7th and The Pink One

By Mishita Jethi

My baby brother fell sick when I was in the 7^th grade. Real sick! Now the funny thing about a member of your family falling sick, and that too the little baby you love most in the world, is that you’re mostly in a state of denial. So when people around me used to ask me how he was doing, most of the times I felt like telling them, ‘Why, he’s fine. He’s just a little unwell and the doctors will fix him in a jiffy.’ Instead, I would end up giving them all a watery smile and mumble a few words, and walk away in brisk steps lest my eyes give away my real answer. I’m reminded of a particular incident as I lie down shaking up more than two decades worth of memories! I remember being extremely angry one day. I was all of 12 and refusing to understand that my parents needed to be in the hospital for days together because my brother had to be looked after. I was being troublesome and difficult. I rebuffed doing my homework, would not eat food or go do my own work-basically I was making the day worse for my dad, who had come back from the hospital as my mom went to be there. Finally my dad ordered me to change into my night clothes and go off to sleep. In particular defiance, I chose to put on a fancy t-shirt (something I was to wear mainly to parties) and came back to my dad’s room just to show him that I would not listen to him. And that’s when something happened which changed the way I looked at myself and my anger and fears. My dad came up to me and gathered me in his arms. He said, ‘I know you’re scared. So am I. But we can either choose to accept our fears and fight them, or continue ignoring them. And I can tell you that if we continue ignoring them, we’ll never really find out what we were really scared of.’

Years later, as I sit separated from that little kid (who has since then grown into a very loving young boy) I wonder what really went behind my state of denial? Why are most of us afraid to face our fears when it comes to things most close to our hearts? I am yet to find an answer to that question. But the question itself has manifested in me thinking a lot about the feelings that we keep bottled deep inside ourselves. I have that pink t-shirt kept safely even today. Its no longer fancy. It no longer can be worn in parties. It is close to wearing out fully. But I’ll save it for as long as I can. I’ll probably give it to my daughter someday when she’s scared of thunderstorms or ghosts in her closet. And I’ll teach her that its ok to be scared because if we accept our fears, we can fight them off. And if we’re unable to fight them alone, they’re will always be a hand to wrap us close, and to give us that hope, that all will be well! It will be. I just know it. Till then, I’ll wear the pink t-shirt again and regain some of the hope that I’ve lost in the last few months!

The World's Shortest Love Story

One fine day she called me up and said, "Listen there is something very important that I have to tell you, and I have to tell it to you right now."

I was all ears. I stated this.

She continued, "The thing is, I have been thinking for a while...you know, about you and me. And..."

This sent alarm bells ringing, I racked my brains searching for anything that I might have done in the past few days that may have impacted my friendship with her negatively, I got lost in thoughts as the voice on the cellphone continued. "So this is final, and I am going to just come straight out with it and tell you, I love you. There, see, I said it." She paused for me to react, unfortunately I had been too lost in my thoughts to properly hear what she was saying, she shouted, "Hello! Are you even listening to me?"

I said, "Yes, yes, of course. And...you were saying."

"I said...you know, I said I love you."

My head swam for a while with a heady feeling, I held out a hand to the nearest wall for support, it took me some time to realize that she was still speaking, "Aren't you going to say anything?"

I paused, reflected and then said, "Well...of course, I love you too!"

And then we had a fairly longish chat which was full of happiness and future prospects and chorus songs in the background, when I remembered, "Er...what about that guy who claims to be your boyfriend? I mean, how does he figure."

She shouted, "Haven't you been listening to me? He doesn't matter to me anymore, you get that? I am through, I am over. I am...wait a minute, my cell phone is showing a 'call wait', oh hell...it's that bastard, let me get through with him and I will call you back, okay?"

I heard the familiar beep-beep one hears after being put on hold. I paced around for the next half an hour trying to keep my emotions in check, and trying not to think about what she would be talking with her ex about. Perhaps something vitriolic.

She called again, and said in the same firm and resolute tone of voice as before, "Listen, it's all over."

"Between you and him?" I asked, smiling to myself.

"No, between you and me, I am going back to him."

"What! How can it be over between you and me? I mean, we have hardly started!"

"I don't know about that," she said, "I am going back to him. He has convinced me so."

"But...we are such good friends!"

"Oh yeah, about that. So I guess we should never talk again, I am ending my friendship with you. Please don't bother me by calling me again, okay?" And thus she unceremoniously cut the phone.

I chose the same spot as before on the wall to lean and support my frame. I sighed loudly to extract sympathy from friends passing by. One of them stopped and asked me, "Is any thing wrong?"

