A sense of living

There are times when human relationships go through a murky phase of obsessive hallucinations that grows into a secret belligerence and an indescribable fatigue for each other. And sometimes, in such a phase, an enigmatic event that happens redefines ourselves under the deep realization of erstwhile losses in the wake of a present loss that starts mending the things around us. One such event happened with us(me and my wife) last month !!!

Last month, in mid-January, when winter was in peak, we set out to revamp our ailing married life of nearly three years by deciding to spend a vacation of two weeks at a hill station. Our love story started in a usual manner of fairy tale thoughts and sweetest caring about each other with the hope of carrying these things forever and forever. Her caresses, devotion are worthy enough to make me embrace her tightly in my arms but time and again it annoyed me when I had to drive my actions with a fear of possible, hyper-sensitized interpretations she might come up with. Like many girls/women she too had a delusional perception of viewing herself as the sole authoritative possessor of my life. After losing the intimacy with my friends, now my senses of being a friend started to vanish away. In evenings when, amidst all the buzzes of city traffic, I craved for a breathing space of my own, she, on those nights, regretted of my failure to feel the extent of the madness of her love for me. Meaning of a relationship had often been searched by us but it only landed us in a more meaningless scrutiny of each others imperfections. Her switch from the feeling of utter disconnection in spite of no lack in communication and endearments to reprise to our original bond was so spontaneous that it left me bemused often of what's next. The proportion of feelings of love and hate in the ambivalence of these grew exactly half within her which gave rise to a hidden disapproval from her to several of my social choices. It reached to a stage where an introspection of this relationship and a retrospection of our individualism began. And a time came which gave birth to a gender racism; gender instincts began to take shape in our disagreements when I felt she was prioritizing the things of that adorable space of me which I kept exclusively for myself. After much pondering it dawned upon me partially that a silent insecurity, which she's much reluctant to reveal, used to ignite her heart the moment I happened to meet any of my intimate friends of opposite sex; but this insecurity lasted for not a prolonged period as if it was a prelude, interlude and postlude of a symphony.

Four years of our affair was rewarded with every kind of emotions and happenings until we settled down to an often heard, irrational advice to get married. "Affairs should not be long enough and partners involved must get married soon" is something I heard to put an end to such fluctuating inflictions which puzzled me quite a lot. The new life after the official ceremony was indeed again filled with rose petals but soon the earlier complaints and expectations began to surface. It was the time for the conflicts in conjugal expectations combined with earlier inhibitions. Although we were a working couple yet strifes, not so sweet, over petty matters continued; concealed discord for my popularity, a growing sensation of my insufficient attention towards her, a feeling that I am unable to understand her emotional readability left me with a baffled sentiency of guilt and a mysterious apprehension of self deeds. After many chalked out protocols and much argued agreements we decided to take some days off to a far away place wrapped in each others thoughts.

Our stay place, at fourth floor, consisted of a drawing hall with a fireplace and a glass top table with peanut butter colored oak wooden legs and a bedroom having a grand bed with an elevated half circle at one of it's end. Both the rooms were lit with beige colored glass lamps fitted on the walls. The large three paned window of the drawing room led a view of a bare land with trees standing in melancholy as the season robbed them off from their green attires and a far away sight of a mountain range aspiring to grow high above everything. The bedroom window gave the glimpse of zigzag hilly roads and dry valleys patched with glaciers. Drawing herself close to me, listening to my heartbeat in that silent surrounding and gazing the far away hills I remember she told me-

"You are like that hill top - solid, standing tall but shrouded with mists and I am like this zigzag road desperate to reach that hill top. I don't have any insecurity; I don't fear of losing you. You know there can't be any forever friendly relationship between a man and a woman; what happens is it starts with friendliness but soon either grows into a committing relationship or turns out into an infatuation at the end. I am desperate enough about you only to shield you from getting inebriated in that mist of infatuation and my only fear is that one day when your senses will prevail and you will return to me, I will have nothing more left inside me to wrap you up. Any woman true to her feminism will argue this and if your friend would have been a true woman, she herself should have subsided herself down in your life when she knows I am there for you. We have only this life where you and I met; can't we nurture this relationship in a way where your everything is me and my everything is you, where no one can even peep to check out is there any void space exists in our hearts."

