“Did you say she left something for me?” His voice quivered.
She nodded. “Letters”
“Letters? She never wrote me!”
“Letters which she never posted. I don’t have them with me at the moment. I simply came to confirm your identity. Her granddaughter will hand them to you.”
“Letters from Tara… How I’ve longed for one from her. From that first moment I saw her, at her house, I knew that I had found my soul-mate. Age didn’t matter, there was only one woman I would ever love in my life. It was Tara. And it was the same for her. Time and again she would ask me to leave, but I managed to convince her that there was a future for us. Specially after my graduation and as I pursued a career in engineering, I tried to make her see reason. And she accepted for a while. But though she knew it deep in her heart that we were meant to be together, she wouldn’t accept my marriage proposal. She was petrified that she had let it go that far, held herself responsible for encouraging me. She couldn’t see that I was beyond encouragement. I loved her far too much and her only offence was not to let me into her life, as I wished. But her priority was her children and the dread of other’s comments. I told her I didn’t care, but she was determined. After the proposal, she asked me to leave. She made me promise never to contact her again. I tried once or twice, but each time she got so agitated that I finally decided to leave her alone. She promised me that when she needed me, she would get in touch with me. I’ve been waiting all these years, in the dear hope that she would see sense and that we could be together again. And now it’s too late.” His voice shook with an emotion he had no power to control.
“She wrote about five letters to you. There may have been more, but we never found them. She wrote to you immediately after your graduation and whenever she wanted you to leave but didn’t have the courage to tell you so to your face.”
“Courage? Tara had plenty of courage. She managed to reject me several times. Perhaps she succeeded, that’s why she never sent me those letters!”
“And later, she really did wish to send you the letters but she didn’t have your address. That’s why we’ve been trying to locate you.”
“She wanted to meet me?” Tears sprang up in his eyes again. “I wish I hadn’t listened to her! I should have just stormed into her house, brushed aside her protests, and swept her away! I wish I hadn’t wasted our lives and our love” Asit covered his face with his hands as regret ravaged his soul.
Sonia watch helplessly, empathizing with his powerful distress and heartache. Love was a supreme emotion, an essence of life, a vital flame, a throbbing energy, an elixir. But the hold of love over the heart, body, and mind was terrifying!
Suddenly he looked up. “Can you come with me?”
Without awaiting a response, he rose and began striding towards a car. Sonia hastened after him, feeling as if she was caught in a tidal wave. She slid into the passenger seat of the car and he edged it out of the parking and onto Marine Drive - a street which swept all along the sea like a necklace. Night had fallen and the illuminated street lamps curved with the road like jewels.
Within minutes, Asit turned into another parking lot, leading her into an elevator up to the tenth floor. Fishing into his pocket, he took out a key and inserted it into the lock, swinging the door open.
“My home and studio!” he announced, brusquely.
He flicked the button and a row of lights in the false ceiling bathed the long hall with brilliant lights. Sonia gasped. Directly opposite her, a window covered a whole wall, overlooking the Arabian Sea and the twinkling lights of Mumbai.
“Wow! What a view” she remarked spontaneously.
“Beautiful, isn’t it? But certainly no more beautiful than this!” He walked forward, switching on lights as he did so. Sonia stared. Life-size, black-and-white photographs of a beautiful woman covered the wall. Tara. As Sonia moved from photo to photo, admiring the beauty of the woman captured by an expert cameraman’s lens, her eyes grew misty. Then she turned to face Asit. He was staring at a close-up of Tara, who seemed to be smiling straight at him.
“You still love her, don’t you?” she asked, almost in a whisper.
“I will always love her, till my heart stops feeling and beating.”
“You never married?”
“I was married to Tara in thought and soul. There was no place for any other woman but her. If only she had seen it. If only…” He choked, stumbling into a chair.
Sonia felt her heart fill with sadness. For equations gone wrong, for exhausted love, for time which pounds on regardless of life or death. For witnessing the debacle of a great sacrifice…
Devika hugged Sonia warmly, enveloping her in the folds of her designer, mango-yellow Salwar Kameez. “Thank you so much, Sonia, you have no idea what this means to me!”
“I believe I do.” Sonia smiled. “And you don’t need to thank me. I’ve learnt a lot from this whole experience, to say the least. Now you better hurry and contact Asit. He is eagerly awaiting your call.”
“I will! Thank you again, Sonia. I shall be leaving for Mumbai immediately, so you and I may not meet on Christmas. I hope you have a wonderful holiday. And a very great New Year!”
“Same to you!”
Sonia felt deep contentment as Devika left. She relaxed in her chair, closing her eyes to appreciate the inner peace. It had been a while since she experienced this sense of accomplishment. Feelings of incompletion and of not having done her best were usually tagged to the
