By the time I was 25, I was married. By the time I turned 30, I was divorced.
It is often impossible to decipher how two lives so entwined could suddenly fall apart, and still no one ever sees it coming. Or maybe, they do?
We were divorced mutually. Ironically, when you get divorced is when you realise the oxymoron in the very essence of the phrase "mutually divorced". We were intense lovers. The separation just couldn't be plain bland.
When you have lived with another skin, in another skin, day in and day out, for years together, it isn't fondness or even the desire to belong. It's a habit. And, you know what's worse than a habit? Another!
It was 2016. Falling in love, indulging in lust, seeking redemption - they were all cakewalks. Or so I thought. And so did, the voices around.
Technology was the answer to sex apparently. You knew technology had raised its bar a notch too high when sex and food sold for similar stakes.
Love had shifted from elaborate spaces of letters to constricted windows of chatboxes. I was freshly divorced, with an unlimited internet usage plan. Definitely not the best of couples. Before I knew, I was under the weather.
In times when people were rigorously opposed to the idea of arranged marriages, it was ironic how the idea of virtual intimacies not just took off, but became a household phenomenon in less than no time. It was funny how it all operated on the principles of recruitment, almost as if you were hiring a partner on rent.
I was never specifically good looking. Moderately built around broad shoulders, unkempt hair, an otherwise sharp nose with an unusual dent, eyes that were neither quite elaborate nor too precise. Words therefore were my only weapon. Born off two generations of poetry, wordplay came to me naturally, I guess. I'm not quite sure they were poetic enough, but I hoped they would get me across the line this time.
Six months of every woman being an apparent prospect, six months of pretended conversations, six months of random sex, and a couple of almost relationships, I was tired. I was tired trying to escape the scathing temperature of the actuality, I was tired trying chasing nothing, I was tired of what I had become.
And that day, I realized the truth of it all. Every single day technology made another indelible mark in the pages of history, we grew apart, a bit further. From each other, from our own selves. We are all broken, we are all damaged, we all have our own share of baggages. And, most importantly, all of us, every single one of us, are utterly lonely. The only ones hearing us are the pale walls of our affordable existences. It's just that we have options, quite a few, quite a many, to buy ourselves more and more nights of unwarranted company. Complete strangers who would vanish into the thin air of a feeble dawn.
Our parents were never in love. Some of them were in awe of the idea of love; the rest of them just stayed put hoping love would happen eventually. While some espoused the idea, the rest got married to the hope. Theirs was a time of rigid faiths and stubborn beliefs. Ours was a time of traded loyalties and shifting stereotypes.
Major shares of our adulthood have been spoilt in choices. From rebellious careers to obnoxious partners, we've had too many to choose from, all of a sudden. Ever wondered what happens when a starved child, who has gone without food for days, suddenly chances upon a lot too many food? In an attempt to savor them all, he spoils each and every.
And, that's what we have done to relationships. To us. And, the world around us.
Ten days prior to my thirty-first birthday, I quit my only source of an assured, secured income. Seven days into turning thirty-one, my first and my only novel was published. Quitting the job was a good idea, for it gave me time. A lot of it. To reflect, to think, and, to start over. Writing a novel though wasn't half a good idea. Deciding to publish it was even worse. The novel sold twenty-nine copies in three months, and soon enough, it was off the shelves. The book launch didn't do my ledger much good, but definitely did me a thick lump of good. For, that's where I met my second wife.
It's tough finding love. It's tougher not finding love.
Names find newer habits. Faces find stranger doors.
But hope...
Hope stays.