I didn't reply; after a while of exchange of each others body smells she departed to sleep. I sat on one of the couch placed near the fireplace. The diminishing wood fire of this fireplace made me recollect one of the lines of a long ago heard bengali recitation; it was like this, "In love women becomes soft river, men fiery wood." Was this her love or was she in love with an idea of being in love? Or was she having a wild dream of being in love - a dream even the traces of whose were never witnessed by any love story of this earth? Tired of gulping down many scattered thoughts and their exegesis I finally placed myself on the bed beside her to wake up to a chilling, foggy morning in the mild light of which, filtered off from white curtains, I found her covered herself with the thick blanket till head and her head ensconced between my chin and shoulder, her arms curled around my chest.

We dragged both the couches to the corridor of the our floor to have the morning tea. Our eyes went upon a lady, in her mid thirties, sitting on her couch in that corridor in front of the fourth room from ours. We exchanged glances through the undulating smoke of her cigarette that was vanishing away in air before reaching to us; we smiled. That day in the evening, upon returning from sight seeing when we were strolling through the hallway that lady intended to began a conversation with us.

"Newly married?" We moved our heads sideways to deny the fact; it appeared as if she got surprised mildly. Her looks were elegantly modern with refined, artistically poised gestures while talking. Her radiant eyes embedded in a face where an entire world of tranquility was suffused gave a glimpse of her possessing a brilliant command over herself. We got to know that she spent nearly ten years as a fashion designer and now owned an event management company. Being a spinster she didn't display that regretting smile at the corner of lips that flickers out of a longing for a designated life partner and brooding over the decision for not having one. Enchanted by her candidness and agility, we accepted the dinner invitation she put forth for that night; my wife, though seemed a bit reluctant, agreed in gentle disposition. When, after dinner, our talks rested on her being still single in spite of she being attached to glamor industry since beginning, she narrated this sitting in that room which by that time was redolent of a mingled aroma from cigarette and wood fires-

"I never regret till date that I haven't got anyone and I still haven't left hope of finding one. It was long ago that my mother taught me that more a person regrets more he/she loses what he/she has and what he/she might find out tomorrow. This glamor world is like a smoking cafe - cluttered, extravagantly lit - so that everybody can only partially see the others. Everybody here is dizzy as if they are under the effect of marijuana and high with overflowing alcohols. The only time when the senses of people prevail is at night just before the sleep is about to come and at that time we yearn to bare our hearts open to somebody. But it's difficult to identify whether we want somebody to be at our side forever or for pieces of times and for this reason we couldn't form any lasting bond with anyone but scattered ones when the urge runs high or when somebody, consciously or unconsciously, retreats us temporarily. I had and still have a number of relationships but never had a stint in what is called love; there's no specific reason for not having anybody apart from my conviction on my decision that I will not be bounded by the conventional age of settling down."

I asked-
"Isn't that a better life being single and never having to be guided by the obligations of commitment? In that sense you are free at your own will, not been dependent at others disposition."

Putting more woods in the fireplace she replied-
"In this world there's no better life because comparison proves fatal and what's more fatal is being ironically judgmental about the fearful possibilities of that choice. A choice is a choice by every means; difference lies is in the strives of making the choice worthwhile. You will find many people in glamor industry, once their career is over, lands up marrying an NRI. Reason being, they never become judgmental about pre-nuptial link ups and hence they rarely become opinionated about possible fears. After marriage they continue sharing bonds with other people, then what remains so special in the relationship with their better half? It is a deep comfort of being able to bare your true self with each other every moment where in this bee hive they have to wear different masks in different situations with different people."

