The Meeting

I could hear the pounding sounds of my own heart. It beat fast and hard. After all, it was all to do with the heart.

I drove on, took turns as I was instructed, and turned left. The atmosphere inside the car was thick with expectation.

Expectation? We last saw 18 years ago—over seven thousand days ago--when both of us were young and brittle. Full of laughter and colours.

And, we were meeting again that day.

Times have changed, people have changed, relationships have changed, seasons have changed, but our love…
No it hasn’t. It has only changed in form—it has only grown in intensity and maturity. Few of our old college mates and class mates could believe that we still love each other. Most of our friends had lost their love sometime somewhere on the way. And, no one complained. That’s the way life is.

But our love…
Our love is like a loose kite that has gone astray in a wild wind but has come back years later with the same colours and gusto to find both of us still standing under that big gulmohar, gazing at the brilliant blue expanse and depth of the sky—expecting.

It is like a boxer, knocked down but refusing to throw in the towel. Or like a cockroach that survives a series of ruthless kicks. Or like God’s grace—manifold and eternal.

I was to be blamed for our separation. I ran away from challenges and now I don’t know what else was there. But I walked away, without ever loving her less.

There were times in the past 18 years when I wondered where she would be—there was a longing to see her again. But then I was afraid of her reaction. I was sure she hated me for my callous way of treating her.

Even though I wanted to see her—meet her—I didn’t have the spleen (heart, yes) to face her. As David cries out to God in Psalm 51—my sin (wrong) is always against her, and I deserved any punishment that she’d call for.

At times my eyes searched for her in the colourful crowds of women and families coming out of a church on Sundays. Since I didn’t know where she was, she could be anywhere. When cars with drove past mine in city traffic, I kept an eye out. Perhaps, in one of them she could be laughing out her signature loud laughter, filling the air with joy and happiness.

But then do I deserve some loving looks or an acknowledgment from her? Even if she cut me dead or looked through me I couldn’t complain.

But when I realized that she is incapable of hating me, or, she cannot have any other feeling towards me than pure love, all I could was cry. Cry loud and long alone in my study upstairs.

Her love found me when I was about to be lost in life. Her love came searching for me before I could run away further from another set of challenges.

One call, and 18 years melted away. One word, the 18 years of silence and pain and loneliness broke.

We realized all we have for each other is love nothing but pure, unselfish, refined love.

No one would be able to understand. No one could relate.

But that doesn’t matter. All my life I’ve tried to be a good one—trying to impress and live by the code of conduct. But it doesn’t matter at all.

So we were meeting that day.

I drove past some thick foliage of leaves--that of rubber, teak and coffee.
She called up and said she could hear the sound of my car and that she was standing after the turn.

As I took the turn, my good Lord, I saw her—first time in nearly 20 years. She was standing there with the best smile I’d ever seen, and was gesturing for a lift. My hitch hiker! My girl! My love!

Before our hands could hold each others, our hearts jumped out of us and hugged right on the road.

It was the most magical moment in my life. I couldn’t believe neither my eyes nor the fact that we had met.

Nature around us changed. All of a sudden the place had become a garden—birds chirped melodies, plants bloomed colours, a dreamy breeze wafted fragrance.

We drove on, not knowing where to. We stopped in between to look into each other’s eyes. Tears rolled down our cheeks. We ran our fingers on each other’s face to make sure it was real.

There was so much love, so much caring and so much passion.
We held hands, we laughed, we kept looking at each other.

We drove on, not seeing the road, people and the places around. We floated around for two hours. We hummed songs, touched the fingertips, breathed in lungful of each other’s fragrance.

Oh, how I wished if time could stand still! Two hours went by in a flash. She said she had to go, though she wanted to stay forever.

How we wished if life could be this one journey and we could drive on till the very end—nothing to stop, nothing in between!

It was the best of all meetings; it was the most magical of all reunions.

It was my best dream come true, till I woke up and realised it was still a dream!