It was like two shores separated by the river of life.
His shore was tangled with the clutter of technology, science, equations, and rules, while hers flourished, untamed yet graceful—lush with greenery, delicate flowers, poetry, sculptures, and a perpetual, whispering melody drifting through the breeze. His shy, reserved, and introverted nature made him look at her shore with admiration; she radiated confidence and openness, effortlessly connecting with everyone and everything around her.
From his shore, he would gaze across the river, drawn to her world, not knowing whether he wished to be a friend, a lover, or simply a silent admirer. He had woven an invisible yet enduring bond, a one-way connection between their two worlds, stealing glimpses of her shore, quietly traveling in tiny boats of social media. Whenever he neared her side, a profound sense of fulfillment filled him, as though he could spend a lifetime basking in her essence.
Over the years, he transformed his own shore, inspired by hers—it became a place of songs, poems, and sculptures, each created with love for her. He sent flowers and bouquets of songs drifting her way, but no response ever returned. She never acknowledged his presence or the devotion he carried. As time passed, the distance between the two shores grew wider. In desperation, he made countless efforts, hoping to bridge the gap, expressing his feelings quietly, persistently, and sometimes even openly and intensely. In the middle of the river lay a small shoal, a tiny plant of hope that he watched and nurtured, longing for it to bridge their worlds.
Years of waiting brought both anticipation and despair. Then, one day, a beckoning sound floated from her shore, stirring a new hope in him. He built a boat adorned with his finest flowers and prepared to cross, eager to glimpse her world once more. But as he approached, he found her shore in disarray—the statues broken, flowers scattered, a solemn silence in the air. He called her name, but there was no answer. Navigating his boat through a dense thicket, he finally saw her, standing alone, clutching a shattered statue of Buddha in her hands.
In that hidden space, he stumbled upon the truth of her heart - a secret she had kept close, guarded in silence. Since her teenage years, she had harbored a complicated story of her own. The Buddha statue was a symbol of this love, a dream so deep it had consumed her, blinding her to reality around her. Her world had always revolved around her dream, as intense and unrequited as his own feelings had been. His own years of longing seemed small in comparison to her decades-long love.
He watched her, wanting to reach out, to offer solace, but her unresponsiveness and ignorance caused him great pain. He realized, painfully, that the beckoning sound was not for him. He had always known he was never a part of her dreams, but what was even more disheartening was that he could never really be part of her reality; probably, he had never existed in her world.
Quietly, he withdrew to his shore, leaving behind his boat on her shore, filled with a carpet of red and white roses. As an introvert, he felt that solitude was perhaps the only balm for such wounds, a way to process and reflect. He hoped time would heal her wounds, that one day she might return to her shore with a smile. He hoped she would walk the carpet he left behind, if she ever wished to, or at least pick white roses to acknowledge his existence. Yet, before that day came, a fierce wave—a tsunami—swept down the river, engulfing everything: the shoal, the withered plant, the boat, his shore, and hers. He saw her cast away the broken Buddha statue, surrendering it to the torrent before she herself embraced the flood, merging into the arms of a new and unknown figure.
Left devastated, he found his beliefs and understanding of her shattered, leaving him adrift, questioning whether he had ever truly known her. Still, he gathered what remained of his heart and built a final, beautiful garden on his shore—a garden meant for her, in case she ever came to visit and saw his love laid bare. A garden woven with poems of all the emotions he experienced. A garden that would be his only tether left to yesterday.
With that, he left the shore, and boats, leaving the river to flow on, carrying their stories with it...
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Decades had passed. He had built his own life, forging new paths and finding his share of happiness. The lingering ache of unresolved questions remained, and the need for closure would occasionally resurface, but he had, for the most part, moved on. Yet, in the quiet corners of his mind, he held on to that distant hope—an unspoken longing to know if she had ever visited the garden of poems he had built for her. This garden on his shore, filled with verses and memories, was his last tie to that old chapter. He would occasionally wander through it, searching for any sign that she might have come, some small acknowledgment of his love, a gesture that might finally offer the closure he sought.
For so many years, it seemed she had never visited. There was no sign, no faint impression of her footsteps, nothing to suggest she had even remembered the garden still stood there, untouched by time but weathered by longing. He wondered if she had ever thought to look back at the place they had once shared across the river’s divide. Had she, in fact, abandoned not only his shore but her own, swept away by the tidal wave of the past without a single glance behind?
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Now, after decades of waiting, he found traces—elusive, hazy, almost illusory—suggesting she had visited her shore, even if only briefly. He noticed an image, an echo of her standing where she used to be, lost in thought, gazing toward her Buddha as she once did in her secret sanctuary. But what does it mean? Has she come merely to rekindle memories of her own shore, her own past? Or was there a chance, however faint, that her presence there might hold some connection to his garden?
All these years, he had watched both shores, and he was certain her shore had been left abandoned all these years, the statues broken, the flowers withered, an untouched landscape of the past including his deserted boat on her shore. But now her image had appeared as if cast from memory onto her shore, startlingly vivid and impossible to ignore. A part of him insisted he couldn’t let it pass unacknowledged. In those faint signs, he sees the possibility of a final answer, a closure he had dreamed of yet never dared to hope for after so long.
Could her presence signal something he long desired? Has she, perhaps, glimpsed the garden he had kept alive, a shrine to his quiet devotion? Was this a hint that he had, in some way, existed in her memory, even if only as an insignificant part of her past reality?
A single footstep in his garden, a whisper of her acknowledgment, would mean the world to him—closing chapters of endless questions and gently releasing the last tether…
- नरेन्द्र सिंह [06/11/2024]
