Once in a while…

There were times when I dreamed about spending my life with someone I really felt like spending my life with. I don’t know when, but somewhere along my life, I realized it’s just another dream. And I thought it will exist only in my dreams or in my imagination, where I meet a true friend, who understand the real me, even better than I know myself, with whom, I could be the real me.
Life started becoming silent. Time seemed to stand still. No matter how hard I searched, I couldn’t find a reason to move on. I had everything I wanted. I couldn’t even find any dreams or hopes about future. Too much silence in my life, and even in the middle of a concert, I felt alone. Life is ironic. You don’t get what you want when you want. There was a million times when I longed for a friend, with whom I could be comfortable by being silent. And when I expected a lot and nothing came along the way, I got accustomed. Hope had no place in my life, not anymore.
And suddenly one day, I noticed my life changing. I didn’t know what the reason was, but things began making more sense. Even the wind or the trees began making sense. I started noticing flowers. I had no idea, what was happening. I simply sensed some change, or I felt life’s getting exciting. I liked walking alone in the rain. I longed to be in solitude, the same loneliness that I hated the most about my life. Even songs started making sense to me. World started becoming more and more colorful for me.
It was her. I met her at the coffee house. First I felt she was too noisy, she was talking all along. I wanted to get rid of her so that I could finish reading my book. But, she came to me and asked, “Beautiful book, can I have a look?” I was a bit surprised. No one asked me anything anymore. The next day I went to the coffee house at the same time to get my book back, she was there. We talked for some time. I went back home. The next day, she wanted some help with her work, and we did it together. I felt good. The next day, I got there early, she was there, and we spent a lot of time together. I sensed that she was able to read my mind or she said the things I wanted to say. She felt it too. By the time I was about to leave, she hugged me and told me she liked me and I am like an angel to her. I hugged her back. I didn’t know what to say. She looked like she was glowing and she was the most beautiful thing that I had ever seen.
I had this feeling that I was at the tip of a mountain, so tall, even taller than the clouds, where I always wanted to be, but the weird part of it, I knew that I was about to fall. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t get rid of that feeling. I wanted to get more time with her. I took off from my work the next day and I waited there for her. She didn’t come. I was sad, but somehow I expected this would happen. I didn’t know how to contact her. All I knew was her name. I was there at the coffee shop every day, waiting for her. But she never came.
My life had changed forever. I wrote to one of my close friends,
“Dear friend,
You know me long enough to know that I was always too choosy about friends. You used to tell me that someday, I will come across a person, a person who simply walks in to my life from somewhere, who will turn my world around. Yeah, that happened to me. It was good, better than anything I have ever known. But, she just walked away, leaving behind her footprints. No good bye’s, no see ya’s, she simply walked away. Now the only thing left for me is hope, a hope that someday I will get to see her, and if I am lucky, I get to spend some time with her, even If I know for sure that I will never be able to even hear about her. Why are all these things happening to me?”
His reply contained only one sentence, “Life is tough, my friend”.

