Poems of Life....A Story

I didn't know who was she, where she came from and why I met her. It was just that I met her at one of my regular lonely nights. It’d been a routine to wander at a forsaken beach of Arabian Sea – warm but soothing, turbulent but peaceful, scattered but coherent. With night water preceded to shores with more and more force, I would always go and sit there, since there, in darkness I perceive life I have never had. Darkness everywhere, even at the proximate island, though, from miles away honking of ships could be heard so easily as if someone from the past calls a name. My life, similar to that milieu – days occupied with lots of work in office and nights lonesome, just like that beach. That night, bare foot I walked few yards at the shoreline but couldn't make it to long distance. I never walked until the end of this beach or I never knew if the beach had any end or not. I just sat down on the cold sand and felt it in my spine. A sense of end and peace crossed my heart, files flying underneath my head suddenly vanished, and eventually, I became empty like a hollow abandoned seashell. I could hear echo inside me; it’s nothing but my own voice talking to beach just like ocean currents which would hit the shore and return disappointed. I heard heavy wind quietly saying something in my ear but as always I couldn't understand it, not even the single word. After all, I didn't speak know its language. Fingers and thumbs began acting in sync and soon I realized they were calculating something –calculating my entire life. A simple mathematics of losses and gains. My balance was zero, neither life had given anything to me, nor had I given anything to it.

I glanced around to divert my focus but found nothing significant enough to get hold of my attention. Through t-shirt, wind kept knocking at my chest at regular intervals to know if someone resides in that barren heart but just like ever, it got no reply. This way, I fought with the beach and it fought with me. We both asked questions and seek for answers until I would get tired and leave. That night, I decided to walk until the end of beach. The end where I might have met myself, I might have found oneself. I was already tired from seeking my lost me. Nothing was as desirable as I was; nothing was as lost as I was. By putting feet in water, I desired to drown and end this search for forever, but thought of suicide was not enough to let me go just like that. Life sometimes give whirls that even ocean itself can’t handle although I kept walking, holding it at my soul. When I approached the end, I found someone sitting in darkness on a big wet rock. I first stopped for a while then without any thought moved ahead. I pretended as if I saw nothing, but that image didn’t act likewise, it responded in voice, “Hey Raj, how long do you want me to wait for you?” I astounded, my tongue couldn’t move but her’s very well, “come sit with me, I want to show you something.” My senses stopped responding and I was on my own.

Again, I stopped and looked at that blur, dark image with conscience and found only a woman sitting on a rock with untied hairs, free clothes, which were flowing with wind. I thought for a while and sat down where I was and again ignored her. She stood up with elegance and came over. I still ignored her, but she said, “What happened raj? You always wanted to talk to me, you always wanted to share many things with me, and now when I am with you, you ignoring me, what’s the matter?” this instance I responded, “Who are you? Do I know you?”

Her voice carried a peculiar clam and seemed familiar but still, I couldn't make out, who was she, “I am the one who was in your dreams, I am the one who was along with you always, I am the one whom you have been seeking at this beach since prolong and I, sitting at this end waited for you to come over.” I asked, “Are you life?” she smiled, “then who do you think am I?”

Suddenly, a wave came closer, I fetched back my feet but she set her hands on my knees and I felt as if she had stopped them, then and there. Cold water kissed them and went back. That touch compelled me to close the eyes and in that state I saw her clearly. She was as beautiful as ever, sat an inch above ground and I could feel her breath in mine. Hairs, as long as wind and face carried simplicity of flowers. My closed eyes revealed everything that darkness of that night had hidden in it.

As soon as when I opened eyes, she asked, “So, now you believe me?”

“Yes I do.” I replied in a spellbound voice.

I looked at her for a while and she was intact. Her dominance, her aroma, her zeal had occupied that particular part of the beach. Water got illuminated and shown my life to us as if a movie. It was my childhood when I met the girl named Sohni. This name had very specific meaning – gold and why she got that name, because of her golden hairs, the long golden hairs, she was half-European half-Indian. My family was migrated to Estonia when I was not even born. She was my first and only friend in the community school. The migration was the result of post independence Indo-Soviet marriage. Father liked Estonia so much in the initial days that he decided to die there but parented me as an Indian. While, Sohni, she only had Indian name since in all aspect she was Estonian. Every morning she would come to our house to pick me up for school on her little bicycle, on which we never sat together except once when she collapsed it with a tree. Every morning, on our way to school, she would share her dreams, and half of them were about my weird Indian thinking and me. Sometimes, I too wished to tell her about my dreams but could never steal a chance from her to express them. She, a poetess since birth, and it was she who made such artistic thing a daily life necessity for me. She used to read poems for me in the free time. Most of her poems were in Estonian and my Estonian was as bad as her Hindi, but her poetic voice would take direct path to my heart, hence language never felt as barrier.

