A Journey to Remember, a short story

Arindam Moulick

Vacations always get over sooner than one realizes.

Our vacation is over and has come to an end. But even to this day, Strong, Arindya, and Sati — all three of us — couldn’t take this in their stride even as it has driven them furlong into the realm of mortifying nostalgia for wanderlust. Nothing can now bring them back to the real world, or so it seems.

Naturally, to get away from the grime and tussle of city life is a joyous feeling unlike any other, thought Arindya, himself forlorn in deep nostalgia and everything else bearing down on him at once. Alas, another vacation wasn’t nearer to happening anytime soon, so learning to live with it, not surprisingly, is hard enough. But that is another story for another time.

They were, as were me, still looking for more after a fantastic adventure that lasted nearly an entire week. Such was our newfound addiction torrent. Strong and Sati, two of Arindya's college buddies, attested to having experienced the same alluring feeling that persisted even after the trip they took a little more than ten years ago is far behind them, embedded, so to speak, in the labyrinth of our collective memory. Maybe everyone who is a good buddy thinks likewise.

Our journey, The Three Musketeers’ journey, had turned out to be the most special mention of our lives. The journey we undertook more than a decade ago, precisely at the start of the new millennium: 2001, has always been a high point of our collective remembrances. We often find ourselves chatting away over cups of hot tea and pakoras on most evenings as we lounged lazily in the wicker chairs placed on the sultry terrace bathed in the dusky evening moonlight cascading down upon us and tenderly recalling those wonderful, younger days of our what seemed to us our earlier lives.

Burning Driftwood: 

All the highs and lows of my life’s first friends-only vacation came into my nightly dreams like burning driftwood that always remained aglow and never went out of flames. As the early morning sky began to rescue its warm, sweet, hopeful Sun from the mystery pools of the dark night, the glowing embers of memories continued to burn in my heart. A new dawn of life shines upon the horizon ending its nightly escape from the clutches of unrepentant darkness. Golden memories are like warm glowing embers that settle inside the spaces of your heart.

If not for the endless days and nights of consternation that went into planning our first outing – a chance at, as they say, ‘getting away from it all…’ – to get away from the daily grind or routinely boring sort of sclerotic lives we were living, then we would have found ourselves slowly seeped out of life and hung up to dry like washed linen on a wiry receptacle of juvenile delinquency. Thank God we saved ourselves from turning into lazy bones and just doing nothing to achieve greatness in life! Getting to be peripatetic is such fun.

For Strong, Sati (our very own Kumbhakaran!), and Arindya, things were not looking up bright, nor were they really leading ship-shape lives. But at long last, when things began falling into their rightful places, they struck wanderlust . . . so they packed and moved. We sang together in our throaty voices, emulating the mellifluous voice of Kishore Kumar, our made-for-the-occasion friendship song while travelling all the way towards finding freedom and abandonment:

To be one with the world…

We are in heaven…

In the lap of Mother Nature…

We are in heaven,

O sweet feeling…

(Arindya wasn’t aware of what was to come upon him when after he returned home from a life-altering journey to Nashik. The three wanderlusts have travelled to Aurangabad, Ellora, Nashik, Tryambakeshwar, and Shirdi.)

In my heart of hearts, I knew this is it. The beginning of one of those things that maketh a friendship last long, for lifelong. The vacation was probably meant to do that. We were known to be best of friends and we wanted to give it a touch of emotional appeal: a fine companionship fetching its own little permanent space in our hearts, for memory keepsakes. And that’s what exactly has happened besides Arindya’s falling in love with an elegant stranger.

Speaking of myself, I would say it was our one great outing, more of a pilgrimage to be sure, that had washed up ashore something of a philosophical musing which, oddly, to this day, is still quaking in my unaccustomed heart. In fact, it never let go of me ever. It still quakes inside me. Like a chronically emotional guy, I would constantly have myself believe that ‘things’ have ‘changed’ and that there’s no way to find out whether it was for the better or for worse; even as it went on to carve a secret alcove in my private life. Why worse? Because I knew for a reason that my journey, especially from Shirdi to Hyderabad, would turn out to be extraordinarily heart-wrenching for me and I’ll have to live my life heartbrokenly. So here goes the tale…

All love stories have one thing in common; you have to go against the odds to get there. For me, the temple town of Tryambakeshwar was the greatest allure of all my own life’s worth could hope to get honoured with. So great was the sweet atrocity of the lost love that Arindya thought a tell-all memoir was all that was left to do and relive those moments all over again. His sense of loss, his seemingly decadent life was waiting to be relieved for the purposes of getting it written and ultimately retold in a manner that would bring him some kind of relief. To unburden. You know, the worst feeling in the world is when you know that you both love each other but still you just can’t be together.