Sensing that the talks are taking interesting shape, she took out a bottle of red wine and three goblets to instigate the ambiance more. The red wine darkened with fireplace light and illuminated room with beige glassed lamps where three souls were sitting staged a dream painting that appeared to have been painted by a poet's recitation on a lonely night. My wife said-
"Sharing any intimate relationship with opposite sex doesn't remain restrictive and when you are into commitment it is illicit. Moreover a feminine heart always bear this possessiveness. Of course these in born gender inequalities can't be wiped off."

She, with a smile, began-
"Is it the heart or the groomed mindset with which we were brought up? If we ponder we can find that there's a habit prevalent in our society of labeling the grooming of boys and girls differently. Isn't it a crime to bring up a girl child with tenderly and utmost pampering while exactly opposite happens with a boy but years down the line it is injected in mind that men and women are equal. Aren't we guilty of breeding the gender difference by ourselves? Humans can never be restricted to from forming relationships. When we, in the days of our non commitment, formed friends we were least concerned with the gender. All we did is we developed a bond with the person who let the door of his/her understanding opened for ourselves. As we get into commitment we abort those bonds by becoming gender conscious with a fear that our better half may not be able to perceive every relationship at it's own place. The most common phenomenon, which is inevitable and sometimes stretched long, committed relationship suffers with is a sense of betrayal from their better half. Even there are times when our better half is not reachable owing to some worldly reasons. Imagine these times - will it be not be teasing not to have somebody to share those temporary arising? Will the aborted relationships come forth to off burden you? And here it is, have you not got another difference between your committed relationship and other relationships?"

Annoyed by her supernumerary direct challenges my wife drank down the goblet in one shot. It was 2:30 of the morning; reluctant to spoil my wife's mood I got up and wished to bid good bye for the night. Back in our room, a sullen silence prevailed between us. She was gazing at the streets from our bedroom window where faint orange rays from street lights were resting peacefully. She sneered, pulled out the curtains and laid down beside me. It was difficult for both of us to sleep but we didn't know when it embraced us.

First encounter with that lady obviously brought, in my wife, a hesitated resentment against her for subsequent days but her gentle humors, easy charm and her grace of rapid forgetfulness soon diluted the barriers. On days when we met, we majorly met on dinners. On one such dinner when it was raining outside, my wife asked her this-
"Is this because you have so many scattered relations that you never felt a desire to have a lasting partner?"

With a sweet sound of sigh she replied-
"I agree that scattered relations can never be a substitute for any lasting one but one of the scattered relation had or has to be convincing enough that I can feel the spark."

Upon this my wife immediately mentioned-
"May be you didn't spend enough time to feel that or your profession didn't allow that much free time."

With a tender smile at the corner of her lips she replied-
"You know I was quick enough to understand the fact that craving for something which an era doesn't offer is like harboring a dream to eat an extinct breed of fruit because it has been heard that it tasted well. I see, around me, so many people spending time with each other just for the sake of making up for the losses which they would not have if the worldly things were not there. And here they go all wrong; most of the broken relationships suffer mainly with a tremendous obsession resulting out of a possessiveness from either of them as they fail to understand where to draw the daily line of cessation. Spending time is indeed an important factor to maintain a relationship but the most important thing is to make ourselves aware how much."

And this time it was my turn to ask immediately-
"Isn't that difficult to understand where to draw the line?"

She was also fast to reply as if she was prepared to attack-
"In the early days when we fall in love an extreme level of pride overpowers our senses upon the first realization of being loved in return on this earth. And we let ourselves slip into a trance where we dream of embellishing each other with our expectations as if we are planning a home decor. And here we are now where our senses are dominated by an ego of self righteousness born out of a guilt of failing to meet our expectations and finding our better half not the person which we have dreamed of. And at this point we understand we are encroaching in his/her very private space but our awareness becomes covered by a smog of flaming ego and an ignorant search of self happiness."

