To taste desire like a pinch of salt

Have you seen the trailer of the upcoming film Once Again starring Shefali Shah and Neeraj Kabi? Did you get the feeling that the chemistry between the two mature and immensely watchable actors is so palpable that you could eat it? 

It is, in a way, life affirming to watch two older people find love, romance and enjoy physical intimacy on their terms. When they go in for a relationship, they usually have zero expectations. And that gives them a wonderful tabula rasa to colour their lives the way they want. 

Once you are on the other side of ‘young’, physical intimacy loses a lot of the anxious energy of two people trying to find out if they work together in bed. There are no waiting anxiously for the report card at the end of it. Was I good? How Good? More importantly, you tend to become so irrelevant to most people that they do not even expect you to have any desire to reclaim any part of your self. It is like putting someone on a no-salt diet for years. And then one fine day, when the first micro grain of salt touches our tongue, the memories rush back to every fibre of your being. But no one, watching you from the outside, will ever know, what it is like to feel desirable, all over again. 

When two older people get together after perhaps a long drought of affection and intimacy in their lives, they have not much to lose. But everything to gain. Including the surprises. And that gives their intimacy its unique timbre. 

I have always marvelled at those who are lucky enough to fall in love again, find romance and beauty in another person after perhaps heartbreak or loneliness. And then there is that thing called ‘chemistry.’ Our ageist eyes see sexuality only in young, lithe, supple attractive bodies. We often miss the subtle signals and the charm of a touch, a whisper, a caress and the simmering sexual tension that is in all that remains unsaid, unspoken. We feel less, and try to do a lot more. 

When you are of a certain age, lust mulls into desire. Blinding sunshine turns into iridescent dusk. You can still get swept off your feet by a stranger, a voice on the radio, or a person you have never met. 

One guesses that is what this film is about as well. But the sense of adventure is tempered by experience. A pinch of scepticism, realism, pragmatism to rein in the rush of a new romance. It has usually been so long since a person made you feel special that you want it all. And unlike the trail of expectations that a summer romance brings with it, there are no promises. No must-do lists. No dates to be finalised. You simply revel in each other’s company and go with the flow. 

Autumnal romance, or intimacy between two older people is rarely something we talk about. There is the cloud of stigma, the stench of taboo too. Whenever we run into them, we are either patronising or critical. Occasionally we label it with all our juvenile vocabulary. But that vocabulary is woefully inadequate to capture the essence of a mature romance. It is beyond ‘cool.’ 

It is salt to the parched tongue.

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