Because

Because

this morning is like any other, soft and tender, prodding those who long for
the day to kiss them goodbye,
telling them to touch the sun just once more, make love with the sky just once
more, and so they wake
sighing, their blurry eyes adjusting to the aphrodisiac
of the new air
and slowly, whispers begin to descend down upon them.

our suite looks down on Carousel Street, where there are no carousels
it is rather a solemn street, actually, and usually you can’t see
any little children anywhere
summer has begun, you can tell because the leaves have flown up
from the ground, reincarnated and become green
and now embrace the air, loving it, caressing it
maybe once there were carousels here,
certainly there is a vague hint of something else
something none of us have seen though, or if we have, we don’t let on

when I open the window the breeze rushes in, triumphant, collapsing over the finish line.
you roll around tempestuously, and I am too afraid to ask
if you are having a nightmare.
in any case, they say I never talk anymore
and when I do, they don’t notice
so it doesn’t matter.
I bathe my hands in the recovering breeze, and I close my eyes
for a little moment, wishes surround me, quickly moving away
when they realise I am the Unlucky One, and they are not meant to
bless me.

our bedroom is spacious, like the rest of the suite
all space, disguised feebly by attempts at clutter
still a gnawing space persists, grinning wickedly, defying all logic
nothing in this place is compliant, not even me,
(though they say I am obedient and dutiful, just unnervingly silent)
silence isn’t really defiance though,
it’s just a little above compliance.

I walk towards your bed, and touch your satin sheets
(yes, they even gave us satin sheets
I suppose that’s why people long to be rich
though they feel awfully lonely)
they are white, mine are blue
I used to think, if I ever had sex (for the first time anyway)
I would want to be in a room with white satin sheets and a silk canopy
now here is the canopy, here are the sheets, here is the atmosphere
but no sex.

your lips are closed yet there is a tiny, ever so tiny gap (the kind where you would need
calculus to calculate it) in between
I’m starting to wonder why your lips never get dry like mine,
what magic chapstick you use. maybe I can borrow it sometime?
I want to touch your lips, to see if they’ll part more then, or maybe close tighter
but I step back instead, admiring the way your eyelashes are reflected in the sunlight
gleaming almost ruby red.
I walk into the bathroom fast,
drenching myself, oh so quickly, with a sudden, violent outpouring of water.
hot, a little bit too hot. I could do with slightly cooler.

My name is Jahanara, and sometimes people will say, “Ah, your name is fitting, considering your beauty.” But I don’t think that’s true. It’s true that Jahanara, the Mughal princess, must have been exceedingly beautiful. But I don’t know if I am beautiful. I look in the mirror and I see a young, vulnerable girl, with skin so pale she is immediately marked down as a foreigner in India, even though she is not, and in America they look at her funny because instead of being tinted with pink, her skin is tinted with white. I once asked my father why I was so pale, because he isn’t really as pale as me (He’s Himalayan fair but still, his skin does have the smallest hint of wheat in it.) He says my mother was exceedingly pale, and I’ve taken after her, and my genes perhaps didn’t pick up the imperceptible hint of wheat, even though that would have (usually) been the more penitrent allele.
They all say I take after my mother. But when I look at the pictures of this hauntingly beautiful, excruciatingly dainty yet fiery strong woman, I don’t see any likeness at all. She is a stranger, someone I would have admired in a play but never known in reality.
My mother was half Italian, half French. My father was there at the last concert she ever gave. He stayed long after the concert was over, mulling over the notes in his head, entranced. So he was there when she was about to plunge a dagger into herself, as Madama Butterfly did. Maybe my mother always had a flair for the dramatic. This seemed to awaken him and so he was her rescuer, and that was his one legendary feat of all time – saving the exotically wonderful opera singer, Nenya Marcel.
Sometimes I have seen my father looking at me apprehensively when I am depressed, and I wonder if that could be because he thinks I also inherited my mother’s chronic depression. I always wonder what he sees of her in me. Everything seems to be a fallacy: I do not look like her physically, though he and everyone else think I do. I do not have chronic depression, though he worries about it. I am not musically talented, though he hoped for it.
Your eyes are blue just like my mother’s were. My hair is black like hers, but it is unruly and wild, prone to bushiness. Your hair is red, but it is just like my mother’s in style: flowing tresses, kempt even when you are sleeping. I ponder over this likeness, but then I realise it is not really a likeness. I have always wanted to see my mother, truly and really. But you don’t remind me of my mother at all. It would be undeniably frightening and freaky if you did.
I don’t know who my mother was. All I know are these romantic tales of an exotic lady. It is hard to fathom that I was created by her.