My wife got up from her couch, went to the window. It was drizzling now in the dark outside. With a touch of restlessness she was at one moment hanging her head down and the next moment hanging her head up to look outside. For few minutes we all fell silent. Me and my wife, both knew what was happening between us was dilemmatic between irksome and letting it go, both knew it was futile, both knew that our life was appalled by her dormant phantasm which generates rippled periods of weariness. Coming back to the couch with a heavy face and sipping the wine she said with a sheepish smile-
"I respect your decision of your life and your ideologies. If I would have been at your place I would have probably enunciated same things what you did. But you could never understand how a woman feels he sees her man, being in relationship with her, sharing a bond with other woman designating her a friend, how it saps out her spirits, how it makes her inside bitterly hollow and dark like a bare tree with no leaves standing near a lake in a no moon night, how dull it makes the corner of her eyes. I want to make my presence felt in every core of his heart so that he doesn't need another woman to make his heart open for anything. I sometimes think what is that pleasure he gets from his friends which he doesn't get from me by sharing, what is so special in his friends that he wants them to give a place in his life? May be the reason that his friends came into his life earlier than me and it's not possible for me to take their place so early. May be for that possible day I have to wait and suffer more, but he's worth."

The lady and I were completely startled by my wife's use of "I" in her saying. I could recognize her torment, many times I made her understood calmly on her self imposed dreads but all was in vain. The lady took the first sip of the third goblet and lit another cigarette. To ease the room of heavy smoke, she opened the window slightly, came back on her couch and narrated-

"I was brought up neither with a feminine philosophy nor with the male chauvinism; since very early I learned to understand a person from his/her individualism rather than gender discourses. I remember an incident, when I was 12, that had shaken me heavily from inside that made me to burn away the gender myths. On one summer evening, my father received the news of the death of his very old friend with whom he aborted his contact some 7 years ago as my mother used to traumatize the sentiments of their relation over my father's friendly disposition towards her. She was suffering from cancer past one year of which my father was unaware of. For the first time in my life, I heard a man screaming and crying out so loud that as if any of his body part is getting amputated from him in full consciousness. Dad's tears were unstoppable, he was wailing madly. I was stunned, terrified at the heart. I could only listen to him with my back resting on the wall; entire sky broken down on me I felt. I watched his agony taking the shape of  tearful sobs. Few days after this I heard my mother saying to my father that she is wounded to the core seeing that his friend still shares a place in his heart which means he never put his friend out of his heart; breaking the contact with her was only a consolation to my mother but deep down inside my father remembered her throughout this 7 years. My father was silent; and from there onwards began a period of deafening silence. I was torn apart by the contrasting shades of an identical emotion - one was of my father aggrieved by the loss of his friend and regretting of not able to be even aware of his friend's ailment and the other of my mother aggrieved with the deceptive behavior of my father of past 7 years. Life was speeding by at it's usual pace but the atmosphere at home was getting desolated of breathes. I thought and thought hard on many occasions is my father have no rights to sink in sorrow over the death of a his once known friend or is it a reproachable act to share a small of part of one's life with others even when one is married.

"Then one night, I overheard my mother saying -'If you still have any other person in your life with whom you share similar bond, you can very well leave me. I regret being married to a person who never shared his complete self with me and is shared by others also in parallel to me.' After three days, my father left home with this note - 'When you will learn to no longer compare the different relationships, with each other, a person have in his/her life and give them due respect at their own places and understand that a person is never completely shared by only one person on this earth, do write to me at the below address; I will definitely come back to you.' My mother displayed suppressed ego and recurring sentiments in the initial days after my father left home and I was once again shaken from inside of spending days without my father which I never thought of. It is my father with whom I was so much influenced with and it is through his inspiration that I dared to be a maverick. In that one long year, without father, I kept remembering his one teaching that he imparted and it was this that never cease from the most prized thing of human living and that is to keep getting connected with people daily. Longing for my father occasionally threw me back from treading on that teaching but I tried hard. On the other hand my mother, I felt, was getting frittered by her own madness. I found many unsent letters addressed to her friends and to her relatives and a few blank letters that were began but never written - it only contained the addressing to my father. At that tender age it was difficult for me to understand what was going on inside of of my mother's heart but primarily I saw her standing on the veranda, gazing to the continuous traffic of people and absorbed in thoughts. And on one night, I was overwhelmed with joy by finding my father standing at the doorstep. My mother and my father exchanged a few seconds of ardent kisses from which I didn't shy away on that day neither were they. I can't put into words the bliss of that day. How my mother brought him back is still a mystery for me but neither I attempted to discover that.

