember her? But most of all, I wanted to tell you that I managed to get a couple of my books of poems, published. This is one of those poems. I finally feel as if I have found a place to where I belong. Publishing house or otherwise, I hope you have too
Goodbye, Winnie
For we may never meet again
“Sshh….Never say never, Max!
That morning will come”
You’d say that and fill my heart with hope
You kept going by in my dreams
You kept telling me in my dreams
“We’ll always have Paris”
And you kept on going by and going by and going by in my dreams
And I couldn’t ever sleep

Wish you a very happy birthday, Winnie!! This year, I remembered

Your
Max

PS: I dedicated my poems to you. You and Tania, tied actually. Kidding… take care.
PS2: Are you going to be in my dreams tonight?