Water on Stone … Story 3
It is a wonder how words lack to perorate anything that matters; the fragrance of freshly brewed tea in the morning, the colour of the flower, the feeling of being in love. Words are like scattered half-eaten fruits on the ground dropped after satiating the hunger of the birds. Words cannot convey the natural feeling; they can’t! It is their inherent nature. The mysterious nature of words makes love equivocal in its expression. It can only be explicit through conjecture. Love, as elusive as it is, in its uncanny way, makes itself known wordlessly. Sweta looked in the mirror. It is through her reflection that she shares her deepest thoughts. His eyes remind her of the mirror. It is miraculous how he understands her thoughts.
She looked at him. He finally came. It was a long, restless wait. He took his seat quietly. Her heart skipped a beat when their eyes met. He once told her they had known each other for many lifetimes. Yes, she saw him in her dreams; he was a priest, and she was an ordinary village girl. Their path crossed many times in her dreams. There is a fragile contour almost unpalpable exists between fiction and reality. The aqueous frame of dreams vanquishes the distance between them. In the dreams, there live many worlds in which they exist in many forms and names. In her dreams, she was on the cliff holding him on its edge while carrying him in her arms. She is the great Gaia, her mossy surface holding his feet, pulling him to herself, not letting him fall into the ocean’s abyss. She protected him to protect herself.
There existed a time not long ago when there were no dreams. Sweta felt his gaze on her. It was the time before they met. There was darkness within her. The dreams were hollow, and there were no stories to tell. A black hole pulled her within itself, engulfing her in its darkest corner. Every night was the same colourless, dry sleep. Waking up in the morning was a chore. Sweta knew she was saved by his smile. He held her from herself. Now, it was her turn. He smiled and released a sigh of relief. This is their last meeting as he is moving out of the country for two years. Two years is not long, but when every minute becomes a wait, a longing to see him again, two years become an eternity.
Sweta felt relaxed. It has been ages since she felt satiated. She lived with an unquenchable thirst to belong, to come home to rest. Her life seemed random, un-purposeful, like a trajectory of water outflowing aimlessly in mud. In this deluge, he found her. His presence in her life gave her a path to walk with purpose. He accepted her wilderness, her solitude. She did not have to pretend to be domesticated by pruning her thoughts and being. Sweta felt a hole in her heart. Is it possible for her to live so far from him? To go on living without his ubiquity in her life. In her dreams, he lived with her for thousand years till eternity. A realisation hit her that everything around her is changing while she is the same. Would he change too?
It was a small village which she saw in her dream. It was a quaint place with dishevelled trees sprouting in places. He was resting against one of the trees, waiting for her. She walked into the meadow. It felt like a long walk to reach him. He had a fire in his eyes. He told her he was leaving her and moving to another town and she wanted to protect him from this world. She tried to scream his name out loud when she woke up. Sweta felt that she is still in the dream. For the first time, she felt the contour between the dream and reality has become tangible. If she pinches herself, she will realise it is just a dream, and nothing has changed.
She woke up from her reverie. He smiled again as if he had read her thoughts. He came closer to her and held her hand. The touch of his hand on her made her feel rejuvenated. Sweta felt hope. Somewhere far, a horizon was forming. There is a place in this existence where they meet. It is their horizon! The world came to a standstill. They exist not just in this time and space but in many times and spaces in millions of universes simultaneously. She was living a hundred lives at that moment. He looked into her eyes. It was a complete moment like a clear blue sky with thousand flowers colouring the earth below. The universe was smiling in their rhythm.
She couldn’t speak a word to him. They just looked at each other as if words could not express the lifetimes of life living within them. The soul recognises, but the mind has questions. There is so much left unsaid between them. It seems an eternity is needed to understand. But it is this moment that seems eternal. Isn’t eternity a moment. A moment that is complete in existence which gets its meaning in the silence of this meeting. This eternal moment started when their eyes met.
They stood in silence. Their path crossed again. They will survive another life. This distance has only brought them together. The old dream has ended; it is time for new dreams and new adventures. He is the same priest, and She is the village girl. How did that dream end? She doesn’t know, but she knows how this meeting will end. It is time to renew new friendships. A new but unknown path has emerged. She is ready to walk on it with him. She smiled and ran towards him. He just stood with open arms. At that moment, she knew how it ended in her dreams. It never ended. They lived through eternity.
