The young, good looking girl sat alone, next to the windows, at the next table across from the middle-aged man. She was obviously looking forward to being alone and talking to someone on mobile phone. She seemed excited and happy as she spoke with someone. She kept tossing her head to get her hair back. There was an animated and energetic expression and she seemed eager to make a good impression on the unseen person at the other end of the line.
"Just hold on a minute! The waiter is here," she said smiling in a friendly conspirational tone and instinctively cupped her hand over the microphone on her mobile phone as the waiter came over.
"Do you need a minute, Miss?" the waiter asked.
"No! I'll order quickly. A coffee latte, tall and the sandwich of the day and chicken soup. Can you bring some water please?," she said quickly, in a brisk tone, obviously eager to get back on the phone.
"Got it, Miss. - Coffee latte, sandwich of the day, chicken soup and water. I will not disturb you as I bring it all in," said the waiter smiling. He then turned to the man who was sitting smiling watching this.
"Can I get anything else for you, Sir?" he asked in a whisper that was just loud enough, as the girl went back to her conversation on the phone.
"Oh! You heard my order?!! I am at this restaurant, OK? Yes, the one across from the park. You remember it? Aaawww! Yes, I miss those days too..." the girl went on, lost to everyone around her. She laughed and giggled nervously.
The middle-aged man asked for some tea as he continued eating. He looked around at the restaurant that was now less than half-full. It was not very popular with the late-lunch crowd.
He could hear the chatter from all around and the girl in front of him was the closest and the loudest. He focussed on his food and avoided staring at anyone. His gaze wandered over to the street outside the windows and the people walking by. It was a bright, sunny afternoon on a winter day, the breeze was cold and blowing. People huddled close together or pulled their coats around them tighter.
Soon the waiter came, silently served him and the girl across from him and went away. She seemed to have quietened down and was looking out the windows, turning herself quite sharply so that he could not see her face. She did not even say or nod a 'Thankyou' to the waiter. The middle-aged man however did thank the waiter and casually looked over at the girl. She seemed to be holding herself still with her face almost on the window, sitting twisted in her chair. She was strangely silent and seemed to be nodding and making muffled sounds that sounded like 'Yes. Yes. I understand. Ok. I understand. I'm sorry..."
She sat like that for an unusually long time. He realized something was wrong. She took out a tissue from her handbag, still facing the window. She dabbed her eyes. Covered her face for a few moments, apparently trying hard to compose herself and then slowly turned around to face her food. She was now facing him. Her eyes and nose were red and smudged with the wetness of tears. She breathed in slowly and deeply trying to control herself, looking intensely at her food and trying avoid his gaze.
He first tried to twist slightly as he sat, to look to his side, away from her. She sensed his courtesy and made an effort to eat. As she chewed she kept looking towards the windows and tears seemed to slowly stream down, despite her best efforts. She seemed ot give up eating and rested her head against the window. The waiter passing by looked at the man and her and raised an eyebrow.
"Shh!" he softly signalled the waiter to let her be and not to intrude. She might recover herself and just needed time, he reckoned. He continued to finish his food and drank his tea.
Suddenly, the sound of a sob escaped the young lady as her shoulders shook and she shuddered.
"Are you OK, Bete ?" asked the middle-aged man.
She turned and looked at him with his avuncular, concerned expression. His addressing her as 'Bete' (Child) opened the floodgates. Her own father was no more. She just sobbed silently but more intensely for a few seconds.
"That is OK, cry if you feel like. Take your time to get over it. You must be hurting," he said quietly in an understanding tone.
His tone and manner calmed her down. It was what her own father would have said to her. Only she would have been hugging him and he would be comforting her. He had passed away less than an year ago. She looked up into the eyes of the man, and she saw a father's look.
"I am upset and sad now, but I will be OK, Uncle. Thank you for your concern,. Sorry for the drama. I am not usually like this" she said, also a bit wary of being too open with strangers.
"Well, that is good. Take your time and don't worry about us. It must be something serious enough. We are all humans here and will understand," he said kindly. He reminded so much of her own father in his manner.
She felt the spirit of her father in this man and suddenly, she started to feel better, atleast for having someone like him around at this moment.
"Uncle, you sound just like my father used to," she said.
"Well, I hope he was as good a man as I like to think I am," he said smiling.
