There's Something About Mira

by Sonali Dev

“It will be okay, love. Everything will work out. Life has a way of falling into place.” “Do you really believe that?” I say. “With my whole heart. The universe is magic. It’s working to set things right. My dad used to say that. He had a theory that for centuries humans have tried to control the world by forcing everyone into matching molds by getting them to close their minds. It’s why the pressure of discontent has turned humanity into a ticking bomb. The only way to defuse it is to change one heart at a time. Every time a single person opens their heart, the magic gets stronger. And your heart is one of the most beautiful, most wide-open ones I’ve ever known, Mira. You’re filled with magic. All you have to do is let your fear go and believe.” His words pierce me. The word magic burrows deep into me, all the way to the part where I hold all my pain. All I know is what life has shown me. I want to believe, but I don’t know how. This is the only way I know how to feel, as though this helplessness in the face of everyone else’s pain is my story and it’s the only one I’ll ever get to live.

I watched An Affair to Remember for the first time in my junior year of high school, when Rumi took a film appreciation class. The teacher was a fan of iconic romances, and Rumi and I became obsessed with them. Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, From Here to Eternity, Pillow Talk, Come September, Roman Holiday: we watched them over and over again, lost in the grayscale and comic-book-toned color images moving slow and intense. The deliberate movements, the close-ups highlighting every nuance of the large, hyperfocused emotions, all of it so pure and heartfelt and undistracted by the complex background imagery of today’s movies. I’d been especially felled by Deborah Kerr’s simplicity and playfulness and how Cary Grant saw her. Like really saw her all the way down to her soul. I think Druv sees me that way, the way I want to be seen. It’s why when he first showed an interest in me, I didn’t run and hide, the way I’ve always done.

Whose is it? The words whisper in my ears. I squeeze it in my hand and look up and down Fifth Avenue as humanity whizzes past me in all its mismatched yet cohesive glory. Couples holding hands, solitary people speaking animatedly into their headphones, everyone moving with purpose around everyone else. Everything that just happened already in the past. Gone. Was I really just sitting on the pavement on my butt? Did a child just knock me down? Here, in the least child-friendly place on earth. A place that should be no more than a concrete jungle but is filled with stories of romance and human connection. All these things that shouldn’t fit but do. The ring and chain dig into my palm. I open my hand and let the ring dangle on the chain. A ring on a chain: two more things that shouldn’t make sense together but do. I squeeze my eyes shut, and every romantic comedy moment I’ve ever escaped into fills me. Something slides down my spine, something urgent and ravenous. The anger in my brother’s eyes when he talks to me, the love that spins around Saket and him when they’re near each other. The infinite chasm between those two versions of him. The kind of discontent I’ve never allowed myself to feel scrapes underneath my skin. Why did I find it? Why me? The ring hangs from my hand, the oddest glow emanating from it, like an answer I can’t interpret. I’m not someone given to wanting. Wanting things always leads to hurt. I’ve avoided it with all I’m worth my entire adult life. Now it...

Chapter Six

*

Dear Suru, Last night I dreamed that you lost your ring and I woke up so scared because it felt like we had lost each other. It was one of those dreams that feel no different from reality and the sensation in my heart was exactly the same as when we both moved to college, when we were separated from each other for the first time in our lives. I had to remind myself that unlike our rings, our friendship isn’t something that can just slip from us.

Remember how scared I was to squat over the new ceramic hole-in-the ground toilet and you couldn’t stop laughing at me? But then you showed me how and I stopped being scared. How quickly we forgot what life was like before water came to us through pipes and electricity through wires. Now my aie acts like the sky is falling on her head when it’s gone for a few hours. I suppose I’m no different because I just called Pune ordinary. How big it seemed in Appa’s stories—like a foreign country. Now look at us. I’m here at one of the biggest colleges in the world and you’re in Bombay, where everything about Pune must feel small to you. Is everything in life a matter of scale? Is anything actually large or small?

