Özledim seni
undefinedGrief is a strange thing, woh waqt ke tarah aage nahi badhti, it circles back.
Some days it comes as anger, some days as quiet acceptance,and some days as a longing so simple that it almost embarrasses me. There are moments when I miss you so much that all I want is to keep my face in your palm the way I used to and just stay there for a while. Or just take your hand and put your palm against my heart, like I used to. Remember?
No explanations.
No history.
No fights.
Just that quiet place where I once felt safe.
And then reality returns. I remember the distance that now exists between us. I remember the way things ended. I remember the life you are building somewhere else and the images of you and her enter my mind. The pictures you’d shared, the selfies you were always so uncomfortable and unwilling to take with me. I literally had to corner you. You looked willing there.
And that is when something inside me hardens again. Because the same heart that misses you also remembers how it felt to stand somewhere I was no longer wanted.
The last few days have been strange.
Couple of days back, in the morning when I switched my phone on, I saw your missed calls.
Three of them.
And then I saw the message , “Sorry”, and an email that you’d sent. For the first few seconds I just stared at the screen and then it began. My throat closed up and my eyes filled with tears. It started to feel like I’d swallowed a big rock that was stuck inside me, then haggered breathing and chest pains, the typical anxiety problems.
Sorry was all you wrote, and despite it being such a small word, the kind of rabbit hole it can take one into is surprising. My heart and mind bombarded me with questions. Questions like,
Sorry kis baat ke liye?
For the way things ended?
For the years that passed between us?
For the pain that still sits in parts of my memory?
Or was it just a moment of guilt passing through your night?
Everyday since then has been a tug of war inside me. One part of me wanted to reach out immediately,
To ask you what you meant.
To ask you why you called.
To hear your voice once more.
And the other part of me kept stopping my hand every time it moved towards the phone. Only I know how have I accomplished to keep my word of not reaching out to you. Every time that urge rose, another memory followed it, and when it didn’t I went through our last text conversation. I remembered
The distance between us in our last meeting.
The way you could barely hold my hand.
How you wouldn’t kiss me.
How you were physically repelled by my presence.
You made me feel abandoned.
Tumne Mujhe mere haal pe humesha choda hua tha.
I wanted to reach out to you par humari last meeting ke scenes where you can’t bear to hold my hand like it’s something filthy, Arre I was the woman in front of whom you’ve peed while I was getting ready, and you locked the door on me? I hated the way you touched me that night, and I shouldn’t have come. I felt so filthy and disgusted with my self, and the desperation and the madness I had made it even more shameful. Tumhara kehna that I need to have some self respect I’ll never forget.
I thought the biggest wound you gave me was abandoning me during the abortion. You will never understand mujhpe kya guzar rhe thi. I cried and you know who pacified me? A stranger. A fucking nurse. The meds that I was given to let the fetus leave my uterus I bled through the sheets down my leg. And you know what was I stressed about throught the time? Ki main bas time se ghar pahuch jaon isse pehle mum and dad call to ask my whereabouts. Main marr gayi ya zinda rahi usse tumko kaunsa faraq padhta?
Iske baad bhi I called you, jab tumne aadhi neend mein phone uthaya aur itne non-chalant the. Uss moment I felt like any other girl you had in your life with whom you were intimate. The girl whom you’d knocked up, I can’t even imagine what she must’ve felt when she would’ve gone alone to get her operation.
Unfortunately for me main tum mein bahut buri phas chuki hun. I’m walking with a dead albatross on my shoulders and despite really wanting to throw it I’m unable to.
The way you treated me, specially in the last couple of months, tumne Mujhe khatam kar Diya, mere pyaar ko tumnein itna zaleel kiya, pyaar chodo insaaniyat ko yaar! Tumhari ek awaaz pe main daudi aati and tumne kya kiya mere saath??
You abandoned me.
When I use to cry and weep, begging you for your time and company and presence and love, because main akeli ho gayi thi, you were unable to see beyond your hurt but mujhse expect kar the the ki main dekhun? Mujhe un ladkiyon se, tumhare flirt karne se, mujhe yeh kehne se ki Mujhe nanga karke meri boli lagwaoge and what not, inn sab cheezon ka zakhm hai, but yet I was still there for you whenever you’ve called on me, I’m sure tumnein iska kabhi socha bhi nahi.
Itne cheezein hai jo ab yaad aati hai.
