Companion

“Happy Birthday Viola! Many many happy returns of the day! Live long!”, this clichéd message of her kinda favourite person had marked the beginning of her 21st year. She was over the moon. She was Viola. The simplest of things could catapult her above the overrated cloud number nine. And yet there were other situations (people, actually) which formed declivities, so easily.
Months later, Viola was 20 years old with a wonderful family, a balanced bunch of friends and a fixable mid-life crisis. Not rare, eh? And from nowhere she recognized that one thing her life lacked. A companion. No, not a boyfriend. Companion. The one person who’s always there. The “Let’s watch a movie and get some pizza” person. That “Let’s go home together” person. That “Let’s talk about life” person. That “Let’s study together” person. That “Let’s just sit together in this comfortable silence” person. That one favourite person for all of this.
Viola never felt unlucky. Lonely, yes. But never unlucky. She knew she was loved by many. She had different companions for different things. There was none for”go home together” or “study together” or “comfortable silence” though. And talking about life was quite tricky. There was no favourite person, in person. It was a bit unsettling, to be precise, to see everybody with his or her companion.
It all hit her suddenly when she figured out that her wishful favourite person had his own favourite person. And that they were each other’s favourites.
A lot is scribbled about unrequited love. Ever heard of unrequited companionship? How it can definitely add unwanted drama to your mid-life crisis? It’s simple. When you don’t see it in someone, you don’t want it and so you don’t feel the lack of it. But when you do, and they don’t, only you can save yourself!
It was a heartbreak of a different kind, Viola contemplated. It wasn’t really a heartbreak, maybe “heart-fell-down-but-just-broke-at-the-edges”? Heart says “I’m good.”
Viola wasn’t as sad as she expected of herself. So she just sat there with her “good” heart and all the scattered thoughts. And then she got up and danced to the happy tunes. Her companion’s happy tunes.
Viola is Viola’s companion after all.

Thanks for reading 🙂
-Malvika Mishra

Between Goodnight and Good morning.

Between Goodnight and Good morning, we met.
It wasn’t real. And it wasn’t unreal.
It was as vague as it was vivid.
Vague to the point that I don’t remember why we met, where we met.
Vivid because I can paint the colour of the light that made his face shine. The glimmering eyes. The impish grin. The distinct voice. The witty words. The warmth of his presence. The impeccability of the moment.
I don’t remember anything else, yet there’s a lot which cannot be forgotten.
This figment resides right inside me. I try to summon the moment to know what happened after that, but there is nothing. It was one moment and it’s gone.
When Good morning hit me, I blinked my eyes as I came back from that place, that one moment. And when realisation struck, how much I wished to go back, to the only place where we could be. A place I wished wasn’t unreal.
I wondered, how we run errands out there, drawing our paths, at least trying to tread on the drawn out paths. And yet we cannot know where we go between Goodnight and Good morning?

Thanks for reading☺

-Malvika Mishra