You’d tell me to be more bold. So I’ve done it myself, pretended to be you as I scold myself in your voice. I supposed I’m not used to being you for me by myself yet, even after two years apart. I can see you shake your head at my silliness. But you’re smiling, aren’t you? Making you smile used to be the best part of my day. Now the best part of my day is writing to you and looking at the photos you send me.

Turns out you were right, my life is a prison. You thought if I studied and let Appa send me to Fergusson College I’d leave the prison behind. But can we ever leave our prisons behind? They built them into us. It’s all they’ve ever done from the day we were born, turn us into our own prison cells.

I wish I were you, Suru. I know you hate to hear me say it, but all I’ve ever wanted was to be you. To hide away in your shadow. Sometimes I think that’s the problem. That I never learned to live as separate from you and I don’t know how to change that. We’re like our rings. They were forged to fit together. Now we’ve separated them and each one just looks and feels odd without the other half. Sometimes I stare at my half and I’m filled with a sense of its incompleteness. Then I think of you wearing your half and everything falls back in place. You do wear yours, don’t you? I know you do. I know it’s not actually lost.

Now, don’t be sad because I said all this. Please. I’m not sad, I promise. This is the happiest of moments because I’m writing to you. If I don’t say these things and remove them from my heart and hand them to you the way I’ve always done, they’ll turn to acid inside me and eat my flesh. So, thank you for letting me.

True love and cynicism can coexist in this world. It’s one of the universe’s great ironies, and my brother here is another great example of it.

I know you don’t enjoy studies. But you are cleverer than anyone I know. It’s in everything you do. You have this ability, Vasu, to understand and to grasp things even those who claim to be scholars can’t. People like me, we can fill our heads with facts and hopefully someday that can help us fix material things. We might make things that make the world easier to live in, but people like you create a world that’s better for us to live in. You see people. You don’t believe what you’re told about them, about how you should feel about others and about yourself. I know that causes you pain, but you have the courage to do it despite that. If there’s anyone who isn’t in a prison it’s you because your mind is free and it’s untrainable, unchainable, unmoldable.

But yes, I do wear it. And everything falls in place for me too when I think of you wearing yours. Sometimes I feel like we are the same person. But how is it possible to miss someone so much if they are part of you?

you know keeping my word is important to me. All we have is our loyalty and character. Isn’t that what your aie taught us? We won’t take jewels and land to our grave, but our souls will carry the choices we made and how we lived to the next life.

You asked me to not send you things, but I never agreed. If I didn’t send you things I would be buried under the weight of all I have. If I didn’t have you to share things with I would be too alone to comprehend. I’d become locked up inside my aloneness. A mountain would grow around me and trees upon that and no one would ever find me buried under how distant I feel from all of humanity because you aren’t here to connect me with it. Please don’t take that away from me.

How could I have been so stupid? I, Mira Salvi, the girl who always manages her expectations, who always overthinks consequences, who never trusts anyone, how could I have gotten so carried away? This will not end well for you if you’re not careful is a line my parents have fed me so much it’s coded into my DNA.

Is politeness his weapon or his shield? I hate that it feels so familiar because of course it’s mine too.

He sits back down, not even a hint of gloating. “Why is it so important to you?” he asks. “Finding this person.” “Honestly, I have no idea. But I’ve never really left Illinois. I’ve barely ever left Chicago. Why would I come all the way to New York and fall down exactly in the place where the ring was lost and find it?” I haven’t told anyone that a child knocked me down or that I didn’t see him because I was looking up at the Empire State Building and thinking about An Affair to Remember. “It feels like it can’t be for nothing.” “So, it’s because you believe in signs.” “I’ve never thought about signs before.” I’ve never thought about what I do and don’t believe in. I’ve only ever thought about what I needed to do. “But I do believe that I found it for a reason. I have to find out what that reason is. I don’t know why, but I have to.” And I have to find out before it’s too late. Even though I don’t know what I’m afraid of it being too late for.

