Skip to main content

Six Years And Apart

When I was leaving R one of the last things I did was to go over our collection of music - tapes, CDs and mp3 files on our computer. His favorites, my favorites and in our short time together those that came to be our favorites. Sort, sift, keep and leave - an exercise that caused me physical pain. He and I were equally possessive of memories - with his photographic memory forgetfulness came to him a lot harder than it did for me.

I would be lying if I claimed I had altruistic motives when I picked out what I would take with me. I burnt CDs, deleted files after me leaving him with an empty home fully depleted of memories. I left his Kenny Rogers CDs behind. New marriage, home-making, waiting for R to come home for lunch have Lucille as their background score. Strange that I would listen to this song so much as a newly-wed. It almost turned prophetic. R would smile when he walked in the afternoon "You're hooked on that song aren't you ?" Neither of us read omens.

I also left behind his Suman Chattopadhyay(the wannabe Bengali Bob Dylan) CD. My favorite number in that album being "Aaj Janlar Kache Boshe Asche Ek Paakhir Moto Shokal" which loosely translates to "Today by the window sits a bird-like morning" The title does not make any more literal sense in Bengali than it does in English. R told me it was the effect of the words more than their meaning that counted. That seemed far-fetched to me.

However, there was something about it that made my heart leap for joy in the early, exuberant days of our marriage. I often played it after R left for work and I started my day as his wife and was content to be just that for the rest of my life. Six years this June and I will admit R, I sometimes think about what could have been between us. Maybe you do too. I remember the last time we talked you said "You left me no memories. Not a picture, no music - nothing" Someday you will be glad that I did what I did. I was listening to Lucille this morning.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Scarlett_OHara said…
HC,
That was so beautiful and poignant.
No one ever seperates or walks away in entirety...we take what we can, we leave behind what we cannot reclaim...sometimes the memories left behind are better than the memories taken away..

Take care,
Scarlett
2:34 AM
Anonymous said…
Some we leave behind, some that stay behind in the past, called memories. no matter how much we erase our foot prints, memories will exist.
5:53 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Carefree Wandering

There are these lines in Paul Cohelo's Alchemist that I love about the shepherd turning a year later to sell wool and being unsure if he would meet the girl there But in his heart he knew that it did matter. And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering. What is true of the the power of love and making a person want to settle is also true of  finding purpose in life. If and when a person is able to connect their work to purpose they care about, the desire for change disappears. They are able to instead channel that energy into enhancing the quality of the work they are already doing. As I write this, I remember S a brand manager I used to know a couple of decades ago. He worked for a company that made products for senior citizens, I was a consultant there. S was responsible for creating awareness of their new products and building awareness of what already ex...
Post a Comment
Read more