P has been on my mind for years. His last words to me came to haunt me much after he spoke them - "I hope you fall in love with someone as difficult as you are. Then you'll know how I feel". I have loved only "difficult" men since and pine for simplicity. I call it the "Curse of P" on my life.
Many times in the last ten years I have longed talk to P one last time to let him know I treasured how he felt about me, that I always wished him happiness he would not have found with me. That I had loved him equally. In some corner of the world, I imagine an older, wiser P surrounded by a loving wife and a couple of kids - the picture of perfect domestic bliss. I know no one more deserving of happiness than he.
Yet, P has vanished without a trace. I hesitate to reach out to him through our batchmates from college. It would embarrass both of us - we were both fiendish about privacy. I have trawled Google time over time but my precious Akoya pearl never surfaces.
Yesterday on a desi matri site I saw a profile with a picture that made me jump out of my skin. It was K - P's very best buddy and by transference my friend. I don't know why I can't believe the dude is divorced. My immediate reaction was a "OMG" meets "Holy Shit!"
Next to Soup my dear friend who mysteriously and disturbingly went out of circulation five years ago, K would be only person I could trust to get me in touch with P. The only way to do that was to respond to his ad and hope he'd accept. Once he knew who I was, he'd know exactly why I had contacted him. I'd not even need to explain. I kept my fingers crossed.
Earlier today I was notified that K had declined. This is the closest I have come to being able to reach P in the last ten years - it was almost like a dream. And like a dream it ended in wakefulness. Maybe I should stop seeking closure with P - maybe some things are best left be. Please, P for old times' sake and for all that we once meant to each other wish for me simplicty.
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...
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