That Thing Called Love:

Yes, you said it right. Indeed, it was love at first sight! Or was it a false alarm? Or was I being a darnedest fool? Didn’t I have ever had a proper handle on the two thinly-veiled, albeit different, paroxysms: Infatuation or Love? Turns out, I never did. I never knew it clearly enough though, not then, but surely, now I do know. An idea can change your life. But ‘change’, a brooding change at that, (if not the real Love itself) can make a hostile bid on your way of life! A thing of beauty is a joy forever and I have lost ‘something’ on my return trip back home and I am left undone. I do know not what to do, or how to do it in order to be able to get it all back into my life. This is a mystery (I simply call as ‘change’) that failed to warm up to me with any evidentiary feeling of what it has ‘changed’ after all. I am unable to place that thing properly amongst the bare necessities of my life but am feeling it all right in the empty center of my being with a great sense of remorse.

Is it a kind of passion that strangely afflicts lovesick puppies all the time? Or is it something to get serious about and needs a little personal scrutiny? Was it love? Or was it supposed to be a plain human reaction after all that rushes up your psychic mind some kind of hormonal hara-kiri when you see a beautiful face, a thing of beauty? Whatever it was, it surely came by slowly and beautifully, that old sweet feeling of - I dare say - love? Oh! Is it all about that good old culprit that goes by the sweetest name in the world called Love? If it is so then it will kill me on a regular basis!

It indeed does weird and wonderful things to your heart, I strongly believe that. The ‘change’ that I so proudly kept repeating over and over again in my mind is known by nothing else but Love. Pure and untouched. Warm and Cozy. Humble and Secure. That thing called Love slowly spread within me like wind-rippled sand in a forlorn, forsaken desert, and little by little the deeper meaning of the word got me totally baffled and confused. Afterward, I grew very restless on account of such emotional stirrings and I knew not what to do except accept my Destiny as a one-time readymade parcel service from the heavenly counters of The God Almighty. Oh yes! I am eternally thankful for that service!

Call it thrill or the regular drill, the other side of the falling-in-love coin is an unchartered territory of emotional warfare. You can deal with it if you think you really can, or else you lose your love and go home in several pieces. Your heart is felled first, always a ready victim of ‘unrequited love’ and longing, considering the circumstances.

After having lingered on such a thought-process in my mind that began materializing like a zany commotion of deep-seated melancholia, I came to realize that it was indeed the mysterious workings of the persuasive power of ‘Love’ that suggested itself by, both subconsciously and feelingly. Furthermore, the matter of such a delicate nature was so tellingly mystifying that I was finding myself shy and uncertain in equal measure to be able to get a comprehending grasp on its unmistakable magical power. I felt I have been given this evident opportunity to figure it all out, and so I will I thought.

~

Somewhere in my heart Love was being bucolic.

It slowly came to light in Arindya’s mind’s eye that he has been touched by an Angel; that lovely species whom one unstoppably falls in love with. And there was never a name for her, for the name didn’t really matter I suppose. As if transfixed I stood there with unblinking eyes looking her way. Realizing my eyes on her, she turned towards me for a fairly long moment and looked up at me. Her eyes, lips, and cheeks twinkled a bit; then knowing that I had still devoted my attention to her, her face broke into a saucy smile. After a moment or two, with a calming poise, she fervently put her hands together in front of the deity praying.

The clear light of day of the afternoon Sun and the serene October air appeared to be blending together to bathe her beauty with divine loveliness. Heavens opened up their doors and windows and Gods and Goddesses assembled together to have a precious look at their loving creation; even a grant of a tiny glimpse at her would no doubt continue to reassure and comfort them of their blissful eternity and immortality. They were being jealous, apparently! And I merely an Earth-dwelling mortal dared to romanticize the lovely sight I was likewise being treated to, and standing right there transfixed I fell into a trance I never seemed to have got out of. A serious bout of daydreaming crept up my soul that completely stirred my living being! I was being as if zealously ‘guarding’ her from something I could never know of what. Gods and Goddesses? Possibly. They too were looking at her, remember?