You love him. I see this when you, like a rose,
bloom when thoughts of him enter your mind.
I have never met him, though I have often frustratingly wandered
the corridors, seeking him, wanting to really look at him
dissect him, and then,
with seething anger, cry.

I remember when I first came here, you were rather silent,
almost observing me,
yet every now and then you’d say something small
(like when we got introduced)
and that was the way it was for the first month
the only reason I hung out with your group, really
was because Beth invited me.
now I fancy you my best friend.

so when I cry, for ages and ages and ages
I am hopeless, wild, I think I could not live without you,
and if I saw you, every single day
I would think of all that we had,
what we could have had
what we will always have.
I suppose that makes me come running back to you
that and the fact that we are too close to be separated.
(hopefully)

now you have woken up, and you smile at me
“I had a really weird dream,” you say, perplexed for a moment
and you tell me some details about your weird dream
and I see your face change when you speak of him.
and inside another layer of skin of the twenty third part of my heart
is torn off
and it hurts unfeelingly,
not like the sore on my ear, not so directly
but that is because it is hidden more. the sore on my ear
is the victim of my merciless fingers
but the twenty third part of my heart
isn’t the victim of anything.

I cluttered up my schedule with tons of classes, most of them hard. When I am pressured, I only heap myself with more pressure. My father is torn between telling me I must work hard if I want to go to a good university (though he does much less of this now that I am no longer in India and he is there, so far, far away from me) and telling me to just relax, and take a deep breath, and grades aren’t everything.
But I can sink into grades, and maybe that will help me forget the rest. When I see the As lined up in a linear progression, for a moment I feel victorious, and I feel my inside smile, giving me a sense of uplifting power. They are all so neat and precise, and they tell me I have something that might just be okay about me.
They also prompt me to commit suicide, an annoying bunch of little triggers, waiting to strike impulsively. But I haven’t inherited my mother’s power, my mother’s strength. I am only a coward, picking up the shreds she left, glimmering in their endless sense of possibility.
I only have English with you, though. I suppose it’s alright since we live in the same suite. But often you go down to the beach, and I sometimes watch you, a very distant figure on that long, large, wide, flat stone, just meditating. I’ve seen you and him together there too. You talk. You do not hold hands, or kiss, or make out, or hold each other. But both of you are there, and you seem peaceful.
Sometimes it seems like you are running away from me, tired of me always following you around. Tired of me always talking to you, whenever I get a moment to. Maybe that’s justifiable. You’ve told me you need your own space. And I can see that. I doubt you would ever say that to him, but then you say you haven’t had the chance to be with him so much. And that is probably true. It’s so interesting, almost unnerving, the way you can be so – almost callously observant – about everyone. I wish I could do that.
It’s strange, how even when I’m writing, when I’m doing my math problems, writing an email to my father – you are always haunting me. I love your haunting presence, just as I love you, but then I see you in reality and I’m always trying to connect reality with dreams. And I realise I’ve slipped into dreams too much.

you like Melany a lot too,
even though she is a Republican evangelical Christian
I like her too, but I am always thinking
of how horrified she would be, if she knew
I love you.
She already knows I loved (or still do love) Tanya, that way
[saying ‘that way’ makes it sound like something
which should never be talked about, like sex
in many places and amongst many people.]
but I can’t talk about that with her either
Melany and I are friends, but we are happy, cheerful friends
when we are philosophising, or talking about sadness
we are still happy
because we do not know how to be sad
around each other.
not that I think we must be sad to be friends
but friendship is a mix of
happiness and sadness
all jumbled together and made into a
splendid chocolate cake.
and without some of the ingredients
there’s always a sense of something that could be more. or missing. or less.

you say I am not a philosopher, not really.
then, so quickly, you changed when you saw my [maybe crestfallen?] face
and said well maybe you thought of the universe, and everything converging back to you
while I began from me, and everything diverging away,
meeting the universe.
which could be true
but sometimes, it hurts, it feels like you think
you know so much more than I do
and sometimes I know you know more than I do
or I feel like that, yet that superior part of me rebukes that inferior part of me
I end up feeling a step behind
and longing to be ahead
but what I really want is to be
right beside you.

