Tuesday, August 5th, 2014

I left her again.

And again it was the same thing, crying and kissing each other at the entrance of an Indian airport, feeling a little shy, with security and everyone else watching. I didn’t think it would be so hard to go back this time. In many ways, the last three months were supposed to be all business: Clear the apartment in Bombay, travel to meet up with old friends, plan the wedding at home and then maybe take a honeymoon. But it ended up being so much more. It ended up being a whole lot of much-needed real life, even if it didn't necessarily feel that way in the beginning.

And so I felt the tears coming even before we reached the gate. Even before we said goodbye, so casually, for the next undetermined period of time. I felt them as I was rolling a dolly packed with only my luggage to the last gate - the visitor’s gate - to see if we could get a last-minute printout of those fucking immigration forms. I still couldn’t believe we were doing this on the last day of my trip. I was mad at Puji and even more mad at myself for letting it go to the last minute. But mostly I was mad that I was letting this last thankless task ruin what was in effect our last moments together. But there we were. This had been our trip. And truly, in our combined lives, nothing ever seemed to go as planned. Things would always go smoothly when they weren’t supposed to and vice versa. Somehow, they always worked out in the end. Except this time they hadn't. I had fucked up and signed the wrong date before Puji realized that the forms we had printed right before leaving the hotel had not even been validated in the first place, which effectively meant that our application would not be finalized with our honeymoon. I had fucked up. I always made these dumb mistakes under pressure. Not Puji, though. She loved the pressure. Sometimes I think that’s part of the reason why she enjoyed leaving things to the last second - and the real reason it irritated me. Now she would have to courier them to me in Montreal. Seven hours spent in Hong Kong airport and more than an entire week in Japan and we hadn’t been able to take care of this one little thing.

Puji must have known I was fuming so she didn’t dare say a word. She wasn’t going to pick a fight with me now. Nor was I. In fact, I think that somewhere deep down inside, I had been particularly irritable the last couple of days because I knew this goodbye was coming. 

Especially during our last day in Tokyo, when we ended up doing all our shopping at six in the evening because we had spent a little too much time at the 17th century tea house in that impossibly hot park. There, the roles had been reversed. I was the one who suddenly couldn’t tolerate the sun while Puji remained stoic, snapping 75 different pictures of endless rows of orange and yellow flowers. That annoyance I had continued to carry like old fashioned luggage while shopping, where I once again had to remind her that I wasn’t made out of money and couldn’t just buy every last person I knew 1000-Yen chopsticks. And that argument, which had started on the last day in Kyoto and ended with us not speaking the entire drive to Mount Fuji, had been rekindled later that afternoon. It all seems so trivial now. But I had been right to call her out and she had been right to fight back. Two years in and this was still one of the sore points of our relationship: Money. She didn’t know how to handle it and I didn’t know how to spend it with a free heart. 

But once we had finally sat down to chill under the complimentary mist on a bench by the Sensoji Shrine, after we had finally matched gifts to both her family and mine, I explained to her nicely why I had gotten mad. She lowered her guard and listened. And then we played a game of Ludo and everything was fine again. Because in the end, the two of us were right to say the things we said. With Amy, it had always felt like both of us were wrong, making arguments the other never understood. What exacerbated mine and Puji's fights was that we both needed to make our points and then stubbornly stick by them for some time. But I also understood this was part of the process. And I never felt for one second that we wouldn't learn from our mistakes, a thought that always left me with the same stubborn hope. Every fight we had - and on this trip, there had been many - was a painful gateway to something better. The peace they ultimately generated is what made them worth it. 

