With or Without You

It's been over five years - May 7 , 2001 and yet the memory seems so afresh. i can still feel the rush of adrenalin and giddyness the first time we met. The shy "hi's " as we walked into purple haze (ironic for the making of a purple moment i must say) one thursday evening to the opening strings of U2's "With or Without you". little did i know them that this song would become an anthem for all that was to follow.

The evening was a giddy high - was that love at first sight? or the begining of an illusion that would prevade my life everafter. i do not think i have an answer to that even today .... i doubt i would have an answer to it even in the future. maybe i do not want an answer .....

my heart still skips a beat everytime i see that name buzz on my phone screen. i almost stop breathing wondering if this is the call which will finally ease everything. my palms instantaneously sweat and i sense the same giddy feeling settling in ..... i smile ..... a hallow laugh just to sound like i am fine and doing well. but who cares if i am doing fine actually ? i presume it does and pretend i am .... allowing the illusion to grow on.

from the day i was asked "can i be with him" to the day i was shoulder to "what do i do, i love him so much but just dont know how to handle all of this", i have changed so much. somewhere during this process i lost the ability to feel ..... the ability to cry. today when emotion demands tears and a sense of melancholy .... i smile and bite my lips to control a laugh....

heaven bend and give me a hand, i screamed silently, the voice echoing aganist the walls of my skull.

and heaven did bend its hand..... i moved cities. was it heaven giving me an oppurtunity to regain the ability to feel or was it me running away by telling myself .... its all over and life moves on.... i did move.

i did move. and moved to hear " i cant live with or without you" all over again. now in plain black words with silence as orchestra.

said for the very first time. heard for the very first time.

i went numb i think, though i could not feel if i was actually feeling numb. it was just a silent void. the silence just grew even more silent. making me deaf. i stopped hearing things.

in a fierce attempt to re connect with the senses i was fast losing i began to date again. maybe "love" would actually play healer this one time. ha ha ha ...... i heard myself laughing at the very thought. stop fooling yourself . but sure i went ahead ...... and thus began a new episode in my life that just turned me blind instead .....

love began to pour in from every corner. everyone i met said they were in love with me ..... gawd this was no freak single instance. everything that i thought love was to mean was now being offered to me on a sliver platter. but i detested it from the core of my soul (that is the only sense that seemed to exsist even if threadbare). was this some joke or had heaven really bent to take my hand?

i could not feel. i turned blind to all this love. i turned a snob, a "he just leads you on", a "he just likes to keep people dangling", a "he dangles carrots and makes people dance to his tune".

this sure had to be heaven bending down .... where else can such melodrama be conceived! sans feelings, sans hearing, sans sight ..... what was i ? a voice ..... a voice drowned in hollowness. waiting to join its long lost bretheren .....

and what could have become an exultation was soon becoming an elegy. with or without you ......

see the stone set in your eyes, see the thorn twist in your side, I wait for you, sleight of hand and twist of fate, on a bed of nails she makes me wait.... And I wait......

my hands are tied, my body bruised, she’s got me with nothing to win and nothing left to lose. And you give yourself away.... And you give yourself away

I can’t live with or without you .........

and .......then i forget the birthday ......