Hira

You talk to a girl – let’s call her Pari – for some time. You haven’t happened to see her, yet you talk to her daily on the phone. Then she disappears. She disappears because she was unable to own you.

After some months, you talk to another girl – Hira – and she is exactly the same person you talked to before. But not entirely the same. The identity is different. And this time, you happen to meet her.

You talked to two different people; perhaps the same. Yes. No. She was the one.

You talked to one, met another one; and both were the same.

You know, men want variety. They talk about it all the time. ‘Change’ and ‘biryani’; not ‘daal chawal’ every day. But then, men are always looking for the previous one. “The one who got away.” They are forever striving for nostalgia. Maybe they live in nostalgia too. Who knows their psyche?

Always trying to get a whiff of the breeze they inhaled a decade back at the beach.

Back to Pari. Oh! Hira. The same person. She knows you already. And as is likely, she disappears again. Because you could not be owned. You were not conquered. Her agenda was to own you, and your agenda was to escape.

Such a clichéd story: A random call. Random sharing. Random meetup. Random disappearance. End of story. No? No.

There is something to be said about being nostalgic in the present. Sensing and fearing a future without the beloved. You are going to lose this person right in front of you. Who you just met. For the first time. And for the last time. After the first touch. After the first kiss. After the first breath. That’s it. Nothing to follow. No seconds. No second touch. No second kiss. No second breath.

Are these lies? Like everything else. This life, this breathing, this space, this whole coding in a virtual platform? Oh! Pain is real. It can be felt. It nurtures and evolves on its own. We all have our share of pain in different shapes. And we are kind of addicted to it. Because that is the only thing we own. And sometimes that is the only thing we know. Pain. Very personal pain.

But even pain is nothing more than some angry brain cells.

See the other side of the human spectrum: special people. Above all of us. Above politics, above consumerism, above religion, above philosophy, above love, above lust, above everything. They are happy. Just happy. They don’t have eternal pain, like us who are actually handicapped and mere consumers.

Rooh / nafs / soul is dependent on a body. Complete human body. Religion simply dismisses differently abled people as they will not be judged in the Hereafter. Fine. But there are questions. Rooh depending on a body completely rejects the idea of soul. There is no soul perhaps. Just a system. Working and evolving.

One cell splitting into two. Two into four. Four into eight. Myopic microscopic evolution.

Or one cell is ordered to split into two. Two into four. Four into eight. The design.

Sigh! Don’t want to drag to the point where a story becomes blasphemous.

Eyes see a person. There is a chemical response in the brain. Curiosity. Love or lust, whatever, is a biologically intrigued chemical reaction. Mood, mood swings, temper, very intelligent anger, everything, is a chemical reaction. And then a whole human body, an object not to be objectified, is talking to you on the other end of the receiver. From chemical reaction in the brain to frequency signals on the receiver to decoding of wavelengths by the ears; love is born. Give yourself a break.

Reminds me of Merovingian’s causality scene of the Matrix. Everything is coded and hence can be manipulated, accordingly.

Back to her. Pari. Or Hira. Or whoever’s Zia she was. Two persons. Two cities. Two names. Yet, one.

How does it feel that you talked to one and met another one; who are exactly the same? That was the story that caused chaos in a dead sea. Some phone calls, and some social media snapshots – welcome to the modern world. What remain are some pictures to see. Sleazy pictures. No second touch but a possession forever.

The pictures remain, the person does not. The story remains, the voice does not. The stories have evolved. Now Ranjha isn’t running madly to save Heer. Romeo is already dead with nothing in hand. Now, the modern-day-Ranjha sneaks onto Instagram, takes screenshots, and keeps on reliving the past. Eating himself like the tail of a snake.

Why do men need to relive and die again and again, yet looking for variety at the same time? Are they still in an early evolutionary phase? Will they ever be stable? How they long and strive to see someone naked for months and then keep on reliving the moments where they were able to save some sleazy shots? Isn’t this digital-lust pathetic?

And the person you see in the picture is the same, yet not the same. The body is the same, yet the soul is different. What would have been a future of such a story? Only unfulfilled love stories are complete. Fulfillment follows disaster. And mutilated stories are not even worth telling. But here it is. As it was. How else to write such a weird story?

Maybe in another life. When they both are cats. Animals.

P.S. I know exactly what I was writing initially but kept on adding some words / fragments randomly in this piece. And look what I made? Noodles! May you make some sense out it. I couldn’t. Maybe in another piece.