A seeker’s love story
The naked, live wire stood in the socket, daring him. The towel was tightly wrapped around his waist, like always after his bath. His hands were still wet, so it would look natural. Besides it would be quick, if not painless, and look like an accident. No mess, no explanations would be required.
His hand moved forward, the water from his wet hair dripping onto his shoulders. A sharp shock forced his arm back in a flashing reflux, throwing him back a few steps. He blinked, suddenly aware of what he had been trying to do.
“Bloody loser!” he said, covering his face with trembling hands in disbelief as he collapsed on the sofa.
When he reached college, he looked through all the faces.
“Good morning, sir,”
Kapil didn’t hear a thing.
“He’s been looking a bit weird these days, hasn’t he?”
“Yeh! Doesn’t crack a single joke any more. Yesterday, he blanked out for five minutes in class. …I heard he’s been ditched.”
“Don’t tell me!! I bet it was that Ph. D student. They were seen at the Coffee Shop once or twice. Anyway look at the bright side – he’s available now!”
“I’ll take him on any day, if only he’d look at me!”
The girls burst into giggles and followed him to the class.
“Siddhartha is the story of a man in search of enlightenment, whose heart gets entangled on the way. Do you agree?”
“Sir, I don’t think he gets emotionally entangled with that courtesan, he’s just using her.”
“For what?”
“For learning the art of love. He thinks he won’t suffer emotionally because he’s above all that.”
“Is he wrong?”
“Well he’s not hurt in the love affair – if you can call it that, but when he meets the boy and realizes that he is his son, he becomes mushy and attached.”
“Why?”
They were all quiet for a while. Then one of the girls answered,
“Sir, he entered into the relationship with the woman consciously, but the appearance of the son catches him unprepared and takes his heart by storm.”
Me too... I was just not prepared. Didn’t realize my heart would get so entangled.
“Why does he feel so emotionally wrecked when his son suddenly leaves?”
Why do I?
“Sir, he thought his knowledge was a sure shot insurance against pain. That relationship
becomes a reality check.”
“I suppose you are right,” he said slowly, “Conscious knowledge is not all. We ride our paper boats of so-called knowledge, and a wave lifts and dashes us against the hard rock of reality.”
He didn’t want to go back to his apartment just yet. It was too early to sleep, and he could not sit in meditation like he used to. Strange, he needed to do this the most now, but couldn’t bring himself to it. He went to the coffee home instead, to drown memories in a mug of coffee. On his way in he ran into his old Professor.
“Kapil! I haven’t seen you for ages!”
“Good evening, Professor. Yes, it’s been a long time.”
Professor Ghosh knew immediately, all was not well. He knew Kapil and he understood people in general.
“I heard you are planning to take leave for post doctoral research?”
“I was just thinking of taking a break sir. A long leave perhaps.”
“What will you do?”
“Oh” he sighed in spite of himself “something different, creative, may be go globe trotting?”
“That sounds interesting,” he paused “provided it is to seek something and not to run away” he laughed.
Kapil looked at him piercingly. He knew?
“To seek, to understand one’s own self and the world better, is that a good enough reason?” he risked it.
“Yes, you’ve always been a seeker of sorts. From what I remember, you grew up in an ashram didn’t you?”
“Yes sir, Aurobindo ashram – Pondicherry.”
“That explains why you seem to be unaffected by the rat race – beyond desire are you?” he laughed.
“We are all human sir.”
“Ah! How true.” The professor looked at his watch, “My very human wife will change into a monster if I don’t get going. I’m not a lucky bachelor like you!”
Kapil didn’t feel like a lucky bachelor when he got home. Regret crawled inside him like a cockroach. The house felt haunted. He went into his study to prepare for the next day’s class. Under the copy of Siddhartha lay a sheet of paper in her handwriting. A wave passed over his heart. How she had seeped into his soul! He had been so proud of himself for being stoic, satisfied, emotionally independent, not like some of his colleagues who couldn’t bear to be alone. He never realized how and when his emotional self got so entwined with her. Her passing through his life had shattered his heart and pride.