So with the sun setting and the Ludo honeymoon series all tied up at three, we had then decided to stop by Asakusa for a little snack before heading home. It only made sense to spend our last Tokyo night where the adventure had all started. We found that same street just off the main market that we had seen those first few days, the ones where rowdy locals would sit on metal chairs, nursing beers and tasty-looking street food. In the end, it wasn't all that tasty. The grilled squid was rubbery and the whale bacon had a funny smell that Puji just couldn’t quite put her finger on. But the Filipino waitress who roped us off the street was far more bubbly than your average Japanese. She was a little tipsy and not at all shy. She seemed to enjoy our story. She complimented Puji on her beautiful eyes and then told her we were lucky to have found love. I felt bad for her in that moment, imagining how lonely a big city like Tokyo could be. Hence the tequila, I thought to myself. She still managed to convince Puji to have her (our) first taste of cold Sake. It was quite good and by the time that small bottle was done we were all a little tipsy.

Somewhere in the next hazy hour, with the couple on the next table watching us awkwardly chase sake with salt, Puji did her best to explain why she had reacted the way she had after having read Amy's last email without me knowing. It must have happened that morning at the Fine Garden in Gifu. There had already been no love for that love hotel, starting with her tantrum while trying to sleep in our stuffy car in the parking lot and followed by one of the most awkward conversations with a hotel receptionist, who hid behind a curtain and pointed to the screen behind us for room availability in a desperate attempt to make up for the complete communication breakdown. And somewhere in all that had been another shitty email from Amy, reminding me (once again) of the person I had crushed to be where I was. Reminding me that she was not moving on. I had kept it to myself. Maybe Puji had thought I had done so nefariously but I had my doubts. There was simply nothing that either of us could do. It was something I had to deal with on my own. But that email and her period had caused that particular fight. And we hadn’t spoken about it since. Like many things, it was lost in translation. But with the help of the sake, Puji tried to make me understand that despite her own insecurity, she always prayed for Amy’s happiness because she felt a shared responsibility to do so. She asked me to do the same. And when it came to questions of spirituality, I always listened. For me, this is when Puji became someone from whom I had a lot to learn. This is when she would feel almost other-worldly, much more mature than myself. There were no tears to cry then and I didn’t have much to say. I spent the rest of the night quiet, not because I was mad, but because I knew how lucky I was to have her and how difficult it would be to be apart. 

Even that last night in Tokyo, after we had packed and failed miserably to find a proper place to enjoy a last sushi meal, something she stubbornly pursued far more than I did, and even after we ended up eating McDonald’s for the third or fourth time that trip, I couldn’t help but feel that we were both very blessed. This trip had been real life. Unlike the first meeting, this one had really put us through the ringer. We had often gone long hours on little sleep. We had been distracted by friends, family and our own phones. And still we could both manage to say the right thing or crack the right joke at the right time to diffuse the situation. When one person was at their wit’s end, the other would step in to balance things out. Somehow, everything always seemed to work out. And it worked out because that’s what we both sorely wanted. I hated fighting with her as much as she did with me. Fighting with her was like looking into one of those funhouse mirrors on a really bad hair day. You immediately wanted to look away. And so even if we only got to sleep a couple of hours that night before getting up, hopping onto the express bus (another blessing) and catching a flight to Hong Kong with plenty of time to spare; even if we spent seven hours at the Hong Kong airport bitching at dirty mainlanders who farted in line, hustled to put together my dad’s wedding album before enjoying a last game of Ludo that I won just as they were closing our gate; even though neither of us got any sleep on that last flight for those very same reasons and then reached our Delhi hotel past midnight, again without so much as a kiss to justify our ‘luxury’ suite; and despite all the last-minute bullshit that brought us to those final moments outside Gate Number 6 at the Delhi International airport - even after all that, I know we both wished that this adventure could go on forever. But that wasn’t the way the Universe had planned it for us. So there was nothing we could do but to say goodbye. Again.