Holy Moly! No…! I remember Adam and Eve’s satanic mistake in the Garden of Eden before they were necked out unceremoniously!

Indeed, I opened my heart at the main entrance of the temple to yield a precious place for her to step right in. No doubt, I treasured her memory (including her divine angelic smile) in the deepest vaults of my unbidden heart ever since.

A Journey to Remember:

A journey to a holy place can sometimes make you feel profoundly rejuvenated and transformed; especially when you find that the journey you had has rendered a new dimension of poignancy to the basic perception of your own life.

One doesn’t just go and fall in love in a temple. It doesn’t happen that way. But you can’t help it when it happens, can you? Love can subtly suggest itself anytime anywhere, whether in a temple or in a park or on a train, or on a bus. I thought to myself, in my limited understanding, that for me Love will always be something that cannot be ‘set up’ to ‘gain’ something from it, but which is ultimately intensely natural and a thing that can only be felt deep within and treasured for a lifetime. Love makes life live. Love makes you feel enormously optimistic at heart. It makes you smile secretly and satisfyingly in the assuring fact that she is the one made in heaven for you. Then again, when others see you smile without obvious reason, they think you are kind of… ‘myyaaad’. So what is Love after all?

“Love doesn’t mean to win someone,

But it means to lose yourself for someone.

It is not done by the excellence of mind.

But it is done by the purity of heart.”

The great novelist Eric Segal’s immortal line “love means never having to say you're sorry” conveys as much of what lovers practically feel all the time but hardly ever can utter in those very words. That’s one way of looking at it. Yet Love manages to get conveyed; if not in words then the eyes do the trick.

All these were personal definitions that Arindya gave to his newfound feelings that were compelling enough for him to freely believe in love at first sight. And this hell of a feeling was met with approval by the Angel he met at the Tryambakeshwar temple in the picturesque district of Nashik.

As opposed to Strong’s suggestion of “infatuation” that I might possibly have been a case of, I had nothing short of The Bard William Shakespeare’s lines to counter his (Strong’s) sly riposte with:

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove…”

I have believed that this piece of sonnet explains everything that Love has been, what Love is, and what Love will always be.

~

When does such a thing affect you? Does it affect you, especially when you find yourself atop a precipice of your life and you have nothing better of your own but to claim that it was NOT infatuation? No doubt, she was an exalted species of pure feminine beauty, and I had to hanker after the girl only because of a so-called ‘exterior’ quality on her - her eye-catching beauty? No, I don’t believe so. And that’s exactly what didn’t happen to Arindya at all. People might say different things, for they are, well, people; they are meant to say things: uncharitable or unappealing. But in the end, you are the only one to know for sure whether or not you were in love and what really happened to you. For me it was Love all right: Love at first sight, Love forever, and Love forever after.

He knew it was far from anything that some people never really get to acknowledge when someone happens to fall in love. Arindya was not travelling alone but he sure was feeling very lonely for the first time among his friends. He had Strong and Sati for good company, yet why does he have to want for something that was not at all his in the first place? Strong and Sati were great friends, but Arindya’s dilemma was nobody's business but his own heart’s catch-22 situation to get around and deal with it. Does he have to draw a line somewhere considering that this complicated question, which is writ large on his face like a dark shadow, is showing no sign of leaving him alone? What does Arindya, the chief progenitor of all things immaterial, think about this entire quandary of his own making? Pushing oneself off the precipice, and end of the matter? Flat on the rocks below?

Or finding something to latch on to, setting adrift on a grand new boat of hope, against the time and tide of luckless foreboding, even tackling the normal wages of one’s daily life should become the normal course of action for him? Which one? Which goddamn one? Where is Arindya’s once-glorified “enormously optimistic” dramatic feeling gone? Cut its way off to a better soul, which was better than Arindya’s? Oh well O well, probably, it is here; it is here, somewhere, trampled. Arindya will find it. He will have to.