After few months, on one evening I found them with a bunch of letters and envelops. Upon asking, my father told me - 'We were inviting each others old, intimate friends on a dinner to mark a new beginning of our relationship. Your mother left her friends for the sake of mine, so we are rejuvenating that part and she was never really connected with my friends, so we are arranging that. It will also give us a chance to connect to each others associations.'

It was a lesson for me that apprehensions in a relationship only worsen the present. An ideal way to get out of this is to keep getting connected to people no matter who they are or how they are related to us."

The narrative was an incessant thrashing of stormy water on our faces. After finishing, she kept on looking at one of the beige glassed lamp for quite long; my wife moving her finger on the round top edge of the goblet, eyes fixed on the residual wine; my gaze fixed on that lady. Nobody was able to speak the first word to break that silence. Back to our room that night, my wife was suddenly going through the contact list of my mobile phone lying beside me. Taking my arms around her she asked me -

"Do you believe her anecdote?"

I replied -
"I don't know, may be it had really happened with her but difficult to say."

She said -
"I too don't know whether she was telling truth or lying but I feel she has got a wise head. But it's strange that why I never allowed myself to connect with your associations. I tried but a disgust pulled me away. Now I want to get in touch with them, to interact with them. Will you introduce me to your associations?"

I smiled and nodded, not exactly convinced that she really wanted to. She kissed my lips, kept my mobile under my pillow and closed her eyes curling herself around me. Thinking of that lady and her words when I felt asleep I too don't know. In the following days I found my wife in shed better charm in talks, sharing with me and also with that lady the good olden days with her friends. Even on few mornings I found she and that lady laughing on some girly pranks over the sips of tea in the corridor. We even clicked quite a few photos. One night my wife invited that lady on dinner at our room. Talks ranged from how we fell in love to college time crushes to flirting humors to professional domain and household intricacies to family backgrounds. Amidst these I asked that lady -
"Do you regularly go out in vacation like this?"

She replied -
"Not compulsively in fixed intervals but yes I do whenever it's feasible from every side."

I said -
"Your field is an extremely demanding one, how do you cope up with that? Doesn't it affect your personal life and relationships frequently?"

She eased herself in the couch and replied -
"I won't deny that it never affects, but I never allow them to be dragged too long. Taking out time for myself is an extremely important thing to me. I see many people asking me this question with the motive of getting a clue for their resolutions. Actually what keeps me survived and fresh in this ever faster race of life is jumping onto my hobbies whenever I get free time. It's like a religious prayer for me to fulfill my hobby daily for whatever small time it may be."

My wife said -
"Don't you feel at times lonely seeing around so many people wandering with their companion which is very common in these metro cities."

With vigorous eyes she replied -
"You know one of the most heinous crime for which humans can be punished is the crime to encourage, within us, the negative reflex by watching a positive happening. Encouraging such reflexes is slow poison that ruins our beautiful surroundings along with ourselves. Yes I miss the reality of having a companion but I never allow it to spoil my hopes. I miss, I look outside the window, I give a nostalgic smile of acceptance and I try to take a road of solitude rather than sinking to an ocean of loneliness withdrawing myself from everything."

My wife said -
"But it's not easy."

She replied -
"Living is also not easy but we continue to live trying in a better way. Similarly accepting the non-possibility of the immediate fulfillment of the demand arising out of our emotion is not easy. Difference is we are taught that ending our life is crime, much teaching is there on never ending life however tough it might be because in life we have to see everything; we are also taught that it's extremely important to display out our emotions as it leads to openness but we are never taught to regard our emotions and peep to the other side of it where sometimes demands surface. And we were never taught to ponder on the feasibility of those demands. And when we face the non-possibility of the immediate fulfillment of that demand we altogether stop displaying our emotions in many cases."

