I've often wondered where the love between two people went when they parted ways.
Does it lie entangled in the distance between them,
the space hallowed/haunted by the affection they once used to hold?
How many broken love stories are we sitting around?
Or does it stay in the person of the lover, bits and pieces of it getting old and rustic while they find new people to love?
The layers piling up on the love that was once so sacred,
now just occupying space in the back of their being.

I think of Fleabag crying at her mother's funeral, "I don’t know what to do with it, with all the love I have for her, I don’t know where to put it now."
I've been realising since then that it’s probably the biggest strife,
Where can we keep the love that's left?

***
 

Last night I watched Ijaazat (1987). My friend had been after me for months to watch it, and I finally sat down to do it. I instantly understood why. From the first shot to the last, there's a yearning that's woven through every scene, every melody, every dialogue. It’s a yearning to let go. You have loved, and you have had to deal with it. The past and the love it carries becomes a burden for the characters (Sudha and Mahender) in the waiting room, and it’s standing there- the elephant in the room. Five years have passed, but perhaps the memories have not. The memories never really pass.

“Mera Kuch Samaan” answers my question, though. The love seeps into the objects. Every moment you’ve shared with them is encoded with the baggage of the memories, and so are the things around you. The days of monsoon that you loved so deeply; you lose them. They're not yours anymore because they are soaked up in memories of them. The autumn is not yours either because that twig on the tree will forever be hallowed/haunted by the love you shared with them. Time might pass, but the smell of henna is still theirs. It reminds you of them, of the time when you and them were not so far away.

​

But it’s not theirs either, for it reminds them of you. They don’t want it; they’ve kept it hidden in their basement. So all the tokens of the love you shared lie in suspension, the middle of nowhere and yet it is somehow everywhere. No one wants the love you both shared, so where does it go?

I mean, it has to go somewhere, doesn't it? The movie tells me that it latches onto the inanimate. The house starts to hold their memories, for you refuse to. It’s hidden in the matchbox Sudha still carries, five years later. Old habits die hard, yes. But is it just a mere habit if it was born out of such unadulterated care and affection? So much to give and nothing to get back? Except a mere habit?

​

Five years later, everything has changed, but it’s again Sudha and Mahender, drinking copious amounts of chai. The waiting room becomes the space where the change that has engulfed them, the passage of time which has consumed them, becomes nullified, even if for just a night. The past and the present meet, and the love that’s been in limbo for half a decade almost comes alive.

That love might pass from your system. The priest in Fleabag says so, and he's never really been wrong about anything. But it doesn't leave you. Little things will always be there to take you back in time- to that one time you were on the beach and taking photos of them. The present is always changing, the future is always enchanting, but the past stays- stagnant and stationary. Do you consider it hallowed by the love you gave out, or haunted by it?