An excerpt from my novel: SUNSHINE ABOVE THE SHILLONG PEAK:- ................................ ............................................. ........... “How do you plan to sleep Rohan?” she asked. She had watched him doing all the arrangement. She moved about six inches from the edge. “I’ll sleep but sitting beside you, touching your face and head.” Nina knew what he meant and wanted to agree with him. She heaved a sigh of tiredness and physical relief. Rohan stroked her hair. He encircled her head on the pillow with his right arm, rest his face sideways near hers and kept his left arm on her body. “Tell me if you are uncomfortable,” asked Rohan. “When I was sick once in my childhood, my father checked my fever every hour and sat or slept beside me like you,” Nina said. “And you always walked with me in the palace lawn like you walked with your father in your home compound?” asked Rohan. “Yes, … … … how do you know?” asked Nina with a forlorn smile. “Every time we walked together on the slope, the grip of your hand over mine was as tight as a child makes on her father’s hand. Your hand took confidence in the hand that you held…. Nina. Every time you clutched my hand, I knew I would be the man in your life”. “Where did you learn all this? .. Oonhh.. See, I told you what about you?” asked Nina. “I knew in the manner you knew my desire to know your name on the first day we met, and you wrote on your note book and offered to me!” Nina smiled, her eyes half closed. Better than the sad smile she gave in the room earlier. She said, “Someone had sat on my seat that day. So I came in your row to sit. I think that was the only time when I sat in that row. You looked so innocent and handsome sitting and sleeping in the class. You looked even darker that day. I couldn’t concentrate on the lecture. I kept looking at you. Since you hardly talked to anyone in the class, I guessed you didn’t know anybody’s name. Nor mine.” After a pause she said again, “I think I fell for you that day but didn’t know.” “I fell in love with you that day; and I knew”, Rohan said, “And your coming to my row that day was divinely ordained, it seems, for the sake of our love. But I know you came once again. In my absence, when I didn’t come for two days. You had sat on my chair”. “Ooonhh..hun. Yes..” Nina whispered. He tapped his fore fingers gently on her head. He moved his face and kissed her chin. She must be very tired, He thought. Her eyes were closed. A simple smile played on her lips. An occasional shudder came on her cheeks sometime with a small, subdued sigh. It was a long night. Rohan slept intermittently. Rest of the night he saw her sleep. He was reminded of a Victorian novel in which the hero looks at his sleeping beloved. He didn’t like the comparison. His case ought to be unique, he thought. He then tried to rationalize. `Nina is one in the world as he is one in the world too. We two have our own selves; our own lives, and our own unity.’ He recalled his adolescent lessons of the Gita as expounded by a visiting sadhu in his home town. Complete merger of the soul with the supreme Spirit. Nina is not the Supreme Spirit, but, a spirit like me. What do you call this unity then? He asked himself and the ancient sadhu. Nina writhed a bit in her sleep. She took a turn towards the wall. He saw her ear that carried on its lobe a dot of glass. Some hair had fallen on her face. He put them back on her head. Glow on the lower sides of her forehead, above the temple, made her look like a fairy. Rohan was tangled in a mix up of sleep and the dream or the fancy, and an awakened sense that asked questions which revisit lovers in every epoch. It became complicated. He simplified the job by craning his neck and kissing Nina’s forehead. She didn’t move. She had gone off to sleep. A kind of sleep you’ll get when you have no question for tomorrow. He felt bit chilly. He put his arm below the quilt over her waist. His hand touched her covered belly. Nina’s hand moved in her sleep and touched his. She held his hand lightly. Rohan felt connected to Nina; and that ….. And that made a sense of unity that was possible. He got the answer. Large questions… battered queries … endlessly repeated on the circuitous quests of tortured lives, have all a simple answer. He rested his face behind hers. Her body fragrance filled his soul. Two hearts beat in unison in the room perched high in the corner of civilization, close to a haphazard burial ground that threw in the sky a sense of end with a hill beyond and stars above. Supine she lay in the shadow of love. Bowed he sat with her in the night…. Their bodies approached the edges of light. Love brightened in the flourished flame of dawn. The morning cracked. 24th April 1977. There weren’t many things to collect. Kids did that easily. Carol packed them in John Smith’s leather suitcase. Ma sat on the easy chair, smoking and thinking of her days in Chaama and McCluskieganj, an exclusive Anglo Indian town... or the village... a hamlet of the past.. A hoary obelisk in the tribal field. She raised her eyes from the cracked floor, slowly to the peak of the tree. And then to the sky as if to pray. Sun threw its crimson on the rims of clouds. Carnations in the sky.
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 11:46:39 +0000
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