Of all the elements, he
was closest to earth. He hated high-rises. Heights made him dizzy. He slept on
the floor. His cherished childhood memory involved painting his milkmaid
Meethiben's walls with cow dung cakes. During navratri, he would use wet sand
and mud to create miniature temples for mohalla maata.
He had been in love
once. He had wooed her with a song where the pining lover smears his forehead
with the earth that his lover has walked on, and compares its fragrance with
that of sandalwood paste. The first time they made love was on the dry cold
floor of an abandoned parking lot. The grainy uneven surface had left stray
marks on her back that he spent the next couple of hours tracing with his
fingers as he listened to her doubts about meditation actually helping one
levitate.
He got her little
souvenirs from every place he traveled to. He got her conch shells, clay pots
with hand carvings, the almost-intact scales of a rock python and perches for
her budgerigars. Her favourite though was the marijuana sapling he had got her
from Manipur. It had provided for many a rainy afternoon spent listening to him
sing about love and longing. The fragrance of freshly washed earth and marijuana
was the closest they got to making love without actually making love.
He never told her about
his cosmic connection with all things earthy. She never saw it either. She put
his preference for coarse throaty qawwals over western classical virtuosos down
to a different musical upbringing. He was addicted to ginger tea while she
loved coconut water. And it seemed alright.
Then one day, he wrote
her a poem about wanting to be together till the earth swallowed them whole.
For a week after that, he didn't hear from her. When she wrote back, she told
him that she needed more space. And that she wanted to break the shackles and fly.
She had to go because being with him was holding her back.
That night, he couldn’t
sleep. So he stayed up and wrote a story about the day when the skies had swallowed
his love whole.
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