His cell phone rang.
“Kapil” Her voice stabbed his heart.
“Hello” his cold, steely voice answered.
Why did she call him now? To be kind? Or did she feel the same helpless pull as him? He would never ask her.
“Kapil I’m coming to Delhi next week. I wondered if I could come and see you?”
“I’m not my death bed yet!”
“Kapil, please don’t!”
He switched off the phone. He couldn’t bear the pain of talking to her now, any more than that he could bear that fact that he felt so embittered. The dark side of soul was unveiled and he didn’t want to believe it was his. He avoided picking up any calls that week. But one evening when the door bell rang, he knew it was her.
She looked the same, almost.
“How come you didn’t bring your husband?”
He wanted to be cruel, to dig his nails in her heart, till she shrieked with the same pain that he felt. Sandhya didn’t answer him. She understood where this was coming from.
She came in and sat down on the large, comfy chair, like she used to. Only she didn’t look comfortable. After a long silence, she asked,
“How are you?”
“You want me to really answer that?’
“If it helps.”
Nothing could help. Kapil sighed. They sat quietly, but it was not the comfortable silence they’d shared earlier. It clawed. Sandhya got up to make a cup of tea.
Kapil took a slow sip from the mug. In spite of that perfect cup of tea, he couldn’t drink down the pain. It was stuck in his throat like a thorn.
“Are you going to college these days?”
“Yes”
She wanted to ask him if he went to Karim’s Coffee Corner in the evening liked he used to sometimes with her. About his nature trails, classic music evenings, and what tunes floated from his flute now. But she let it be.
“I may go away for a while from here,” he said softly.
Sandhya avoided a gasp, she realised then how deep the wound was. He had always believed in facing reality, no matter what. Suddenly she was afraid for him.
“Where to?”
“I don’t know, yet.”
Could she have misjudged his strength? Was he crumbling? He was so different from others, but after all, he was human. She wanted to hold him close, to wrap her arms around his neck so she could feel his breath, and he could feel her heartbeats. But, she didn’t. He would have thought it was pity.
“Kapil are you – are you okay?”
He knew what she was asking him. He almost thought about telling about the day when he almost killed himself. His heart was a mad house. He wanted to hold her in his arms and smother her at the same time. Kapil couldn’t believe how his heart swung like a helpless pendulum. He was bewildered. They’d both tacitly known that there was no future to their relationship. There was no one to blame. They’d both accepted that. Then, why this pain?
“I’ll survive, I suppose.”
After she left, Kapil left the door open. He secretly hoped she would come rushing back, saying it was all a bad dream, that everything was fine and she would stay - forever. After half an hour he latched the door shut.
That evening, he wrote to his guru, not giving too many details about what had happened, but explaining his emotional state, the pain and the bitter disappointment, and the surprise at being so overwhelmed. His guru wrote back,
“It doesn’t matter what or who has apparently made you feel this way. Both the problem and solution live in us. But this is difficult to accept when our hearts are caught in a storm. You are shocked at your own reaction, I can see. Possibly, it is not attachment to the person who is no longer with you, as the attachment to your own self image that has hurt you more.
Life sometimes pushes us into whirlpools when we are not looking, that’s when your strength and skills are tested. It’s always easy to stay afloat in calm waters. Some of us stay on dry ground all our lives! A test is a test – neither a blessing nor a curse. It forces you to look into a flawless mirror and see the inner self, the real you, beyond books and acquired knowledge. Don’t shut your eyes to yourself, because you can only transform the real, not the dream. Don’t shift to a mirror that gives you a more pleasant image – pleasant but unreal. Resist mirages. It is beyond that you find causeless joy.”
Kapil didn’t take break that year – or the next. The winter after that he took leave and went to Pondicherry to stay at the ashram where he had been brought up. He still had the keys to his foster father’s house, where nobody lived. He never knew a mother. Sometimes he wondered whether not having a woman in his growing years made him so vulnerable to only one he fell for as a grown man. But for now it didn’t matter.