Maybe you should never have sung to me at the youth festival. You were wrong. Ashatai Athavale does not have the most beautiful voice in the world. You do. I know you were supposed to have been singing for the audience, but I know you were not. It was in your eyes, which stayed on me the entire time. That was the thing that changed me, it changed my life. Maybe I should not have allowed everything that followed to happen, but are we born to turn away meaning when it finds us? Everything that happened was like light filling the sky when the sun rises, natural and inevitable.

I will not be able to live this life without you, Vasu. What happened between us is the most beautiful thing I have ever experienced. Every breath I have taken since then has been more beautiful. And every breath I take in your presence is more beautiful than one where I am without you. If everything else were lost to me, every one of my senses gone, I would not trade how I feel when I’m with you to get it back. They can have everything, but they cannot have the piece of me that is you.

I know we cannot do this without lies. I will tell a million lies for us.

I love Van Gogh, and I’ve only seen what they have at the Art Institute in Chicago.” In third grade we did a project on Van Gogh’s paintings, and I remember becoming obsessed with drawing the blue swirling sky of his Starry Night over and over again. It felt like a portal sucking me out of where I was, and sucking things out of me.

That’s when I learn that when embarrassment and fear live together inside you, fear wins. “Why the hell would anyone want to do this voluntarily?” But I’m on, and I grab his shoulders because even though we’re not yet moving I feel off balance. “Hold on, close your eyes, and imagine something soothing. Like shopping for your wedding.” And with that he takes off.

I hope this new us doesn’t change the old us. I love that word you used: conflate. Is it a combination of contain and inflate? That’s how I feel. Like our love always contained us into one being, but what has happened between us—the hunger to feel each other’s physical being—inflates us into something higher, something even more beautiful.

I am eager to hear your plan for the rest of our lives. I have one too, but I suspect it is more simple and less viable than yours. Which obviously means we will be following yours rather than mine. Which obviously makes me hopeful and happy (a pretty constant state for me these days). I’m looking right now at that Darwin book you left me. It’s interesting enough. The man seems to understand the world in a way the world needs to be understood. There is also an added advantage to reading it: as soon as I read a few pages I get the best sleep. I almost want to give it to my aie. Instead of taking her pill to sleep she could use this.

We’ve always said that you are the smarter one and I the braver one. I never understood what you were afraid of. You always said only a girl who had never lost anything or wanted for anything could be as brave as me. Now I could lose you—and I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want to be with you. If I lost you I wouldn’t know what to live for. For the first time I am terrified.

Your name means the rain and mine the earth, how can anyone want to keep us apart?

New York John, now silent, leads us to a room, and there it is: the swirling sky I’ve seen in my dreams since I was eight years old. At the edge of my consciousness, I notice that John falls back and Krish excuses himself. I step up to it. An odd turmoil grips me. What must it have been like to see the world this way? Every stroke is restless, all those tiny splotches of color coming together in a tidal wave of chaos and beauty. I’m rooted and shaken. I never want to look away. It’s how my lips burned, how my hair flew in the wind. It’s how I felt when I found the ring, how the rough pavement scraped the skin of my palms. An experience that traps my body and squeezes my heart, takes up all of me. I am the swirling blue sky, the steady yet nebulous flames of foliage, the bleeding glow of the stars and moon. For a moment, I am every painful experience I’ve ever had. I’m all my yearning for joy. Eddies of pain and pleasure burst inside me. I close my eyes and dissolve into all I’m feeling.

“I think I might actually be happy,” Rumi says. “It’s not all the time. God knows, I’m not that evolved. But when I am, I just am, and it’s so much simpler than I thought it would be.” His voice changes again, turns the slightest bit more vulnerable. “But it didn’t happen until I stopped being afraid, Miru. Until I stopped believing everything I’d been taught about myself. It didn’t happen until I learned to follow my heart. It’s terrifying, but you have to learn to listen to what your heart is saying.”