Facing another straight blow of the bitter truth of life me and my wife looked at each other. We identified ourselves being guilty on these lines so many times. And my wife jumped on to ask -
"How are you so controlled and so happy?"

She laughed out loud, gave an innocent look to my wife and said -
"I took long years to build me. You know the simplest yet most ignored fact is that in our life the maximum time we have to spend is with ourselves. We take this fact so much for granted that we never make diligent endeavors to make build ourselves."

Rest of that night's talks were much hovered on the beauty of that hill station, usual lives of ours. On bed, after that lady's departure, we remained interlaced in tacit thoughts that lady's words in the soft green night light of our bedroom. Suddenly my wife spoke -
"I want to go back to our place soon and meet my friends. It's been  long time I haven't spent time with them. You know I also want to take you along with me and you know I also want to share these lady's words. How true, how pure and how deeply felt. You should also meet your friends, it's not good to get out of touch with them. Who knows when we need them, who knows when they need us."

I didn't know what to say, I didn't know what to do with her. She kissed my eyes, blocked the outside street light from coming on us by pulling the curtains with her feet fingers and ran throughout my body. And it's like after eternity when we experienced coition pleasure, a sensation of raising up above the air weightlessly and then crashing on the bed. She appeared tired then after and fell asleep immediately. I got up and went to the corridor to lit a cigarette. Outside was cold enough to make the fingers numb; neon street lights were in full effect but not enough to illuminate the distant mountain ranges that were still in darkness waiting for the dawn to break.

Standing there, calming down my shivering inside with the warmth of smoking I was incredulous about the persistence of my wife's disposition what she displayed today towards my associations and friends. Was it a change that would subsist from now onwards or was it just a psychedelia caused by this vibe? I was in a mixed feeling of excitement and fear. That lady's room was still illuminated at 3:00 AM. I made a casual walk to with the touch of curiosity. When I turned back to return from her window, she opened the door; I again turned back and she asked -
"Not slept?"

I swung my head sideways to accept the fact. With the first puff I said to her -
"You know what's the difference your father and me? Your father gave up his contact with his associations abiding by the wish of your mother but I haven't. I chose to tread on a path where I continued to keep in touch with my friends thereby making it clear that she has to get rid of the figment of her imagination and thrive on realistic happenings. I didn't know will it ever work or not. Few hours back, after you departed, she seemed to understand the reality. But I fear it as a sailing cloud that might move away when we will drive down these hills the day after tomorrow. I wish she would have had the head not to indulge herself in the unfolding of convolutions of human inside."

We sat down on the floor; she too lit a cigarette using mine and replied -
"I can't label my dad's act as unjustified as I might be biased towards him being deeply attached to him and hence I don't know whether he was right in abiding my mother's wish. Neither I can judge your path as I merely know both of you. But I would never want to see anybody ever in life to cry like my father on that night. His mad like blubbers still pierces my blood vessels, it still haunts me whenever I remember his never ending tears that wet his mustard color t-shirt; those bawls of his was emptying me from inside as if a suction pump was put to draw out the child inside me. I have seen people ending their roads when they fall in love thinking that the love itself will take it's course. As with this world where we need to toil to make our place, it is same with the relationship; we refuse to understand that we need to toil to make place for the relations we have in our life. Every relationship is like an agreement where the most important clause is that the better halves must cease to cross that road which enters into his/her their own private space. That space will always appear obscure to us. Problems start when we intend to travel to that partially illuminated road and compare it with ours; this is where the existent reality faces the lack of oxygen. Always remember comparison is the most fatal form of imagination that even robs us from ourselves."

