the banyan of life

(Continued from two solitudes in their togetherness)

Who knew where the flycatcher flew

The morning light peeked in through his window, almost unsure whether to wake him up. In the middle of a dream, he did not want to wake up either. His tired words seemed to have carried some meaning to her after all. She came to see him. They talked in that dream, after a long time, under the shade of the banyan that had seen their solitudes grow into an unfinished togetherness that they were now leaving behind them. The conversation had reached a happy place and he was almost ready to wake up, naively hoping his dream world would merge with the real world when he opened his eyes. Somewhere along the passage from one world to another he realized the fallacy of the hope with which he was going to wake up. And to protect himself from the disappointment that stems from impossible dreams one holds too dear, he tried to continue sleeping. Some other, more ridiculous, dreams would hopefully take over and he would not long for them after he opened his eyes. That did not happen. Instead, he woke up with a longing that would be a lot more bearable if it weren’t burdened by his love. All he could do was to put pen to paper, continuing the conversation from under the banyan, almost hoping she could still hear him whisper in the carefully punctuated spaces between pen and paper:

I am sorry I wasn’t there for you in your most difficult moments and that you couldn’t tell me how you felt, that I didn’t read it all myself, glossing over everything and weakening our love. I realize that love, as life, must be a constant improv, rather than a fixed recipe handed down by some master chef, or a routine thing to be taken for granted until it withers in our hearts. We must constantly tend to it, as one tends to a sapling that’s just beginning to spread its roots, and we must never stop doing that, not even when the sapling turns into a beautiful tree that can withstand the elements. There are lessons we learned in our time together as lovers which I hope will keep us company as we figure our way along life’s maze, finding our way to a place that isn’t yet a place. I also hope that we find in ourselves the strength and wisdom to improv to life in a new way, that we may love each other differently this time, as friends, and that this friendship is not a thing to be seen as a diminished form of what used to be our love, but a thing in its own right; not something salvaged from our relationship as lovers, but a thing built upon the togetherness we once shared, one that’s falling off like leaves in autumn right now, but only to enrich the earth which only gives; and in which we must trust to provide a fertile ground for our growth. This love, founded in friendship, is a different aerial root of the banyan of life, finding its way to the earth, seeking to find a footing in the truth of the soil, so that one day it doesn’t matter where the “main” trunk of the tree is; what matters is that the tree is a forest, a life-affirming ecosystem in its own right, just like the Adyar banyan we once sat under. I hope that our friendship finds its way to the earth and stays rooted in it for a long time to come, that we meet again in this forest under the banyan of life, regaling each other with tales we lived through away from this banyan, and that we find that paradise flycatcher again when we come back. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

He thought about what he had just written and whether it was anything more than a bunch of platitudes strung together to make what is difficult seem easy: self-indulgent prose that doesn’t help anyone. Maybe he was just storytelling his way out of troublesome feelings and his own past. But isn’t that the usual task of being human, coming up with stories that comfort us, that “fit”? Except that, usually, these stories are told from a distant future that one isn’t ready to inhabit just yet. He considered the thought for a moment but then decided that these words should reach her, if only so she knows where to find him when the time comes. He found an envelope, placed the note in it, affixed the necessary stamps, and sent those words on their journey across the ocean that separated them.

When she received his note, she filed it away with the rest of his letters. She was surprised how much she still enjoyed reading him. She wondered if it was even possible for them to meet again under that banyan, if that wouldn’t just bring back difficult feelings. She certainly couldn’t promise him anything. Besides, she found herself sharing her cup of loneliness with someone else now.

She noticed her phone still had ‘life is an improv’ on the home screen but she wasn’t sure of that any more.