.........Magic.........

BETWEEN THEM
Part 63

Krish informed Shradha the night before he left... They planned the place and the time.... He had a whole day to while away before he could meet Shri....

He wondered why it was that he was feeling alternate pangs of guilt, excitement, anxiety and awkwardness... On the whole he summed it up as natural as he packed....

"I just wish that I was there with you when you meet her.... But then I realize it be better that you two meet each other alone... " Kamala smiled at him as he left.... She had promised him that she would take care of explaining everything to people back at home...

He smiled... And as he walked out to the car, Kamala looked up at the skies, hoping that it all turned out fine.... for all of them...


Shradha managed to convince Mythili about it all.... She even arranged a call between Mythili and Kamala, who promised that it was going to shape up well this time...

It was when Shradha spoke to Shriya that she kept pausing and minding her words.... If anything slipped, then she knew it would all be lost...

"Hey... please.... Come on.... You know the place right? We were there a couple of years back.... Come with us Shri... You will love the change..."

"Why should I be coming there when you and Hemanth are going to have a nice time... Keep to yourselves and relax.... Besides, Hemanth might get fed up having me tagging along with you two love-birds...."

Shradha managed what she guessed was a convincing laugh.... "He won't ... And you know what... He has some stuff to do... Some deal to make with some client... So am going to be alone anyway and you need a change of scene..... "

"Hey... Get Hemanth to talk to me... What does he think of it all? Of you?.... You are going to be some kind of secondary interest in the whole vacation eh? He needs some telling.... Deal eh? Ask him to put all that stuff for later....."

"No worries... He will finish it up within a couple of days.... Lets just hang out together... please Shri.... "

It took a whole lot of cajoling, reasoning and threatening before Shradha relaxed.... Shriya had agreed on one clause.... If she was to come, she would have to be left alone, so that she could spend time with herself and get out of the guilt of having intruded into their time together.....

Shradha smiled.... As though she had any other plans for her, other than leaving her alone.... almost alone.....



It was a short trip to the resort, by the East Coast Road, infamous for such small relaxation places, complete with the charm of the ocean in the foreground.....

Shriya insisted on a separate single bedroomed cottage for herself and they found her one that was smaller than the rest there.... It was on her insistence that they left her completely alone till lunch....

"Are your friends always this cranky?"

"Remember you too started out as my friend..." That silenced Hemanth.

Lunch passed with a kind of a calmness that was characteristic only of the sea....

"Know what Shradha.... There is something beautiful about this day.... I mean, look out at the sea.... There is something that it holds only to itself, na.... Something so beautiful that anyone can feel it, but very few revel in......"

Shradha looked at her in surprise.... If she was going to get even a wee bit sensitive, it would help a lot, particularly when Krish found his way down here....

Anyway, as Shriya maintained her silence through the rest of the day, there was no way of ever finding out if she was getting any the more soft within....



The evening lights had come up on the beach, though they were far and few in between... Shriya dragged her bare feet in the sand... They reflected the golden hues of the yellow lamps and took on a rather sand gold color themselves....

She moved further away down the beach... Reaching somewhere very close to the waters... Though not yet there.....

The evening sky was turning a deep blue, with clouds scattered everywhere and she suddenly wished that Shradha and Hemanth were here, but then Shradha had told her that they were hosting a small business meet in their cottage, and hence, here she was all alone....

There were almost no stars around..... Though the moon kept poking around from behind huge white gray clouds....

She had tried wishing on the stars a million times.... But maybe now....

She wished upon the moon.... "If it is really true that everything in this world has a meaning, including dreams and wants, visions and realities, make me realize it this night...." she paused, maybe that was asking for too much..." Or any night as eternal as this one."

She laughed aloud even as she finished.... Talk about being kiddish... If anything, she could rather have been a starry eyed fifteen year old for all that crap....

Maybe the same starry eyed fifteen year old that she had been whenever he passed across....

She winced... Why was her mind playing games with her? Or her heart? If he was meant to be forgotten, he was....

She turned on the loudspeaker in her ipod... It was some silly hindi song... Not that it mattered though.....


She spoke out aloud.... For a moment, imagining him somewhere deep within her memories....