I am naïve, actually. Maybe we are both naïve about some things
you say I am more naïve about love than you are
but then I think of how I have gazed out the window, longing for you to come around
and I have cried. “I love you. I love you. I love you. How could you do this to me?
I love you.” and lurching sobs that were contained throughout math class
now escape, scaring the walls with their noise
and scaring me with the possibility that someone could hear
and come and ask me what’s wrong.
but no one is there to hear
and I am not sure I would want you to see me cry [over you]
that seems almost sadistic
yet I am tired of turning on myself for every emotion that I have
maybe some emotions just are,
yet it is hard to convince myself of that.
I think of how I have walked into my counsellor’s office
and she has looked at me, and asked, “Are you in love?”
then one more look, and, “Yes, you are in love.” and she smiles
“poor, poor Jahan.” I am sure that is what she is thinking.
yet that was not real, that was merely a longing, a crush
something to satisfy the curiosity of my friends
it was not real.
do I try to convince myself too much of this?
my hair falls over my face and I wonder if I look romantic at all, clutching the bed,
sobbing, tearing my mind, outright wailing
over you.
It is pitiful. Completely, abhorrently pitiful.

I like Melany
but I am slightly apprehensive about saying anything negative about her
in your presence. I think of your friendship with Melany, built over the years
you had that with Thessaly too, though now that seems to be lost
shorn away with the scissors I used to cut my dolls’ hair.
you have that even with Diana, albeit to a slightly lesser extent.
but with me
do we have that possibility?

I am tired of school. There is nothing to offer in the endless dullness, endless boredom, endless hoping, expecting, wishing that things could (maybe? someday?) be better. I love this school, how it is so grand and glamorous. I do not like how there are few people who can get in with a scholarship (I was lucky, maybe it was the only thing I was lucky for), and how almost everyone is from an elite, rich family. I do not like how everything is actually just a commercial gain, a commercial loss. Nothing is real. Nothing has true substance. It is all a farce, managed by the capitalistic idols.
You are also here because of a scholarship. But we seem to be almost the only ones. It seems almost coincidental that we share a suite together. But then, this world is bound to have a few coincidences. I suppose it is lucky in this instance.
I remember thinking I should not be in love with you, it would be so much easier if I wasn’t. And this endless questioning, this endless
your not believing my capacity to be in love with two people
or anyone’s capacity, really
you don’t believe I am in love with you, do you?
and that hurts, it hurts that I always choose
[the wrong people] to fall in love with
that I could disrupt everything just because I am too
passionate about you
that we have the chance for a lifetime of friendship
but I could destroy it easily.
I don’t want to.
but what if I do?

Our group is just a bunch of people strung together because we have nowhere else to go. I hope you and I are friends for better reasons. I think we are. We have something. And you and Melany have that too, but there is also something missing. A hesitation. Something about the way she was shocked when you attempted to show her what a stage kiss would look like, and she was so homophobic she thought you might be about to kiss her, and she ran away. Something that says, “Look at me. I am still here. Why have you forsaken me?” And I’m not really sure what that thing is that has been forsaken. But it is something.
And Diana is only tolerated by some of us. You like her, sometimes I envy that you accept Diana’s infuriating snobbishness and superficiality. Sometimes I want to delve deeper into Diana’s personality. Other times I despair.
Melany and Laura also have a friendship. But Melany and Laura only have a loose friendship with Diana, one that borders on toleration. Or maybe it just seems like that.
And Beth is so distanced from us sometimes it’s surprising when she returns. Yet she is the most tolerant of all, or maybe that is because she has learnt not to become so emotionally involved in everything.
Sometimes Jillian comes around and says hello and stuff. But she is definitely more preoccupied with her boyfriend, Ian.
We are just a bunch of people strung together, hopelessly trying to forge closer bonds while some of us wreck everything. Sometimes I fancy that I ruined everything. But I’m not sure. That might be just giving myself too much credit. But can a detriment be considered credit?
Maybe I was a catalyst. Will I be washed onshore again, then, later? When everything has been wrecked to the point of absolutism?

It is hard on you too,
when I finally burst out at you
you will shoot back, and tell me it is not a one-sided fight,
which shocks me, as I suddenly realise
yes there is another perspective,
and I begin to wonder if this is not a selfish love
where I do not hear your perspective.
and you ask me why I am so mean to you
telling you to do this, do that, do this, do that
somehow, after a while, your questions, your side
calms me down so I stop crying
and being sarcastically sadistically ironically bitter
and I try to be real
and tell you I am sorry
because suddenly I am sorry
and even though it feels horrifying, to know that I was wrong too
I realise
I have been accusing you that it’s only about you
but I’m acting like it’s only about me.
so I look for the median
(I cannot remember their geometric properties
perhaps I should look them up again
so I can solve and prove the theorems)
I haven’t found it yet
but maybe I will someday.

you tell me I am an idealist
I think I am but I also am not one
I am clinging on to idealism
maybe it’s like my drug, something that helps me escape
yet it is also real, because I can try
and try and try and try and try
but some things no matter how hard you try you just have to get over it
and realise there are more possibilities too.
or something like that.
sometimes I wonder if I’m come to that sort of understanding
about Tanya
or if I’ve replaced her with you.

