The Universe Conspires

When you’ve broken up with someone, even if the person has a relatively unusual name, you will find that his name is suddenly everywhere. It will leap out at you from the backs and sides of trucks, autos, cars, scooters, cycle rickshaws and horse-driven carriages. Boxes of matches and crates of cola, hoardings advertising safety pins to surrogate mothers, shops belonging to tailors, travel agents, and traders of all sorts will bear his name. When you look closely at various products – chips, chapstick or chastity belts - you will see that either the licensee, distributor or manufacturer will have his name, often all three. His will suddenly be the most popular name on tv - from the news to talk shows to Balaji sitcoms to sports channels.

When the break-up with – let’s give ourselves an ego boost and call him you-don’t-know-what-you’re-missing – happened, I was prepared for this moniker offensive cos I had faced it once before. So I shrugged non-chalantly at the labels, didn’t change channels when a certain minister appeared, didn’t flinch when a waiter’s name turned out to be the same.

I even braved a film, which besides being in his language and set in the lushness of his home state, had for its premise a woman in love with a man for portraying a legendary character after which you-don’t-know-what-you’re-missing is named. I sat patiently through this highly romantic, sensual, dreamy, poetic film without missing a heartbeat (okay, maybe one or three).

In happier times, when I was exclaiming how extraordinary it was that everything between us seemed to fit so beautifully, y-d-k-w-y-m had told me that when you really want something, the whole universe conspires to give it to you.

More like the whole universe conspires to mock you. Well, as I said I’m quite used to this cosmic assault, but today was the last straw. This is what I read in an advice column in the paper – ‘Dear Aunt Agnes, it has been a year since I split with y-d-k-w-y-m and I still feel pangs of pain…’

Yup, the universe is definitely mocking me.
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On another name note, at my request a fellow-blogger who travelled to a beach wrote my initial in the sand...he said he waited for a while but the tide didn’t come in far enough to wash it away...