On the eve of my departure to God know’s where ( I shit you not other than narrowing down the state which is Madhya Pradesh, I have no clue where I am going) one has to wonder if one has any different thoughts from the previous wandering. Not really…the parting thoughts remain the same (if I pop it search for parting thoughts). Other than the men I inevitably run into while traveling, there have been no special additions and surprisingly no subtractions in the past few months. The feelings remain the same, for practically everybody I mentioned. The desires too remain the same.

Although there is sometimes a fleeting regret, that if it all got over today, what a pity it would be to have not been totally ruined by love? Majnu ki aulad banne ki bahut khwaaishthi humari! Aashiq mijaaz to tha, lekin dil phek type ke he zara…jo bhi pyaar se mila hum ussi ke holiye! But it’s ok…so what if not even one of the stories was as fantastic a chase as the Thomas Crown Affair or as complex a story as the Fountainhead.

So what if I was easier to ‘be fascinated with but so tough to live with’. So what I did’nt go on a tempo to a man’s house, with my brothers and serenade him with, ‘arre oh Jumma, meri janneman, baahar nikal!’. So what if I never did send a handwritten note with Narula’s lines-‘I want to do to you what spring does with the cherry trees’ or Ghalib’s, ‘ Ishq mujhko nahin wahshat hi sahi…meri wahshat teri shauhrat hi sahi.’ None of my fantasies have me playing wife, mind you!

But these are just passing regrets…With my commitment phobia and a world that’s moving rapidly towards online hookups, this dramatised version of a Love or even an unrequited one would’nt have been possible!