10th Wedding anniversary

I was floating through the skies when I saw it. A rainbow. There was nothing else in sight. A bright rainbow in the whole sky. I looked down. I could only see the clouds. It slowly changed in to something more beautiful. A pair of eyes. They looked very familiar. I’ve seen them else where. I began drifting in the wind. But I wanted to stay with those eyes. I felt like they are telling me something. Suddenly the wind turned in to a storm. I could no longer fly. I was falling.
I opened my eyes. Yes! I figured it out correctly. Those eyes were that of my lover. She was sleeping peacefully right by my side. I tried to remember the dream. That beautiful rainbow and the clouds that turned in to her eyes. Nice way to start off a day. I simply lied there for some more time looking in to her face. Everyday I want to wake up seeing those eyes.
Slowly I got up. I went to kitchen, made 2 cups of coffee and came back to our room. She was not in the bed. I saw the doors to the balcony open. I went there. Sun was just rising. There she was, standing and enjoying the breeze. The view was gorgeous. I could hear the river flowing. And far away, there are the mountains.
I went there, kissed her on her neck.
“I love you”, she said.
I didn’t hear the words. Instead, I felt it. I was not sure whether she said it or I felt it from her face. I gave her the coffee. We simply stood there.
We didn’t talk for a long time. It was the silence that spoke for us. When she leaned to my chest, I could hear her breathing. I always loved the sound of her breathing. When she fall asleep in my lap hearing the stories I say for her, when I wake up in the middle of the night right beside her, and in the morning, when I wake up early, all these times, I enjoy that sound. Sometimes I felt that it’s my life force that is flowing through her body.
Ten years, its been ten years since the day we met. Now, I couldn’t even imagine surviving without her. It’s the small things, her sound, her smell, her presence, everything had become mine, my life. Without them, there is no me.
We spent the whole morning, sitting in the balcony, watching the river, the sky, the sun and everything else.
Every year, 4 days we will spend just for us – we had promised each others, when we got married. Some place where no one can reach us, no one will identify us, just like in dreams, living the dream.
After lunch, we again went to the balcony with the books we were reading. Soon, the sky began to get darker. Rain – it was about it rain. We closed our books. We could hear thunder. We could see the rain coming from the mountains. We heard it coming nearer and nearer. It sounded like wind chimes. We both wanted to dance in the rain. For the next 1-2hours, we went back to our school days. We made small streams of water and build a small dam across it. We made paper boats. They floated in to the river and slowly disappeared.
By the evening, there were only drizzles. We bathed, had a cup of coffee and went out to walk in the near by plantation. We could hear the sound of the frogs. Even for a moment, we didn’t part from each others. We held our hands tightly. Crazy it may sounds, but we were enjoying solitude in each others presence. We wanted that moment to last forever.
We came back, and I presented her with the red rose I secretly kept in my bag for her. “I love you”, I said. I could see her chins turning red. She hugged me tightly. I wanted to stay like that forever.
We went back to the balcony with a bottle of wine. She lighted a candle and we sat there enjoying the wine. After dinner, she came to me, lied down in my laps. I told her the story of the princess who got imprisoned by a witch and the prince who rescued her. She fell asleep soon. I enjoyed her breathing sound for some time. I put off the candle and accompanied her to bed.

Our 10th Wedding anniversary
31 June, 2020

A Butterfly Life

Have you ever heard of the concept of ‘Butterfly life’? I’ve seen it in a movie some years back. I forgot the name of the movie. But it really touched me. That movie is basically a narration. The narrator always carries a stop watch with him. Some times he clicks it. His lover once asks him why he is carrying it always. Then he replies, “ I am adding these moments to my butterfly life. Let me explain. Have you ever noticed butterflies? How beautiful they are? How lovely and happy they appear always? Ever wondered about how long they live? After coming out from the cocoon, some of their life span is only around one day. In that one day, they do everything. They drink honey, fly and play a lot, fall in love, mate with their partners, reproduce, enjoy their life, do everything they can do in one day and go to a peaceful sleep by the end of the day. A sleep from which they will never wake up. Yet they enjoy their entire life, our single day, or 24 hours. They take the maximum out of it. With no complains, no worries, they spent their whole life happily. We, the humans, our life span is around 70-80years. Yet how many years, months, days and hours we waste worrying or planning over the silly things which may mean nothing to us in the end. So whenever I think I am spending my time truly happy, like a butterfly, I click this stop watch to add the time to my share of butterfly life”

Saying this he checked his watch and said “I have lived over 19 hours of butterfly life in the last 30 years since I have started this”

This touched me deeply. That was one of the situations, I really thought about how I spend the time of my one typical day. One day mean nothing to us, most of the days we spend meaningless doing nothing of much importance, without even realizing the value of the time we ware wasting. Only when I heard this that I realized the value of each moment in our life and wondered how precious moments can be. Later there should be no regrets. Because I have read this some where,

“Dream what you want to dream
Go where you want to go
Be what you want to be
Because you’ve only one life
And one chance to do all the
Thing you want to do”

ps: What I have described here may not be exactly same as in the movie [the dialogue], but the sum and substance is the same.