I am always afraid you will stop trusting me
because I have told some things
but not the things you have told me definitely never to tell. it is hard to explain
how hard it is for me not to tell something
but I will do it for you, keep secrets I mean
the ones that are necessary to keep,
the ones which fleet, and can be solved
only through trust and waiting and hope.
and because it would be selfish if I didn’t
and because I want to gain your love
and trust.
and because I constantly look for reassurances
of your trust.
it is like an honour, that you did consider me trustworthy enough
but will you always consider me trustworthy enough?
sometimes I feel like the more I tell you
the less likely you are to trust me.
I am both vicious and narcissistic about myself
glorifying my flaws, then trying to contradict them
and all the time trying to please you,
to make you laugh,
to hope.

so when I am me
I am, like Fateh said, a different person
I am not the person he knew
I may not be the person anyone knows
for with every person it feels like I change
to fit into their puzzle.
sometimes I try to stand out
but that seems unlike me too.
maybe we used to all just be strangers
and if we were strangers now
we’d be more like ourselves.

You look at me earnestly over your glass of soy milk. I am not sure why you are drinking soy milk because usually you like 2 % milk. But maybe it’s just a quirk for today. There is an almost comfortable silence, the one I used to talk about with Liam (he thought we did have comfortable silences but I think he must have been blind, or unfeeling, or maybe I was blind, and unfeeling.) This one is just about to reach its grand finale when I say, “You would make a good spy.”
Your eyebrows smile, and you laugh, shaking your head. “That was a pretty random comment,” you say.
“I know,” I am silent for a while. Then you ask, “Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say, slowly.
We talk about several different things. Homework, and school, and teachers, and friends, and Christianity, and conservatism. And free speech. Then we start talking about him.
“Well, I think everyone knows we like each other,” you are saying, “but as long as they don’t say anything, or suddenly impede, maybe it’ll be okay.” And for one jilting, first-time-at-an-amusement-park-and-on-a-spinning-swing moment, I think the ‘we’ you are talking about is you and me. It takes a moment for my senses to become oriented again, and when I do, I realise it is you and him that you are talking about. I feel immensely stupid. I know you don’t think of me that way. You never will. I don’t expect you to. Or if I did, or do, I shouldn’t. And I won’t.
“Yeah,” I say.

when you get up
the silk tassels of your dressing gown trail for ever so ever so ever so long
and I admire the way your slight body moves
unconsciously beautiful
and you have closed the bathroom door
and I hear the shower begin.

I want to read in bed all day,
or maybe write
or maybe think about emails. Or maybe just gaze at you
(but you’ll probably be doing a million different things all at once)
It is Sunday and usually I feel tense about Sundays
but this Monday it is a holiday
and so I am lazy
and tired
and just accustomed.

I have a sad, sad life. It is so utterly sad
and lame and stupid
all I do is stare at my email inbox, willing
something exciting to appear.
listening to songs that remind me of Tanya,
trying to find a song that epitomises you,
confused in remembrance.
a stack of books lie beside my laptop,
hinting, hinting
clutter, clutter, clutter. but still a great leering space
and you are dressed up prettily now
(I am just wearing my debate sweatshirt and my worst pants
and drab grey socks.)
I used to look passable,
now I only look ghostly.
but you are beautiful all the time.
you love to dress up, and so do I.
I wish we could play dressing up games like Leela and I used to.

I have been in this school for four and a half months
and we have grown, I suppose
and I am supposed to be over Liam and I am supposed to be over Fateh
and I have given up on the male sex. Right?
you tell me Fateh has made me too cynical about boys.
I idealise love
yet if I could smash it between two slides of glass
I wonder how it would make me feel.
the thought of smashing a butterfly like that makes me feel like
I could die
but I don’t know what love is contained in.
maybe it is a butterfly too
and it would make me die
too.

I should do my science homework.
I am the only one who has an A in Mr. Murray’s class
and when I watch you struggling to keep your B+
I feel guilty.
I am not really as intelligent as they say
things have just been droned into me.
I don’t want to think about physics, though
sometimes thinking becomes too much
especially when it’s forced.

It has been precisely eight months and 28 days since I have seen
Tanya. She is immersed in the Board Exams I ran away from
which don’t begin until 32 days later.
this is the period of ultimate stress,
when some people are driven to jump into Sukhna Lake.
but Tanya and Ekakshra and Parineeti will all do excellently
satisfy their teachers’ faith in them.
I wonder if I would have been able to do that
too.
Even Leela and Reyana are immersed in studying
though Leela is more immersed in the in crowd.
and she told me she was doing badly at school
and I sighed with the realisation
that she is becoming one of them.

