Floodgates

She was beautiful once.

You knew that by the way she acted around other men...sometimes even you.

Such sense of entitlement...that her actions seemed ridiculous, her demands preposterous, now that her glory days were well past her.

We were friends who gradually drifted away.Sometimes people just do that for no apparent reason.

In writing this, I was searching for a quote by Salman Rushdie that went something like "Why are men so interested in women than women in men".

He might have said that, by almighty Google could not find anything remotely close enough.As they say GIGO, or Garbage In , Garbage Out.

The aforementioned quote existed somewhere in this infinite inky vastness called the universe, but my search methods were simply too sloppy to find it.

The general rule of the universe was that men found women very interesting and women found women interseting too.The oppsites simply did not attract each other equally. 

She was interesting because of her strange sense of entitlement, becuase of her unflappable belief.Because of the inherent tragedy that was her life(as she made it sound)

What is the strongest part of a man (also woman)?

His belief.At times ,his belief is also his weakest part.

This girl believed stronglyabout certain certainities and events in her life.She believed that deserved the best in life, and that she always got it but with a good fight.

She was vaguely interested in me because I was a man with a forked tongue...silvery lies dripping easily and rolling with mercurial ease.

Here is a genuine Salman Rushdie quote "How come we don’t always know when love begins, but we always know when it ends?”

The man with a forked tongue...I could lie on the fly...outlie everybody with the delicateness and precision of a sushi chef.

                       The greatest thrill of lying is when you get away with it.The essence of a lie is to believe in it yourself, even if for a fraction of a second, so that the beilef itself is firmly embedded in your psyche.

The effectiveness of my silvery-slithery-slippery untruth was fully realized when she asked me to marry her...well she did not do it in a direct manner as you and I would have done it, but she proposed that we run away somewhere.Always a Drama Queen , her life was full of people who had hurt her, tragedies and traumas that had befallen her and she was always the victim.But a triumphant Victim nonetheless.

Her proposal left me speechless.My forked tongue was all of a sudden impotent and ineffective.

                           Was it desperation?

                                                      She was engaged to someone she did not like.

She was forced into the relationship by her parents,as a  price to pay for her past indiscretions.Her assent was the price for her freedom, her emancipation.

My prose might seem overflowing with vacous rhetoric, but this is the only way I can protect her and yet tell my story(which was her story with me in bit roles)

We met yesterday.She seemed distant yet friendly.Her behavior did not indicate any ugly reaction to my sudden disappearance.She asked me if I could drop her someplace.I agreed reluctantly.We had many things to talk about, and things would turn ugly.

She was quiet for a while.Then she said that I had changed.So had she, I told her.She asked me a few dry perfunctory questions about my life.I accused her of avoiding me, while fully knowing it was the other way around.

This opened the floodgates.An outpour that confirmed another one of Salman Rushdie's quotes"The only feeling of real loss is when you love someone more than you love your self.”

                                           It would take time...

I took a wrong turn, and went on the other way.The floodgates had just been opened...the seiches and undulations would take some time to calm down, so I took another wrong turn and headed the opposite way.

As I sensed the tide of anger ebbing away, I headed towards the right direction.I needed to see the seabed uncovered beneath the floodgates that were so deep and held so much.

So I lied once again.

And I let them open.

It was the least I could do.