Remembering Your Unforgettable Love

By

To a dead husband and my eternal love,

Who said time-travel has to be utterly physical in nature? I time-travel into your memories every day. Your memories are paper boats I can step into, row and glide in.

Each morning I travel to the damp porch of the earth, where naked sand is kissed voluptuously by the Dal Lake. The otherwise still water has developed small tremors in the fresh morning breeze, as if the lake was a young child playing joyously in its cradle after waking up from a complete sleep. I look at the warm boat that topples mildly in the lake; the boat seemed warm because it resembled the moon-shaped vessel in which Ammi served curry last night. Curry with thick-spiced Murgh-Masala. The delicious dinner was bland and colorless against my loveless tongue, it immediately took me back to that sunny afternoon where in the wait of your belated letter, I sat and learnt the traditional recipe of the dish from my mother, just so that I could get you to taste its beauty when you returned home. You loved it when I cooked.

I step into this boat dutifully each day, just before dawn is about to crack, when the sky is that tricky color of purple and white that one can never paint. It is just that hour before sunrise, before the birds woke, when you used to turn in bed and sheepishly hum, and rising from sleep, put your arms around me and kiss me with all the love you contained.

I seat myself carefully but with ease, the daily practice has made my movements natural. I untie the boat from the hinge of consciousness and I pick up the oars, and sail away, melodiously traversing this sea of memories, love, loss, pain, or alternatively, a simple sea of tears.

I softly row my way to the other shore, the land of dreams…where I can lose myself indefinitely, where the vagaries of time do not trouble me, where I can think of you and remember you without guilt, sorrow or ridicule.

Where you and I are one again – if not in soul, then in memory. I am taken back to the first day I met you, the snow-capped hills and the beautiful valley icy, the memory is pungent within me till date. I remember the subtle chase in our eyes, our subsequent interaction when I asked you for directions, and the many boat-trips in the Dal that you consequently took me on, on shikaras of happiness.

Sometimes I think, ever since that day, I have been sailing the same sea, while time and space have transcended and reshaped around me incessantly. To and from, tortuously.

I had decided to leave everything back at home and settle into this paradise only because the immensity and unbounded fearlessness of your love made me stay, provoked me to love you back, make you half as happy as you had the capacity to make me, to free you from all unprecedented sorrows, and forthcoming pain. My love was traditional, but complete.

It pains me to remember you, to memorialize your laughter and your love. But what choice do I have? I cannot afford to forget you or your memories, they keep me alive.

I would have forgotten you if you were simply a man I loved. But you had washed into my world like a storm; to me, you had become love. And as you will understand, it is easy to live without the specter who stole your heart, but it is impossible to live without your very heart.

This sea that I travel is dark, Janum. And this land is villainy. But I must undertake this journey. With your silver hand in mine, as thin as mist, as warm as the sun, I must travel through time to reach your memories, because that is what true love is – unforgettable, forgiving, and lovely.