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Khaleej Times

Why do we let some people take advantage of us?

She came, she saw, she conquered. Then she left. Like a heartless thief in the dead of night. Was it a dream? Or a fantasy? Or some sensual avarice? Or a deadly mix of all of the above? I'm not sure. When emotions rush at you like an avalanche, that's not the time to stay put and dare. You just choose your truth over facts and let yourself be carried away like an uprooted tree. That's exactly what I did. I trust my heart more than my mind. It's not like she made her presence felt physically, but she was everywhere. She reached every nook and corner of my house — and cognition — and being a designer, she commented on all the things she loved and loved not. All this she did through photos and videos. 'My kinda man. Homeproud,' she said, heaving a heavy sigh. I thanked her but didn't bother much about the gravitas of her conspicuously cavernous sigh. I was like a novice traveller who had just hopped onto a Parisian tourister that gently stopped for me. I just sat back and enjoyed the ride unaware that it all would come to a halt one day. Unaware that the Louvre could not be my permanent residence and I would have to be home by sunset. Life's like that. You actually aren't unaware. For some unknown reasons, we let hypocrisy play it out on its own. We deliberately slam the door on the realm of logic and throw the doors wide open for some sinless turpitude. We let someone else's harmless follies, foibles, and fallacies take us for a ride on uncharted waters and finally let ourselves drown in a maelstrom of emotions. Not because we are masochists. We just love the innocence and effervescence behind the person's candour and crankiness. We enjoy the guest actor's jokes and melodramas, and refuse to pull the curtain down even when we realise that the play is over and the artist has left. And then we walk back from the theatre of the absurd in the wintry cold, our hearts shrivelling like prunes. Still, I let her tower over my small life longer than we both expected. My drawback was that I had just one drawer in my heart to keep all my emotions. Even if I had different ones for dreams, fantasies, hallucinations, or desires, in her case, it would have been difficult to tell one from another. She looked like everything. So, I smiled at her little lies and ignorance, and admired her thirst to learn. She wanted to travel and was in love with the Nandi Hills in India. 'Wow! Your house overlooks Nandi Hills?' She could not believe it when she called to let me know she was happily chasing the winds and clouds on her north Bangalore purlieu. She talked about how she fancied both of us making it to the Hills and beyond on a bike. When she called again a few months later, I was home in Bengaluru, enjoying the Hills' view from my living room. 'Oh, you are here. Let's catch up.' She said she would come for dinner, and I went a bit crazy. Deep cleaners had left my house topsy turvy in my absence and I laboured for hours on end to bring order to the house and prove that I was 'her kinda man'. That I was 'homeproud'. I cooked; bought fruits, peeled and cut them; laid the china on a new runner bought from Temu; brought out the glasses and Riesling; and filled little bowls with cashews, hazelnuts, and pistachios. But she never turned up. As my wait stretched well into the wee hours, the little tears shed by the candles formed a lake of agony. She neither called nor did she answer my calls. I was like Alfred Hitchcock's Miss Lonelyhearts in Rear Window, played by Judith Evelyn. Hopelessly romantic but all alone, I dressed up like Miss Loneyhearts in the following evenings, laid out a candlelit dinner, poured wine, and welcomed and chatted with an invisible guest — and then went to bed hungry. She finally called on my last evening in Bengaluru. My frustration melted away. 'Where were you?' 'Chasing the clouds elsewhere. But don't worry, I will be there before you drop ice cubes into your fourth drink,' she said, quoting Mohanlal in Aaraam Thampuran. 'Say sorry, at least.' 'I'm never sorry for what I do.' But she never came, though I dropped ice cubes into many more drinks. She called the next day when I was checking in at the airport. 'Where are you?' I swallowed my anger. 'Riding pillion to the Northeast to chase the clouds,' she said, voice cracking because of the gusts of wind. 'Hold tight,' I said. 'Here's wishing you a sky full of cotton clouds.' 'Mark my word, I'll be back. Buy our bike before that.'