"Rubu, we have now officially spent nine months together." Puji had announced the calculation in the last Delhi cab ride, and something about the way she emphasized the last word made we want to cry and wrestle her at the same time. She had somehow managed to capture the intensity and love of our entire physical existence through simple enunciation. These were the moments that made my heart smile. And there were so many of these now that it was impossible to ever conceive that they would ever be finite. For now, at least, they would have to continue in a medium other than real life; that sort of half reality we had learned to manage so well. Whether or not this time would be easier or more difficult was impossible to tell. The sad truth was that one year was a long time and so many things could and would happen. The last time we were apart Baba died, Didi left Bombay and my parents got divorced. Now I’d be going back to a half broken mother who would try her best to convince me otherwise and a father with a penthouse condo and a new girlfriend. The Mothership and my brother seemed to be just fine. Jules would be in town. But everything else would once again become a giant question mark. Would I make it a year without needing to go back? If she begged me to come, I know I would. Because in those last five minutes I spent scrambling around the airport looking for anyone with a printer, internet access and an ATM, all I could think about was the girl I’d be leaving behind. My darling. My blessing. My wife. Probably the absolute love of my life if I could ever stop for half an hour and really think about it. 

And as I approached the gate I thought I might have forgotten I caught a glimpse of her through the filthy glass. Puji, standing there in her grey jogging pants and purple Adidas jacket, doing nothing but keeping her eyes peeled for me. She had asked me if she looked okay before we left the hotel for breakfast. I didn’t even have time to tell her she looked beautiful. As I made my way past the gate and the first guard, who again reiterated that I not step out beyond the line separating terminal from pavement, she came over to my right side. She was smiling. "And?," she asked. I told her there had been no luck with the forms before I handed her 10,000 Rupees and told her to contact Titz and mail the forms to me from Delhi itself. No need to wait any longer for this thing to get underway. I hugged her and kissed her neck as the other guard, the one who had originally told me I could go, check in, go to the ATM and then come back to the door, stood on my left and kept letting other people through. I know Puji probably felt a little awkward kissing while others watched scandalously but I didn’t care. I was relieved she wasn’t crying because I could feel some tears forming behind my own eyelids. She asked me to text her when I reached London. As if. She mentioned that she might not get the What’sApp messages because it hadn’t been working so well and that’s when I realized she was crying. Those deep sobs, I had come to learn, always started with what sounded like innocent sniffles - the same kind she’d make to emphasize, in jest, that I had said something that had offended her. 

It wasn’t often I got to see her cry like that because it wasn’t often that I was the cause of it. Thank god for that. Maybe the last time was shortly after the wedding, when I had yelled at her for ignoring me. She had explained then that she no longer had a father and her family meant everything to her. It had broken my heart to hear that. Because all I had wanted her to realize was that even our time was limited. It anyway always felt that way, didn't it? And now, time had run out. It would now be time to flip that giant hourglass around and start counting back the other way. It would feel impossibly hopeless. But then today would be the worst day - and every day a little better from there. Keeping track of time would become meaningless as the weeks became months and eventually come to a grinding halt as the months became weeks once again. This was life. If there was any blessing in this second trip, it was that time had gone by so slowly. Three months had felt like six. Easily. We had enjoyed and made the most of it. And I knew we’d try to make the most of this next phase as well. 

I didn’t think about any of this as I listened to her cry because I didn’t have to. Physical grief took over and did all the heavy lifting. My eyes filled up with tears as I went back toward her and told her not to cry. I hugged her and felt her tiny body and stroked her hair and kissed her and tried my best to take her all in. And then she told me to go and I told her to go as well. I walked toward the counters and turned back to look at her as many times as I could without making it worse for either of us. But I knew she’d be watching me go until she couldn’t see me anymore. And with my tears still falling on the dirty carpet, I took a right at the ticket counters and saw her again behind a different dirty window pane than the one where I had left her. I walked toward her and she walked toward me and I could see that she was still crying. I gave her one of our nods, the one that sarcastically asks ‘what is it?’ even though we both know exactly what it was. I smiled through the pain and gestured at her not to cry. She gestured the same and then told me to go. We both walked away and looked back a couple of more times. But the last time I did, she had turned and walked away. 

Until we meet again, my darling.