In the evening, he took a walk along the coast. He was sitting on the edge watching the waves. He felt the air change as someone came and sat next to him. He knew it was her. He didn’t have to look. When he did, they both gazed at each other deep and long.
“When did you come?” she asked.
“A month ago. You?”
“Yesterday. My husband is here for a business visit and I asked to stay here.”
The words ‘my husband’ didn’t cut across his heart so much this time. The edge had blunted. He looked at her face, her eyes highlighted with kajal, her silver earrings, the round nose, full lips. As always it was her presence that affected him the most, she carried an aura which he immediately and unmistakably felt. He’d never asked her if she felt anything similar. It didn’t matter.
“I somehow thought I’d meet you this time in the ashram,” she said.
He looked at her and then at the sea. Waves everywhere. The sun was slowly melting into the waves. Words didn’t come to either for a long time. She leaned her head over and gently rested it on his shoulder barely touching it. He let it be. That was the only communication for the remaining time they were together in the evening.
Kapil sat at the same place the following evening, expecting her to come, even though neither had mentioned anything about meeting again. She wore jeans and a blue kurta but no kajal.
“You’ve grown a beard!”
“You’ve gained weight!”
They both laughed. Kapil reached out and placed his hand on hers. She entwined her fingers with his and held his hand tight. A choked silence.
“Can we please go and have a cup of tea or something, I haven’t had lunch,” she asked after a while.
Kapil wondered why she’d skipped lunch and whether her husband would be expecting her, but he wasn’t curious enough to ask. As they walked to a quiet restaurant, Kapil frequented, he avoided touching her. A touch said too much.
As they were giving the order for snacks and tea, Sandhya’s mobile rang.
“Hi! How was your conference? ....umm…did you have lunch? ...Yes I’m fine. When will you return? …You’ll reach by dinner time tomorrow then? …I’ll be waiting for you…bye.”
“Shekhar’s gone for a conference to Chennai for a day. I stayed back.” Sandhya explained, even though she knew Kapil wasn’t interested in the details.
Then he asked her,
“Are you happy?”
She looked at him, a little irritated. Was he playing the professor again?
“What’s happiness?” she put her cup on the table, “I’ve nothing to complain about.” She paused and added, “I feel settled, secure now… that’s being happy, isn’t it? … Anyway, tell me about yourself.”
“Where do I begin?”
“Where we left perhaps?” she suggested tenderly, her face soft.
“After you left, I learnt what longing was – I became it,” he confessed, “I used to sometimes imagine…” he paused, looked into her eyes, and decided to continue, “that I would leave my body and go to you… So, I would think of you perhaps cooking, or gazing at the moon… I thought of myself as a vaporous soul, dissolving and melting into you. My subtle hands melting into yours, my heart becoming your heart beats, my lips and eyes diffused into yours. Every cell, every atom vibrating with yours till there were no two entities. I became you Sandhya, because there was no other way left that could quench. When that happened, I felt no more longing… Of course, it was just imagination.”
Sandhya had closed her eyes, tears hung on her lashes. She had felt him on occasions, almost jolted by feelings that engulfed her. Now she knew why.
“I still miss you.” he said
“Yes I know – we both miss each other,” her voice was heavy.
“Only it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
She looked at him. To anyone else this would have spelled indifference or rejection, but they knew each other too deeply. The air around them was warm and mellow, the silence soft.
“Do you have any regrets – about us?” she asked him.
“Regrets? God! no. But, I couldn’t understand my own feelings for a long time. The pain surprised me. I was horrified most by the thought that if I found it so difficult to let go, then my love had to be fake. I couldn’t accept that. It forced me into some house cleaning!”
She admired him more now, for emerging so clean. No blame, no malice, no regret, no expectation. In retrospect, it was surprising that a detached loner like him got caught in an emotional whirlpool… Hidden depths.
“Love happens, we don’t plan or seek it,” she mused.
“Yes, but when it goes…”
“It never goes Kapil - it never goes. It just gets clouded sometimes.”
It was there, now, moving in and out with their breath. The clouds had vapourized and they looked into each others eyes, drinking deep.