En Route to Tryambakeshwar via Nashik:

Booking a room for us three lads at a local hotel was, thankfully, not a tricky business to deal with. During the tourist season, naturally, getting even a single room is big trouble, but we eventually found one in a nice hotel not very far from the Maharashtra Tourism office-cum-hotel plaza on the main road. To tell you the truth, we enthusiastic bunch of all-guys travellers did get lily-livered sometimes when faced with indigenous, maddening signboards hung on hotel front offices such as “Sorry! Rooms Not Available”, “No Rooms”, “All Full”, “Houseful” or even “No Vacancy”, as if we were looking for jobs! We have been pretty much up to face whatever challenge was popping in front of us. But we sure disliked these ‘unwelcome’ signboards where ever we spotted one.

No wonder Sati (our very own Kumbhakaran!) was the one who went to the bathroom first to bathe and spillover some cologne fragrance under his tropical rainforest-like armpits, and I and Strong smiled sheepishly at each other to resolve who would go next up! Sati’s childlike enthusiasm to always be the first one to use our hotel’s bathroom was no less legendary than Strong’s preference for a window seat whether on a bus or on a train! I was more like a confused mute, a concerned spectator sandwiched between their ever-amusing comedy of errors (always-use-first bathroom and window-seat preferences included). Must say I hardly ever made any attempt to get out of my reverie, for watching them do their own thing in the pocket-sized, beige-toned hotel room was hilarious!

And yes, not to forget Sati’s insatiable penchant for rounding off his meal with a huge bowl of curd-rice was 'laughed out loud' over Strong’s all-weather-always-better garam garam idly, sambar, rasam, and rice preference, never mind curd-rice. I didn’t exactly dream of McDonald’s or Domino's platters, but my mouth did remember to flood at this unexpected suggestion of well-tasted hemlock that I have drunk not very long ago! Umm.

Before we embarked upon this journey, Strong let out a secret of his to me that if he doesn’t eat rice for dinner, he doesn’t get sound sleep at night! I nodded: possibly! Of course, all three went out to dinner and sat in a vegetarian-only restaurant to eat a belly full of sona masoori rice.

Our first leg of the journey was a long one to complete. We travelled from Aurangabad to Ellora caves and back. After a night’s intervention, we alighted from long-dead King Aurangzeb’s kingdom Aurangabad and traveled in an MSRTC (state-owned local bus service) bus to Nashik’s central bus station via several unmanned railway crossings, roadside shacks, and quiet villagers, who faithfully lived with their precious cows, hens, cocks, goats, and buffaloes and bulls, even an occasional donkey or two. I spotted several cows grazing and mooing blissfully in the grassy meadows; the hens playing with their tiny chicks in the open yards and goats braying in the vicinity of their human caretakers. The bus ride was bumpy but we enjoyed the bumps with shoulders colliding with the passengers seated next to us; we slammed, banged, crashed all at once into the front seats knocking our breaths out of our lungs, and bounced several inches off our scruffy seats before our heads bashed upon the overhead bunkers pounding on our senses.

Apart from all the bumpy encounters we experienced, our bus ride to Nashik was pleasant enough. In fact, in Aurangabad, though a nice little place to visit, we hardly found any other option in the name of good inter-city bus travel apart from the one we decided upon for our journey. That was the year 2001; things might have changed a lot now. These days, when we find each and every city of our country taking a turn for good economically, old things are being replaced with the new and how: city squares, shopping centers, fine dining restaurants, and all coming up like crazy. I am sure Aurangabad city too had transformed itself now into a fine tourist destination that it was always bound to be.

~

Strong and Sati (our very own Kumbhakaran!) were jousting with each other to look at the seat occupied next to a hulking woman travelling with her fair and fine-looking daughter. They (Strong and Sati, that is) craned their heads, flashing their gazes at the object of their attention, and tried several tricks up their sleeves to get her attracted to them, but all their actions came to naught. She was far ahead in her own dream world but apart from looking at their general direction, she was, apparently, way out of their league. And Arindya, he had already gazed at her for a moment longer than necessary, tried to be really interesting and all that, but it seemed that he was met with a rebuff.

The bus ride through the countryside had us totally rattled and disheveled, but we took no notice of that. We were on a mission here and totally up and about to accomplish it, so who has the time, you know, for things that don’t matter much.

After reaching the central bus station of Nashik, we took a bus to the great Tryambakeshwar Temple. Tryambakeshwar (Tryambakeśvara) is located around 28 kilometers from the urban center of Nashik, tucked away into the pacific greenery of the wonderful countryside of Nashik. The ancient Hindu temple is situated at the bottom of the Bramhagiri mountains, where the river Godavari is said to have originated from.

