The only thing she couldn't do is love. Or so she said.
She writes, she fights on the streets with banners ablaze,
she sings, acts and dances. She paints, too. She said she belongs to her political party first, then to her theatre group. She said she’s poly amorous
and the person she lives with now is her comrade in politics, she loves for the
politics. I could only fall in love. I asked her if there is anything she can’t
do. She couldn't love. Or so she said.
I do not belong in her politics. I cannot do any of those
things she does with an everyday ease. I do not know her beyond what she tells
me. I know people are much more than what their affiliations make them, for
affiliations change, dreams shift, allegiances are doubtable. She tells me
she’s her theater, her politics, her institution but I know she is also a poet,
a painter, a dreamer. We are a perfect recipe for disaster. Sorry, there’s no
“we” in this. I’m a perfect recipe for disaster, my own catastrophe.
Is it necessary to deconstruct “love”? Do we need more than
one word to describe it? If we do deconstruct, we will destroy the pleasure
associated with it. Given, such pleasure comes from a very narrow, patriarchal,
heterosexual, romantic understanding of relations between two human beings; do
we need to throw that away? Are we to believe that one word has just one
meaning and that is fixed, transcendental and timeless? In Bengali, the word
analogous to “love” has come to connote a multiplicity of meanings. It is not
anymore what it used to be. It is time bound and timeless, heterosexual and
homosexual, romantic and postmodern, mono and poly amorous, simple and complex,
all at once. It is that notion of love I have for her. Power of a language is
often measured by the number of words it has for the same thing. When in a
language, a single word has multiplicity of meanings, all subtly different from
one another; I believe that is productive too.
What do I love about her? She’s young, enthusiastic and
passionate but I love that white streak of hair more. She has beautiful hair,
eyes and smile. She has a beautiful mind but I love her eyebrows more. When she
moves around guarding her space with the grace of a boxer, I love her
movements. When she sends me poems and asks me if I’m in love with her, I love
her honesty. I suspect my love for her might be bodily and may stop at that
only, I’m yet to find out and I may never do. I do not understand myself very
well, nor do I wish to. I’m a confused being and I love my confusions. Doesn't she
belong to her body too, when she sends me the photographs of her anklets? All
of this has nothing to do with how she feels because she can’t love, or so she
thinks.
For the last few days she has been silent. May be she is
busy or she is busy with someone else. May be she just doesn't want to talk to
me. I know all that. I have learnt not to expect. But she affects me. She
inspires. I wish she surprises me. I like the gestures she makes to let me know
I exist in her life. I asked her if she wants to meet me when I was in her city,
she didn't answer. Next morning she called me to a poetry reading session and
read a few poems. I was a face in the crowd, but she did let me know she has
seen me. She sends me these photographs of poems, paintings, herself, her room.
I am hooked to photographs, I guess she knows. May be I’m just another idiot, a
piece in an elaborate play she has made for herself. This distrust is
beautiful. It’s a pain and a pleasure.
Why is pleasure so bad I ask? Why must it be destroyed? Isn't
it the only defense we have left when our lives are controlled by binomial
logic? Isn't it the only place where we can still take the flight of fantasy
where digital devices are yet to enter? I know she doesn't really exist in
reality. I mean, she does but that’s not the person I love. I love the one who
digitally sends me photos and poems, one who almost makes love with me,
digitally. I slip into the symbolic every day. I cannot comprehend reality. My
world otherwise is a very boring place. These are my escapes from reality. There
is a place between the Symbolic and the Real, where the piece controls the
game. It starts imagining. It does what it is not allowed to do and by that act
of defiance, it comes into being. Every time the piece comes into being it
changes the rules of the game. The player becomes the piece then. The player
doesn't know that. No one does. Like
most of us, I am forced to live a reality I do not wish to acknowledge. Denial
is my strongest defense. Denial is very productive for me. It has made me see
new light. It has taught me, when everything becomes meaningless, we can deny
meaning and live on.
She doesn't have to know all this because she can’t love. Or
so she said.
