Sticky Chocolate

For you. But you already know.

...

We went to the temple.

I just remembered. It’s funny; I never thought about it all these months. In retrospect, our having gone there seems symbolic and powerful and loaded with metaphor; just the kind of thing I like to make myself miserably nostalgic over. I also wonder now why I went. I had willfully stayed away from anything that stank of religion in this masala city before. I was (and am) in-between ages: too old to believe, and too young to understand.

The temple was just near the college backgates, in the parking, from where we’d walked out almost every evening because we were too late for the main gates. Both of you were with me. I remember you told me that you’d never even known that we had a mini-temple-thing on campus; such adorably pathetic powers of observation you had. I remember you told me that you’d only come here once before, when you were desperately hoping you’d get into this college. That had amused me – for all your sketches of rationality, you were such a profoundly Indian girl. I’d never liked you more.

The three of us solemnly went up, removed our shoes – I remember cursing myself for not wearing sandals – and shuffled our way to the idol. I don’t remember which particular deity it was, exactly; they’re so many, and anyway, it doesn’t matter. I remember thinking that the three of us looked like out of a Yash Chopra movie. We just needed the sound of pealing bells and singing voices in the background. And, well, cosmetic surgery (me).

But the bells couldn’t have rung. It had been a still day, and moisture lay like an overlarge comforter over everything. Even the dust looked subdued, and we were all so lost within ourselves. I remember wondering what you were thinking. I still wonder.

We’d prayed for a long time. At least, I hoped both of you did; I could feel nothing but pure emotion swelling like a wet balloon from somewhere above my solar plexus into my chest cavity, straining and struggling against the confines of my body. I tried to channel it, and hope somehow that the stone idol in this small stone mini-minaret who had the weight of so many anxious students’ fervent last-minute prayers etched onto its skin would understand that through the overburdening of my soul, I was praying for both of you.

The both of us finished long before you did. Watching you pray, I’d thought about how your frowning, concentrating mouth gave you the appearance of a little puppyrabbit who was convinced it had been wronged. I remember vividly the single tear that had curved silently down the convex cheek I had always wanted to lightly pull out of heavy affection, but hadn’t ever, because you’d once told me you hated people who did that. 

Oh, and we’d also made an offering, hadn’t we? So cute we were. We’d put in three ten-rupee notes, one for the each of us – God probably got home chicken for dinner that night – and we’d put chocolate.

Why chocolate? Some instinct probably told us it wouldn’t be appropriate to the somberness of the moment to be blazingly capitalist. The occasion demanded something more… wholesome.

So the half-eaten bar of Cadbury Silk it was. Our last, sticky chocolate. The one you’d given to me so that I would have something to eat on the ‘plane.

Ironic that the one person I hated the most that day laid claim to it.

I wonder what happened to that chocolate. Did it decay slowly, spread maudlin on the base of the stone platform, and stain the idol? Patiently dissolve into a pool of wistful sweetness? Everything melts in the hot Indian sun.

Or did someone pick it up? Eat it? Someone who took care of the temple, maybe. A boy. I wonder if he still believes in the little stone idol, or if he’s just going through the motions like the rest of us. I wonder if he liked the chocolate. I wonder if it tasted more significant to him, somehow, compared to the other chocolates he’d had. Did he feel anything different? Did he roll the bitter-sweetness on his tongue, press it against the roof of his mouth? I bet he didn’t like the fact that it was all melted and gooey and sticky and messy. Me, on the other hand; I only like sticky chocolate these days.

I also wonder what the rickshaw-wallahs thought as they watched the three of us walk out of college on a hot Sunday afternoon. Bratty kids who couldn’t do their hugging in the privacy of their homes. Come to think of it, they probably didn’t think anything. So many people pass through these gates all the time, every day. 

So many people. Every day. 

The everyday, the ubiquitous, and the familiar.

…

I’d rung the bell on our way out – you know, for good measure. And we had walked out. Slowly, heavily.

…

I still have the wrapper. It lies, hibernating, in one of the shelves of my desk. I could touch it if I wanted to. It’s a nice wrapper.