"Oh Yes! You remind me of him a lot. He passed away last year. I miss him terribly sometimes," she said.
"Well, I am father too. I hope whatever you are facing now is something that does not bring you down forever. It appears to be a shock to you. Life occasionally does such things to us. I hope, at some point, you will go back being like you were as you came in here," said the man, smiling kindly.
"My father too used to smile even as we shared sad news," she said.
"One can feel devastated and grief and still have a smile on the face. It does not mean we feel any less. Each of us is different. I hope whatever bad news you had does not break you," he said.
It dawned on the girl that this man was not nosy and was not probing into her affairs, only talking generally and still comforting her but still getting to the core of the issue. He was obviously aware of her concerns about a stranger.
She started to wipe her tears away and composed herself to begin eating. The man got up, went to the cash register and came back with a box of tissues and discreetly set it next to her within reach. He went back to his seat and sipped his tea.
As she finished eating, she looked at him, not staring at her but still calm and unperturbed finishing his food. He sensed her looking at him and then looked up.
"Are you feeling better? You seem more in control now. Good!" he said.
"Thank you Uncle, for being here," she said.
"Oh, you don't have to thank me, Beta," he said, "One day, you will be there for others. I did nothing but just listen to you."
Still, he was not nosy.
She suddenly decided to talk more to this man who seemed to be just the kind of person she needed to talk to. So what if he was a stranger? Perhaps that was the kind of person she needed. He seemed thoughtful and considerate to her.
"Uncle, can I share something with you, in confidence? You have lived a lot longer than I have and I want to know if you have ever dealt with something like I have to now. If so, how did you?" she asked, she was obviously intelligent and quite rational even when dealing with strong emotions.
"Why, sure, young lady, if you feel like it. Go ahead, I promise you it will just be between us, but it will be so only if you come across to my table and sit closer so that you can speak softly and I can still hear you. My hearing is going slowly. If you talk from there, everyone will hear you too," he said smiling.
The young woman got up, walked over to his table and sat across from him. The waiter came to clear up her table.
"Would you like something else to drink? A juice perhaps? If you don't want to have too much coffee?" he asked.
"Why, thank you!" she said.
The waiter took the additional order and went away.
"Uncle, I just spoke to a friend I have not seen or spoken to for five years. His family moved when we were in high school and we lost contact. He was my first love. I have long felt we are soul mates. We just got in touch again through a mutual friend today. I had carried him in my heart for a long time and hoped we would meet again someday. I just spoke to him. Apparently, he too cared for me and used to think about me a lot. I was so excited and happy to hear that before he gave me the bad news. He got married a couple of months ago. He does love his wife and is committed to her. If he were not married, he says honestly that he would have no one else in his mind but me," the young girl's voice cracked again as she said it out.
It was obvious fate had dished out a great disappointment to her.
"Oh!! It must be a great disappointment! You surely must be hurting a lot. What do you think you will do now?" the man asked, observing her closely.
"Oh! I surely do not want to see him unhappy. I think he has married someone who loves him and someone he loves. I don't want to ever be the cause to break them up. I wish them well even though my heart is crushed. I don't know how I will get through life in the future. I cannot imagine anyone else for me, especially after knowing that he too had loved me from a distance. Only both of us did nothing about it. It is the cruelty of fate. I suppose I would not have felt so miserable if I had never happened to get in touch with him again and hear him say he loves me too," she said.
"What did that young man say? How does he feel about his future?" the man asked.
"He said he loved me. He also loves his wife. Yes, he says he feels differently about the two of us. He says he could never consider leaving her after honestly committing to her, even if it were not for the fact that he is about to become a father. There is something he said just before he hung up that haunts me. I suppose he said it to make me feel better, but I think he was honest about it," the young woman looked in such pain that the man's heart could feel it.
"What did he say, Beta?" he asked with a concerned expression.
"He said we could be together, if I wanted, 'Agle Janam Mein' (In our next lives)!" saying which the young girl again broke down.
"What? Seriously?!!' the middle-aged man was suddenly quite animated and his voice was louder than he wished. The waiters and a few other patrons looked at him oddly.
"Sorry! I could not control myself," he told the young woman, softly now, "Did he say 'Agle Janam' for sure?"
"Yes, he did!" she replied.
"Now, how do you feel about that? Seriously?" he asked, now more in control and in a quiet voice.
