The opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own and do not reflect the views of Her Campus.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Ashoka chapter.
Edited by: Sreenandana Nair
- You spent 864 minutes watching my favorite movies. You sit on the dirty sofa with no hesitation. Watch the show you know you despise in another life, but pretend to enjoy it just for me. Make all the right expressions, laugh at the jokes you know I would always laugh at, gasp at all the correct moments. Put on a performance just for my enjoyment. You know, the whole time, that my eyes linger on you longer than then they watch the screen. I care what you think, and it is so obvious. It is leaking out of me— my breath caught in my mouth when you say something mean about the characters, my words tumbling out of me trying to give you all the context you need to get the jokes, my coughs, my nails bit to bits. I know it is not important. I simply want to believe that you think the way I lead my life and spend my time is good. Worthwhile. That is no small thing. Do you think I am interesting? Do the things that I care about of my own free will, without needing to, make you feel anything? Do you really like the show? I want to know that we enjoy the world in the same ways. And you don’t let me down.
- We listened to 129 of your songs on the metro this year. I stand next to you on the metro. Almost fall on you twice because everything moves too much and I can’t keep my balance. End up leaning on you, both of us staring at the city and the trees outside. We have 13 stations to go and you know the crowd makes me sort of nervous, so you hand me one earphone. You say you will pick the music. I pretend to hesitate a little but I am delighted inside. I try to listen carefully. You are bobbing your head, tapping your feet, looking at me for a reaction in a way that doesn’t seem too eager. I notice and smile back. I am trying to remember the lyrics, the melody, the way you light up when your favourite parts of the song come on. The way you close your eyes to particular words. The way how, despite being on a metro surrounded by people we don’t know, you are still so yourself. How wonderful to know how you decorate your time, how you have fun when no one is watching or listening. How thankful I am to be let into your rich inner world, and how loved I feel to already be this welcome.
- We watched 12 movies together this semester. We decided to have movie night forty five minutes ago but the six of us have refused to agree on a movie. Too slow, too emotional, too bleh : we are running out of excuses to reject movies and I can sense our collective restlessness. We reach a compromise: everyone gets two vetoes. Three minutes later, we are watching a movie. It was no one’s first choice so we are all talking for the first fifteen minutes. But then we just shut up. Head on your shoulder, arm wrapped around my bowl of popcorn. Whisper to you sometime in the middle that this movie is actually really good. You hear me sniffling fifteen minutes later. Two hours, and the lights finally come on. Everyone has cried a little, and now we all laugh. No one wants to leave so we sit there and talk. We feel for the same things. Maybe that’s why we are friends.
- I forced you to look at paintings for 48 minutes. You are not a museum kind of person. I try to be so I drag you with me to look at all the art. Try to make smart comments on all of them so that you think I know what I am talking about, but I do it in a funny kind of way so you know I am lying. You don’t get the joy of it— of looking at colours arranged in pleasing ways by dead people. You are condescending about it sometimes which I don’t like. You tell me this is too pretentious, too meaningless for your taste, and I get upset. I tell you that you must be really fucking full of yourself to not get the beauty of paintings, because the beauty literally smacks you in the face. Yes, it’s made by dead people thousands of years ago, but it still makes you feel, it still tugs at something deep inside you. Something made thousands of years ago still makes you feel something today, isn’t that good enough for you? We don’t talk much for the next thirty minutes. Both of us feel guilty but not guilty enough to apologise. We are walking silently and then, suddenly, you stop. You stare at a painting and it’s beautiful. You tell me you get it now. Hold my hand. I think about letting go to be petty, but I don’t. We look at the art together.
- You sent me 783 reels this year. I don’t reply to reels when I am sad, it takes too much effort. You know that. I haven’t replied to most of your reels this year. You know I feel guilty, you know I am drowning in my work, in my own mind. So we created a new ritual. We set aside an evening once a month to look through the reels together. You scroll through them, I nestle into your side and make sure to say something about each reel. Mostly good stuff. You tell me that reels are a way to reach across the vast expanse of the digital space, to navigate through the unnavigable and incomprehensible terrain of the internet, to let someone know you are thinking of them. That, even while navigating one of the most individualistic spaces on your personal cell phone, you still want me to know you think of me fondly. From that day onward, I always send you reels. I am always thinking of you. Fondly. I want you to know.
- I wrote 18 poems this year. 7 of them were about you. I showed you one of them, after much persuasion and much hesitation. Hate for you to see me so wanting, so vulnerable. Think it makes me so, so weak, needing you like that. Fear often that you don’t need me in this way, that I am much more replaceable to you than you are to me. You can look through the imagery and the metaphors in the poem. You see what I am really saying. I am biting my nails and waiting for your reaction. You say it is really beautiful but then you get sort of quiet. You ask me if I know that you are not leaving me. That you want to read my poems fifty years later when we are old and when I don’t know how to type because the keyboards are too technologically advanced. I say I know. So glad to have you to care about what I think, to look through my poetry to see what I have to say but I cannot articulate directly. Know I will always show you my poems first.
- I notice, at least 7 times every day, that we engage in the same rituals like some magical clockwork. Send reels, watch movies, force each other to start new TV shows, plan to visit the new galleries and exhibitions as soon as we have a free weekend. Everywhere, art engulfs our lives. Maybe that is why it is all so beautiful. Maybe that is why we love it so much here. I turn to see you standing in the dinky refrigerator light. The knots of your hair, your blue eyeliner, the arch of your nose— I want to paint it all. I want to write about it. You become art to me every day. In the dinky refrigerator light, in the white of the moon, in the movie theatre, in all your glorious stubbornness and wit and humour. Yesterday, you, of your own volition, put on my favourite movie. And I can’t help but think this is the most sacred way to love: to enjoy and appreciate the same things about the world, to look together at the same things. I could go on like this forever: movies, reels, TV shows, poetry. Nothing about the way you see the world will ever get boring to me.