- Harvinder Kaur
(Published in New Woman magazine, August 2009)
The naked, live wire stood in the socket, daring him. The towel was tightly wrapped around his waist, like always after his bath. His hands were still wet, so it would look natural. Besides it would be quick, if not painless, and look like an accident. No mess, no explanations would be required.
His hand moved forward, the water from his wet hair dripping onto his shoulders. A sharp shock forced his arm back in a flashing reflux, throwing him back a few steps. He blinked, suddenly aware of what he had been trying to do.
“Bloody loser!” he said, covering his face with trembling hands in disbelief as he collapsed on the sofa.
When he reached college, he looked through all the faces.
“Good morning, sir,”
Kapil didn’t hear a thing.
“He’s been looking a bit weird these days, hasn’t he?”
“Yeh! Doesn’t crack a single joke any more. Yesterday, he blanked out for five minutes in class. …I heard he’s been ditched.”
“Don’t tell me!! I bet it was that Ph. D student. They were seen at the Coffee Shop once or twice. Anyway look at the bright side – he’s available now!”
“I’ll take him on any day, if only he’d look at me!”
The girls burst into giggles and followed him to the class.
“Siddhartha is the story of a man in search of enlightenment, whose heart gets entangled on the way. Do you agree?”
“Sir, I don’t think he gets emotionally entangled with that courtesan, he’s just using her.”
“For what?”
“For learning the art of love. He thinks he won’t suffer emotionally because he’s above all that.”
“Is he wrong?”
“Well he’s not hurt in the love affair – if you can call it that, but when he meets the boy and realizes that he is his son, he becomes mushy and attached.”
“Why?”
They were all quiet for a while. Then one of the girls answered,
“Sir, he entered into the relationship with the woman consciously, but the appearance of the son catches him unprepared and takes his heart by storm.”
Me too... I was just not prepared. Didn’t realize my heart would get so entangled.
“Why does he feel so emotionally wrecked when his son suddenly leaves?”
Why do I?
“Sir, he thought his knowledge was a sure shot insurance against pain. That relationship
becomes a reality check.”
“I suppose you are right,” he said slowly, “Conscious knowledge is not all. We ride our paper boats of so-called knowledge, and a wave lifts and dashes us against the hard rock of reality.”
He didn’t want to go back to his apartment just yet. It was too early to sleep, and he could not sit in meditation like he used to. Strange, he needed to do this the most now, but couldn’t bring himself to it. He went to the coffee home instead, to drown memories in a mug of coffee. On his way in he ran into his old Professor.
“Kapil! I haven’t seen you for ages!”
“Good evening, Professor. Yes, it’s been a long time.”
Professor Ghosh knew immediately, all was not well. He knew Kapil and he understood people in general.
“I heard you are planning to take leave for post doctoral research?”
“I was just thinking of taking a break sir. A long leave perhaps.”
“What will you do?”
“Oh” he sighed in spite of himself “something different, creative, may be go globe trotting?”
“That sounds interesting,” he paused “provided it is to seek something and not to run away” he laughed.
Kapil looked at him piercingly. He knew?
“To seek, to understand one’s own self and the world better, is that a good enough reason?” he risked it.
“Yes, you’ve always been a seeker of sorts. From what I remember, you grew up in an ashram didn’t you?”
“Yes sir, Aurobindo ashram – Pondicherry.”
“That explains why you seem to be unaffected by the rat race – beyond desire are you?” he laughed.
“We are all human sir.”
“Ah! How true.” The professor looked at his watch, “My very human wife will change into a monster if I don’t get going. I’m not a lucky bachelor like you!”
Kapil didn’t feel like a lucky bachelor when he got home. Regret crawled inside him like a cockroach. The house felt haunted. He went into his study to prepare for the next day’s class. Under the copy of Siddhartha lay a sheet of paper in her handwriting. A wave passed over his heart. How she had seeped into his soul! He had been so proud of himself for being stoic, satisfied, emotionally independent, not like some of his colleagues who couldn’t bear to be alone. He never realized how and when his emotional self got so entwined with her. Her passing through his life had shattered his heart and pride.
His cell phone rang.
