A Journey of Inseparable Love

Who said love stories have sad endings? When I saw her for the first time, my whole world turned upside down. Amongst millions, your eyes manage to capture that one face which you had always dreamt off, your heart like radar senses the frequency flowing from hers and your mind directs the body to function normal. Two years back, with no second thoughts, I decided to spend my entire life with Trisha, who then promised the same. Ever since then, our love has intensified every second that passed by. But soon I realized that I had only known a little about love. With love comes happiness and pain, romance and jealousy, passion and suffering, togetherness and separation.

“Raj, please don’t go, I want to spend this valentine’s with you” Trisha said, with a sweet smile to die for.

“No sweetheart, it’s an emergency and I have to be with my grandmother” I said, with a heavy heart. Yesterday my dad called me from Nagpur and said that my grandmother was not keeping well and she wants to see me. Born to a family of doctors, my parents never had much time to look after me. So I spend most of the time with my grandparents. They taught me the basics and I loved them more than my parents. My grandparents shared a very sweet relation, their love was clearly visible in the way they treated each other. I could not experience much of it as at the age of 10, my parents decided to send me to a boarding school in Dehradun. Distance does make a lot of difference but somewhere deep inside my heart I had restored the moments spend with them. Some three years back, my grandfather died due to heart failure. The incident affected my granny immensely. They loved each other a lot; nothing could separate them except “Death”. The separation of my grandparents always left a sad expression on my face.

Sometimes expressions are enough to portray whatever you are going through inside, Trisha must have understood what I was going through which is why she changed the topic and handed me a gift. The gift was wrapped neatly in a sparkling red paper with a note written in blue saying, “I love you a ton.” I landed a kiss on her forehead and opened the gift. ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, a famous novel, written by Charles Dickens. “How do you always know what I want? I really loved it. Thank you”, I said.

“Keep your mobile close to you, I will give you a call”, she smiled.

I boarded my flight from Bangalore at around 3'o clock in the afternoon. It approximately took two hours to reach Nagpur. I landed at Nagpur Airport, famously known as Baba Saheb Ambedkar Airport, at 5 in the evening. As soon as my father saw me, he took a sign of relief and hugged me tightly. There is this strange thing about my father, he gets all nervous about this air traveling. I jumped into the car and started counting every second that passed by. Every second that left behind gave me a pleasant feeling of seeing my grandmother sooner. The excitement to see my grandmother just amplified when I saw the board of our colony,”Laxminagar”. Here my father parked the car, and there I ran into the house, directly into the arms of my grandmother. I must mention, she is the most beautiful women in the world, an epitome of Indian beauty. I gave a tight hug and pulled back to see her properly. The changes and loneliness in her life was evidently visible on her face. The red mixed dark circles below her eyes explained the sleepless nights that she passed in shedding countless tears in the memory of her beloved, my grandpa. She looked so different, the remorse on her face stimulated the flood of emotions hidden somewhere deep in my heart.

But somehow I controlled myself, giving her a smile I said, “So how is my sweetheart doing? I see that you have a special glow on your face, what’s the secret?”

“Yes. I have been using a lot of cosmetics to look younger.” She winked at me and continued, “See, now that your grandpa has left me, I need to look beautiful and young when we meet.” She gave me a lovely smile, but I could see the sadness hidden behind it.

“Ah! Granny, you’re not going anywhere. Remember, you have to tell me your love story, perform a dance number in my marriage, torture my wife, play with my kids and a lot of other things. I have signed a pact with God; he won’t let you leave this planet before eternity” I said.

Smiling at me on her death bed she said, “Okay. So how is Trisha?”

“Trisha is fine. She wanted to come along with me, but I insisted her not to. You know it would have been so difficult to handle two girl friends at the same time.” Staying away from home had changed a lot of things but the love that I shared with my granny was untouched.

“Raj, you’re the same old flirtatious wanna-be boyfriend of mine. But I appreciate that you still feel the same for me”. Saying this, she started laughing. One thing that I loved the most in her was, the way she laughed. Her laugh had always been so lively and fresh, but today, it was so unreal, so vacillating. Suddenly in all this conversation I forgot to meet mom. I gave a kiss on granny's hand and promised to return back in no time. My mom started crying when she saw me, and hugged me tightly. Everyone loved my grandma a lot, and her separation was a fact that no one was able to admit. I consoled her. This was the only thing we all could do. Console each other and pray.

After having my dinner, I went to grandma's room to say her goodnight. She caught my hand and asked me to sit beside her. We both looked each other for some time; so much had changed in her. She looked so pale, weak, lifeless, thin and tired. At last breaking the silence, she said, “Raj, today I want to tell you a story. A story that became my reality. The story of two lovers who met somewhere on the land of Punjab, 65 years back, during the time of Indo-Pakistan partition”. Her eyes sparkled as the words stared to flow from her mouth. “Late, in 1947, India was partitioned under the British government. Our leaders Nehru and Jinnah played a vital role in this historical act of partition. The fire of anger destroyed the lives of many people. Trains loaded with death bodies were sent from each other’s country. My village was not that close to the border. Half of Punjab was now in Pakistan, the villages that were near to the border were bestowed with merciless killing and suffering. Muslims were asked to relocate to their new land, and Indians were asked to return back to their land.”