I nodded, sighing again. "Tell me, what happened?" He asked.

I said, "I have just been a part of The World's Shortest Love Story." And I proceeded to tell him the details, it did not take long, I was through in a couple of minutes. My friend said, "But that's so cool...I mean, it's awesome! Isn't it?"

And then I realized he was right, it was totally awesome.

All You Need Is Love

"Love, love, love," I said, pacing around the room with a pen and a paper-pad. "Love, love, love." I added, for good measure.

Mathew asked me, "What exactly are you doing?"

I replied, "I am just thinking of lyrics for our next song, and I want to rhyme love with a word that's not 'above', I mean I have done that in my poems a million times, don't want to repeat it."

Mathew stopped tuning his guitar and said, "Can we write a song that's not about Love for once?"

I said, "Considering we have written only one song till now, and it was not totally about love, yeah, I guess we can do that."

He laughed and said, "Well, are you capable of doing that?"

"Hey, there is NOTHING I can do that can't be done, get it? Or...something like it."

"Fine, you carry on with writing the lyrics, and please, please add a reference to Harley Davidson in the song somehow." He said.

I continued pacing around the room, sifting through the pages of the pad for old inspirations and half-used poems. I came across our set-list for an upcoming show. "I have a point at issue here."

"A pointed tissue? Where?"

"No, I have an issue, with the song selection." I told him. "It appears, by some crazy mistake, you have added 'Rock n Roll' by Led Zep in the song list."

There was a pause in the conversation, I stared at Mathew, he shifted his gaze to birds sitting on a tree outside his window. "Come on," he said, "It's one of my favourite songs! And we gotta cover Led Zep sometime!"

I said, "There is a problem with that my friend, and I am going to be vocal about it. You see, the problem is with the vocals, I can't sing this song man, it's too tough."

Mathew threw his hand up in the air and said, "Hey if it can be sung, you can sing it. Practice, do whatever, but that song isn't going out of the set list."

I decided to go out of his room, and went to my own to write the lyrics. As was usual, I found a persona non grata sitting on my bed and staring wistfully at his cell phone. It was the other guitarist CP (Chandra Paul) of my band. I told him, "Get out." He said, "Fuck you." And that was that. The conversation moved to other areas.

"What the hell are you doing staring at your phone for?" I asked him, not caring to be grammatically correct.

"I just had a long, unpleasant conversation with my girlfriend Jyoti."

"Right," I said, "And I just remembered I have some work to do somewhere." I tried to escape but he caught me by the wrist and looked me in the eye, holding me at the spot like the ancient mariner had held the wedding guest.

I sighed and said, "Fine, tell me about it."

He stayed silent for a long time, and as I tried making a quiet getaway, he said, "There's nothing I can say to her these days. I have been with her for two years now, and I still don't know how to play this game called love."

I consoled him, "But you can learn how to play the game. It's easy."

After a few more minutes of (studied) silence, he said, "I guess I should not think about break up, should I?" I offered him nothing, he continued, "If this relationship can be made back again, I am willing to make it."

I told him, "Well, you can be saved still."

He laughed sarcastically and asked me, "And what do I do for that?"

I said, "There is nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be yourself, in due time. As I said, it's easy."

"How?"

"All you need is love."

Presently CP exited and Shobhit-The accidental philosopher entered the room. He picked up my writing pad and read aloud, "Love, love, love." He looked at me and then continued, "Love, love, love." He sat down and said, "Strange poem, six words and all are the same."

I told him, "Well, love is all you need."

We chatted for a while about this and that and about some girl who did not know who Franz Kafka was, and then he said, "Have you ever thought about knowledge? You know, as knowing being a fundamental part of being?"

I said, "No, I rather run away from academics and stuff."

"I am not talking about that...you see, this universe, it is full of knowledge. In fact it reeks of knowledge, it's almost vulgar in it's display of knowledge. There is a lot that you can know, I mean, there is nothing you can know that can't be known...and, I want to know about that which can't be known." He stopped speaking and looked at me, "Do you see what I am talking about?"

"If you show it to me, I can see it."

Shobhit laughed and said, "Never mind, we will talk about this later."

"You shouldn't be in this college maybe, you know."

"Why?"

"Cause...you think weird!"

"He he, you see, the individual is the driving force behind his own actions, and thus is the sole decider of where he should be, by that logic, you can't be at a place that you are not meant to be."

"Hmm...I see, I finally see what you are talking about." I didn't.

"You do, so what do you think about it?"

I tried to find a way out and said, "It's easy. Well...I think, All you need is love."

