Popagandhi

A Running Commentary

1.
That woman there, sitting on the edge of her seat in the train. Two words come to mind: “beauty salon”. Evidently, she works in one, the signs are all there. Black outfit, black shoes, stockings, long flowing black hair. Her face heavily layered with makeup. I momentarily imagine the process of removing that — which must be, for her a daily task — imagining this alien process to be akin to diving through the icing of a cake. I grimace at the thought. I then imagine the daily process of getting all that colour onto her face, and attempt to put myself in her shoes (living vicariously and all that), but pull away in shock as the mental image of such tedium becomes far too much for me to bear. She’s beautiful, no doubt. It could be any woman. But I want to dive under that to see the exact picture of the person I could very well wake up next to, no pretense, no mimicry, nothing but the naked truth, woman to woman.

2.
She was silent for the entire duration of the bus journey. Her husband said not a single word to her, nor made as much as an indication they were family, yet they were for sure — the signs were apparent. An air of familiarity enveloped them in a bubble. She was pregnant, again. Her first child sat next to her, clearly having inherited these genes of silence. Her husband put up one arm to obtain a better grip as the vehicle meandered its way around the estate, yet could not raise the other arm to break the fall of his small child from the seat which was too high for him. She looked up at me with eyes containing not a hint of sadness. Nor indeed a hint of anything at all. I have never seen such empty, vacuous eyes, until now.

3.
When I saw her a week ago at a restaurant, she was a stranger to me. When I saw her some days later as she walked into my store, she remained a stranger still. Since I possess an achingly good memory, and never forget a face or a situation (a curse and a blessing in equal parts), I remember how she had been on a date with a beautiful woman. Early 30s, successful career type, “gay” spelt across her face in neon lights — she possessed all the trappings, especially those outwardly ones. When she dines with that woman, and looks at her that way, it is what it appears to be; nobody, not an outsider, certainly not its participants, could doubt that. Yet when she sees me with my date, I wonder if there’s that same tacit acknowledgement. Possessing none of these trappings, and not brightly decorated with similar neon lights, I can’t help but feel like an imposter. Yet what do you do when you want to love a woman, as a woman?

4.
Two jugs of margarita — mango and strawberry. A chance meeting, three continents represented at this table tonight. A cursory, fleeting, though not intrusive, brush of the hands.. ah, the moment. It hovers there, but being shy, I let it die. She doesn’t bother to make excuses to touch my hair. It’s going well. It’s going all too well, especially without expectations. She excuses herself to the bathroom, and he wonders if I fancy her. I’m not ashamed to say I do, but left the second half of my answer lingering — does it matter at all? That five days from now she could have very well not existed, that it could have been an apparition of my mind? A floating, nomadic spirit — I’d always known I was drawn to these types. Except that this time, it’s literal. And if language is sex, this is it. And if the forces of the universe are conspiring against me, this is it, too. I can only be bitter they don’t make local flavours of such a package. Or packages I could have and hold for more than three times, before self-destructing, or flying halfway around the world, whichever comes first. I’m just unlucky like that.