Colours of My Heart
on love and emotional anchorlessness
When you did not come, everything was what it was:
The sky was the frontier of sight; the path, a path; the wine cup, a wine cup;
And now the wine cup, the path, the sky’s colour are
The colour of my heart ‘about to turn into the blood of the heart—
Yellow sometimes at the joy of seeing you;
At times grey for insipid moments;
Brown for autumn leaves, thorns, dry grass;
Crimson for flowers and gardens aflame—
Poison’s colour, blood’s colour, the colour of night.
And the sky, the path, the wine cup—
A garment wet with tears; a throbbing vein;
A mirror ever turning.
Now that you have come, stay so that some colour, some season, something
Might stay in one place,
So that everything might be once more what it is:
The sky, the frontier of sight; the path, a path; the wine cup, a wine cup.
Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Colours of My Heart, Trans. Carlo Coppola
Ever since college or even before, I have been an emotional mess. Yes, I have grown and become more emotionally mature - I recognise what I am feeling, I am able to disassociate singular events or persons from very strong emotions, I am maybe a better guardian of my mind’s garden. But with all this maturity has also come a deep sense of emotional instability, an emotional anchorlessness. For a long time, my emotional anchor was home. I never needed anything else. I went to school in the morning, had very few friends but was always the teacher’s good boy, and came back home in the evening. I went for badminton training for two years during middle school but hated it, never made any real friends there, and quit it soon after. I have never looked back at badminton seriously again. Till Class 10, all my memories are mostly memories of me sitting by my mother’s side doing my homework, or watching TV, or playing make-believe games with my cousins at home. A distinct memory I have though is the memory of me playing in the streets - with strangers turned friends, with children my age and children double my age.
I also have the memory of being very very closely attached to the domestic help at our home who came from Assam. I developed a connection with them which I still believe - despite all my training about caste, class et al - transcended our respective social locations. I loved another human being unconditionally, unapologetically when I loved them. But every two to three years, they would go back home, forever. I think now that my emotional anchorlessness began then. Everytime they would leave, I would cry. I would write letters for them while leaving, letters in Hindi because I had taught them the language while they were with us. One time, I wrote a letter which was so personal that my mom did not allow me to give that letter to one of them due to some worldly reasons, and I still have that letter in my bedroom drawer.
The emotional turbulence that this repeated experience produced during my childhood continues to haunt me to this day. Just the other day, one of the didis had put up a Whatsapp status about someone’s death in their family. I sent them a voice note asking who it was. They replied saying it was their father. I still haven’t replied to their voice note yet. I wanted to call them, but haven’t been able to gather the courage to do so. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what assurance to give them. They and I live lives so far removed, so structurally different, so unequal that despite my “unconditional love”, there’s only so far we can be friends. Or maybe my love is not strong enough. And “friend” - that’s a word I find extremely hard to understand.
I started writing this because a friend just replied to my more than a week old barge of texts I flooded them with. Our “friendship” has always been precarious now that I think of it. It was only in my head that it made perfect sense. I felt, for maybe the first time in my life, that I had a “best friend” - you know, the kind of friends everyone seems to have in their childhoods. Our intellectual bandwidths matched so well, it felt like someone finally understood what I was saying even without me having to say it. We had a playful kind of quality about our interactions with each other. The way I imagine it is always me being a little bossy, a little nerdy, a little strict-uptight-disciplinarian-small town boy and them being the metropolitan, rebellious, untidy, cool, funny, but kind person. The moments I remember about our “friendship” are times when people used to look at us and say - I don’t understand how you people are friends, and yet you guys make so much sense together.
Hahah. I don’t know what to do except laugh at myself. I think I have been constructing this notion of “us” too much in my head since childhood. I thought the didis and I were “us” - people who shared secrets and were loyal to each other until I would find one day that one of them had lied to me, and stolen things. Similarly, my friend tells me today that one of the main reasons why we have grown apart over the years is because I am mean to them, I don’t value them enough, and they feel they cannot fully be themselves with me.
I don’t blame any of them - not the didis, nor my dear, dear friend. I just wish I didn’t have to blame myself too. I just wish people understood how deeply I cared about them. I just wish that people understood that you can only be mean to someone so very endearingly when they know that hidden beneath that meanness is an exclusive and deep-seated admiration - no, love is the word - for them. I just wish we remembered the same moments of our friendship.
Well, I am teaching myself to move on from people. My therapist once told me (we were actually talking about this very friend; no surprise): “Let them go. If they come back, they are forever yours; if they do not, they never were.” I don’t know how true that is. I still think it’s worth putting effort into relationships you value so deeply. Yes, it gets frustrating and tiring, it seems useless, it seems not-fair. And yes, in those moments, I want to let it be, I want to let them go. And I have done so in the past - successfully so. I have made new friends, found other people to share my secrets with. But you know, you see someone’s Whatsapp status some day, you see your friend understand what you were saying so quickly and seamlessly, and you want to try again. So you send them a voice note yet again, you send them ten paragraphs of chats once again. You go to your room and say “they are smart” so out-of-context people don’t know how to respond. Yes, I did this the other day when we shared yet another moment of intellectual synergy. I got up from my chair, went to my parents’ room the next door, and just said randomly “you know, whatever you say, they are intelligent”. My family said some things, not so important, but I wish they understood what was unsaid. I wish my dear friend understood what was unsaid.
Family has become complicated too. Today, my family was talking about marriage of cousins, my brother - young people of marriageable age. Marriage is the talking engine of Indian families, it is what keeps them together. And I have no problem with it. It’s just that for various reasons, at least at this point in my life, I don’t like listening, let alone talking, about marriage. So I left the room while they were talking, and we got into a little altercation. Words were exchanged (okay, it’s not that serious, it was just one sentence each). In any case, my home, my family, my forever emotional anchor just doesn’t work a lot of times now. I hate to admit it, but it simply doesn’t. I am unable to express, let alone share, my love for theory with them. My worldview has shifted so drastically and radically that I cannot even watch a cricket match with them sincerely applauding each time India gets a Pakistani wicket. I will find a “problem” even in that, and if I dare point it out, I will be told how “one shouldn’t become so biased also”. Again, this is not to blame them. Despite everything I say, everything I write, everything I think - home remains home. My mother snuck into my bed today morning and hugged me - maybe for the first time this break (which is totally my fault by the way, I have become uncomfortable with physical touch for some reason). And though I did not tell her this, and though I became fidgety very soon, I loved it. There’s nothing like that in the world. I just wish, I just wish, I could share with them the true colours of my heart. I just wish my friend remembered with as much fondness as I do, the time when I packed their suitcase because they were late for a trip and while leaving the room, they looked back to give me a little handshake. That meant the world for me.