THE BEWITCHING LOVE

 Life is imperfect. Life is Scary. Life is electrifying. Life is everything you want it to be.

You and your friends, drinking away the nights, smoking away the days, dreaming about the good old times are just a small part of a big chaotic universe. You have a burning rage, a heart torn apart like the pages of an old Victorian novel, roaring agony that you hold so dear. You wear facades of happy to veil the shades of gloom and despair. You tell her you talk less when you feel so timorous and sweat oceans of fear. You hold her so dear, so close, so near, you feel her love laden breath on your beating heart.

But your friends warn you this is just the beginning. The quiet before the storm. The change before the norm. The rain before the hurricane. You listen, you fathom. Is this the beginning of the end?

Over the bustling streets of Mumbai, the beating hearts of the Chaiwallahs, and the loud thunder of the rain, you hear your thoughts. The lights of the night fade away, the chaiwallahs close their stalls, the last rickshaw abandons you. You drip wet in the Mumbai rain like a forgotten book, a lost tree. You walk through the red theatres and the black houses.  You take the local train just to fall into the arms of the woman you love.

She made this house, a home. She makes you whole. She's the fuel to the fire. The lust to the desire. The ash to the pyre.

There is chaos in her silence. There is a muse in her misery. There is annihilation in her eyes. You don't fear her, you don't run. She is hard to love. But there you lay like an obedient child in the arms of a woman wearing a smile brighter than the Sheesh Mahal, wider than the eclipse and you drift away to the pitter-patter of the slow rain.

And in that moment, you are whole again

-Arshia