The first day of October month was agog with beautiful indulgences of the blushing cottony clouds ambling across the blue expanse of the Gods above…

I still remember the shimmering countryside meadows sparkling under the veil of moon-struck light illuminating everything from the sky above. I recollect the face of a serene-faced girl with lotus-like eyes I had never seen before or ogled at. Dressed in a soft yellow salwar with tiny ashen-grey polka-dot-like flowers spread all over her lovely attire that greatly embellished her graceful countenance; she looked a million bucks. Without hesitation, I resolved that she might be the very embodiment of a dream-like, unheard-of Angel that hardly often do we ever get to see in other normal circumstances. It tugged and pulled at my heart when she found my eager, will-you-be-mine eyes and winked impishly. She winked her huge eyelashes at me. At that moment my heart forgot to beat. I saw her at the Tryambakeshwar Temple offering prayers and trying to hand over her casket of coconut, red kumkum, agarbatti, and yellow Marigold flowers to the Sanskrit-chanting purohit, entreating him to break the coconut and flowers be put at the jyotirlinga of the presiding deity Lord Shiva.

Leaving Tryambakeshwar was hard enough for Arindya. He realized that he has fallen in love, really hopelessly, and leaving the pilgrimage town of Trymbakeshwar meant bidding goodbye, farewell, and adieu to her, perhaps forever.

While journeying back on a bus to Nashik, my plain lunatic heart began to thump furiously at the thought of not having to see her ever again, perhaps, never in this lifetime. No wonder my days of being an eternal optimist were gone. What am I to do now without even an ounce of it? What a life I have!

The chimera of optimism anyway doesn’t work in such a circumstance, does it? I had no way of knowing her, and finding her again at the same spot is a foregone conclusion even if I come back looking for her. Life doesn’t treat us that way. It isn’t that easy to get excited about. It has its own exigencies to care about first. Besides, there are so many other unknowable factors that come into play, whether you like it or not almost all of them will be pitted against your wish and will. Mankind is always left in the lurch to enthuse themselves by indulging in the mucky discourses of defunct challenges and useless competition. No wonder, in a dog-eat-dog world such is the twisted fury of God’s own creation!

I can’t even expect a ‘coincidence’ thing to take place and then somehow I come rushing back to find her. Life, it seems, has its own book of destiny to keep. The thing is a brave man makes his own destiny, but the question is: Was I brave enough to be undertaking the task of going back to Tryambakeshwar and find her – all by myself? Perhaps, I might as well just do it. There is, after all, a wee bit chance, an opening, for anyone who knows where to look and how to look. But Arindya could not possibly have fathomed that secret, for he was not in Destiny’s good books. If passion is what it appears to be in Arindya, then the desire to find her, to see her, to touch her, to embrace her, will always remain a desire, no matter how vaguely life leaks away thinking about her. I couldn’t believe what I was feeling for her. I was dying inside to touch her, hold her. Never will come that moment when I can get close to fulfilling it. I am not in a position, Oh! Dear Lotus-Eyed Angel, to fulfill that passionate desire of mine... It will stay that way.

Eternal passion!

Eternal pain!

Not in this lifetime, my love. Not in this Hell that I am being bludgeoned through and still managing to survive with my besieged chest full of memories. As far as Arindya’s future prospect is concerned, howsoever well-deserved or even if there was one in the first place, it had dead-ended, stopped dead in its path, prematurely. That has come to be known as his portion of sad destiny ever since!

If there is any hope to know what she thinks about our little, private rendezvous at that old Shiva Temple, I would drop everything and go rush in her general direction. On second thought, that won’t be necessary because I understand for the same sacrosanct reason that she understands: we have been destined and decreed to be together only in our next life, not in this one. A compromise appears to be the darker side of man’s Destiny, full of twists and turns and blind corners. Such is God’s will. Take it or leave it.

Love Is a Sad Song:

I remember how the silvery-white moon had shone from high above wandering somberly in the largely cloudless, inky October sky like a loving soliloquist soul, peeping at us lovingly through the tinted windows of the bus we were travelling in, wishing us a silent goodbye after we reluctantly bid adieu to the temple town of His Holiness Shirdi Sai Baba.

“I swear to you

I will always be there for you.

There’s nothing I won’t do.

