CHENNAI: Chemistry is one thing, being adored quite another. At the cusp of my 20s, there was a gorgeous man with whom I never became involved, even though a deep and evidently mutual crush existed between us for something like three years. A friend of his told me then, “We sit here and talk about every girl who walks by, but when you arrive, he falls completely silent”.
I saw his eyes light up whenever he saw me; and because I could ask for no purer reaction, neither could I ask for more.
No, that’s a lie — I am a shy woman. And I like to be asked.
But this is true: there is nothing really complimentary, deeply meaningful, about being found attractive. There is only a marginal, and often perishable, difference when it comes to being lusted for. Both are ultimately about the beholder and their pursuit. This is why, so often,it wilts upon fulfilment — curiosity satisfied, skin that yielded so tenderly so quickly thickening to hide. For by the light of morning none among us is anything but vulnerable, but some among us are so afraid.
I have not been adored often. I’d like to think that I would always appreciate it, and so would always recognise it. I say this knowing that there’s a part of me that is coy and cruel, and takes and does not reciprocate, while pining for other things that don’t spinintoxicatedly around the vagaries of my caprice.
Such spirals are not adoration, just another form of beholding: if fortunate, one knows better than to risk touch. In astronomy, there is the concept of evection. The word literally means “carrying away”: it indicates the eccentricity of the moon in response to the sun’s attraction. Even the moon is driven mad, and sometimes we are simply moon-kiss’d.
The last time I saw the man who fell silent, his eyes suddenly-lit, whenever he saw me, we had bumped into one another unexpectedly in a public place. Neither of us could contain our delight – we held both of each other’s hands and sparkled hellos elatedly, and then simply let our hands drop away. That too, was almost a decade ago, but I count it among the few times I knew myself to be genuinely cherished.
Should we have acted on it? Maybe, maybe not. He adored me, I adored him; this is not a bittersweet memory.
It was not Love, but it was love enough. Adoration is something else altogether, something soulful and joyous and often taciturn.
The hands, the feet, the eyes — these are the holy centres. The gestures: to kiss the hand, to touch the feet. And those most taciturn and most soulful things rendered by the eyes.
Not everybody knows how to do this, how to adore. It takes a certain grace, a certain respect, to be able to look at a person and make them feel beautiful without it being about the way they appear, feel desirable without it being a proposition, feel extraordinary and original and singular with it being only — and only — about some sublime and recondite essence of their own.
(The Chennai-based author writes poetry, ficion and more)
Not everybody knows how to do this, how to adore. It takes a certain grace to be able to look at a person and make them feel beautiful without it being about the way they appear