Secrets in Love

Since I was riddled with secrets of all kinds, and my tongue enchained with unbreakable vows, my own passion now became a punishment. I knew too much, and I had begun to understand why ignorance was bliss.

So on one eventful day, when the world was celebrating Pillow Fight Day or something, and I had nobody to fight pillows with, I quit social media and joined the university. I was so relieved that no more secrets were to be kept that I lost a few kgs out of happiness and lightness of mind. But unfortunately, I had an amicable personality. And fancy words. So I was dragged into this loop again. 

I met a girl (let her name be X) who was a living, breathing, walking East India Secret Company. She had such a vast collection of such diverse secrets that she could write a novel in bullet points, a novel so grand that Proust would need nine lives to recreate. Anyways, X happened to know another girl from the previous town, (let the name of the girl be R), who had earlier divulged too many of her secrets to me. So now X wanted to know R’s secret and was eager to barter her own secrets for that. When I refused right away, she told me secrets after which I couldn’t refuse. 

In fact, she told me so many secrets that my hippocampus became godzillacampus. She also told me the secrets of big men, the people who call shots and all, and of celebrities, going as deep as their purse contents. She gave me the microanalysis and the explicit atomic details, like who eats mangoes in what ways and by whose hands. I knew everything about everyone, and I couldn’t see my batchmates with the same eyes anymore.

However, things began to go south when she wanted to know the secrets of some senior, and wanted me to masquerade as a lecherous gigolo and befriend the guy. 

“You just enquire about how he sees women. Throw in your regular misogyny to gain his confidence. “

“Excuse me! ” I protested, “I am not a piccolo or whatever you think I am. “

“Calm down. You have to act. I know you have a knack for such missions. ” She exuded so much confidence that I believed I must have a knack.

“The guy was secretly staring at me. “ She said. “So I want to find out what’s up. “

I agreed to do this odd job with some hesitation. However, as I followed the guy, I realized that someone else was following me. A friend of X, let her name be M. When I confronted her, M told me that X had told her to keep an eye on me to check if I was in love with her. She even showed me the notes she’d made. It had precise observations but pathetic conclusions. It ran like this.

Sat in the grass for 97 minutes doing nothing. This is love. ✅

Sat in the lobby doing nothing. Definitely love. ✅

Missed college 5 days before her birthday. Totally drowned in love. ✅

“Are you guys nuts!? Isn’t he following her? “ I asked. 

“No, he is following is me. I told her this. So she sent you to pretend to spy on him, in return, she asked me to do the same on you. “ M said calmly, as if it was something even a six year old could figure out. I felt disoriented for a while and then asked her to revise some of the conclusions, which she refused point blank.

“It’s superior science. ” She said, “Men don’t get it. “

As it turned out, it was indeed X who was following the guy, who was following M. But M wasn’t interested in the guy. Nor was X. Well she was, but not in a romantic way.

Yup. That’s when I gave up because I was a mere mortal of 3 dimensions, and this was straightway Nolan magnum opus. 

I told her I couldn’t do it anymore. But she wouldn’t let me. She blackmailed me that she’d tell her friend R that I had blurted out all her secrets. That’d have been an end to my reputation I had built over a decade. She also agreed she’d stop spying on me if I told her what my feelings were for her. I told her I hated her guts. And I kept up with her. 

The clandestine love triangle chase soon collapsed under its own weight as the guy was later accused of harassment because he was following twelve girls a day. That’s when I took a sigh of relief.

Then, there was this girl who fell for my friend, who didn’t like her hanging out with the boys. So instead of quitting talking to me, the feminist feline started discussing the relationship with me. It was mostly complaints and nitpicking, and sometimes embarrassing details, and I had to tell her to stop because I couldn’t handle it anymore. Now I had to live double lives: when I was with him, I had to feign ignorance, and when I was with her, I had to recall all that information she had drilled into my head. I’d also have to erase my call records whenever I met the guy. However, things really got crazy when on one fateful day, the guy told me to pretend to be a monk and get from her what she really thought of him. 

