“Things I do for you!” he said, laughing and holding on to her hand. The fingers were intertwined and he had a firm grip on them.

She smiled. “May be I will sleep with you if you manage to refrain from making fun or cracking a stupid joke about it for six months.”

“Ah, today is 25th of January! So that would be..”

She did not let him finish the sentence, grabbing the menu that lay next to her with her free hand, swiftly brought it to contact with his head. He appeared offended for a second, and then broke into laughter again.

It was surprising how comfortable she felt around him. Despite all the talk about dating and not dating, getting hurt and who’s getting hurt. It had all come to her hand ending in his and he being his freaky self commenting on how nice his skin looked.

“Some things never change!” she told herself, contemplating on the freakiness of his which has evolved over the years and which she had grown to love of late.

She found it amusing to imagine the reaction one who knew the two of them from years back would have on seeing them holding hands and actually making conversation. It was agreed by both that there would a few jaw-drops and many a “ Oh my God!”and “ No way!”.

She even remembered her friend teasing her asking “ so someone is in love with the freak?” and her brushing away such thought in the most nonchalant manner a few weeks back.

Well what could she say, strange things do happen once in a while, and they seem to happen to her ever too often.

“OK you got 20 minutes more with me!” she announced. Laughing on remembering that every time they meet, for some reason she checks time just 20 minutes before the driver was to come pick her.

Goodbyes always be cause for confusion, every occasion. A hug, a kiss, or both? May be today be the exception.

“So when are you coming back?” he asks.

“ Sooner than you think!” she answered gently brushing her lips against his and with a smile.

He smiled and then kissed her back.

A story of love, childlike, that seems not to realise its futility nor its fragility. Love of two and the desire of another not to be left behind. The story of two who fight to live the moments spared to them, and the effort of the other to put things right.

It be a story of love that ends in loss, prevented of the happy ending one as I, would await. A story that leaves one wondering WHY!?

Why fall in love to feel so hurt and separated? Why be damned as one be, and be damned again knowing that you cannot be with the one you love, (despite being ready to do anything so that it be a possibility)? Why are we at times so incapable of love though we wish to be in love!

Why do we separate those in love, merely because we wish to be part of something, not to be that lonely creature left out and crying in the cold? Or the heat whichever it be.

Watching the movie of three humans who were destined to be “donors” and have a life that be curtailed to the duration of donation of organs was depressing, dragging me down and damaging to my very few brain cells that be bestowed with emotional capacity. Not merely because of the grotesque nature of creating humans for accessing their organs, nor the manner they are discarded when their use be fulfilled. ( though it needs be noted that they are depressing as well) It be mainly due to the disappointing manner the story ends with no hope for those two creatures or humans, who be treated like slaughter house sheep. It tortures one to watch these two lovers, separated once, be united to witness their hopes being shattered. Again!

Is it not evil to give people hope and then shatter their dreams?

Would it not be better to leave them with no hope, so that their broken souls would not be mended for a short while to be broken again?

When one knows not of aspiring for something, one lives better the despicable state. The happiness one knows not would not be the unhappiness when it is felt and experienced, and then deprived.

Would not life be better if one did not feel those momentous, short lived, random, and stolen seconds of fleeting euphoria to be woken up to a reality of bitterness, sadness and nostalgia?

Would not life be happier if you were not in love with something or someone that you could never attain?

Or should I say would life be a better place if one never fell in love, never looked for that ideal partner and just lived for the moment, with whom one shared a fleeting second of desire and not the comprehension nor comfort from within?

Would life be simple if one never dreamt, never knew what happiness was or what sense of satisfaction was?

Life is suddenly more depressing than it was in the morning.

I turn to Rathindra, for answers as to why love stories of present never end in happiness. His “profound” response being “when did love stories have happy endings? Romeo and Juliet to .. Jane and Mark Wilde, they always end bad! A great love story ends in tragedy!” I swore silently that the day he does write a “love story” to buy the whole stock myself and make them “perished goods”. In my thoughts it would prevent more depression for those souls who still believe in happy endings. Second resolution reached to commit homicide the second he quotes “Chucking the Dragon” again for an explanation or anything else!

Anyway, thank you Kazuo Ishiguro for depressing me! Let me turn to “The Budda of Suburbia” with hopes of better thoughts.

I always wondered why people were so obsessed with others sexuality. Sure it is out of sheer curiosity, and that gossip inclination we all have within ourselves to know what be the others greatest darkest secret. But then again the last few weeks I have been party to a flow of discussions on people’s sexual tendencies.

I am not completely assured whether my increased participation is due to people assuming that I be a lesbian, whether my colleague questioning another person’s sexuality or whether this be merely due to my presence in many a human rights forum where sexual preferences and their equal rights were pronounced frequently with much emphasis. But the topic keeps looming in my head, haunting and posing a million questions.

