We age, our feelings don’t
Shaadaab S. Bakht
Shaadaab S. Bakht, who worked for famous Indian dailies The Telegraph, The Pioneer, The Sentinel and wrote political commentaries for Tehelka.com, is Gulf Today’s Executive Editor.
- 07 Apr 2022
We age, our feelings, our dreams don’t. They merely slip into hibernation under the enormous burden of circumstances, which are such a regrettable corollary to human existence. My friend just experienced what we are discussing.
Let’s go back in years.
It was December. It was cold and foggy. But foggy weren’t their feelings. The dewdrops were in a state of free play as their wishes played throbbing petals.
In minutes, they found their way to exhilarating privacy, not absolute, and after coffee they decided to take a walk to the world where unalloyed pleasure plays sovereign and where the material world never intervenes.
And there began his deep and long association with hope.
But while the exercise was on they had completely forgotten that life is invincible and heartless and wallows, rightly or wrongly, in playing the jealous marauder.
And there began his deep and long association with hope.
Anyway, they walked for miles, they enjoyed the shades of trees. Time and again they stumbled, they grimaced, but they refused to be stopped by a universe which revels in bullying and where pure and lavish desire loses out to social mores, where the natural are often noosed for permitting the heart to make its choice and where demeanour matters more than concrete action. They intensely battled man-made values to remain alive and realise their dreams.
But, as discussed, a time came when life decided to interrupt and his passion-packed swagger degenerated into a trek. One evening the setting sun didn’t silhouette their togetherness. It left it invisible. By the way the restaurant where they went regularly for coffee was called Utopia.
They then took their buses of need (some prefer the word commitment) in two different directions, but remained one at a level visible only to them. Then days turned to weeks, weeks to months, months to years and years to decades.
But love, like raindrops, never drowns. It always spreads. My friend discovered that days ago. He was waiting in a line to collect his baggage when he heard the routine words “excuse me.” But as he turned back, he didn’t know he was turning the clock back by decades. He simply froze, she simply froze and the moment froze. Decades of distance were bridged in minutes, that is unconditional fondness. They decided to meet. And they did. Nothing had changed. They beautifully rescripted their tale as the grammar of passion was as sound as it was on that winter morning.