What that meant was now I had to pretend that I was pretending but at the same time not pretend. I couldn’t give him the truth because it would have ended their relationship. I couldn’t tell her that he was spying on her because that would have ended the relationship. So I took secrets from her and morphed it to suit him, and that’s how they survived themselves. Life was tough.

But soon, I fell for a girl, let her name be Z. A storming, blazing, annihilating piece of pure, oxygenated fire. Around her, I felt like the proverbial bug that was destined to jump into the flames, knowing well that it’d kill him. When I saw her, she was all I could see, and I could see her till the end of time.

But because she was such a cannonball, confessing was never an option. So I had to secretly nourish my crush. Oh the charm of unrequited love!  

I was obsessed with her. In a completely harmless way though. As I wanted to know about her, I looked for her everywhere: from LinkedIn to quora to betting apps. And I stored and saved every trace of her I found floating in the virtual world. 

But the real pain in the heel was that she was a batchmate, and we talked as friends. So I had to delete all my history every time we shared a table. I was careful not to give my phone to anyone, no matter what the urgency. So people began viewing me with suspicion. Someone spread the rumors that I had 128GB worth of communist content on my phone. I had to tell them it was only 4k videos of Russian towns. Nobody believed me. 

During one of those secret sessions, X began to tell me about her, and I immediately forbade her because none of the secrets X ever told me were of good nature. She only mentioned weirdest kinks of everyone. And I wanted to see my beautiful Mary Wollstonecraft without a blemish. 

“Awwwwwww.” She drawled for four calendar years, and said, 

“You absolutely dote on her! “ And then, after thinking for a while, she said, “Ewwww.”

Since then, I started to avoid X. As I isolated myself, my feelings for Z began to grow like uncolonised tropical wilderness. I couldn’t sleep at night if I didn’t think about her, and if I began to think of her, I couldn’t sleep. It was catch 22, in pink. I texted her every once a while, and we talked about her dog, even though I didn’t like dogs. I mean I don’t support dog meat festivals, but that’s just my boundary of dog love. But what’s a human if he doesn’t become a dog in love! And dog I became, a proper Labrador of ancient golden lineage. I synced my interests and world view with her. I hated Donald Trump because she hated him. I loved Bernie Sanders even though I didn’t know if he sold burgers or ice creams. I liked the poetry of Tennyson, and the philosophy of Kant, and I watched British drama till I started calling my friends “sir knight”. 

And I could go on and on like that heart in the Titanic, but I guess I should directly jump to the bloody glacier. 

My heart really broke when one day, Z texted me she was having troubles with her relationship, and if I could do her assignments for once. 

“Relationship? You mean your dog? “ I took my chances. 

“No stupid. This Bengali boy I told you about? Francis Bacon? “

Francis Bacon! That was the dog! Wasn’t that the dog? 

I wanted to scream. Who names their boyfriend Francis Bacon, for the love of Atlantis!

And with all the vague statements like “Francis Bacon only sleeps all day”, “Francis Bacon didn’t bring me a chocolate”. Well dogs do bring chocolates if they are trained. Chinese people have trained penguins to go fish shopping. It was on YouTube.

The hell. 

And if Francis Bacon was indeed a man, what an audacity to throw at me the assignment order. Okay, it wasn’t an order but still. It stung like an order. 

I cooled down after three and a half minutes of laments and agreed to do her assignments. She wrote a long obituary starting with “I cannot explain in words how grateful…”, which I didn’t read further.

Instead I typed a lengthy love letter, the size of a PhD thesis, only to decide against sending it. If Francis Bacon was actually a dog, she could let it loose on me. 

But such was my literary flourish in that letter, such poetic and lyrical descriptions of her eyebrows and eyelashes, such vivid imagery of the times I saw her walk, turn and talk, such great outpouring of pure love, that I decided to save it and post it as a WordPress blog after making some minor adjustments. So I just replaced her name with that of my friend X, and made some minor tweaks, and brushed up the Tennysonian wordwork, and saved it as “assignment wp”. wp for WordPress. Yeah, because I was nutty nuts. 