She was an exceptional soul- full of life. Her understanding was above all philosophies. The poems she recited were all inspired from nature, bird chirping, wind, and many more things. She would always imagine herself a bird in poems and wished to fly beyond limits of anything even god. I silently listened to each word and watched her playful eyes which played in sync with syllable. Life, living heaven in itself allowed me to learn life from her. She turned out my mentor and one fine morning I lost her. When, at the wish of her mother whole family moved from that eastern part of Europe to the West. I waited for her at home but she didn't appear and that day I went to school alone. I went to her place in the evening but found no one and then someone told me that they left the country.

Now I left with no option but to start life all again, with new things. However, I felt her presence everywhere in every aspect of my life. Be it in water, be it in bed, be it in food, be it in wind, be it in birds chirping, be it in flowers. Whenever I would touch anything, I find myself humming lines of her unnamed poems. I wished I could have gone away from her influence but how, after all, she had given shape to it. Years passed but her poems hadn't, they become eternal part of my life. I hum them wherever I would get chance. And, one day while humming I opened door at the knock of postman. He was carrying a post for me. My name was written in some familiar handwriting hence I quickly opened it. It was a letter from destiny, which, once again awarded a chance to meet her. It was her marriage invitation and besides a letter attached to it, in which she had asked me to be her best man.

I decided to fly to west and eventually managed to reach at venue. She appeared in the long corridor of church in creamy-white marriage gown. Her hairs now appeared more golden than ever and she looked more beautiful than any other beauty of the world. She caught my presence in the crowd and I came out to accompany her as best man until the dice. As soon as I held her hand she slowly said, “You are still as Indian as you were.” I smiled and led her to dice. So many things were there in me but words nonexistent. In my breath I began humming the last poem she read to me a day before leaving Estonia. She looked at me with familiar expression, which I had preserved in my memories for years. She knew what I was humming and besides she began humming it so slowly that only we two could hear and enjoy the words.

She took vows of marriage and reached next stage of life. In the marriage party, she raised toast for her childhood days and again read a poem. After every line, she looked at me the way she used to in our childhood and jumped to next line after I blinked my eyes. With every line, her voice was being filled with lump that only I knew. From Estonia, only I was invited for marriage. I couldn't understand why she did so. Why, all of a sudden, after this many years she sent a letter and asked me to be her best man. So many questions and so many people around, and raised toast for her forthcoming marriage life. I was the first to left party and went back to Estonia.

My life had turned out miserable with time and my family decided to return to India. I visited home of my forefathers and heard their stories. A house surrounded with coconut trees and at distance of one kilometer around there was a forsaken beach, which was an old-age home for boats. One day a post-man appeared at our home, he asked for me. He carried a post, it was from Estonia, and a good friend of mine had sent it to me. With it, another post was attached. It was about someone’s funeral, I looked at the name, and a jolt passed through my heart. It stopped working for a while. Sohni was no more part of this world and I began humming her last poem again. Now, every year I go to west to present flower at her grave. With her, I also lost the life that she once had gifted me in the form of poems. Life turned out monotonous, nothing more than a routine.

Water showed my whole life to us. While tears rested at brink of eyelashes, she asked, “Why didn't you let her go?”

I replied, “Why is it necessary to let go someone like her?”

“It’s not the matter of choice, it’s the way of life, and you can’t hold anyone for your entire life. It’s certain that those who came in your life will someday depart.” She said.

“But I don’t want it.” I replied.

“There exists no life which is termed as stable. The only stable thing is your existence until you die.” She argued.

“But I am dying.” I said.

“Certainly, however, your existence will remain un-intact until your last breath. But do you really want to die carrying emptiness the way you carried it while living? I bet, certainly not. So better, let her go, live in peace. From the heaven she would smile at you in satisfaction.” She said while looking away.

“How come I let go just like that when I know she was part of me since I didn't even know the meaning of it. I recite her poems every night in loneliness at this beach.” I argued.

“I know, I heard you so many times singing those poems but you lost their meaning, you never understood them. They were full of life. They constitute the real meaning of it. They were joyful and always conveyed – Let go what you can’t hold, let allow new things to flow, let me enter in your joy let me go with your sorrow.”

Those lines belonged to her poem, a poem that I have forgotten in the gust of time. I look towards horizon and saw the sun coming out to scare away darkness. Light conquered night and in that light, I looked at her. She was Sohni. Morning light made her hairs look more golden all again. She smiled the same smile that she did on her day of marriage.

She glowed divine and said, “Raj, let me go, I can’t stay here with you anymore, let me go….it’s been a long time” and disappeared just as the night had.

By Rajveer ...