Ila Sundstrom

The jaded part of me — emerging in all its glory in the wake of the barrage of ‘boyfriend day’ Instagram stories — laments that I am never going to find anyone. Perhaps I am destined to end up alone, surfing my happily married friends’ couches, in line to be the next childless cat lady that my neighbors would come to grow utterly sick of. 

My starry-eyed 16-year-old self would be aghast at the cynicism I have picked up along the way. Back then, love seemed inevitable — something that would be bestowed upon me in abundance, in serendipitous stolen glances at cafés, the perfect flash mob promposal, long walks along the beach talking about everything and nothing. 

I knew exactly what I was waiting for, expectantly, and I find myself still waiting, as the universe hands out one happy ending after another, while I remain stuck in the line that never moves.

What if nobody is tied to the other end of my invisible string? I let the sadness that this possibility evokes wash all over me. I lie in my fairy-light clad room, tucked neatly into my duvet, wallowing the absence — or optimistically the delayed arrival —  of my “soulmate.” My roommate walks in with a cold brew in hand — a drink she detests, but knows I love. “I was at Book Trader and thought you could do with a coffee,” she says, placing it on my bedside table. 

The condensation from the cup trickles down my fingers, dissolving much of my disappointment with it. I see the very invisible string I had started to lose faith in, for it seems like an act of ingratitude when the universe granted me the ultimate privilege of a built-in best friend in my roommate. The world worked its magic by bringing me to a campus full of strangers, to spaces filled with uncertainty and somehow, to this very room, to this very person. 

I wonder, then, if the invisible string theory has less to do with blind faith in destiny, but more our way of explaining the bonds we find difficult to put into words — that enter our lives when we least expect them, and become our most defining relationships. 

For beneath all my outward acrimony, I often think that this very invisible string might just be my birthright. Even if everyone were to dismiss the theory as mere fantasy, I have always believed that my parents stand as the ultimate testament to its existence. 

Having grown up in the same city, they spent the 20 years prior to their first meeting raving over the same unbearably spicy yet ridiculously satisfying Indian Chinese food, on the edge of their seats mere miles away from each other during the historic 1983 Cricket World Cup final, falling hopelessly in love with the city they would eventually claim as their lifelong home. They were happy, and still, completely unaware of what “happy” even felt like till the day my mum found herself at my dad’s doorstep on a sultry day in October 1991. 

Clad in his standard ratty T-shirt and shorts, my dad opened the door of his home, expecting a friend who was stopping by to return CDs. Said friend happened to be commuting back home with my mum, dragging her up the stairs and to the door of my dad’s old apartment on Nepean Sea Road. They spent the night arguing about the British colonization of India — of all the things they could have picked to argue about — my mum scoffing in annoyance in response to every word that came out of my dad’s mouth. A tense lunch at Bombay Gymkhana, a relocation to the U.S. and several phone calls later, they fell in love — a little bit at a time, and then all at once. The rest — as terribly cliché as it sounds — was, indeed, history. After spending their entire lives in the same city, going to the same college and sharing countless near-misses, it still took two decades and a stack of long overdue CDs to bring together my two most favorite people in the world. 

They have always been my living proof of the invisible string theory — that they are intertwined across time and space, I have no doubt of. 

Perhaps I have more invisible strings in my life than I give credit to — after all, I am a product of  a connection that seemed coincidental at first, but ultimately became the foundation of everything I know. 

Come Valentine’s Day, or the next time everyone seems to arbitrarily celebrate their significant other on social media, the jaded part of me will inevitably resurface — more from a place of impatience than one of disbelief, though. Because all my skepticism and ‘rationality’ fails to explain how the girls I got coffee with every Wednesday last year quickly transformed into some of the most important people in my life. Or how I spent my entire childhood in the same city as a friend I first met during orientation week — where perfunctory small talk melted away, only to be replaced by shrieks of laughter.

Inexplicable, and still, it’s my source of clarity in a life so far removed from everything familiar; unexpected, yet undeniably fitting — and perhaps that’s the beauty of the invisible string.