I promise you,
All my life I will live for you;

We will make it through…”

Then out of nowhere a forgotten strain of an old Hindi song decanted into my mind. I was instinctively humming it aloud in my heaving chest thinking about the lotus-eyed girl I saw in the sanctum sanctorum of the great temple:

“Dil ke aasman pe gam ki ghata chayee

Ayee ayee ayee teri yaad ayee…

Teri yaad main sari duniya bhulayee

Ayee ayee ayee teri yaad aye…”

The tail-end of the journey was a heart-pounding experience for all three of us. Strong, Sati and Arindya were still awake and far away from any sign of wanting to get some sleep. All that trekking, hiking, climbing mountains and forts and circling historic temples in faraway places like Aurangabad, and Ajanta-Ellora Caves, then visiting Panchavati and walking on the streets of Nashik did not bog us down. We were fatigued no doubt but kept up our tempo in full gear. Strong and Sati were still afresh with keen energy and so was Arindya.

“Oh figure about those younger years

There was only you and me

We were young and wild and free

Now nothing can take you away from me

Even down that road before”

A small detour to Pandav Leni Caves after we visited Panchavati was also on the cards and so we hired an auto-rickshaw to reach there. All the way there the feisty driver sang songs of popular Hindi tracks, old and new, one after the other, as if he had someone to see urgently, a girlfriend without a doubt, after dropping us on the Nashik-Bombay highway. We were so thoroughly entertained inside its cabin, all for free!

“Mero peeko pawan, iss gali le chali,

Koi roko meri zindagi le chali…

…

Mujhse roothi kaheen aur yeh zur gayi,

Zingadi ajnabi raasta murh gayi…

Ek umeed thi aakhri le chali…

…

mere peeko…

mere peeko…”

I remembered a song and somehow managed to sing it despite my grim and constricted feelings - which were a direct result of my falling in love with a girl in the wintry valleys of the ancient temple town of Tryambakeshwar; it was a delightful Timmy Thomas song…

“…and I was dying inside to hold you

I couldn’t believe what I felt for you

Dying inside…I was dying inside

But I couldn’t bring myself to touch you…”

Pandav Leni like the nearby temple Raam Kund located in the town of Panchavati is a place soaked in mythological history. This is the place where Pancha Pandavas visited and rested during their journey to their banvaas (exile) of 14 years. It is believed that Lakshmana, the devoted brother of the great Bhagwan Ram, cut the nose of poor Surpanaka (sister of the demon-king Ravana) in the vicinity of Panchavati.

Pandav Leni is actually a collection of caves of Buddhist origin, similar to the ones you will find at the famous Ellora Caves located a few kilometers away from Aurangabad city. It houses the great statues of Jain Tirthankaras, Pandavas, and other great Buddhist saints and is situated atop a steep mountain. We were told that we can view the Sunset from up here, and sure enough, the view of the setting Sun from that vantage point was simply SPECTACULAR! A deeply enhancing experience it was. Something very rarely do we come to behold such a great view of the setting sun! Ethereally romantic! An opportunity that comes by only once. We enjoyed ourselves there on the Pandav Leni mountain looking at the distant Sun setting little by little at the crimson horizon; we clicked many pictures of ourselves with the Sun shining like a big orange halo sparkling above our heads.

"You'll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You'll forget the sun in his jealous sky
As we walk in the fields of gold...

As we walk in the fields of gold..."

Reaching Shirdi:

Our eyes refused to close for the night even as we got tired and hardly had any stamina left in us. Strong, Sati and Arindya, all three of the travelling musketeers remained awake like owls very late into the night. The bus they were traveling in careened through the countryside, rushing speedily through the meadows and the valleys back towards the city-unforgettable Nashik.

After snugly seated inside the moving bus, Strong was perhaps thinking about the next leg of the journey to the land of Shirdi Sai Baba and where to get budget hotels. Sati was a keen eater and was probably assessing “where to have dinner” and “what to have for dinner” in Shirdi (to which Arindya added jokingly: “how much to have for dinner!!!”), and Arindya was looking out of the window lost in his somber thoughts, knowing full well that Strong will take care of their Hotel bookings and Sati (our very own Kumbhakaran!) their dinner feasts - of course, lest you forget his “filter kaapi”. All’s well that’s end well, but the loss of the Lotus-Eyed girl was obviously hard done on Arindya’s soul. He could not dig out of his grave situation. Strong enticed him to a strong brew of tea, his favourite, but to no avail. By late evening we reached Shirdi and we booked a double room with an extra bed arranged in it. After taking shower we got dressed and were ready for dinner, and Sati naturally was so excited about it! The open balcony of the off-white room we stayed in was the nicest, surprising attraction. It allowed us a direct view of an almost lucent Moon of the night which was perched at the far end of our Hotel’s lively bylane. No wonder, that night we slept like dead logs of wood.

