The first time he had seen the painter, a mild tremor had run down his body. Something about him, his eyes maybe, had that seismic quality. But that was before he heard him speak. He realized that the eyes were merely complicit in the crimes his words perpetrated - each one polished to perfection, never a second too early or too late, opening his mind up to possibilities and to the possibility, of something emerging from all this.
His own was a profession of creativity, he was into the business of bending music to will. But never before had art as intrigued him, as when he stood in the painter’s gallery, trying to piece together the jigsaw that was his personality, each part hidden in a separate painting.
The painter himself had been there; not alone, with a glamorous wife in tow. They said she was a poet, and his muse.
Their eyes had met yet again, they even exchanged a few mundane words. And somehow, somehow, he discerned the painter’s loneliness, that no ordinary muse, no matter how beautiful, could dispel.
They played a game of cat and mouse for an appropriate amount of time, each trying their best to not make the first move, yet always be within touching distance of it. And then finally it happened, a memory of which he had felt upon seeing the painter for the first time; call it memory or omen, time can run in either direction.
Finally, it happened, a coming together of his music and the painter’s art, of his rhythmic fingertips and the painter’s aesthete touch. He felt as if the entire world stood still, as audience.
Except, of course, that it hadn't stood still as much as it had carried on, business as usual.
As he rubbed sleep out of his satiated eyes the next morning, he noticed a few missed calls. They were from his girl-friend. The two of them were college sweethearts, their love made sweeter by the fact that each had rebelled to be with the other, she against her entire family, and he against his own instinct.
But missed calls were of no consequence that day. This weekend was to be theirs, his and the painter's, no interruption big enough. They spent large parts of it talking to each other about this and that. From dreams to delusions, from poetry to playlists, they discussed it all, walking arm in arm, knowing they were away from all prying eyes.
He’d spoken to the painter about his girl-friend, and her hold on him. She was in love with him with an intensity that was all hers, he could never begin to reciprocate and they both knew that, to varying degrees. So far, he had stayed, drifting with the flow, but at the end of that idyllic weekend, as he alighted from the painter’s mustang and turned around to walk the few blocks to his home, he made his mind up to leave.
Things took a strange turn after that. She had not believed him, not that he wanted to leave, and especially not that it was for another man. So much so, that he’d had to fabricate another woman into existence, the one, the other, for whom he was purportedly leaving her.
Her, the woman who’d stuck with him through thick and thin, through his playing in seedy bars, and even on the streets; who’d left her plush existence behind just so that she could leave a trail of ash-filled whisky glasses in second grade motel rooms, accompanying him and his washed out talent, once so vibrant, like his love.
He realized that this was her narrative, her little story of betrayal, that gave her the strength to move on, fanning the flames of a love, that was all hers. He was a man of few words, unlike his painter, but in one of his more lucid moments, he’d spoken about the power of one-sided love, about its purity, its unadulterated longing, undivided by each individual’s interpretation, unbesmirched by expectations – lofty or mundane. He had felt a tiny swell of pride as the painter had watched him, solemn, struck by the loveliness of his words, haltingly spoken though they were.
***
Many years later, he came home one day, to find a letter from her, his one-time girl-friend, now wife, saying that she was leaving him, was, in fact, gone. It was a letter of love, of tender remonstrances, and deep deep pain. It ended with a thought, a shadow of another he himself had had long ago, on the power of unrequited love; the thought had undoubtedly made the rounds of much better company than his own in the intervening years, in being articulated much better, rather like an Urdu couplet than the broken introspection of a man of no importance such as himself, a mere DJ, DJ Ali.