I went on writing the assignments, and with every word, my hatred for the scholars, and the discipline in general, only snowballed. It was an essay about tracing the historical build up to enlightenment, and we had to discuss certain Prometheuses of philosophy. I was already sad and broken and angry, but when I saw Francis Bacon as one of the scholars, I couldn’t control my rage. I wanted to perform gruesome acts on him, acts of medieval torture, but I couldn’t pull him out of the screen, so I download his portrait and edited it on my phone. I made him look real ugly, ugly beyond natural, something that’d have crushed Tennyson, and wrote self incriminating statements on his dress. I completed the assignment like prisoners serve jail terms, and saved it as assignment wh. wh for world history. 

And I think you have already guessed this, but when I had to send her the assignment, I mistakenly sent her my confession with the other girl’s name. 

Holy moly Bernoulli! I was screwed totally! 

She didn’t reply for two monsoons because she was carefully reading every word of it. 

“OMG! I am crying. You love her so much! I will tell her this. “She wrote after four glaciers had melted in the Antarctic. 

Yeah, and ruin half a dozen lives. 

“No. I was about to delete this secret I have held in my heart. And google doc. “ I typed, “She is in a happy relationship, and I don’t want to ruin it. But I had to tell somebody. And so I sent it to you. I hope you’ll delete the file and keep my secret. Will you be my secret keeper? “

“Yes. Yes. Absolutely yes.. “ She said, and added 🥺 emoji to further stress her point. 

Guys, let me give you an important life lesson: women maybe great scientists and inventors, they maybe great writers, politicians, and even jail superintendents, but what they are absolutely not is secret keepers. 

So I should not have been surprised when four days later, I spotted X and Z together in the canteen. They were discussing an important issue in a hushed voice. Let me tell you what I saw. 

X said something to Z and Z smiled. Then Z said something to X and X smiled. Then they smiled and talked. Then they said something together. Then all the smiles, from the whole of earth and two planets beyond, vanished like Lake Faguibine. Their faces turned pale white, their brows (which I had praised like a bard) were clenched like livid bowstrings. Then the shock was slowly replaced, like the stacks of Tennyson on my table after the heartbreak, by a shimmering, seething, fuming fury. And then they began to type furiously, as if Julius Ceaser writing to Brutus from his heavenly desk, and my phone was hit with a barrage of texts, as if I had aced the UPSC exam.

I quickly put my phone on mute, and ran on my toes. In my room, I packed my bags, and granted myself a much deserved holiday. A Phoneless, people-less holiday. As I left the city, I couldn’t help but indulge myself with this amusing thought:

Of all the 128GB of secrets I had, ultimately, what led to my downfall, was my own secret. Some kind of poetic justice it was! 

The lesson I learned from this affair was that…. Well there was something. I will tell you in a while. Till then, a couplet in Tennysonian style:

People who remember do not live longer. People who forget, live without regret.

Your Secrets are My Secrets 🤫

It was when my mother bought a pair of Nato green binoculars on Dhanteras (a holy occasion when women buy jewelry) to spy on the shady neighbour that I realized I was genetically predisposed to snooping. Thus, in my case, to know was to be, or to be was to know, however you like to put that. 

Whenever my Naniji or Mausiji graced our humble abode with their presence, my mother spent hours spilling to them secrets of everyone, as if she was a RAW agent communicating field notes to the seniors. They listened with the attention of cranes, and were always eager to prod further, and tell the secrets they had gathered all this while. It was a club of matrilineally related women, and if you have observed well enough, you’d know that’s a crazy club. They practically talked everything till every shred had been analysed and examined like an extraterrestrial carcass.

As it was only natural, I acquired a taste for secrets. I began with my own house, and after spying on my mother for some time, I hunted down the pack of Horlicks she’d buried behind the Tupperwares on the topmost shelf. After I bravely climbed the shelf, I also located my piggy bank which had surprisingly gone missing after ingesting a grand fortune. My mother had told me that the piggy bank had run away with our money, and that she’d lodged an FIR. 

Soon, I too began to look around for news. And in the school, I’d overhear conversations, mostly about Ben 10 and DBZ, and make a note of it. It went somewhat like this:

Manu likes Diamond Head. But his pencil box has a Forearms sticker. 