“What would it be to live as a homosexual in Sri Lanka?”

I get constant smses, each time R is at a meeting with reference to “rainbow brigade” and I recall one instance where he was so frustrated at a meeting where I called to check if he was okay. I found his rapidity of getting stressed in the presence of homosexuals a little surprising and at the same time quite troubling. And later I found it quite ridiculous one day when he told me “I thought you were into women!”

The thought that crossed my mind instantaneously was Aruni’s remark I have the “gay vibe”. Whatever it be this special “vibe” which she notices in me, I fail to decode this difference in me.

It is quite funny how much homo phobic people live in Sri Lanka. Most believe that it is a choice and that you could actually whip this “unnatural” tendency out of individuals if one tries really hard. Though I was not much entertained when my ex boyfriend decided to declare one day that he cheated on me with a man, I do not at any instance support the stupid belief that one can actually chase away the inclination one has towards the same sex. It is shocking that in modern times people believe in such possibilities.

A thing I constantly ask myself is the question “What if I were a lesbian?” I always wondered how my close friends would take it. As Aruni would tell me once, “it would not bother me if you were a lesbian, it would not even bother me even if you hit on me, it would only bother me if you did not take no for an answer!” ( A colleague pointed out that it would bother her only if I were a lesbian and were not to hit on her)

As much as I appreciate her openness on the matter, I feel that if someone was truly a homosexual the way one would look at it would not be the same as the when one believes the person you are forming hypothesis on is heterosexual.
I think any opinion uttered on the assumption that one is heterosexual would be tilted towards optimism than the reaction received in reality when that individual is proven to be homosexual. One doubts if there be the same amount of comfort that you feel in sharing a bed or taking cloths off in front of the other.

Perplexed I be as to what I am to expect of the world around me, if one days I were to say “sorry I am not interested in men, I prefer women!” What would their perception be of me if those were uttered? Horror or mild indifference to be expected?
Wonder who would still choose to be my friend. Wonder who would like me( this is among those who like me at present despite my so called bitchiness.)

Would the world still be for me filled with rainbow shades or would I be from that “rainbow brigade”.

I always believed in people having the capacity to change. I have always been taught that everyone deserves a second chance. But does this really make sense?

The more I think of it, the lesser I start believing in the fact that people do change. There is always something within us we hold inside. Is change permanent or a mere form of adaptation.

Someone asked me a few days back “what if I try to be not full of shit”. He was answering to my accusation that he is “full of shit”. It hit me at that moment, that it is all an effort. An effort at suppressing what we really are so that we be accepted by those or the majority beings. Hide those “flaws” that they hate, or those mannerisms that “they” loath.

“Oh pray, bring my shroud of hypocrisy for I hence forth shall play that role as be required of me!”

What am I trying to say here, well the simple fact that, of late I really do not believe that people can change. The instances that I did believe in that capacity, it just dragged me down to dumps where depression be my only companion where despise would have been a better option.
Speaking to Sonali last night I realised that she and I have both believed in the theory of rehabilitation, and second chances and unfortunately drowned in our own disappointments of our own positive expectations of answers of affirmation and willingness.

In short humans make an effort as far as there be an incentive for their adaptation. The moment of its disappearance, we become those reptile brain creatures filled with mere survival instinct threading upon the weaklings for the gloating of our egos and the empowerment of our dominance.

Humans are mere vicious creatures full of deceit, hypocrisy and suppressed and frustrated vile.

Suppression does not help those that are in frustration.
How long can one “try not to be full of shit?” Is that even an option? A mere flicker of hope in the human capacity of change and adaptation? Where does hope separate from fact, and then fact from fiction? Where rest those answers to those questions never voiced but remain forever silent?
Too many questions and too few answers.

For those on a quest for revival of that positive side of those disappointments, brave will you be when the disappointment is thrust upon you like the cold on Colombo nights where beggars shiver with sheer helplessness cursing their hope that there be one day, where all be well, due to the mere blessings of hope turned self crushing reality.

Sometimes you think you have something worthwhile, but then you have not. Sometimes you think that you have found someone worthwhile, and then you are merely or immensely disappointed.

I on the other hand, am neither.
I am just plain bored!

I have always known that my span of interest was minute and that I have not had much patience of things that bore me. But then again this was faster than I imagined!

One cause of boredom seems the sheer interest he holds for playing safe, not being affected and whole indifference he seems to be carrying over his shoulders. ( slightly annoying too I must say!)

I wish for once people would be spontaneous, say how they feel and actually pronounce with articulation to be heard and felt!
Well if that was the case, this story would have had a different ending. Or would it have?

May be not! Why waste on this? I resign on the “subject”.

Hats off to Sonali, it definitely was not worth it!

Definitely not all the drama it entailed!