With a soft expression on her face, grandma continued, “My family participated in helping the ‘refugees’ (this is what they called their own people who came from Pakistan) by supplying them with food and shelter. I belonged then to a well to do family. People all around 10 villages knew my family and honored us. I still remember the day when I saw him for the first time, since then in my memories I have viewed that scene countless number of times, my heart gave me signals that were unknown to me. At a tender age of 16, this girl who never cared to look at a boy fell in love with a one who looked a lot more like her dream prince. As he walked towards me, time stopped. Everything around me came to a halt, except the Pigeons, who flew in the air, making our first meeting, the most memorable one. His sharp features, slender body, fair color, brown hair and stunning personality left me with a sweet pain. A pain, that seems to be the sweetest, one of its kind.” She took a long breath before speaking the next line.

“Amazed with my expression, he looked at me with gloomy eyes. He was sad. I could feel it. Later that day, my father told me that he had lost his family in the riots. Now he was left alone so my father got him here to stay with us. That boy was your grandfather, Pritam Singh. My father introduced him to the rest of the family and included him in our family business. He was going through a tough time as he lost everything that mattered to him. First few days, Pritam chose to stay alone at his room. For hours he kept quiet and never cared to even utter a word. I could not see him in this condition anymore, so I made a plan. Goli, my best friend, was ready in rendering her help for my one sided love story. One day when Pritam was sitting alone in his room, she went and sat on his shoulder. He was shocked suddenly to see a pigeon beside him and stood up in a second. His expression was so funny that I could not control my laughter. I covered my mouth with hands, still could not help it and burst into a loud roar of laughter. When he saw me hiding behind the curtain laughing, he rushed in my direction and ‘slapped me’. I was so stunned, so shocked that for some minutes I just stood there with my hand placed on my left cheek. It was insulting and rude for him to do this but at the same time my heart thudded loudly. He touched me for the first time. I repeated this again and again to myself.” Love is blind, now I know why. My grandmother looked so weak but still her face glowed. Talking about grandpa always left her with a shimmery expression. Coming out from my thoughts, I concentrated on what she was saying. My curiosity level increased ten times more.

“The next day I saw a cloth tied up on his palm. I felt bad but my self-respect was on sake so I behaved as if he never existed. All this while, by some or other means I left no chance in making him feel special. All day long, I hovered around him asking, if he needs anything, serving him water, food and what not. But now that he slapped me, I decided to avoid things that could emotionally disturb him and me. I was sitting outside with Goli when Pritam came towards me and sat beside me, maintaining decent distance between us. “ Mandeep, I am sorry for whatever I did that day. There is no excuse to what I did and you have all the rights to punish me”, Pritam said with a husky voice. I was so lost in his voice that I forgot to reply him back. His dark brown eyes stared at me and demanded for an answer. Regaining my senses, I said “It’s alright. As soon as you asked me sorry, I forgot whatever happened”. Oh! I felt so stupid. He gave me a sweet smile and my eyes fell on his wound. “What happened to your hand?’ I asked him. He hesitated for sometime and finally answered, “I punished myself for the miserable thing that I did to you. I had no intentions to hurt you but the whole incident kind of took over my senses. The incident from the day I lost my family came in front of my eyes in bits and pieces. The anger which I had held inside me came rushing and I ended up hurting you. I am really very sorry.” I could see a change in his tone; it had concern for me. I was on cloud nine, my mind started building castles in the air and suddenly I felt so special. It was the beginning of our love story.” A tear fell from her eye; I could say that she missed those moments a lot. But I never interrupted. I wanted her to speak and relish those moments that would last in this world through me.

“You know those days were so different”, she looked at me. “Unlike today’s generation, were you can express your feelings in number of ways. We had no mobile phones, no internet connection, no means of communication other than writing letters to each other. Goli played a special role in the initial days of our love story. She was our postman. Without any ones knowledge, we exchanged letters, chatted with each other on the terrace, and went for long walks by making some excuse at home. That day is so clear, I still remember each and every small detail. He wrote me a letter and asked me to come to the terrace at night. I was dressed in red salwar, his favorite color, moved slowly and slowly towards him.” Suddenly grandma started taking long breaths, I called Mom and Dad. They knew that she was proceeding towards her end, but who knows it was a new beginning for her.

“He was in white kurta, looked amazingly handsome as usual. I had to take only ten steps to hold his hands. The distance that I covered then is the same which I have to take now to reach into his arms.” She breathed more heavily and kept on speaking, “He gave me a smile when I started walking towards him.” I shook her hard, tried to give her water but she was somewhere far away. She continued, “I stretched my hand to hold his, and stood right in front of him. Next what he said where the most beautiful words I had ever heard. I can hear them now too. I can see him, he is calling me, he says “ I love you”. I am coming Pritam, I love you too”, were the last words that she spoke. Her hand fell and she laid there lifeless.

Pure love find its own way. Even death can’t separate true lovers. Somewhere in between the clouds, I know, my grandparents are rejoicing their togetherness and celebrating valentine’s in their lovely way. Their love story left a great impact on my life, and I have now learnt a new meaning of love.