Avant-garde playwright.

Her skirt flaps around her knees as we stand on the top of the monument, her knuckles white as she grips the hand-railing tightly. It is a beautiful moment. I look past her pale shoulders and see the grey clouds in the distance, and let out an audible sigh. She looks over her shoulder at me, and smiles. The smile is genuine, and so is the emotion behind it. The lights of the night encapsulate her figure completely, like a cocoon, and there is such a frantic urgency with which the breeze moves about her, that it is hard to tell which is which and who is who. The dress she's wearing is so delicate it might remind one of gossamer, yet she does not show the slightest bit of discomfiture. The setting we find ourselves in mimics many of the films we have watched in the past week, but do not find this fact annoying. Yet. It looks like a natural and commonplace sight, but it is not. If I wrote a song about this moment, it would be the most sanctimonious one ever written. She is scared of falling, perhaps she has vertigo - I do not know, but watching her framed in the greyness of the landscape is titillating.

It would be a lascivious one too, if I told her I would be breaking up with her the next day, because she has the intellectual capacity of a needle.

Plainspeak in Suburbia.

The summer breeze makes my shirt billow outwards like a tent, and the soft drink I am sipping through a straw begs to acquiesce. It is one of those oh-too-lazy days where nothing really gets done, and through the maze of mildewing bath-towels and half-eaten brownies, you try to compare your life with an idyllic one and see what semblance it bears towards the latter. More often than not, you end up unearthing quite a lot on the topic of relationships and how they affect the more professional aspects of our daily life. Sometimes, when I am feeling upbeat, I like to think about myself as an Icarus who soared too high and burned out his wings of wax. Fell to my 'death', consequently.

No one likes to think of their relationships as dysfunctional. When I was young, my teachers instructed me in some of the teachings of Austrio-German social scientists, most of which basically contained the maxim - You have to provide for someone in order to be provided for yourself and have your affairs in order. Most relationships - filial, marital, sexual or otherwise - operate on a level of co-dependency. You fixate on a person's strength of character while you fill in on the points that need filling. One does this on a conscious or unconscious level. When it is done on a conscious level, the relationship is more volatile than what it would have been if the individual had not seen his cards before laying them out flat on the table.

Besides, it is easy to idealize a relationship. It is easy to 'connect the dots' and say that you have it all figured out. What I think, though, is that all relationships grow more if the individual is eager to learn. I think the mistake I make (and most of us make) is bring the baggage from the previously concluded relationship to the next one. In doing so, we wrest the fairness of the 'deal' from the hands of the other individual. So, for now, lets say that the Zen of relationships is that we must always empty the cup. Easier said than done, though. The process of constant cleansing requires that no dregs stick to the bottom. Most of us are vulnerable to emotional volatility. We might handle the stimuli themselves with varying degrees of stability, but our perception towards these events remains the same. We still know that our next response to a similar set of emotional circumstances will be quick and efficient. That forbears on my judgement of a relationship pattern. I have heard friends saying that they feel manipulated and used when a relationship takes a turn for the worse. I have no advice to offer to them - none, whatsoever. It is because one can only control the events that are directly related to oneself, you cannot bend a behavioural trait in another individual to your advantage. The least you can do, at this point, is to be honest and hope the other is honest too.

I have seen some relationships that are so spontaneous , so effervescent, so beautiful that they are almost too good to be true. These have involved little to no efforts from either of the two individuals in the relationship. Probabilistically speaking, this is indeed possible. There must exist two people with the same value-judgements and the same moral compasses, and when you bring them together you will get a relationship that works with the least friction. There is just the slightest bit of turbulence by external factor(s), which then gets eschewed into the relationship and finally is excreted because the relationship has strong roots, and hence can shake off the snow. It is resourceful to think of oneself as being constantly on the make, because there is nothing much that one can do to avoid turmoil in relational landscapes. When I say this, I speak from a direct subjective standpoint. It is easy to be objective and say that two plus two equals four, but what happens when the screen gives you five? The least we can ask of the other person is to be authentic in his claims and his desires. History, theology and philosophy have always influenced its students to one particular end - do your best to salvage what you can from the ruins of your last relationship and graft it to your new one. Because, then you are more wise, more objective. But, let us ask ourselves one thing, what does it really mean to be rooted in objectivity? All that we achieve from this one-sided objectivity is a myopic vision of where a relationship is heading. Let us now see what happens when you broach the topic subjectively. Yes, you are more vulnerable because you don't know what to expect, and you don't know how to read the writing on the wall and draw the lines that need drawing. But, you do feel a tremendous enthusiasm to look things in the eye and honestly accept the fact that you are giving what it takes to keep the relationship going strong. Feeding it, nourishing it. One might argue then the enthusiasm dulls with time, and that honesty dulls itself through and through. Contextually, that is in line with our bourgeois conformist values because whenever we feel that we are not getting our share of the relationship pie, we wear out our welcome and cease to see things as a story, as a continuous opportunity for growth. Cookie-cutter responses to day-to-day stimuli may be very well relaxing, but they do little to alleviate the pain of that constant cycle of emotional instability.