"It's over, in case you did not still realize.... Or you do not still bother.... I am done with anything that is remotely related with you.... Someday, I wanted to tell you this... In person... But then it doesn't matter.... Goodbye Krish....." she paused and added as a quick afterthought.... "Just keep getting the hell out of my life... I don't want to run into you, with some future wife and kids of yours around.... Make sure we don't meet again.... "

That was kind of cheerful... Though she was sure she would never voice out expletives, absence did not mean nonexistence.......

She had not expected a reply though.....

"I am really sorry that I keep messing up things... And never seem to do what you expect of me...."

She gasped and turned around.... And looked up....


There are always these rare moments of magic....

It was one such moment now, there between them, as the sky and earth held suspended, she gazed at him, more in surprise than in shock.... The ipod had gone conveniently silent....

He smiled.... Once again the lopsided, three cornered grin.... And once again she wished that he wouldn't do that, for every resolve within her was on the verge of slipping into oblivion....

"Why are you here?" There was something remotely like anger in her voice....

"I just told you right.... I have this inane sense of missing out on what you really want at times that I mess up meetings."

"What kind of meetings? You call these stupid come-acrosses as meetings?"

"Not really stupid.... " he lowered his voice..."It was all planned."

"Planned? How the hell..... You mean Shradha?"

"I am in no way going to say it is Shradha.... I promised her I will not." he laughed...

"Oh... Stop it man.... And get out of this place..."

She turned away, toward the sea and started to walk down to it.... He caught her hand and followed...

She shrugged him away.... But remained silent as he stood by her at the waters...


They were a frothy white... Those waters....

"Know swimming?"

"I do not...."

"That is even better... I can teach you... Want to start? It is actually very simple..."

"I don't think I asked for a trainer...."

He was quiet... Curiosity got the better of her...

"How simple is it?"

"Very.... The strokes come later.... First you need to get into the water..."

She really could do nothing as protest as he dragged her inside the water.... It was warm, but then she rebelled...

"Stop it Krish.... This is stupid... No I was stupid to have asked you..." She walked out, wet till the neck and sat down on the sands, warily well away from the waters...

He followed with a smile....

"What were you doing? Trying to drown me? You do this with every girl eh?"

"The water is no more deep than your knee level here.... And I don't do this to every girl... Only to girls who reject me...."

She was silent, as though the topic was getting to be something she wasn't interested in...

He kept watching her.... She turned around in disgust....

"Please go away Krish... "

"I am as much here as you are, to relax.... I mean I am vacationing."

"Fine... You stay here...." She started walking away...


"Wait Shriya... " He caught up with her, "Listen to me.... Look... There is something I have to tell you.... "

"Go on...." She stopped and looked at him...

"Let us get near the waters.... "

"No... I mean... Not very close there.... There are...er....crabs..."

He laughed.... "Trust me .... They won't hurt you.... " He pulled her to the shores.... They stood there, in silence, lost within the spaces between them....

"You wanted to tell me something...."

He sighed and pulled something out of his pocket.... The fortune cookie prediction....

She read it through.... And turned to face him....


"So?"

"There were times in my life, Shriya, times when what I did was not what I really wanted to do.... Times when I sometimes kicked myself for not having done something better.... Something less practical and more .... more sensitive."

She listened in.... But he was in no rush, pausing in between and looking at the skies, which had by then taken on a deep purple shade....

"And you were part of such times.... I knew even back in school that you had a certain something for me.... That you were, to say in the least, smitten.... But it did not make much difference to me.... You were maybe the first girl who I knew liked me... But then later there were many more and I was not really bothered about any of them, sadly, including you...."

The dark clouds were parting somewhere above them in the skies.... Some stars were starting to shine through the holes, making small blobs of light visible in that massive purple....

"Somewhere in between, I realized that you were different from all of them.... Never the boisterous one, never seeking attention, never even aware of whether I knew it all or not.... You would have rather preferred I ignored you, because you were naive.... and you were scared of me.... Something that I did not expect from any one..."

She swallowed... Lumps were forming in her throat.... She wished she would not cry just then, not in front of him....

"You were not beautiful, not even pretty by the standards then, but I knew I wasn't really looking for that in women... In fact, you helped me realize what it was that mattered to me as far as women were concerned...."

The clouds that had scattered conglomerated at a different point, adding dark shade after shade to that part of the heavens and the star light showed everywhere else....

