A Bowl of Elusive

I remember all of us sitting in the dining hall at our place in Sambalpur. I wasn’t more than five years old at the time. My grandfather was seated in his usual wooden recliner, with my grandmother by his side in a matching chair, while my father sat at the dining table peeling mangoes for everyone to eat. I was on the floor fiddling with some toy of some kind while my father was entertaining his parents with anecdotes from his time in the armed forces. After a while, the conversation shifted to me and how I was such a big responsibility, especially since my father was raising me alone. My father looked at me with pride and announced that I’d become “a doctor or an engineer” when I grow up.  My father’s plan was to be hands-on with my upbringing and to a large extent he was. But it was short-lived, as just five years later, he died of kidney failure and I came under my grandparents’ care. They were good people and their style of parenting involved giving me a wider berth to grow creati

Here’s the fourth part of the Siddhant-Ishika story. Here are the links to the earlier chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 . Go read those and then come back to find out what happened next. At five in the morning, Ishika left Siddhant’s apartment, wearing a red kurta and white leggings. Siddhant paced after her. He wanted to see her off to her cab, but she stopped him by the elevator. She put a hand on his chest and pushed him back. Then the elevator door closed and she was gone. He went to the balcony and just got a glimpse of her walking towards the car downstairs. When she left, the exhaustion and the hopelessness of the previous night hit him hard and he collapsed on his bed. But he couldn’t sleep. Because he’d made a deal with the Devil. And the Devil had collected his dues right away. As he lay on the bed, sleepless and disoriented, Siddhant looked back at the events of the previous night. He couldn’t help thinking about those glorious moments that made up that night,

This is the third installment of Siddhant & Ishika's story. Click on these links to read the previous parts: Part 2 & Part 1 . Just to summarize, boy meets girl, likes her but his feelings aren't reciprocated. Still, they grow closer and share a strange intimacy they develop over the course of days. If you're done reading the earlier parts, let me tell you what happened next. So Siddhant's plan was pretty simple. Be consistent, be insistent and be crazily persistent, and just hope that his feelings would seep into Ishika's heart. There was just one problem with that plan. It didn't factor in Ishika's decision never to fall in love again. There's a background story to Ishika's drastic decision but she's pretty tight lipped about it, so let's respect her privacy and move on to where Siddhant's at. He was being an absolute darling to Ishika, but his charms fell flat against her unwavering resolve not to fall in love.

Measuring the degree of how much I want something has always been a challenge for me. I do understand the difference between yearning and obsession but I'm afraid my definitions may vary a little from the societal norms. You see I tend to be a little intense with my feelings. It usually plays out well for me because there's not a lot I want in life. But sometimes it becomes painful, especially when I have no control over the causality of things. That happens when its SOMEONE I'm yearning for. Because the way of the heart can be treacherous and all consuming. If I like you, I like you. There's not much in my control after that. I don't just get infatuated easily, only to be disillusioned later. I often know what I want and when I come across it, I'd pursue it through heavens and hell, through good and bad, through suffering and joy, because it's worth all that. But there's another side to it. An ugly one. I have never had things easy. And