Game Changer

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.