(Thank God, that night the inexcusable snoring that wafted away from Sati’s upended nostrils (a Hogwarts Express by all means) was not loud enough to crank us out from our deep slumber!)

Shirdi is a holy place, forever brimming with visitors, tourists, pilgrims, and people from different walks of life. Our budget hotel was located diagonally opposite the main shrine in one of the well-lit bylanes of the bustling market. We chose this hotel on purpose because not only the room afforded us a convenient location but also people coming and going and conducting themselves in their puja-aarti sessions in the temple courtyard would be good fun to watch. With eyes wide with wonder we calmly watched the goings-on.

We lived in Shirdi (like kings! Long live the kings!!!) for two wonderful days and two tender nights and not for a moment did we feel anything uncomfortable about our stay there. Part of the reason we were unconcerned was that we were too enthusiastic a bunch of wide-eyed tourists to mind unwanted stuff like the jammed lock on the bathroom door, frayed mattresses, flat pillows, a surplus broom parked at the far corner of the room, or a burned plastic astray (despite being a no-smoking room!). It was a budget hotel after all so why care so much and get needlessly finicky. Besides, it was enormously fascinating to be sitting on the open balcony with a glass of scalding hot coffee in hand, sipping away slowly and watching people going about their business down just one floor below. The sights and sounds of it all were simply amazing, to say the least.

The temple of Shirdi Sai Baba is characteristic of an important Hindu temple, with an assortment of long courtyards and several small shrines situated within its high-walled estate. Long queues are a given there. We stood in the queue which, I am sure, was no less than a 2-mile long one. One cannot see the famous ‘bada line’ (long queue) from outside anywhere; in fact, once you go inside the building only then will you find that there are several partitions pitched across the length and breadth of the room. I thought the waiting line of people looked as if a big coiling serpent has been slung on the floor and is moving slowly!

Getting closer to see the life-size sculpture of Sai Baba is a tough task in itself, I mean you got to be kidding me when once you are inside you just cannot leave but have to stand in the queue (the longest one I have ever seen in my life and yes Tirupati is still the ‘big brother’ of such a thing though) and walk through several well-ventilated scaffoldings and buildings specially meant for all queued-up devotees standing and waiting there. But, trust me, never mind the long queue, it will gradually become an enjoyable experience for you there, moving ever so slowly from one huge room to another in one single file, and then finally getting rewarded with a glimpse of the Holy Sai Baba; nothing matches that feeling. It feels like a hard-earned reward. For us, it was all well worth it. We found kids (of all sizes) enjoying themselves in the general cacophony of people engaged in endless conversations, chatting, laughing, and smiling all around - a heartwarming scene that will meet your instant appreciation. A nonstop, but the pleasant din of commotion echoes at all times in the buildings; even the temple courtyards, passageways, and just about everywhere is teeming with people and more people. Strong, Sati and Arindya loved the experience of it in Shirdi.

Leaving Shirdi and Coming Home:

It was evening again in Shirdi and when all the pre-booked seats in the bus were taken, we were set to roll at 6pm. That’s one of the best things you can get from a good private tour operator – right on dot. Our bus trudged along the countryside of Shirdi and then back to the City of Pearls in a super luxury Volvo-like tourist bus.

I’ll never forget the day of our journey back home from Shirdi. It was perhaps the saddest day that one can manage to live through when one becomes conscious of the fact that life is not going to be the same again, ever again. Arindya’s was not really a justification for a simple love story. Far from it. If it were so, then think about his fate of not being a part of a different world, a different history that could have been made, a different life altogether. Something will always be amiss. He will never understand such complexities that dot the landscape of his ordinary life. It was, let’s say, a complex outcome of a lost opportunity.

