Clasped

As I lay clasped in his embrace, the warmth from his body engulfing mine with unparalleled comfort, I looked into the eyes which revealed a tender, sensitive soul…a steely exterior, grown stronger with the onslaught of life’s multi-hued experiences…the stronger the framework of steel, the more soft the protected thoughts within…and emotions suddenly coursed through my veins, as though an unknown dam had broken without any perceptible reason. I loved this boy beyond the bounds of thought, so much so that every word which fell from his lips went straight to various corners of my heart…every emotion was heightened beyond comprehension…immense joy, immense sadness, immense relief, immense satisfaction, immense amusement…and I felt like merging myself with him on levels beyond the mere physical…and I wished to transcend time and space in my modes of union with him…the present moment ensured that we were entwined with one another…with the volatile world spinning on its axis around us…while all we cared about was the mutual affection which bound our breaths together...the future, laden with uncertain possibilities, lay ignored for the time being, as we swirled the taste of living in the moment around the tips of our tongues…but the past…ah, the past was beyond our reach…for every former tear shed, for every illness battled in solitude, for every beat of a saddened heart…which he had experienced on his own…I was unable to reach out to that realm gone by, to put my arms around him and lend him a consoling shoulder, a reassuring hand, to nurse him gently through bouts of sickness, to kiss him to sleep after a night of bewildered self-questioning and to stroke his head for no particular reason… to rejoice in the rain with his little joys and sorrows…which accompany the half-illusory, half-real successes and failures which play hide and seek with our lives…but all I could do was long in wistfulness, from the helplessness of the Present, which fettered me and restricted my access to bygone hours…

The Theatre of the Mundane

Change is engulfing us within its inextricable embrace, weaving together a tapestry of transition, with the threads of time...memories are spinning through the loom and creating new ones with each passing minute...over the past few days the pages of the social networks I subscribe to have been inundated with photographs capturing this change...old friends I used to play with are now new mothers, new lovers, expectant professionals and beautiful other halves of couples...change has caught me in its grip as well, and transformed my life from that of a lonely dreamer to a dreamy partner to a tender soul...and the revelation of partnership, of union has lived up to its rich legacy of Literary musing... I have often heard, read and been reminded that a marriage is but a domestic partnership, a way to adjust with the ways of another within the confined space of home...akin to alliances with room-mates...and some have shared with me that it is anything but romantic...but I do beg to differ as I am of the conviction that romance is not estranged from reality, rather it is sewn into its very fabric with adroit stitches... I fervently feel, (and this is my subjective insight), that the true romantic can squeeze out romance from a near empty toothpaste tube...Romance is not restricted to the pages of fantastically imagined novels or verses of carefully-thought out poetry...I believe that it spreads its wings beyond such realms and soars over it all, by diving headlong into the Theatre of the Everyday...and none of its enigmatic charm is lost even when it is infused within that which we commonly perceive as mundane or boring... With a dash of imagination and an ounce of creativity, the Theatre of Routine can be shipped from the realm of the Monotonous to the realm of the Sublime...stealing a mischief-laden glance while standing in winding grocery queues, a whispered secret while scrubbing dishes clean, the thought of reveling in clean, fragrant clothes while mixing the detergent, musing on the happy possibilities offered by a swept and scrubbed floor (such as sprawling a mat and having an indoor picnic) the inviting allure of a freshly made bed, the infinite potential of a bowl of just-peeled vegetables, the gleaming beckons of newly purchased pots and pans, the wrinkles of memory amidst the folds of crumpled linen, the charm of frugality amidst the uncertainty of humble beginnings, the varying degrees of struggle encountered by young, bewildered couples...how can any of this not be stammeringly romantic? Love blossoms in arenas where the Theatre of the Mundane is premised on a script which is lettered by promises of a shared togetherness, of an assuring sense of routine in a world laden with chaos, of the charm of adventure lurking in each kitchen cupboard (often in the form of insects :), of rest reposing in the thought of a shared, longed for midnight pillow... That is not to say that a holiday from routine is not welcome, that the reel of romance cannot play in distant, mysterious lands, but there is something romantic about the thought of having to return to the clasp of the time-table, if only to break its schedule at times...