Beyond Love

Beyond Love

Heart of stone. A stony heart. You develop a stony heart when loneliness is a passion rather than an obsession. As the morning light wafts through the sweet odour of the night, it was in these thoughts that he was lost in. Yet a perfect day for a walk, he thinks. Down the stairs. Through the narrow streets. The faces seem familiar. He has seen them almost everyday during his regular walks. He doesn’t speak to them. He never has. They think the old man has a heart of stone. A stony heart. He smiles at the thought of it. He looks at them and imagines how one day they will transform into him. More than that how he yearns for their transformation. Nobody to talk to, nobody to share nothingness with. And when you do talk, you receive sympathy. More than being sad, its disheartening when people know you are sad. I am not sad, he repeats it and believes in it.

Through the wide streets. In front of the temple. He tries not to look at the temple. He pretends not to hear the gong. It’s always the same. He is not an atheist, he thinks. Perhaps he is afraid of god. That god knows too much. More than he could ever, even about his own life.

The grocery shop. The departmental store. The medical shop. The orphanage. He pauses to take a look at the orphanage. It reminds him of something he can’t remember. Probably, his life without love. The second grocery shop. The cake shop. The crossroad. As usual, he doesn’t go beyond the crossroad. The cake shop. The second grocery shop. The orphanage. The wail of a baby.

It was not a mystery when he saw the baby lying in front of the orphanage gate. But it sure was a mystery when he picked up the baby and decided to take it home. Maybe it reminded him of his own lost child, or the night he threatened to kill his wife and child with that long knife in his cupboard or that day when they simply left him alone, vanished from his story, like forgotten characters.

Wide streets, narrow streets and sweet lonely home. He didn’t remember any of them. Just the face of the baby and her melodious-to-his-ear wail.

This is your home, our home, he tells her. I am your father, you can call me ‘papa’. Of course, you cannot speak now but you will soon. Someday you will even walk which is how I brought you home. That’s when you are around one year old. Ya, I will celebrate your first birthday with the best cake in the town. You can’t eat a cake now because you don’t have a tooth. But even without them you have a sweet smile. That’s due to your lips. You can kiss me with those. People kiss each other to express love. Love is…..

Words flowed out from long and slow. Today, he just wanted to speak up. To let go all that had been in containment for so long.

…..and then you will marry that guy. You will probably cry when you’ll leave me which is what you are doing right now not because you are leaving but you are hungry. Okay, drink this. See, it feels better. You could still come to me during some holidays and we could sit on that park bench and talk about our old memories.

Suddenly he stops. Fear grips him. He remembers it. The simplest truth yet the most denied, the mortality of human life. He acknowledges that his surrealist wishes could simply not exist within the given frame of this monstrous time. How many more years did he have? What after that? Something within him, perhaps his love for her, coerced him not to think of ‘after that’ but absorb what life was so generously offering. He loved her so much that he just wanted her till he lived. But what made him decide what he decided was something beyond love.

Through the narrow streets. He could not let her daughter suffer. Wide streets. Not again. Beyond love.

The orphanage. You’ll do fine, he tells her. He kisses her forehead, puts her down, rings the bell and walks away. What exists beyond love is still love where the boundaries of self dissolve to embrace our need for flowing together. On the way back, he stops at the temple. ‘thank you for everything’ he thanks god not really knowing what he was thanking for. Back to sweet lonely home. Heart of stone. A stony heart. Yet irrigated by canals of love.