“Kapil” Her voice stabbed his heart.
“Hello” his cold, steely voice answered.
Why did she call him now? To be kind? Or did she feel the same helpless pull as him? He would never ask her.
“Kapil I’m coming to Delhi next week. I wondered if I could come and see you?”
“I’m not my death bed yet!”
“Kapil, please don’t!”
He switched off the phone. He couldn’t bear the pain of talking to her now, any more than that he could bear that fact that he felt so embittered. The dark side of soul was unveiled and he didn’t want to believe it was his. He avoided picking up any calls that week. But one evening when the door bell rang, he knew it was her.
She looked the same, almost.
“How come you didn’t bring your husband?”
He wanted to be cruel, to dig his nails in her heart, till she shrieked with the same pain that he felt. Sandhya didn’t answer him. She understood where this was coming from.
She came in and sat down on the large, comfy chair, like she used to. Only she didn’t look comfortable. After a long silence, she asked,
“How are you?”
“You want me to really answer that?’
“If it helps.”
Nothing could help. Kapil sighed. They sat quietly, but it was not the comfortable silence they’d shared earlier. It clawed. Sandhya got up to make a cup of tea.
Kapil took a slow sip from the mug. In spite of that perfect cup of tea, he couldn’t drink down the pain. It was stuck in his throat like a thorn.
“Are you going to college these days?”
“Yes”
She wanted to ask him if he went to Karim’s Coffee Corner in the evening liked he used to sometimes with her. About his nature trails, classic music evenings, and what tunes floated from his flute now. But she let it be.
“I may go away for a while from here,” he said softly.
Sandhya avoided a gasp, she realised then how deep the wound was. He had always believed in facing reality, no matter what. Suddenly she was afraid for him.
“Where to?”
“I don’t know, yet.”
Could she have misjudged his strength? Was he crumbling? He was so different from others, but after all, he was human. She wanted to hold him close, to wrap her arms around his neck so she could feel his breath, and he could feel her heartbeats. But, she didn’t. He would have thought it was pity.
“Kapil are you – are you okay?”
He knew what she was asking him. He almost thought about telling about the day when he almost killed himself. His heart was a mad house. He wanted to hold her in his arms and smother her at the same time. Kapil couldn’t believe how his heart swung like a helpless pendulum. He was bewildered. They’d both tacitly known that there was no future to their relationship. There was no one to blame. They’d both accepted that. Then, why this pain?
“I’ll survive, I suppose.”
After she left, Kapil left the door open. He secretly hoped she would come rushing back, saying it was all a bad dream, that everything was fine and she would stay - forever. After half an hour he latched the door shut.
That evening, he wrote to his guru, not giving too many details about what had happened, but explaining his emotional state, the pain and the bitter disappointment, and the surprise at being so overwhelmed. His guru wrote back,
“It doesn’t matter what or who has apparently made you feel this way. Both the problem and solution live in us. But this is difficult to accept when our hearts are caught in a storm. You are shocked at your own reaction, I can see. Possibly, it is not attachment to the person who is no longer with you, as the attachment to your own self image that has hurt you more.
Life sometimes pushes us into whirlpools when we are not looking, that’s when your strength and skills are tested. It’s always easy to stay afloat in calm waters. Some of us stay on dry ground all our lives! A test is a test – neither a blessing nor a curse. It forces you to look into a flawless mirror and see the inner self, the real you, beyond books and acquired knowledge. Don’t shut your eyes to yourself, because you can only transform the real, not the dream. Don’t shift to a mirror that gives you a more pleasant image – pleasant but unreal. Resist mirages. It is beyond that you find causeless joy.”
Kapil didn’t take break that year – or the next. The winter after that he took leave and went to Pondicherry to stay at the ashram where he had been brought up. He still had the keys to his foster father’s house, where nobody lived. He never knew a mother. Sometimes he wondered whether not having a woman in his growing years made him so vulnerable to only one he fell for as a grown man. But for now it didn’t matter.
In the evening, he took a walk along the coast. He was sitting on the edge watching the waves. He felt the air change as someone came and sat next to him. He knew it was her. He didn’t have to look. When he did, they both gazed at each other deep and long.
