The Secret in her eyes....

You cannot do anything.

A thing you hold on to, a situation when you will out that conversation you have been having for years inside your head. See a cute child, hear an old couple's love talk, a mother fighting for her son, a bird pecking endlessly at a car's mirrors as if it did not like it own image, the cat you run after, the acid scar on your thigh your friends mistakenly put on you, the first hint of rain on your face, two metal chairs on a railway platform, the possible duration of lactation....it goes on. Life's tit bits, till the memory attached to them becomes that passion with which you live your life, day after day, year after year.

The biggest truth of them all. That you are afraid. Of numerous things, faceless, nameless irrational fears. Your life, your way of life. The dirty room, the swollen left foot, the books you are supposed to read, the books you read instead, travel and fashion magazines you collect, the fear of entering a parlour, of being made to feel like the one you want to hide the most. Behind that grit, that volcanic anger and the humor for which your patients warm up to you, your juniors adore you. That girl who keeps looking on, behind all this. Day in, day out. Like a secret.

Like a death you remember nineteen years later with absurd details. And when you don't want to but end up crying and revealing everything through your tears to the person who should have been kept the most away from it.

Conversations that go on in theory for 4 years, and in practice for less than 3 hours. Amidst your diamonds, the smart phone, the A/C, the second Littmann...You are a rich girl. And you like it. A trip in the same position, as a pillion, in that same posture you sat 4 years back. Afraid. Afraid of many things. And time flows. This time though there were no irrationally humorous conversations. There were just forced silences of the inevitablility that was to come four days hence.

Fear is such a constructive force. It helps one to work better, unlike the absurd excuses one can give for not wanting to return. 'I don't socialize. I don't pretend to like a person I can't. I don't care how I look. I wish I could care how I work. But beyond a point, no.' You give one reason for it, its understood. You will fail. Love will not last, a second time. And you are afraid when it will happen, this time you wont make it. Notice the author has used the word 'when' instead of 'should' like this is an inevitability.

Fear of getting in the path of ones dreams, like returning home night after night fallen, beaten and tired to keep a smiling face at the door, and sipping coffee and discussing 'paradigm shifts...'. These are well founded fears of coming in the way. Once accused, they never leave you, even if the person says its unfounded, because you know it has always been there, inside your head..Your absence is a release, your presence has always been a prohibition. Beyond that 16 hours working thinking about everybody else and coming back home to read 15 other things in 2 hours time is a soul that is desperate to be talked to. Doesn't matter. It will be learned to be overcomed.

Tell me. Tell me anything you want.

There is nothing else to say.

Okay then.

I will call you sometime.

Click of 2 phones. Sum total of 4 years of relation summed up in these 4 sentences. And the difference in it finally came about from an enforced request to clear the muck. At a time when things had gone far far ahead. The 'I will call you sometime' has never been kept. An ordeal for one of them. An uncomfortable situation. Why did he decide to stick on to it then? She had only wanted to see him one last time before she went.

This and in other painfully unimportant ways do people stop being in love with one another. It starts with these mute cycles of respiration that grow out and snuff everything else in no time. Even if 'make up' has been a word in not so distant past. Because it takes you 1 hour of your duty to realize where you stand.

Nowhere.

Nowhere. No escape. Not even a fleeting thought that love could be enough.

Despite what the movie says, its never enough.

Pictures. Pictures you see, photographs, two people looking good, smiling at the camera, holding each other like friends, sharing dinner every night, talking, laughing, getting the sun together on their skin, discussing movies, books, music, dance...How can you even think it could be good otherwise? Convince the person. Slowly but reassuredly, make him know that the word 'make-up' is always a put-on. It always wears away.You are invincible when it comes to optimism. This is the lasting truth. One just lacks a little bit of strength, and a little bit of motivation to understand why 'everyone' needs the 'call before you sleep' routine. Even people laughing together drunk in the spirit of the moment, where the glint in his eye is visible while he sips that beer. Even in the space where at some other place someone is trying to decipher why the man she sent for a psychiatry opinion would have come back and arrested. She had never seen him look like that. There was no glint, perhaps thankfulness, and the so called 'respect and intimidation' stuff she heard regularly, when he saw her. She hates herself for herself. Fireflies had studiously disappeared this time.

Things are always that complicated.

In any case the entire situation is the same as it was a month back, a year back, four years back. Things don't change and the only thing you know is that you make a better choice by choosing to step back. Like the numerous lies you told him in lieu of asking him if he wanted you any closer. It was a negative. People forget. He forgot. Or else his smiles wouldn't have been that happy, his looks wouldn't have been that satisfied. And even when he asks to bring it back, you know it cannot be brought back. You have been too wasted in that wait. Its too late. Things somewhere have been signed, sealed and delivered.

Its better to remain in status quo. Better for both, and at least for him, on a personal option too. Because the four years old secret you read in four days in the eyes of a person you will begin to forget before four weeks pass. Its not your cross to remember. It the other's. Looking on from behind that formidable force she presents.

The Secret in their Eyes, I saw this movie tonight.

I hated this movie. Too much of the things I would not want to be told.