Cobalt Blue

by Sachin Kundalkar

How did I acquire those habits? Perhaps that’s what happens during the forging of a relationship: if nothing else, you adopt some of the other person’s habits. It makes you feel those small adaptations, those adoptions, make him one of you.

At such times, I’d go thundering down the stairs. This was a tricky ploy. My plan was: I thunder down the stairs. You come after me. You apologize. You ask me to come back up. I say, ‘Buddy, you cannot be so self-centred in a relationship. You have to learn to make some compromises with your principles.’ You apologize again, you say that you get it, and instead of ‘Let’s see’, you say ‘Yes’. We go out together. Most times my plan failed at step one. I would come down the stairs and wander about in the house, waiting for you.

And on this latter list there was also a man we both loved very much: you. I had only met men like you in novels, men who lived their own idiosyncrasies.

You began what you described as your accomplished solitude from that day. This term—accomplished solitude—struck me deeply. And it slowly began to dawn on you that you did not need people around you when you were painting or reading, when you were watching a film with deep concentration, or when you sat down to eat, chewing every mouthful and savouring every flavour. You made loneliness easy on yourself.