Third letter to heaven

It has been three long , painful,dreary years since you left but it is not even three small minutes when you are not missed . Braving the world, which is an entirely different one without you…. It is  still unthinkable and impossible to acclimate to a life without your best friend, loving companion, soulmate.   Losing you is having lost myself in the milling crowd…….

With hobbled legs and lurching feet, I have been moving on ,living a life on your behalf too, doing things that would have made you happier,  attiring in outfits you would admire, cooking dishes that would have tingled your palate and hitting roads you would have loved to tread upon.   But all this  is with an aura of false gaiety  and fake  normal semblance….It tugs at my heart strings when I have to use so much of ‘ would have  and could have’ . Wish destiny was not so cruel and brutal to us.

 

The third year without you embarked with Yagnopavit  function of our Sonny boy. As we  both had planned long back that we would  perform it  at  Zyestha Mata temple  in Srinagar, so was it done amidst the dense deodars and Chinars  at the  sacred foot of Zabarwan hills , a picturesque and a pious destination  , but the absence of a father and a husband whose presence was a sine qua non for the ritual made it a sombre and insipid one. Wish the hands slinging the yellow thread across his shoulders were yours and the nimble fingers braiding my hair with  bedecked thread were yours 

 

Your nephew got hitched  and there  were celebrations lasting over a week,  for that jolt of a proud chachi … I participated in all functions  and staying on fleek.. I blinked away my tears and kept conjuring how you would have grooved to the catchy Bhangra which you were very adept at,  I dressed myself  to nines , being the better half of  a suave , charismatic and handsome person with rich sartorial taste, could not settle for anything shoddy and dull.  … ..

 Year 2023 was always looked forward to…as it was a year our marital life would complete 25 years, but the silver was like asking for a moon,  the journey to silver was smothered and stifled three years  ago.. I remember , after reading Dan Brown’s ‘ The da vinci code’ I was swept off the feet by the enigma of France, I asked  for a  trip to Paris on our silver anniversary , as I wanted to see the Louvre  museum and  like a gentleman you promised me  this potential gift   ….But is Life really  obliged to full fill all our cherished dreams and promises ?.. Nay!

I did celebrate our silver anniversary accompanied by our memories  , at Dalhousie, the place from where we started  our marital journey  together in April 98.  I visited the same hotel, same cafeteria ‘s restaurant s, spots we had been to, revisiting the nostalgic  moments.  Sipped two glasses of coke at the same place in Khajjiar and two cups of hot coffee  at the same hotel…  we went to twenty five years back.   The ones I sipped on your behalf tasted sweeter despite the brackishness  caused by tears  rolling down my raddled face. Got myself clicked  sitting on the same kerb at Chamera… like the one clicked twenty five years back  ! Time almost rolled back and I was transported to the happy days  , I knew I will never again have you by my side , I am so darn alone……!   but that did not stop me from  missing you, remembering you, honouring you, celebrating you  and  loving you. 

Life has been oscillating , bobbing up and down between After You and Before you   like those relegated to history… it is but for a jigsaw puzzle with smithreens of memories, the ones we created and the ones we could have crafted but for the diabolic ploy of fate..

  

I have been attending functions, retirement parties, birthdays , minications..but all gatherings are  a reminder of a gnawing overwhelming loneliness  , an intertwining of solitariness , despair and anguish… Am travelling a lot, and can only imagine you being all ears for my travelogue and write ups . But things work out the way they are meant to be…

Your sight, sound and smell surrounds me everywhere , everytime, can not step back on the shifting sands of time but shall seek you for a hundred life times…