“Why didn’t you try to find out what made me skittish?” “I thought I knew.” “Tell me what you thought.” “It’s what you’ve said before. Your childhood. Your parents are great, but they didn’t have it easy, and they didn’t make it easy on you. I remember how quiet and reserved you were in high school. I also remember the natural kindness and dignity you had about you. Something none of us had at that age. I think I was struck by it then, and when I met you at Shubha’s wedding, I was struck by it again. There’s always been something about you, Mira. It came back to me, and it soothed me. You calm the restlessness inside me. You feel like an answer to questions I don’t even know I have.”

Two skinny boys run into the water in their day clothes and start playing in the waves as their mother shouts after them to be careful. For a long time I watch them, unable to say more, unable to stop shaking, cold in the heat. They loop over the rolling water, under it. They let their bodies go. Give themselves up to the power of the ocean, the waves playing with them as much as they’re playing with the waves. Finally Krish breaks the silence. “You know how you asked yesterday if I had come all the way here to talk you out of looking for Vasu.” “Did you?” “No.” “Then why did you come?” “Because the only way I’ll have the courage to do this is with you.” There’s a good foot between us, and I’m so very grateful for it, because if he were closer, I’d let myself fall into his arms and cry. “Why am I so filled with the pain of this stranger?” “Maybe it’s not her pain you’re filled with.” A giant wave crashes against our legs and soaks our jeans. Neither of us moves. That’s when I know. I know why I’m here.

I’ve never given soap much thought, but scrubbing my hands and face makes me grateful for all the simple things we take for granted.

“I don’t know who Reva Smith is. But based on what you’re telling me, it sounds like she’s Sureva Bhalekar. Who was Vasu’s lover.” She says the word lover with some satisfaction, and Krish and I exchange a glance. Her gaze slides between us. “I don’t know why people associate that word with the physical. If you’re in love, if your hearts recognize each other as a piece of themselves, you’re lovers. When will people stop using lust to devalue love?” I look at my hands. I have no response to that. I think of my parents devaluing Rumi and Saket’s love because they can’t see anything but the physical aspect of it. Or they choose to see only that so they can call it ugly based on what feels physically natural to them. If they saw Rumi and Saket together, if they saw how they care for each other, how they glow in each other’s presence, if they let themselves see the love, that would make it impossible for them to believe the things they believe.

Why is there a cruelty to friendship? All my life I had this need to come first for you. Now I would gladly be standing all the way at the end of your priorities if only I could see you one more time. I’ve often wondered if the life you gained when we lost each other was worth it. I suspect there is no easy answer to that. I know you’ve done amazing things already and you will do more. There are too many fatal diseases that are only fatal because you haven’t found a way to stop them yet. I can see it already. Work you’ll do. Machines you’ll create to break down cells that kill us. Magic you’ll make to heal the pieces that make our bodies breathe and hurt and bleed. I can see the trance in your eyes as you dig and push and inhale entire libraries so you can move something into place. The nights you stay up, the days you forget to eat. That’s the life I imagine you living. I hope there’s someone there telling you how beautiful you are, someone to cherish the force of nature you are, someone to scold you to rest. Another jealous and brutal piece of me wishes it’s me still, who sits on your shoulder, who makes you care for yourself because you can’t bear to upset me. I am there, you know. On your shoulder. As you are on mine. If there is happiness in this world it is knowing that we have that forever.

When you live in a monastery (isn’t it ironic how I ended up in one of the coldest parts of India when I hated the cold so very much) you get to think a lot about what happiness is. Even after everything, I do believe that our families who separated us did want us to be happy. They just couldn’t define happiness as anything outside of what they were taught to define as normal. I’ve questioned almost everything in my life. I’ve questioned the intentions and character of every person I’ve ever met. Including yours and mine. I’ve hated that you left me. But I’ve never questioned that our love was right, that it was powerful, that it made me feel my own humanity more than a single other thing I’ve ever experienced. If you are reading this letter then I hope it follows that the only thing I’ve ever desired in this lifetime is about to come true. I hope that it isn’t after our entire lives have gone by. Even if it is, I’ll take it because I will not leave this earth without seeing you again, Suru. My soul cannot carry the burden of so much unfulfilled wanting to the next life.