“When did you come?” she asked.
“A month ago. You?”
“Yesterday. My husband is here for a business visit and I asked to stay here.”
The words ‘my husband’ didn’t cut across his heart so much this time. The edge had blunted. He looked at her face, her eyes highlighted with kajal, her silver earrings, the round nose, full lips. As always it was her presence that affected him the most, she carried an aura which he immediately and unmistakably felt. He’d never asked her if she felt anything similar. It didn’t matter.
“I somehow thought I’d meet you this time in the ashram,” she said.
He looked at her and then at the sea. Waves everywhere. The sun was slowly melting into the waves. Words didn’t come to either for a long time. She leaned her head over and gently rested it on his shoulder barely touching it. He let it be. That was the only communication for the remaining time they were together in the evening.
Kapil sat at the same place the following evening, expecting her to come, even though neither had mentioned anything about meeting again. She wore jeans and a blue kurta but no kajal.
“You’ve grown a beard!”
“You’ve gained weight!”
They both laughed. Kapil reached out and placed his hand on hers. She entwined her fingers with his and held his hand tight. A choked silence.
“Can we please go and have a cup of tea or something, I haven’t had lunch,” she asked after a while.
Kapil wondered why she’d skipped lunch and whether her husband would be expecting her, but he wasn’t curious enough to ask. As they walked to a quiet restaurant, Kapil frequented, he avoided touching her. A touch said too much.
As they were giving the order for snacks and tea, Sandhya’s mobile rang.
“Hi! How was your conference? ....umm…did you have lunch? ...Yes I’m fine. When will you return? …You’ll reach by dinner time tomorrow then? …I’ll be waiting for you…bye.”
“Shekhar’s gone for a conference to Chennai for a day. I stayed back.” Sandhya explained, even though she knew Kapil wasn’t interested in the details.
Then he asked her,
“Are you happy?”
She looked at him, a little irritated. Was he playing the professor again?
“What’s happiness?” she put her cup on the table, “I’ve nothing to complain about.” She paused and added, “I feel settled, secure now… that’s being happy, isn’t it? … Anyway, tell me about yourself.”
“Where do I begin?”
“Where we left perhaps?” she suggested tenderly, her face soft.
“After you left, I learnt what longing was – I became it,” he confessed, “I used to sometimes imagine…” he paused, looked into her eyes, and decided to continue, “that I would leave my body and go to you… So, I would think of you perhaps cooking, or gazing at the moon… I thought of myself as a vaporous soul, dissolving and melting into you. My subtle hands melting into yours, my heart becoming your heart beats, my lips and eyes diffused into yours. Every cell, every atom vibrating with yours till there were no two entities. I became you Sandhya, because there was no other way left that could quench. When that happened, I felt no more longing… Of course, it was just imagination.”
Sandhya had closed her eyes, tears hung on her lashes. She had felt him on occasions, almost jolted by feelings that engulfed her. Now she knew why.
“I still miss you.” he said
“Yes I know – we both miss each other,” her voice was heavy.
“Only it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
She looked at him. To anyone else this would have spelled indifference or rejection, but they knew each other too deeply. The air around them was warm and mellow, the silence soft.
“Do you have any regrets – about us?” she asked him.
“Regrets? God! no. But, I couldn’t understand my own feelings for a long time. The pain surprised me. I was horrified most by the thought that if I found it so difficult to let go, then my love had to be fake. I couldn’t accept that. It forced me into some house cleaning!”
She admired him more now, for emerging so clean. No blame, no malice, no regret, no expectation. In retrospect, it was surprising that a detached loner like him got caught in an emotional whirlpool… Hidden depths.
“Love happens, we don’t plan or seek it,” she mused.
“Yes, but when it goes…”
“It never goes Kapil - it never goes. It just gets clouded sometimes.”
It was there, now, moving in and out with their breath. The clouds had vapourized and they looked into each others eyes, drinking deep.
- Harvinder Kaur
(Published in New Woman magazine, August 2009)