Tumhari yaad aati hai, I think if you, of us, of our songs and of making you laugh, I think of you in contexts which are outside intimacy too but you’ve never thought of me in any another regard in the last few years aur main bhi in desperation to have any kind of contact with you, volunteered for it.
The feeling that I had suddenly become someone unwanted in a place where I had once felt at home.
So I didn’t reply.
Not because I didn’t want to. But because sometimes silence is the only way to protect the small pieces of dignity you are still trying to hold together. Khud ko aapke saamne maine bahut baar zaleel karwaya hai. Khud ki izzat ki, and like you rightly said, self respect ki dhajjiyan udayi hain. And had it not been for you making that disgusted face and asking me to have some self respect, I would’ve still continued to pursue you. Aapke yeh kehne nein mujhe jaise kisse khwab se jagaya ho.
Reality check jaisa.
But then another strange moment happened.
I had met someone — a prospective match.
He was kind, the conversations flowed easy and he spoke about the future with an excitement that once had felt like a dream to me. A dream I saw with you.
He asked me what kind of proposal I would like someday, and I’m sure you wouldn’t remember but I told you I was never proposed and would really want you to do it. He asked me what kind of ring I would want, where would I want to go after the wedding, and that he’d stay with me after base transfers, and while he was saying these things, something inside me started collapsing.
My throat tightened. I felt tears in my eyes sitting across the table. Not because he was doing anything wrong but because suddenly all I wanted to do was call you. I had felt this sudden urge to run to you and ask you to hold me tight, as if I wanted you to protect me. I wanted to come to you and tell you how strange it felt sitting there. How I felt like I was trying to step into a life that my heart had not yet made space for. I wanted to tell you that maybe I would never have had to feel that way if you had simply stayed beside me.
But then the other part of my mind returned again. The part that remembers everything clearly. It reminded me of the life you have now. Of the woman who stands where I once believed I would stand. Of the person that you are now who just looks like the man who once was the person in whose arms I would fall and burrow myself in his chest like a kitten. Syncing our breaths.
And the urge to reach out disappeared into silence again.
And then sometimes memories arrive in smaller ways.
At times it’s the songs we heard together. Seeing Vinod Mehra in kurta pyjama, some catchphrase that you be used, and yesterday it was the jacket I had bought for you from Turkey, the one I’d asked Priya to get. You know why I chose that particular black denim jacket? You had that pair of faded black jeans that I loved on you. I had imagined you wearing that jacket with those jeans and your gunmetal aviators. I thought aap par acchi lagti.
Objects, places, music, fragrances, they are strange like that, they hold pieces of futures that never happened. Futures that faded with time and words and feelings became ironical.
Today I saw a picture of the Galata Tower — the same tower we climbed when we were in Istanbul. The caption said that if two people climb it together, they are destined to marry, and the first thought that came in my mind was that it was a lie.
I still remember the photograph I took of you that evening with the sunset behind you. It was one of my favourite pictures of you, but now it exists as a memory from a life that no longer exists.
There are days when I feel angry.
Days when I feel abandoned, that feeling is the strongest, kyunki tumnein Mujhe bas Bhagwan ke naam pe chod diya, ki yeh toh strong hai, yeh kar legi. Par yaad karo Nikhil jaise tum arzoo ke saath the aur abhi bhi ho, jaise tum uski cheezon ka khayal rakhte ho, I never had that side of you. The man of the house, taking charge of the situation, aise tum kabhi the hi nahi mere saath. Why do you think I loved it when the last time we stayed in radisson, after you entered the room, I just sat down and went quiet? Kyunki after years tum room mein aaye, took charge when you saw that AC was not working, and got it sorted. After a long time, even if it was for a brief moment I felt like a woman. Tumein mera yeh kehna shayad na samjh aaye, but remember last summer when you were getting ACs serviced for arzoo and taking care of other things around the house?
You took an initiative, took charge, she felt taken care of I’m sure.
Days when I remember things and feel like I lost something irreplaceable.
But there are also moments like today.
Moments where I realise that the real battle inside me is not between loving you and forgetting you.
It is between longing and self-respect.
Between wanting to run back to you and reminding myself that I promised not to return to a place where I had begun to disappear.
So I sit in this strange middle ground.
Missing you.
Remembering you.
But also holding myself still.
Maybe one day these memories will soften.
Maybe one day places like Galata Tower will feel like beautiful stories instead of unfinished ones.
Maybe one day someone will hold my hand and it will not feel like I am betraying a past that once meant everything to me.
But today I am not there yet.
Today I am simply here — between memory and restraint.
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