The Heart Pees Where It Breaks

Once upon a heartbreak, I lost a tea-shop to the very romance that had led me to it. She-who-shall-not-be-named lived close-by, and before I’d drop her home after our dates, we’d share a cup of tea, holding each other, by the side of the road, just outside it. By lost, I mean - collaterally damaged - by memories around it that turned into those of a bitter ending.

But this phenomena wasn’t limited to just one place like that. It wasn’t even limited to one breakup!

Cafes, parks, roads; books, notebooks, movies; even trees!

And across cities!

In fact, one whole city!

Oh, and the flight path between 2 cities, albeit, thankfully, in just one direction.

And an airport.

____

I remembered the airport as I crossed it’s turn on the way to Fort Kochi. It wasn’t my first time here, but it was the first time after the only time that I’d been to the airport on a visit here. On the morning of my last visit to this town, I had gone to the airport to receive another she-who-must-not-be-named. On the morning of our departure, we had been engaged to each other, at this very airport - for all of 10 minutes.

Don’t ask me how I knew it was exact 10 minutes.

I know it sounds weird. But it is true.

I had proposed, she had accepted, and 10 minutes later, she changed her mind.

What happened in those 10 minutes? Nothing related to her changing her mind, at least from my side. Whatever I had to have done had already been done in the illustrious past of our relationship. It is my belief that her brain may have only just been catching up.

Alas, I don’t blame her, and neither am I ungrateful. It had happened a long time time ago, enough to have been forgotten, and it had been forgotten, except for when I saw the turn on my way to Fort Kochi, this time.

____

Some time ago, I had had a pet. At time, it had been his privilege to have my company, for I was easy to tug around along his adventurous wanderings and taste of vegan roadside snacks which his usual company was already trained to avoid.

On these walks did I observe a silent pee-war between him and other members of his species. Trees, roads, cars - some of the very things that I’d attach romantic moments as meanings to - were regularly peed over, one after the other, to mark and win territories, without so much as a bark or any bitterness. That is used to happen everyday, irrespective of the time or the order of who peed after whom, or without any apparent irritation from each member as to the momentary nature of territorial ownership was, least to say, very thought-provoking for me.

I didn’t know then that this ritual was going to serve as an inspiration for me in life.

____

Moving cities is easy. Get someone to pack your stuff and book you a ticket, if you can afford such privileges, and hopefully, like in my case, if you’re moving back to your hometown, you’d probably have your family waiting to cook you your beloved home-made recipes.

What is tougher is unpacking your life in a new city; routines, social circles, a sense of belonging, a sense of culture, an arc for growth, hobbies, societal surveillance, culinary appetites, and of course, dating pipelines - simple nuances that go overlooked unless you’re a trained nomad or a sworn saint, and that get destroyed without any sensory signal. You realise what you’ve lost only after countless morning of waking up without a sense of what you are going to do with your day, or how you’re going to manage to live through it without what could be called as a life.

So, when faced with the daunting reality of needed to replace that tea-shop stood ahead of me, along with all the others that connected to each other in the fabric of my new life, my nervous system revolted with the whole of the rest of my being, “NO! We’re not redoing months of effort to rebuild another life here. Each space is scared - found through serendipity as much as sincerity. We shall not let it be written away as collateral damage!”

But, how do we do that?

____

Late one night, it finally dawned upon me, as I got into my car, put on the new Spotify playlist that I’d named as ‘Pivot breakup 2024,’ and decided to go for a long drive, with a route, and a ritual in mind. The music was important; while I drove the car, the music drove my spirit.

Together, we reached the place where the tea-shop was located. Together, me and the music, still ringing in my head and singing in my heart, stepped out, and walked into the shop. Together, we read the menu, and ordered everything that we liked. Everything was yummy, everything was enjoyed wholly, everything was enjoyed slowly, with all the condiments and the add-ons, yet, zero guilt.

Once we were done here, I ordered the tea. God bless tea. It tasted even better alone, even while standing in the same spot as where she and I used to hold each other while having it. Maybe I was hallucinating how better it tasted, but that’s better than hallucinating much else.

Ah, there was an ice-cream shop, too! A great one! It made ice-creams with only Jaggery or Honey. Not that my guilt was concerned today, but it’s good to know when you’re ordering 2 scoops and then a third, one over the other. It was Winter. I had it slowly; it melted only down my throat, and not once over my hands.

Phew. What next? Back in the car - I knew where to - it’s a drive that I was used to; there was another shop where I used to go after dropping her, where I used to have ice-cream all by myself, but with memories of our days and weeks and months together, reflecting upon how I could do better to keep her.

I drove, I parked, I ate more ice-cream, and made better resolves. Water flushed the sugar down my throat before I felt ready to move-on - the night was done, a ritual evolved.

Mission accomplished.

____

Fort Kochi is a much smaller place than Delhi. I hadn’t ever thought about it - about how the same fabric would feel much heavier here, with heavier memories connected by stronger threads woven all over each other - until I walked through it again this time. So many roads, cafes, warehouses, trees, hotels, reminded me of meanings that I had subconsciously attached to in a past that held no meaning to me anymore, yet there was a weight to all of them.

It was as if this town itself had a memory that it wanted to remind me of. That meant only one thing to me, this time.

That my bladder had something larger than itself to take care of.

But this time, it wasn’t with an undertone of bitterness, and neither did it feel like it needed a mission. I realised this only as I wrote, that there had been a transformation inside me, albeit so gradual that I had failed to acknowledge it thus far - that it didn’t take a mission for me to claim, or reclaim, my happiness in the spaces that I occupied, inspite of whatever meanings that may have been attached to them in the past through mine or anyone else’s life experiences. It also didn’t need anymore of a resolve to make happiness, as much and more of it, through moments experienced in the present.

Hence, all that I needed to do in Fort Kochi, this time, was to not control my bladder in any way. Like my gut, it beaconed me towards places and experiences that mattered to me, and when a worthy moment arose, I didn’t stop happiness from flowing out & marking its territory.

Except for this one Italian Gelato place. They closed it, in the middle of the day, for a few minutes, exactly when I went to make my happiness there.

I wonder how they saw me coming?