Warning: purple prose up ahead

There's some soch lo contest happening on Indiblogger. I got a mail from "The IndiBlogger team" saying saying, Dear Nimpipi, do you want to win a blackberry? By posting this, they will know I mean yes.

I'm all for competition. And I love a good essay topic. This offers neither, but Miss Gayatri, my English teacher in school, (yours too, Han) would be so proud of me.

Miss Gayatri had a hunch back, wavy hair, always wore a brown shawl with a sari and had a tiny handwriting. She wrote with a maroon pen and I was thrilled whenever she gave me twenty three and a half on twenty five. I say whenever because if I might blow my own trumpet, it wasn't all that rare.

The last topic was "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." I wish I still had it with me. Twenty three and a half on twenty five, you hear!

Anyway, the choice is to write on one of the two topics:

Do all relationships come with the past?
(or)
How would you handle it if your partner’s EX wants him or her back?

Option two seems sillier than option one. Indiblogger doesn't specify a word count. But even 300 words on how I would handle it if my partner's ex wanted him back is excessive.

(It isn't up to the ex, right? It's up to my partner. If he wants her back, I'd be horrified, confused and horrified. I would cry and feel betrayed but the idiocy of it all would help me move on fast.)

That leaves me with no choice.

Do all relationships come with a past?

Do all adults have a childhood? Yes, all relationships come with a past -- two each. There's you and there's your partner. You've dated other people. Each of you have had the build-up to relationships -- the banter, the chatter, the back then, the wondering, the dreaming -- the am-I-the-only-one-who's-reading-too-much-into-a-stray-remark, the affirmation that maybe not, the flirting, the dancing, the footsie, the skirting around saying what you feel.

And then, since it's all in the past, it happened. You happened. There was a we. The couple-ness. The sex-ness. The item-ness. The smiling in response to, "Oh so you guys are together now?" It happened. It's in the past. It's undeniable. You don't wish it away. It can't have another ending. Are we even sure we want one?

But there was that once upon a time when you loved other people. It means little now but there were smiles and touches and presents and midnights and kisses and promises and the belief that this is what they call happy. There was a routine of being together. There was contentment. And lust. And fun. There were nicknames and movies and drives and back seats and the making out in places we imagined nobody before had.

For that time, we lived well. And for however long that time was, we did it well. You flirted, we flirted. We danced, we talked, we messaged, we told small lies to be with each other. There was a fondness. It built up to us having slept together one afternoon when no one was home and there was strawberry syrup in the fridge that we wondered how best we could use.

There was so much we did back then. There were looks and wants and thigh grazes at inappropriate places. There was so much to hang on to. It didn't stop at sex. There was a chemistry even to the talk.

And then, in time, when the weather one day didn't seem so good -- and here's my tendency to purple prose that another English teacher, not my favourite, warned me about -- there was this feeling; an inkling, a suspicion, a gut call. And right when you were doing nothing in particular, it hit you. This wasn't working. He doesn't love me. Or you don't love him. What are we doing. This isn't what I want. You had your fill -- or not -- but then it died. And the details merged.

What remained was one of us wanted out. Or one of us cheated. One of us felt that it wasn't good enough. Maybe the time was up. Mummy didn't like him. Long distance didn't work. Someone died.

And just like that, it became the past. We weren't together anymore. The memories stayed. There are records in your head and in mine. But the tense changed. Importance dimmed. His status got updated. Three a.m messages now came at noon. Photos were put away. Speed dial was allotted other names. Being friends became a pain. Everything seemed so much harder than it was to start with. That was so smooth. This became messy. What the hell happened to us?

In time, we didn't care to ask. We moved on. You and I found other people to love us, for whom we insisted, saw us for whom we were.

Everyone has a past. That truism makes us who we are. Some of us dated assholes. That's in the past, too. From it all, we learnt. Surely we learnt.

Some of us lost the love of our lives to a drunken escapade at a club. That also happened. Some of us found it too easy to move on. Some of us are still broken about what we think was unnecessary, uncalled for, or just so very stupid. Hormones fucked us over. The need to be with some mythical person who was funnier, better, nicer, hotter, ruined our happiness. The old belief that this was it became that is that. None of it made any sense. We broke up. The friends who counselled hadn't a clue. Even when you said you were fine, you weren't. But why get into that -- it's in the past. We all have one. What we all don't is the common sense to get over it.