I am listening to romantic Hindi songs when you finally come home. It is night, but not really that late. Just about eight. I am wondering where you ate dinner and what you ate, because you weren’t down in the dining hall when I went there. I don’t ask you, though, because it’ll seem like I’m too nosy or interfering. Maybe. I’m not sure.
You slam the bathroom door and I am worried. This could imply that you are in a bad mood. I am never sure what to do when you are in a bad mood. While I hate to be left alone when I am stormily raging and crying, I am left alone. But I think you like to be left alone.
So I wait until you emerge. I watch as you come inside and flop down on the bed. “How are you?”
You look at me listlessly. “Not very good,” You say, finally, almost redundantly. You sigh.
“What happened?” I ask, coming over to sit down at the foot of your bed.
It is cold and I am wondering if I should turn up the heat a little. But right now I want to listen to you. I hug my arms to myself and look at you. Your hair looks tired, unlike its usual precision. Your eyes look weary, unlike their usual earnest sparkling selves. And your hands don’t fidget. They just lie in your lap, limp. I bite my lip. I could say the wrong thing and that would be pretty bad.
“Turn off that crap,” You finally snap. I quickly get up and jab the speaker buttons a bit. I am tired, too, but it’s so early in the night. Tomorrow is still a holiday but for some reason I wish it wasn’t. Strange because usually I love it when it’s a holiday. But being at a boarding school really doesn’t give you much reason to love holidays. You still see the same people, you still are confined to the same campus, you still wait, impatiently and mundanely, for school to begin. Nothing is new, nothing has changed. Things are just blank for a moment or two.
You sigh and bury yourself inside the covers. And I don’t know what to say, or do, or be. I just look at you, flummoxed. Eventually I shut down my computer and turn off the lights, and curl up on the window seat. I am not sure if you are asleep. You are not crying but I can sense your sadness, as real as the air and as silent as the waves bowing to their master, the sky.

Monday is the beginning of second semester. I am happy
about my new teachers, who are more interesting
than last semester’s.

In the afternoon, as we are walking towards the dorm, Beth says:
“I tore up my artwork.”
So I cry, “Oh, but why? You might have liked it later.”
And suddenly, with a rush of bitterness, you mimic, “You might have liked it later.”
Pounding, pounding, just when I thought I had things realised.
“Why do you always have to be so mean?” I ask.
“Why do you always have to be so mean?” You mimic, again, and
I cannot stand it any longer
“Get lost!” I scream at you and Beth. “Go!”
Beth looks at me, startled. I explain, morosely, “I know you would go with her
anyway, so go.”
You go…
I am there, left alone
so while the sky burns with unclaimed lust
and the ground heaves with unbound dreams
I cry, waiting.

Nobody comes.

I rush up to the dorm. You are not there.
There is pounding, pounding, pounding,
like the orchestra that never ends.
There is a bottle of aspirin in the medicine cabinet. I take it out.
Then my medication. I lay it side by side
on the crisply starched kitchen floor.
I should take off my contact lenses so they don’t get hard and dried and cracked up
when they find me. Maybe no one else can use them, but still.
I sit down. They glare at me, almost admonishing.
I open the aspirin bottle, and pour out some pills. It says one hundred pills
on the marking sticker. So many? Ah.
I stare. Then, one gulp, with the tall glass of water
glittering.
One more gulp, and one more, till
only a few pills are left. Then… collapse
my heart rate speeds up with the shock and my body’s reaction
to what I have done.
I race into the bathroom, and try to make myself throw up
all those bulimic fancies I never carried out
so I try, and try, then race upstairs
grab my cell phone with my vomit-covered hand
and dial the principal’s office phone number
(why not the police first?)
Panicked. I tell her. She says, “Okay, okay, I’ll be right there.”
Then I dial 911 on the dorm phone.
They ask me questions.
“What is your name.”
All the time I am screaming, saying, “Am I going to die? Am I going to die?”
Then I wait, wait, wait, wait, wait…
the police have come.
They are still asking me questions!
Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?
I answer them, but it is all surreal.
They make me sit in an ambulance, make me buckle the seatbelt, and rush me
to the hospital. is it really rushing, though?
It is not glamorous
with all the cameras flashing
and the oxygen mask over my mouth
and the rubber sheets and the feeding tube in my nose
Instead it is panic,
and the security guy says “I don’t know”
when I ask him if I am going to die.
(He is nonchalant, just as the grass outside doubtless is.)
So on we go.