A Cold Winter Night

By Surya Prasanna Bharani Sannidhanam

It was cool around. It was cold inside too, not that it mattered.

It was cool outside, breeze and rain are not a great combination, especially when you are standing in your balcony, dripping wet, on a cold winter night in a mere t-shirt and shorts. Especially, when you have cold thoughts and wet eyes. I blinked rapidly to subdue the pain that shot into my head from my eyes. Heart, well, is still mending from the pain.

The Tollywood heartbreak songs (Tollywood seems to be the best) I had been listening to, on a loop, started to take effect on me. The sadness started to overpower me, matching with the thick grey heavy clouds above. Is nature mirroring me today or was it the other way?

I didn’t know. All I know is the boring hole deepening inside me.

I realized my tightened grip on the railing, desperately trying to grasp it, to hold it back, to make it stay. Oh, it doesn't work that way, right!

I blinked again. My lids started to hurt, from the consistent and excessive excretion over the days. I lifted my shaking hand to wipe the rainy tear that streaked down my cheek. The slight shiver in my hand could write a thousand stories, could paint a million pictures, and could still go unnoticed forever.

It’s not your fault. I wish it was - to give my pain a wound, an origin. My anger would have had a direction. My heart would have had a reason. My love would have had a face. It’s hard like this, unfathomable, undecipherable, unexplainable, and most importantly, indigestible. But you have never been wrong. I wish you had been, at least this time.

I closed my eyes for the nth time now, reliving once again, the incessant dreams I had with you, awake and asleep. There it goes, another tear.

The feel of your hand is imprinted in mine. The grace, the way you perform hulk-level tasks with princess-like delicacy, and get them done awfully perfectly. The way your smooth cheeks slope down to a thin chin, under my palm (and my lips). The touch of your forehead to mine; little soft stolen kisses; the way you look at me; the very air around, when we are close to each other; I breathed in, `God's most aesthetic and exquisite creation. ` A true beauty with brains.

Not Yours! In Bold!

The gut-crunching feeling returned. Aaahhhh! Why does it have to be so difficult? Except for a few chosen, all these movies seem to be a far cry from this real suffering. They seem outright shallow.

It was getting colder. The showers have exhausted- maybe its the nature's sign. I turned around into my room. I could do this another day. For now, I will walk back into the house with a smiling face, for the happiness of the people most important in my life- AMMA and APPA.

By Surya Prasanna Bharani Sannidhanam