I was watching the movement of her lips uttering those words and was spell bound when she finished. A little drop of tear rolled out from the corner of my eyes. I moved away my face to look at the starkly black landscape in front of us; vision was bleak with and wavy when I realized my eyes were pregnant with tears. I wiped it with my middle and ring finger; she kissed me on my cheeks but we were not aware how and when our lips locked. In that warm moment, during which our eyes were closed, I felt a flicker of light struck my eyelids and vanished as if one of the lamps of my room was suddenly put on and put off. I didn't stop to find out what happened, in that one moment I wished my wife discovers me here with this lady and makes an end to our married life so that I can be free to live my imagination and my world and I don't have to live in the clutches of fear of failing to fulfill her sentimental expectations.

Just when I was about to ride on her, on it's verge she withdrew and eloquently said -
"No, I know who I am !!!"

I was perplexed, I was frowned to see her calm eyes bearing a stamp of immense confidence and pride of her awareness about herself. She got up, smiled and walked back to her room. I threw away the dry filter of the the cigarette, walked back to my room and lay beside my wife. A feeble light of dawn was visible outside although the morning was still quite long away. My wife's body was warm under the blanket, smooth like velvet. At that time I was not sure whether that flicker of light was a reality, whether my wife had really seen me in the corridor. After spending much time with that thought I prayed that I wished my wife hadn't seen me. It was only a moment of daftness to imagine ending this marriage. But her eloquent denial brimmed with pride was still scornfully scratching my inside. And I woke up late that day, it was the last day of our stay.

It was a day mostly busy with bag packing for our next day return. By the jovial, pleasant mood of my wife I could judge she was completely unaware of yesterday night's incident. But strangely, throughout that entire day the "Do not disturb" board was hanging at that lady's door. A ponderous air was prevailing inside me searching an explanation of the DND board. At dusk when we went to bid a good bye to her, the board was still hanging. My wife turned into touch melancholic where as a doubt of she not wanting to come out of her room till we leave this place rose in my heart. However we thought that she might be taking a day's rest for being unwell. We decided to meet her the next day afternoon when we would check out from here and exchange contact to stay in touch although I slightly hesitantly reluctant in facing her and exchanging contact.

The DND board was still hanging the next day. Being upset we proceeded to the reception for check out formalities. We were astounded when the receptionist handed us a letter from that lady and we came to know that she left on the early morning of the previous day and there was a foreigner checked in her room; being very tired of his journey he hung the board of DND since the previous day. I was a bit relieved but was shocked. I didn't know what will be in that letter. On the way to two hour long journey to the airport I opened the letter and read out loud for both of us -

"Dear ___ (Me) and _____ (My wife)

I know I will upset you by my absence. And by the time you will receive this letter I might have again mingled in the buzzes of my world. These two weeks will remain vivid forever in my imagination and I would have loved to stay in touch with you people. But sometimes the sense of living demands something else. Our worlds are entirely different in the pursuit of realities and dreams. Let this difference remain unscathed. The memories of last few days were so beautiful that I want to cherish them forever; I don't want to let go away it's fragrance by bringing two different worlds together thereby overpowering each others perception of reality by their own. And out of a purest self conscience I am saying that not a single action or talk of any of you has prompted me to take this decision, I wish you will never think on those lines.

We met, we spoke our hearts out and we departed secretly. One day the beauty of this meeting will lie in this secret departure; had it not been secret, it would have raised many questions as we continued to stay in touch with each other which would have made the grace of each other look shady. I will not consider this connection shared with you as a scattered relation which is sometimes characterized by the pitfall of lust which gives birth to an abject emotional connect but soon that connect and the memories fade away in distant horizon when the hang over of the loneliness goes away. What we shared after coming to this place was an abstract, spontaneous spark from the corner of our human erraticism and it had given a poignant and sweet taste of life. Let that taste remain with me in my mind and soul.

This life is too short to search for a reason behind a person's action, I hope you will respect this thought. Sometimes beautiful journeys come to an end but they give us enough memories which might be more beautiful if we tell them so. Life needs to keep getting connected with different people; in our hearts sometimes we have to make place for the people we connect to and sometimes for the memories they give us. Although I know but still I will pray that in this journey of placing people and memories in your heart there will always remain, in both of your hearts, a special place for each other which is which is free from any percolation of comparisons.

Regards,
_________"