[Reader-list] on kisses and embraces

[Hansa Thapliyal]

About the old discussion of where the kiss came to hold so much resonance- Yes the kiss holds a lot of resonance for many. In India tho, one popular culture, at least the cinema of the  70s and 80s, idolized not the kiss but the heavy embrace- the feel feel touch touch stroke stroke with chins buried dizzily into each others shoulders-I do agree with the organic looking for ways to get into each other- the natural instict, suggested by rana dasgupta-

That we might have kissed- that we might have embraced, regardless of cinema and song..

We might of course have discovered other permutations and combinations, who knows-

At a tangent- not quite about kisses and embraces but the fascination for language and then, the fascination for the thing that it stands for..

 "A  skinny girl, about 8? 7? 9?  walks on a road in a middle class 'nagar' , named prettily after a hindu god or a venerated king from ages ago, in northern India.

Spindly legs in trousers, a tight maybe striped tee shirt and a rough mop of hair. She walks ahead of trucks on a dusty road.

She listens inside to the mounting sound of a truck, and races- to the next pole, whizzing a furious thought across her synapses-

If I don't reach the pole before the truck, I swear- I will- commit-

Sui-cide.

The delicious excitement of the last word in her head gives her that impetus of terror and chemical madness.

She ruuuns (knowing she will win, but - delicious chance, were she to stumble- or not reach or twist her foot just before)

She'd SWORN suicide.

And she slows a little to extend the play and then race- just behind her the truck-

on good days.  On other days, the truck would be a little delayed.

 

Another older girl, then older woman- just adding looser thicker skin to the skinny thing that once ran roads-

Well. Perhaps some smoothening into curves, early youth and then the pleasant thickening..

So, self same walks, by herself for a changing set of reasons, roads, and a new game- more a new habit, where she just called  things to the wind. 

 

I love you-

Wildly, passionately

 

(well, to the outside world, just a  movement of lips - but she would say it, somewhat aloud)

 I love you

Wildly

Passionately

 

(Appending a name, from present, from past present, the imagination fillinf out the half truths.) 

I want to kiss you

Will u marry me?

Marry me?

 

To try and look at when the game returns would be more worthy of advanced years?

Surprising when all it comes, despite the thickened skin and a life that bears more sediment than before-

What losses it seeks to fill up, what gaps it can try to cover.

 

Love you love you love you in the head, where the flyover is dark and half constructed and hanging with rusty rods and you know and don't register that people are breaking slowly to make it, 

And the lights of cars are many and the day has been a series of 'professional ' discussion about the lives of people in a soap, and a lot of talk about plots and people and creating of characters and a clumsy car ride with a stranger who she knows a little because they have talked so much about characters through the day- and that should be revealing. But the abstraction of the tv channel and the saleable story also hangs over those discussions, deciding much of their nature.

 And she stands suddenly alone in the traffic on a highway midway between going and filling this gap of facing the city with some familiar face. That s when it returns the old habit, of saying-

I love you, love you."

 

So, where do these games come from? What conjunction of social concept, adolescent fascination, and jiggling of neurons or whatever chemical somethings there are that jiggle our insides and tickle our beings and make them shout with restless energy . The idea of killing oneself loving helplessly being helplessly loved- what gives these a kick, or 

Finds resonance inside us? Why do they buffer us- these floating words? And what do they put us in touch with?

 

 

 

 

 

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