Unique Short Love Story – Perhaps in Another Lifetime
Unique Short Love Story – Perhaps in Another Lifetime
Photo credit: gracey from morguefile.com
My dearest Anu,
The past five years of knowing you have been the most crucial in my entire existence. Your companionship has brought a rare efflorescence to my cognizance.
Today you will be marrying Aryan, a man I respect and admire, a man I consider a perfect partner for you. I hope that in him you shall find the bliss and tranquility you truly deserve.
Anu, as much as I love you, we both know that our fates make it unachievable for us to seek togetherness.
Perhaps in another lifetime…
It seemed impossible for me to hold back my tears. No worries if anyone finds the tearful bride, there is an unquestionable assumption “ The poor girl must be missing her family”. An outright lie but useful all the same.
The ceremony is done away with and I am supposedly waiting for Aryan, my husband, perched on the bed in the bridal poise in ‘our’ bedroom for our ‘Wedding Night’ , which sounds like a sinister terminology at the moment.
I am awaiting my husband and crying my eyes out for the man I love. Love that seems as much unreal as it is real, Love that has no future, no likelihood of enduring beingness, for I am in love with a spirit.
I am in love with a spirit who was last alive in 1918. William Jasper, a portrait painter and a musician. Died at the age of 29, a young bachelor who lost his life to the epidemic outbreak of influenza in The great Britain.
I first learned about auto writing when I heard a paranormal fanatic friend of a room-mate explaining how it is done. I had commented, “ Seems like a good way to kill time for people in Asylum” .
One night in a state of drunken despair I sat down on my desk with a paper and pen. With trembling hands, I held the pen over the paper and concentrated with all my might. After 15 minutes, a very slow movement began and there appeared the words,
Hello Anamika, I am Jasper..
I shrieked in terror and flung the pen against the wall, succumbing to a hangover thereafter. The next morning I woke up in a state of disarray. Right in front of me was the desk and the paper. Slowly I got up, picked up the pen and sat down on the desk . Once again the pen began to move, but this time I was fascinated and thrilled at the movement.
Dear Anamika,
I apologize for the fright I caused you the previous night. I had no intention of startling you…….
And so began our companionship..
I was abandoned by my parents when I was a little six year old girl. They got divorced and left me with my grandmother who passed away five years back, another abandonment I dealt with. There were a lot of broken strings, a lot of anguish, and Jasper helped me fix them all. He became my Guardian Angel, as I gradually began to trust in him, I picked up all the dishevelled pieces and there was a rejuvenated confidence in my stride.
He reinstated my belief in God, in Love. “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”, he used to say. Slowly unknowingly, the intoxication of feelings began to devour my mind and I fell head first in love with him, and so did he..
The sound of the door opening awakened me from my reverie… In came Aryan, my newly wed husband. Ours was an arranged marriage, though Aryan and I are childhood friends. Our continued denial to marriage joined our fates and here we are thirty something and sharing a bedroom.
He looked up at me and smiled his usual cocky smile and I couldn’t help but smile back even with wet eyes and a now smudged make-up.
“You can fool everyone with your I-left-my-parents’-home melodrama, but I know better sweetheart” , he said with an annoying snarky tone.
“The lovely hassles of a childhood friendship”, I retorted, at which he chuckled.
I got up from the bed and staggered to where he was standing. Bloody lehenga, I thought.
“Aryan, I have to tell you something”, I stammered.
“Go on..”, He replied.
“I fell in love with someone, a while back. But we couldn’t stay together. I…It’s complicated..” I looked up at him, searching for astonishment in his warm brown eyes, but there came none.
“I kinda knew Anu. You didn’t tell me, but I knew. I know you pretty well sweety.”
He gently grasped my shoulders and said, “I lost my girl too, remember?”
I flashbacked to the hospital scene, watching Aryan break down in front of Swati’s lifeless body. Swati lost her life in a tragic car accident. I have never seen Aryan loose himself the way he did. To see my best friend being tortured by life’s callousness was a torture for me too and I shudder at the very memory.
“I lost Swati, and you lost your whosoever he is. We are in the same place right now and it’s absolutely perfect.”
Holding me tighter he continued, “Listen, we have been best buddies throughout our lives, and I expect nothing more than the continuance of our beautiful friendship. Anu, I love you a lot and I am gonna take care of you, no matter what”, he finished with an intense look that bewildered me.
Incapable of words, I threw my arms around him, and we embraced in the sweetness of that moment. I relaxed for the first time in the entire day.
“Better a loyal dog than any other dog, huh?” I teased, and we laughed together in peace.
Then, I heard the distant toll of temple bells, as if amplified for my ears in that second. I was enchanted by the divine music, as I recalled Jasper’s final words..
Perhaps in another lifetime we will find each other. But today, there will be a moment when I will be with you, you shall feel my presence around you, a blessing in music for your new life.
With Love,
Jasper
I buried my face in Aryan’s shoulder. Crying uncontrollably, I whispered, “Thank you Jasper, Perhaps in another lifetime….”
__END__
