Two Summers, Too Short

Lovers meet in Delhi and Europe for two bouts of cartographic passion

- Uttaran Das Gupta

This is not your typical love story; it is a Yash Chopra film. That’s what my friend said when I recollected to her my travels across Europe, meeting and bidding farewell to M—. I met M— in New Delhi in 2017 and again in Europe the next year as we tried to work out if our romance was meant to be a short-lived summer fling or had the potential for a longer engagement. In the end, we decided it was not going to work out. She worked in London, and I in New Delhi—it was an impossible cartographic challenge that no passion could overcome.

I met M— soon after my father died. After the cremation and funeral rituals, I returned to New Delhi and threw myself into work at the newspaper, where I was employed as a sub-editor. My book of poems, Visceral Metropolis, was brought out by independent publisher Red River to favourable reviews. I started writing a column on cinema and politics and another one on Indian poetry in English. It had been about a year since my previous relationship ended, and at the suggestion of a friend, I decided to download a dating app.