Rustom is a Vegeta lover. But he pretends he likes Goku. 

Then, as I tumbled into std 5, people started playing FLAMES, a game that was as dangerous as it sounds. It decided once and for all who the lover was, and who the enemy was. And everybody played the game. I followed it keenly, and soon, my notes began to look like a CAT puzzle question:

Rustom likes Manisha. But their FLAMES score is Enemy. 

Munjal hates Manisha. Their FLAMES score is Enemy. 

Viren and Kritika are the same height. They share Affection. 

As per FLAMES, Kritika Loves Manisha. They are actually sisters. 

As per FLAMES, Munjal Shall marry Kritika. 

Rustom loves Kritika as well. Actually, Rustom loves every girl. And Vegeta too. But FLAMES says Rustom is Kritika’s enemy. 

Now Rustom and Munjal don’t like each other. 

I had a crush on a girl, and when I secretly tried the game, it got me friend-zoned. I finally switched to playing Atlas when they started putting my name on FLAMES, along with the female teachers of my class. 

Soon, we stepped up the ladder of adolescence, and there were more secrets than non-secrets. It was the age of exploration, of discovering the new world and experimenting with ourselves. And those secrets were quite gross and macabre even by my standards. To summarize, all my classmates fancied this woman called the TRex, who lived at the corner and bewitched young boys. As the myth went, she had stopped ageing 150 years ago. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to meet the TRex, but there were always stories floating around, about who met who. It was also the time we were learning cuss words, and getting really creative. And there was an unwritten textbook of cuss words circulating around. I also hoarded rumors, like which teacher had what cancer, and which senior belonged to which gang. I never bitched about it to anyone, because I didn’t trust people much. More on that later.

After these small adventures, I began to crave higher orders of pleasure. So I learned two things: the art of deception, and the art of manipulation. This effectively meant that people now began to confide in me. I had to make zero effort to get things out of their heads. They’d seek me, cajole me, and pay me. Sometimes, even random strangers would harangue me with their love story. I was good at making people feel comfortable and wanted. I gave them the polished English words gathered from Zee Cafe and Fox Life shows. So there was a long queue of people who just wanted to let it out, and confess their crimes, and I was the guy, the father confessor of the convent.

Girls would confess to me that they were lesbians, and boys that they liked lesbians. I told them I understood, while I searched ‘lesbian’ in the dictionary. Then came the era of  3G internet and Facebook Messenger, that brief era, and everybody sent requests to everybody, and the CBSE board allowed you enough leisure to swim to the Atlantic, observe seagull evolution, and come back to score 90%. Cyber criminals were still in their buds, and people weren’t vile. In that rare moment in history, my whole lodge was engaged in unprotected careless chatting with multiple partners. 

It was the time when my secret treasure was close to bursting. So many secrets flooded my inbox that it was impossible to manage those without a battery of assistants. To add to that, secrets also flew in via other apps, through text messages, through Whatsapp and Hike, and through good old phone calls. Sometimes I’d be chatting with 4 people at once, and all their secrets blended and became a weird Monty Python story. It was bewildering to keep through the narratives. Despite the notes and flow charts, I’d always blunder. Sometimes, I’d say “I understand” to someone who had a crush on a cousin, and “I am with you” to someone who wanted to murder physics teacher, while what I really wanted to state was the former response to the latter statement, and the latter response to the former statement. 

I came to feel like the parking lot where everybody parked their truck of secrets. I had created a multiverse. And it was spiraling out of hand. 

Plus, mostly, people just hated everyone else. And for the silliest reasons. One of the blokes told me they hated another bloke because he had a banana-like jaw. Another one didn’t like this girl’s handwriting. This girl didn’t like this boy’s specs. 

They also revealed their crush and all, but mostly it was the most popular girl or boy. And it took insane amount of math while talking to 4 women with same crush at the same time, pretending in 3 cases that I had no idea about the 4th one. 

It was the time everyone was going to Kota, and that fuelled the first era of mass breakups. So people needed a shoulder to cry. And so I was all ears to their grief and rants.  

To be continued…