Cotton Candy Comedy

February tickles in and the new year spirit leaves us with the gloomy bloom. It’s the month of love or in other words the most profitable month for the card makers, soft toy sellers and restaurants. Love either overflows or dries a human heart for first fifteen days of this small month. I who am in love with the idea of love finds imaginary wings growing out from my toes in this month. For years now my friends and I we have been gifting each other chocolates on valentine’s day. We can blame this flaw of ours easily on the Japanese and Korean rom-coms we grew up watching. My once walking mate and now my partner in quest of  self love, turns into over-feminized creatures in this month with me. 

Valentine’s day is a big event in the life of loveless. By loveless I simply mean the love that comes from a lover. My family is strictly forbidden to enter my non-existent love life and express their suffocating love to me to counter my loveless comment. I love wearing red on this day, and my sister out of pity got me a red dress, because well the only colours I have in my wardrobe is blues and blues, occasional greens and standard blacks. Last year my valentine's day was bore, with no human around to even have a coffee party with, lets forget a single praise for my red attire. This year I simply wanted a red dress and look pretty. And I did look pretty, but not Valentine’s day.

On last Tuesday, my mate was busy changing her display picture and sharing stupid love quotes on her Facebook wall. On other hand I was busy walking down broken paths of Spring-fair (this fair is miniature, rather minuscule version of the Winter festival that I spoke about in my December post). On last Sunday we had a department picnic, where I enjoyed a lot and ate a lot. Thanks to the picnic I could not attend the prime time of the fair, that was also on Sunday. Two days before that very picnic I realized, rather my femme fatale self discovered calendar and found valentine also fell on a bloody Sunday. Hence I chose to be bloody pretty on my picnic day.

But on that Tuesday I decided to walk past the remnants of the fair with my over-feminized zeal. My main thought was to eat Mathura-cakes (Indian version of donuts). Sadly, there was only one shop and the cakes had gone sour. On that very day I realized my elder sister who is blessed with strange sense of gifting was buying me a bank robber’s mask! Though it’s called a biker’s mask, it is in truth a prop used by criminals.

As I kept roaming around the fair and haggling with trinket sellers, my mom called me. The funny question being, “Why are you alone again?” like she doesn’t know, I am an ambivert. But then came the knockout punch “It’s almost valentine! You are forever single! What will you do this year? Dress up again and hope for a rose?” she was smirking I could feel it. I was already pouting, and I could see every other human who knew me asking the same question. “One day I shall have a lover” my brain yelled and maybe I should carry a signboard, ‘happily alone till then’.

After the call ended, I was stuffing my mouth with chocolates that I have been buying at random since end of January. That’s when smell of pickle bought me back to a request made by my object of affection. A one sided imaginary love affair with no future, in nutshell. Very meekly I was asking price of pickles, since I had no idea how to buy them. The grumpy pickle seller almost pickled me, but in the end I was carrying garlic and ginger pickle. And I was smelling like pickle too.

The evening was growing dark and my sweet tooth was far from satisfied. Finally, my eyes fell on the upturned magical creation of sugar. In pink, orange, blue and white. I am a human who loves happy endings, at times really cute things she has no use of. Over all I am a girl, my object of affection happily fails to see it, my friends see me as a weird human and my mirror is so small I fail to see below my neck, at times I end up wondering what’s below my neck. So since my childhood my mom let me indulge in one luxury that was cotton candy. Sadly, I could never finish one. But, once upon a time cotton candy sellers bought them in tiny packs and I relished them.

But last Tuesday, I decided to accomplish the impossible! I bought myself a cotton candy. With my trinket and pickle bag I sat myself on the dais. Next moment my face was hidden in the pink hole of nothingness. I bit and it melted, I chewed it vanished, yet it refused to recced in size. Younger girls came in groups and gave me curious looks, the elder couples were in a way perplexed at why I was sitting alone on the dais and ripping apart a pink universe like a hungry feline. Few vagabond children really found my endeavor funny and chose to laugh at my comic act. Only I knew how hard it was for me to finish the whole creation.

Now the couples came, I don’t know if it’s my face or my small structure that makes people pity me. They really felt bad that I had no friends with me. They have full right to feel pity for me, but they can utter their thoughts after they walk past me and not when they are standing in front of me. But they had no sense of space and kept their talks up and I chose to browse through Huffington Post’s articles on Valentine’s day. In next fifteen minutes my twitter was crowded with links from Boredpanda and Huffington Post. Yet the couples refused to vanish from my vision nor did my cotton candy reduce in size. But I kept my struggle intact. At last when the first glimpse of night rose up. I was holding a stick and the pink hole revolving inside my tummy and annoying lovers gone. I had attained another impossible task after nineteen years of struggle. I returned to my room glorious and proud smelling like pickle!

And today, I think my love for love is very much like cotton candy. I can see its size, I can try to eat it, but it’s not going to be easy or fluffy journey like Mills and Boons. But again like Chekov’s love obsessed characters, I too feel and think like them, may be I am behaving like them too- “so what if the person I desire doesn’t love me back, I can’t stop myself, but love them”. It’s better to share chips, eat chocolates and watch rom-com with someone who cares about us as a friend despite love being an impossible destination. Its more than better, not because we want them forever, but because we get to share moments with them and that make us who we are, Believers.

P.S- Now in my case can I stop believing in happiness? Probably never.  

thanking you to bear with me

paulOaries