With A Little Help From My Friends

When I walked into the practice room I was welcomed by smiling faces and applause from my band members. What was missing was a big yellow coloured banner with 'Congratulations' written on it in black letters. "We were waiting for this day from the time you hooked up with her." Akash said, "Your relationship with her was all fire and brimstone, it was so shaky..and anyways, now you will have time to practice again, go wipe the dust from the microphone."

Akash was right, a strange sensation of freedom surged through me. And it was more than two months since I had last practiced, not being a good singer in even the mildest sense of the word, without practice I was horrible. As this thought crept into my mind I asked my friends, "What would you do if I sang out of tune?"

Mathew laughed and asked me, "When do you sing in tune?"

I said, "No, I am serious, what would happen if I sang out of tune, you guys won't walk out on me, would you?"

They debated this thing jocularly amongst themselves and came to the conclusion, "Dude, we would not be the ones walking out. You would be thrown out! And we would make sure you do not have a soft landing."

I laughed and struck a pose, "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend me your ear. I am going to sing you a song," and as an afterthought I added, "and I will try not to sing out of key."

I remembered that it was yesterday while breaking up she had asked me what I was going to do now, I had told her I intended to get by with a little help from my friends. And tonight, I needed to get high.

The practice went considerably well, my throat responded nicely, and we covered a couple of new songs. After practice while I was in a buoyant state of mind, Mathew asked me, "Dude, do you really need somebody?"

I asked him. "Need somebody? For what?"

"Do you need somebody to love?"

I laughed lightly and said, "Not necessarily...but I don't know, not everyone needs someone to love. I guess, I do. Yeah, I need somebody to love?"

He frowned and said, "But could it be ANYBODY? Even her? That bitch, you knew her history, and now you know her future, you spent two months of agony with her, why man?"

I smiled and replied, "Perhaps I wanted somebody to love."

We returned to the hostel, and I walked into my room to see two of my friends already occupying prime positions on my bed. I checked my watch and pointed out the thin one, "It's eight in the evening, what is he doing in the hostel?"

I got the answer in second-hand, "His girl friend is away, she has gone home for the weekend. And all he has done since the evening is sit here and sigh."

Nishit, the thin guy sighed again, to prove Prakash's point, he said, "What do I do when my love is away?"

I asked him, "Does it worry you to be alone? For a single evening?"

He replied, "You don't know how do I feel by the end of the day."

Akash entered the room, having kept his bass guitar and amp in his room, he looked and Nishit and asked a similar question as me, "Hey, are you sad because you are on your own?"

Nishit sprang to his feet and said, "No! I got you guys!"

I mentioned my plan about getting high, Akash said, "We can try, but presently I am hungry."

The four of us went to a decent Chinese restaurant nearby, all through dinner I was the butt of a million relationship related jokes. Prakash, who had had a similar experience a few months ago said, "We can start a club you know. The Broken up club or something."

Akash. the master of tangential thoughts suggested, "Your relationship was like a punch in the face, and your breaking up with her was like losing a tooth. Painful, and perhaps necessary. So name your club 'Broken Tooth', I guess that will fit."

"Broken Tooth!" I said, "What a stupid name!" I was going to further philosophize on the general stupidity of Akash and his ideas when on the next table in front of me I beheld The Most Beautiful Girl in The World. She was wearing a blue dress and eating a starter of some variety.

I kept on staring at her, not realizing that all my friends are going to follow suit, when she started staring back we diligently returned to our table and food. After a while I asked my friends, "Er..do you guys..you know, believe in love at first sight?"

They laughed for the sixtieth time at my expense, and Nishit said, "Yeah I am certain that it happens all the time."

Prakash interjected, "But how do you know if it's love?" And because he didn't like notions of love, he added, "Love is nothing. Nothing is love."

Nishit said, "I have a method, it's fail-proof. All you have to do is close your eyes."

I said, "Can we try it now?" Nishit said, "Sure." After I closed my eyes he asked me, "Now in the complete darkness, as if the lights have been turned off, what is it that you see?"

I saw, quite clearly, the picture of the girl sitting a few feet away, and I told my friends, "I can't tell you right now, but I am sure that it is going to be mine."

It took me a whole minute to realize that I was sitting in relative silence, I opened my eyes to see that my friends had deserted the table, leaving me to become the laughing stock of the restaurant and to pay the bill.


A few days later I got to be introduced with that girl in blue, by chance and random consequence. In conversation, she asked me, "So Ram, what do you do in free time, generally?"

I smiled and said, "I get by with a little help from my friends."