"And then, still there was the 'love' part of it all... I never really knew when I would fall in love... Leave alone with whom.... Somehow these did not matter much.... And somewhere in that decade, I realized I was already in."

The waves were lapping at their feet, silent whispers of foam that cleansed the sand every now and then, heaving up and falling down....

"I always had this piece of paper with me... Something that I never threw away..... Though I got it someday when the fad was to think girls were fluffs of nothingness.... And every time I read through, it was you who swept through my thoughts, then nothing more than a love-struck classmate."

The purple skies had blended with the dark waters in the horizon... And everything seemed to close in between them, him standing a few feet away from her, staring up at the stars as he spoke on....

"I wrote it all down in a diary.... Under the name of Maya.... You know the usual name that guys give their fantasy loves.... But then this wasn't a fantasy, nor was this anything that was then realized as love.... I just wanted to vent out what ever it was that I was feeling..... And one day, mom read through it...."

She looked up at him.... He was still facing the sea, away from her... And there was a small hint of a smile in his tone...

"It did not come to much... She took it all easy, the usual crap that most teens write, the 'love and deep in it' stuff.... Only, it was much more than that... It was where I really got stuff out of my already confused mind and put in words, so that some time later as I re-read through, I understood that a long while ago.... I had fallen for a silent, innocent girl, and had been stupid enough not to really understand what it had been that I had felt the first time I had ever seen her... a non-entity in my life then..... The real enormity of that eternal, long ago whisper... Soulmates...."

He paused... A long while.... She was silently crying..... It did not matter if he heard her now...

"It was then that I started believing in druids and faeries..."

He turned around.... And walked up to her...

There was something about the way she was crying.... the pain of all these years portrayed in those pure tears.... It made him hug her...

She looked up at him... The stars shining in the sky above them, small patterns that she had watched all these years.... They formed the perfect background against the two of them...

He was still smiling, his eyes moist too.... And then he spoke....

"Tell me Shri.... What do you want from me now? Just go ahead and ask... I swear I won't mess this time...."

The stars glimmered.... The purple was enticing, making her forget the past, linking her with what was the promise of beautiful tomorrows.... The sounds of the waves were edging her on to talk it out with him.. tell him what she wanted to.... what she had ever wanted to....

It was easier said then done... She was getting nervous all over, and he was hugging her tighter....

Something in her was calling out... prompting her to tell him... She looked at his eyes... The same sparkle of eternity, the same knowing, and there was something in them that she had not realized till then, though she had noticed....

The light of warm and soft love....


She drew in her breath...

He was still waiting... Looking at her...

And she knew that what she was going to do was what they both wanted... The beginning of infinite promises....

And the very strength for it all she drew from him....

She kissed him...


It was a magical moment... One that swept over their eternities and their silence, one that drew them in an embrace of the souls, the elements standing testimony to yet another infinite tale of togetherness and Twin Souls....

The waves danced around their feet, the earth held them in tight hold, the wind breezed past in quick sweeps, the clouds rejoined somewhere above in space....

And the eternal fire in the stars glowed, soaking in the light of love profound....


They broke apart, both breathless....

Held in secure embraces, eyes lit up, they stared at each other, smiles breaking out, him in surprise, her in shyness....


"Was that what they call sudden miracles?"

She laughed....

"I rue fate for making me wait this long for this....."

She smiled....

"Krish?"

"Hmm?"

"There was a dream some months back.... I mean it all happened... And then some...."

"I will start believing in dreams too....."

"What can all this be Krish?"

"Maybe I can give you a sermon on it... But I can give you a word for it too..."

"What?"

"Magic...."


They walked on, hand in hand, towards the cottages, little petite doll houses that stood lighting up the other end of the beach....

Behind them, the waves kept dancing, jigs in near horizon.... The purple blanket expanded as golden and silver star lights weaved their way through... And it started to rain.....



In between the visible heavens and the mysteries of yonder, the druids and faeries gathered.... The stars glistening from the tips of their magical wands... and cried, not out of cheer.... but at the vagaries of fate, as the two down on earth walked toward their future... in blessed oblivion... to the all-consuming drama that was going to unveil in their future.... the drama of Destiny.....






~~~~~~~~~~~END OF THE SEQUENCE~~~~~~~~~~~