THAT MAGENTA SOMETHING

That afternoon when it started raining,

It caught them unawares

Washed away whatever egos he'd once embraced

And that magenta something in her hair

His borrowed umbrella flew like a polythene bag

Her sexy stiletto heels fell apart

The years had run like rabbits

And now they were back at the start

“With your smudged mascara and dripping hair

You look like the woman you had once claimed

You would never resemble

You look surreal, as though in a dream

Or one of those out of focus photographs I took of you in Mauritius

Or maybe a memory

….

“When I tried lending Salinger's 'Nine Stories'

From our Calcutta university library

I realized that someone had been there just before me

I remember turning my head slightly to the left

And that's when I saw a woman carrying it away

I was startled to discover that she was beautiful

It was the first time that I saw you

Slowly, I also discovered that you lived on 114 Lawrence Road

That during your free sixth periods, you read with earphones on but no music

That you wore tinted sunglasses on afternoons when you felt like crying

That you scribbled graffiti on wooden desks and poetry on paper napkins

That you'd started wearing your watch on the right hand to conceal the pain of a tattoo

And somewhere in between all that

I had fallen in love

A week later, when I did borrow the book

I saw a poem written on the margins of the thirty ninth page

I still remember it

I still don't understand what you wrote

Or why

Or when it was that you fell in love with me?

Or why””

…...

“Remember the time we had gone to Mussourie with Akshay and the gang?

I had gone skating despite you advising me not to

And I had slipped and hurt my right ankle badly

Blood was oozing and a bit of the skin was hanging out

But it was worth a wound, it was worth a thousand wounds

For you had been besides me the next instant

You had let me pierce your forearms with my pink polished nails

You had let me ruin your brand new cream corduroys by staining them crimson

While you dressed my wound silently, delicately

Slowly blowing over it; inadvertently, taking my name,

Again and again

You had somehow reminded me of Baba in my earliest memory

Wiping my little crying face with a hot water towel

When ants were crawling over chocolate left overs

On my sleeping lips

You too had been such a rock star about the whole thing

But after that you started crying

And I began to laugh

Looking back, I feel that

That was when I fell in love with you

I'm sorry for spoiling our trip

I'm sorry for shouting at you when you had applied the antiseptic

I'm sorry for never having told you

That I hadn't read 'Nine Stories' until last week

That day I had borrowed it for my cousin, Polly

That it was she who'd written that poem inside it

That it was the poem you fell in love with

Not me”

…..

“For the whole week afterwards

While you were yet to walk due to your plastered leg

I wrote poetry

Without the third row of letters that our laptop had

I just wished to share your despair

Just like this last paragraph”