Then he reaches over and collapses against me. From the depth of his soul, he lets his pain out in heart-wrenching sobs. Krish, stoic, indomitable Krish. Krish, who hasn’t shown me a sliver of emotion in the time I’ve known him, is crying in my arms as though he’s been waiting his entire life to be able to cry. I wrap my arms around him. For those minutes, I’m what holds him up. What makes it possible for him to keep breathing through the pain that’s choked him for so long. In being that, I’m also what I’ve wanted to be for as long as I can remember: someone whose humanity is complete because they’re connected to others. Someone who feels undamaged and enough. Someone with the power to make the unbearable bearable. When the sobs stop, we sit there like that, his forehead pressed into my shoulder. Another moment when we’ve breached a wall with each other that has kept us safe from everyone else. When he pulls away, his face is wet. That, combined with the swollen, bruised jaw, makes him so vulnerable, it’s like he’s stripped down to his soul. He takes off his glasses and wipes his eyes. “You should have seen the look on my mom’s face when I said those things to her. I see her face in my dreams every night. I gave her that. In return for a lifetime of love, I gave her that.” I squeeze his hand. “You were horrible to her one time. You were obviously a wonderful son all the other times. Do you think she took only that one conversation with her? Do you think she forgot the life...

His lips press together. He takes a step away from me and raises a finger, pointing at my face, then at his heart. He opens his mouth but struggles with words. “That. How you just felt. That’s how I feel every time you say his name. There’s no one else in my life.” Relief floods through me. He isn’t with anyone else. Then anger so violent I want to explode with it. Then shame. I’m getting married in a few months. He’s breathing hard, seeing right through me. Why would he do this to me? His hand goes to his temples and squeezes. “When we first met, you were right about me. All through my childhood I learned not to show my discomfort when I didn’t fit. Because I’ve never fit. Not until now. For the first time in my life, I fit. I fit in my skin, in this world, in my own discomfort. I’m not a stranger when you’re with me, Mira. And I’ve been a stranger to myself all my life.” The silence that follows his words rings in my ears. “Why are you telling me this now?” “Because it wouldn’t be fair for me to not say it before we get on that plane.” “Krish, I can’t just flip my entire life over.” For one second the words Why not? burn in his eyes. He knows why not, just as much as I do. “I don’t ever want you to do anything that feels like it’s flipping your life over.” I hate how articulate he is. How he doesn’t just throw words out without choosing each one carefully. Even more than that, I hate how much those words pierce me. The gate agent calls boarding numbers over the PA system...

Vasu lets go of Krish’s hand and reaches for me. I go to her. “Thank you for finding me.” The ring is hanging around her neck on a black thread. We returned it to her yesterday, and Reva put it on her. I nod. My throat feels raw. There’s so much I want to say, but I can’t speak. “I know,” she says. “It is hard to do the thing you want when you’ve been taught that doing what others want means loving them. But you came here to find me. You do know how to do what you want.” She places her hand over my chest, where my heart hurts. Her hand is cool, but heat gathers beneath my skin under her touch. “When you’re true to yourself, even when something hurts, it feels good. When you’re betraying yourself, even when something is supposed to feel good, it hurts.” When she pulls away, I feel shredded. And so seen it’s like she just stripped me. It hurts. And of course it feels good.

Our bodies press so close there isn’t an inch left untouched, not a speck of me left unchanged. When we pull apart I’m in pieces, and all the ones I’ve never let out before are clinging to him. I open my eyes and wait for him to open his. When he does, I see the entirety of our life together flash in them. “My home just came to me,” he says and pulls me back into the tightest hug. Krish Hale is a hugger. Who would have thought? I smile against his chest. And it feels so good, it doesn’t even hurt.