I have no stratagems to apply here. I am learning too. All I can do is grab hold of life by the horns and hope it doesn't blow its nose

Good good. So, our affairs are in order.

The Going.

So,it is with a misplaced need to unbelong that I step off the train that brings me back to Bombay. Six months in Manipal. Perhaps Bach felt the same way when he wrote his first composition. Who knows? I'm taken aback at the weather here - it is chilly, and it is a welcome respite from the weather I'd encountered back there. A porter's throaty baritone jugs my mind to the present and I start walking towards the exit.

As I start to walk across the footbridge, stray memories jostle for my attention. I will be honest. There were times I felt like screaming and tearing at my hair, there were times when I lost myself in the subjectivity of an eighteen-year old's emotions, there were times I laughed till I cried. No emotional roller-coaster, really. More like an emotional Ferris wheel. I never did the math, because I never felt like doing it. Because that would involve being stoic, distant and detached - which, by the by, can never be practised in Manipal, and because it would not allow me a chance to observe, to ponder, to reflect. I'd rather amble along here, although, frankly, it's not a bad idea any longer.

I hail a kaali-peeli. Shove my bags in the rear and myself in the front-seat, and head towards home. Looking at the faces whizzing by.

The virility of Death as we know it.

I am sitting at my desk in the assembly. My Windsor knot's making me gag, so I loosen it and squint at the corner of the podium. Oh,it's him. Hair tied back neatly into a ponytail, and with tie fastened perfectly around his collar, he would have been just as attuned to a Pearl Jam concert than he was to this meet. I had met him three years earlier. He was so blase then. now he looks at his friends passively, his face neatly arranged into a mask, so that all people, high or low, cannot measure his attitude from his countenance.

When the meeting is over, I walk to his side and ask him whether he would like a drink. His face lights up. I didn't notice you, he says. Where were you?

Oh, I was hiding near the coffee maker. Spilled a little of it on my conscience.

We laugh and he proceeds to tell me of his life so far. He is not a very successful person. His grades are average and his projects are never turned in on time. He tells me of working with students of NSD, and I listen to him, amused. He seems happy. Unlike the last time, when his claws were out and he was baying for my blood. Because he thought I had wooed his girlfriend. Messy affair.

We exchange notes on the proceedings and then stop at a bar. I leave my shirt open at the collar, and ask for a mug of Heineken. He does the same. He looks at me and says,'So,how's it going with Michellia? Slept with her yet?'

If it had been anyone else, I would have shoved his head into the ice-box, but I shake my head. No. The whole friend-angle. He concurs, smiling to himself.

You were good today, Ayan. I really liked your views on some of the topics.

Thank you, thank you. (It's awkward. How do you talk to somebody whose girlfriend you have slept with? A childhood sweetheart at that? Maybe, I really am a bum woman-trafficker).

It's okay, you know. She left me for this guy who landed a place in Cornell. I knew she wasn't going to be mine anyway. Love hurts, man.

How are you holding up?

Fine. I mean, it was bad at first. I didn't take it very well. Refused any contact with humans. (laughs). But you gotta pull through. You gotta. She was everything. Light of my life, and all that shit. But, you know what, these things are better left alone. We men needn't bother with pointless human emotions. Otherwise, it chews up a hole in you the size of a Big Kahuna.

True, that. (uncomfortable silence)

He breaks down into aching sobs.

La-di-da, la-di-da, la la.

Annie Hall. I never got over Woody Allen's prima facie story of Everyman's desperate attempts to find meaning in absurd, emotionally-overwhelming and beautiful relationships. I could see this any time of the year, any time of the month, any time of the day and still be satisfied with where my life is heading. Tough call, really.