How was I to know?

And when one thinks that all is over… then a slim, almost non existent ray of light creeps into your life – it’s a nature of the light. You almost do not see it and it almost does not light your way. But you feel it, you feel the warmth. You know there is a crack somewhere in the dark, thunderous cloud over your life. You race around with your head raised to the sky, hoping to catch that glimmering ray. Because you know that once you find it, there is hope. You can reach out and tear open the crack in the cumulonimbus, before it unleashes its thunder and storm on you, to see the beautiful, blue, clear sky atop.

The radiance has a mind of its own, it keeps appearing and vanishing, tantalizing the one who needs its presence, like a glow worm in the dark for the lonely traveler. Like I said before, it has a nature of its own, a mind of its own. The radiance, the hope, the light - must be coveted for, must be wanted and desired passionately before it reveals itself to the onlooker. The searcher must dream of the light to see the light. Oh! and what joy it is to see the whitness, the pureness of the light, after one has scaled the peaks of sorrow…

You are my light. You are my radiance. You are the brightness in my sunshine and the hope in my eyes. The spark in my soul and what makes me whole. You are my light. How was I to know?

I didn’t know it when I saw you. I didn’t recognize it when I spoke to you. How ordinary that day was when I met you!! Neither did the ground beneath my feet shake nor did the skies tremble. Your face didn’t call out to me and you voice didn’t speak to me. How ordinary it was. How extraordinary the ordinariness seems today. I had waited for you all my life and I didn’t know you. I have wondered many times over, as to how that could have been?! How can events of so much relevance and importance transpire without any indication of its importance? I guess my Earth life had conditioned me to look for bells ringing or a siren blaring somewhere in the darkness, as it always does when people or events wish to make themselves known, their presence felt, an attempt to warn the unprepared traveller that it is coming along. I waited for that siren all my life. And it never came.

I thought that the ringing of the bells were just a fantasy I had downloaded from all the fairy tales I had read, from all the perfect romances I had absorbed like a beached whale absorbs sunlight. Helplessly I had sunk lower into the depths of expectation for a sign, from above or within, as my life swished by me. But how ordinary the beginning was.

I remember our conversations as with any friend of mine. One who didn’t mean the world to me. One who was just an acquaintance. I remember the rides we have shared together and the roads seemed the same, the music blaring from your car stereo… I remember when our hands brushed together – you were changing your gears – and though I felt a slight frission of pleasure that touch induces as a sense, I am amazed that I felt nothing more.

And then I was in the depths of pain brought on by my love for another. I wallowed in it, oblivious to the world around me, outside me. I was thrown around helplessly in its churning waters and sharp-edged rocks. I was rejuvenated and yet torn apart by the pain I had felt. I was falling straight through the void left by the sudden absence of someone no longer beloved. And I saw the crack in the clouds above. A wee bit of luminosity was streaming through. I swam after it, chased like never before, thinking it to be the rope that would save me from the sea of bitterness I was choking in. I held on as the beam of light lifted me up and above the sharp claws of the witch named despair. I looked around as I made it past the dragons guarding my sorrow so that I could thank the kind being who had shown me a way out.

And I saw you. Like I had never seen you before. You shined like an angel, I heard the bells ringing, I felt my heart soaring. And all I thought was – How corny all this is!! This is so picture perfect, so like my girlish dreams that this could not be real. I believed I had made you from the ethereal fabric of my imagination. Woe be on me… the cynic that I was, the cynic that I could kill by finding solace in being able to blame the world for creating the former me.

Cos you proved us all wrong. You proved that everything is still right with the world. You showed me that my life was not just depths of depression, solace in J. Krishnamurti, bumpy rickshaw rides, suffocating pollution, wayward siblings, hollering family or interfering neighbors.

As I contemplate my life today, content as a lazy feline who has and is still having her share of the cream - I see that I am blessed. Blessed by my pain, my sorrow, my guilt, my cynicism, my conscience. I am blessed with you. So here I tell you - with no shame or ego. My life is you. My days and nights are you. My joy is you. My everyday is you. Thank you.