Blank

I’m no addict. The only knowledge I have of dope is through Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies and its sequel novel River of Smoke. In the former book, where a great deal is written about opium, I particularly remember one sequence. It depicts a scene where an addict is forced to undergo de-addiction.
No, don’t ask me who that character is. But what I can tell you, in good detail, is how he craves for his drug. There is a reason why I can recall the scene so vividly.
So this addict begs for his cake till he faces a near black-out. He wakes up with immense pain in his limbs. It’s a peculiar pain. He feels that his innards are being twisted with iron hands till he can’t breathe. And multiple claws are gouging out his eyes, gagging his mouth…and suffocating the life out of him. He thrashes, he kicks, he shouts, he salivates, he implores. He’s garrulous with deprivation. All he needs is one sniff of his wonder drug for everything in the distorted world to return back to a silken state of normalcy. Of bliss. Until then, it’s haunting chaos in a sea of debris.
The reason why I remember this is because that is how I long for her. MY wonder-drug. Only, she is a beautiful addiction. The health-giving one. Truth be told, even though my insides bruise without her, and every part of me aches to touch her and hold her again…her love never allows me to do a wrong. In that sense, she’s the exact opposite of opium. Addictive in a purifying way.
All of us give in. I did so today. Breaking my resolve, not hers. I smsed her. What the world calls a blank message. But I know she knows better.
She had once forwarded me a mail. Of a little girl who gifts an empty box to her dad on his birthday. Angry, the dad blasts her. The girl breaks into tears, and tells him how she had blown kisses in the box all night until it was brimming with love.
In this case, I am the daughter. Our relationship is such, we keep exchanging roles, and fit them all like missing blocks of a puzzle. Gap-less. So, I know. I am confident. She would have understood the meaning of that ‘blank’ message.
It meant nothing, yet everything. It meant a relationship of no expectations, yet bursting love. Of no ego, yet total sublimation. Of no claims, yet hundred percent surrender. Of no words, yet complete understanding. Of no definitions, yet perfect balance. Of no interference, yet eternal involvement. Of zero, yet infinity.

Comments

  1. it is so cryptic that i need to relieve myself..lol..by the way your last paragraph is such a vivid reminder of dicken's 'a tale of two cities' opening lines..in any case happy vijayadashmi from Ger.. wishing u all the prosperity & happiness in all shapes :)

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