I’ll never forget her smile. The smile that had the magical power to course through every molecule of my living being, swarming me up with its warm persuasive power of love; it tapped my soul in a way that stroked my senses into full attention and brought up an answering smile on my normally abstemious face in response to hers. No wonder my heart leaped up in sheer delight. And as we continued to secretly smile at each other and moved about in the general milieu of the devotees milling around us, we reckoned an inescapable gut feeling that Time and the physical distance will make us part now, and at long last, we are going to be separated and possibly never see again.

Before long we came round the main temple, and a realization came upon us that we are not strangers anymore; we sure had felt an instant - shall we say - heart-connect. We have never seen each other before…, and even after all these years I still remember the extraordinary feeling of Love that was so intensely abreast in our hearts. 

She also perhaps knew that there was no way we could possibly do anything about it, but in some way continue to live our lives without each other.

She is from someplace I knew not where, and I from elsewhere she knew not where. What name could I give to a non-existing relationship like this? If Love is the treasure of heart, then those few impeccable moments warrant some kind of longevity for Arindya’s life to sustain and hers as well. How do I explain to you that today when I think about that fateful day when our eyes locked in a deep embrace…? It often brings silent tears of longing. Only sweet little memories are all that are left there for me now. Her fair face is etched in my mind’s eye and her smile is in my heart. It’s hard to believe that those younger days of great joy have all disappeared and gone. And ever since she’s become an inscrutable memory, sweetened by the passage of Time, one from the times past…

Nice Guys Finish Last:

I have finally known the meaning of the small albeit now familiar word called ‘change’ that I was trying to fathom ever since it brought forth something heaving within me in sheer expectation and delight. Quiet happenings that I have witnessed changed me as a person and my life forever.

Admittedly, I could not even have had the bare process of my own imagination within my head placed well. The sudden occurrences of Change and Love brought about a sweet upheaval: an intoxicating feeling of falling in love. It warmed the cockles of my heart and altered the course of my life in the bargain. Her memory has become associated with the enduring legacy of love that, I believe, we read about in the books or oftentimes hear from near and dear.

It seems I have been given this journey only for the sake of remembering it and getting nostalgic about it in the company of my friends and loved ones. To be able to think back on such an incident that occurred in my earlier life is in itself a precious thing to do. Any delinquent urge to alter my destiny or fate shall straightaway make me be liable to an untold misery of consequences-deluge to deal with. I thought long and hard about it but had to keep quiet and not make a sound. Nice guys finish last and go home empty-handed.

The heart knows its secrets, and I know I’ll never be able to erase her memory away even if it becomes in some way necessary for me to do so later on in my life. For what purpose does one live his/her life? Only to be able to ultimately go seek his/her future or whatever is in store for him/her. Take a degree, get a job, get married, and as they say: settle down is the standard mode of life. Perhaps, that is what I am possibly destined to do, never mind how heartbreakingly miserable, materialistic, and selfish, it sounds. I blame it on the Gods and the jealous skies above for all the impediments I’ve faced. Trust me the world has never been a better place to live in, for me at least. Life is anyway such a freak show.

It’s like an either-or situation - either I just disregard my predicament, rebel, and go back looking for her and get to be a hero, or I forgive myself and surrender my dreams forever to the heartless anonymity of the Universe and its supposedly ‘larger scheme of things' mystery.

And as the sun goes down on me, I graciously raise my head to the skies and say - take me with you if you will, my lord.

By Arindam Moulick

- Written between Oct.-Dec. 2012

(Alternatively titled: Love in Tryambakeshwar, a short story)

Word Count: 7,097

Pages: 14 (MS Word, in plain font)

Songs - Credits & Courtesies:

1. “I swear to you…” (a Bryan Adams song) 

2. “Dil ke aasman pe gam ki ghata chayee…” (a Hindi film song from the movie Romance) 

3. “Oh figure about those younger years…” (a Bryan Adams song) 

4. “Mero peeko pawan…” (a Hindi film song from the movie Ghulami) 

5. “You'll remember me when the west wind moves…” (a song from the album Sting - ‘Fields of Gold’)

- This short story has also been published on the EzineArticles.com website in two parts. Click on the following web links to read:
http://ezinearticles.com/?A-Journey-to-Remember,-a-Short-Story,-Part-1&id=8766962
http://ezinearticles.com/?A-Journey-to-Remember,-a-Short-Story,-Part-2&id=8766992

Disclaimer: This short story is entirely a work of fiction. All incidences and characters portrayed in my story are fictional and entirely imaginary. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. No similarity to any person either living or dead is intended or should be inferred.