"Of course, I would like that, but right now, I don't know how I can manage to get through this lifetime or wait patiently for the next," she said plaintively, she was trying hard to calm herself.
"I suppose you have not yet had the time to think about this, you have only just heard the news. It is all emotions, all honest of course, coming out. You are still young and while your feelings are strong and true, have you considered the possibility that you might meet someone else who you will love so much that you might want your next lifetime also to be with that person?" asked the man, almost teasingly and smiling.
"I suppose so. But you know, I could not imagine anyone I could love more. I cannot imagine anyone more perfect for me than this one who got away this time. It is cruel fate! Why the next lifetime?!!" she said feelingly.
"Well, there is a difference between your friend saying it and you saying it now because, he is already married, committed and loves the person he is with. He still obviously loves you and he probably has a better idea of who he would like to be with in the next lifetime. His continuing loyalty to his wife means that he loves and respects her too and he wants a good life with her now. His love for you takes nothing away from his love for her and vice-versa. If he has a good life with her, it will become harder and harder for him to let go of her in the next lifetime, but he could still manage it without any hard feelings," the man said watching the young woman's face intently.
"Well, I have always looked forward to living a full life. I just can't seem to wait to start my life with him, even if it is the next lifetime. But I suppose I have get through this one somehow. I don't want to make this lifetime a sob story and just a waste of time. I also want him to have a full happy life with his wife and kid. I don't want our love to be at someone else's expense. What can I do? What do you think? How should I take this and move on?" the girl was full of questions.
"Well, since you asked, I can tell you I have faced something like this in my life too, in this lifetime. It is your talk of the next lifetime that caught my interest," said the man with a smile on his face and a sudden sombre expression.
"Did you also lose a soulmate, a person you most wanted to be with?" she asked.
"Yes, I too lost mine, to another man," he said.
"Uncle, it is OK if you don't want to tell me what happened, but can I ask how you dealt with it?" the young woman was now curious.
"No, I don't mind sharing with you as you have with me. By the way, I was married and I have grown-up children. I am single now. The love of my life is a lady who is married and has children of her own. We grew up in times when there was no culture of dating. We were young, liked each other a lot and did not know how to express it or do much about it. We too grew up, moved away from each other and lost contact with each other for a while. When we met many years later, we were both married to different people. We became friends once again and it was then that our love grew to what it is now. We are both certain that we want to be with each other in the next lifetime. We would not even want to bother looking for someone else. Fate and circumstances have made us decide to let things be the way they are in this lifetime. We too do not want to be together at the expense of others' happiness and peace of mind. We do not want to upset the children, her husband (a very decent fellow I might add) and all our families. Our love for each other is never in doubt. We both are fortunate in that we could atleast let each other know our feelings and also hear their feelings first hand," said the man, slowly.
"So how do you go through life? Are you happy? How do you manage?" asked the young woman.
"Well, we each carry on with our lives, doing the best we can. We find happiness in so many other things too - our children, our interests and life in general. Yes, there is an intense longing sometimes. We then remind ourselves of our pact that we made at our special temple," he said.
"What pact and temple?" the young woman asked curious.
"There is a temple called "Agle Janam Ke Meeth Mandir" (The 'Mate of the Next Lifetime' Temple). It is a lovely place just out of town. Couples can go there to make a pact to be together for the next lifetime! Once it is done by both, it is supposedly guaranteed! You can then go back to living your present lifetime to the full!" said the man, smiling mysteriously and mischievously.
The young woman looked at him with incredulous eyes! She could not believe anything like this existed or that this rational looking man would believe in such. She looked at him intently and he seemed to have dealt with his situation in a reasonable fashion that left him looking sincere, smiling and happy enough.
"You see, we have a temple and ritual for all human conditions, dilemmas and situations in our culture. Such is the nature of our spirituality in this land. It is very practical if looked at in its true perspective," said the middle-aged man and gave her directions to this temple.
"I will visit this temple," she said.
"I hope you lead a good, full life this time around too. Feel free to write or talk to me anytime. You are welcome to visit me too. You might get along well with my children who are closer in age to you," said the man.
The young woman and the man chatted for a while longer. She thanked him and he too conveyed his appreciation for her courage in asking, talking and listening to a stranger. They parted exchanging salutations and blessings, in addition to each others' contact details.
Copyright (c) Kannan Narayanamurthy 2016
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