The Golden Silver Oak

The silver oak tree...with its golden flowers

Kasauli shivered in the summer night. The COVID era wedding allowed for only 25 attendees, and all of them were unprepared for the cold. Who packs up winter clothes in north India for the month of May? Moth, earwigs, and other insects lay dead or dying, also unable to cope with the whistling winds.

The wedding was arranged in a hotel that stood atop a hill with the valley on one side and a lawn on the other, the latter being used for the functions. The white and golden canopy of the wedding tent was complemented with the simple and startling decoration of hundreds of tea lights. Though electronically controlled, their flickering flames looked real in the weather. Yellow fairy lights swirled around tree trunks and branches around the lawn. Natural mist diffused the lighting (and the mood) in a way that most exotic places couldn’t match. It looked like the place was ready to welcome gods of heaven. A sickle moon rose above the imposing Deodar trees, against a purple sky, shining with liquid blue stars.

It was against this dream backdrop that they met. After 11 years.

“Sunaina…”

Her feet froze. She was walking down the exit shamiana, towards her room, when he approached from behind. Her face turned crimson. There was a stab in her chest. A stab giving rise to the old, familiar pain of longing and despair. She thought she was prepared to meet him again. It turned out she wasn’t. She was as unprepared as she was for this weather. She turned around.

“Hi Yogi,” she managed a social smile, something she learnt from her profession. This time, his name was loaded.

Was he following her? When did he arrive? She’d been there since morning, going through mehendi and all, waiting for him. But he hadn’t turned up. Seeing her face, Deepak had relented and called Yogi. “Only because you won’t get married doesn’t mean you won’t come to mine. Get your royal ass here. Quick.” The amiable Deepak had mustered special anger to deliver the message. He’d winked after that.

“You haven’t changed a bit. Maybe the kilos you lost found their way into me.”

Sunaina was thinking and drifting. Clean shaven look, soft jawline, high cheekbones, the best nose in the world, the complexion of golden and ripened grain, the end of robe casually thrown over his broad shoulders. You make a sexy yogi, darling.

 “Things can’t get lost between us; they can only shift places,”

Damn, she chided herself. Her glace immediately followed the slip of her speech. A long silence ensued. Stray and feathery masses of clouds rose from the valley below, kissing tree tops and wafting in the laws. Smelling like rain, minus the rain. Enhancing the pleasurable pain in people’s hearts.

 “Time has only sharpened your beauty. One can see how the impatient girl has turned into a whole woman,” Yogi said each word with considerable forethought. Like his speeches she had heard online. She had scoured them, to be accurate.

“I’m afraid I’m too overdressed for your taste, maybe?”

Again, she did it again. She’d known about this event for nearly two months. She’d gone over this wardrobe in her mind a hundred times. She’d picked the most graceful items. Simple silk sari, a gold necklace, and plain gold bangles. She was one hundred percent sure that he’d appreciate this get up. And yet she sought his approval. Why did she always have to buckle in first?

 “I’m afraid you can never be anything other than my taste,” he admitted. Unaccustomed to this way of talking, he got a tad awkward. And added with rather haste, “It’s good to see you on TV. A sane voice in the sea of chaos. If ever I watch TV, it’s to see you. And it’s worth it.”

Sunaina blushed, and saw his eyes softening as well. Every saint has a past…the aphorism didn’t fail to register.

He detected the slightest tangent of thought and asked, “So which line did you just think of?”

She laughed openly. He joined in. Time travelled back to the age when they were 8. When playing in their colony park, exchanging idioms, and holding breath inside the swimming pool were their best pastimes.

“I’m guessing you’re officially qualified in the art of mind-reading now?” She asked between her laughs.

He stopped laughing. “Did I ever need it for you?” Was there a need of acknowledgement even in his voice?

“Twin souls?”

“Twin souls, indeed.”

They must have been twelve by the time Deepak started noting their commonalities. Always well mannered. Disciplined to a fault. Creatures of good habits. Rebels in their own ways. Favourite child of their parents. Favourite student of their teachers. “You both are twin souls,” he’d declared one day while the three were cycling blissfully on a rainy day. Knowing little how he sealed their fate in these two words.

They stood there. Looking out into the valley beyond the hotel premises and gazing at each other in turn. Silent only on speech. City lights from afar shone like floating gold coins on a black sea. She was lost in her trains of thought. He was motionless and comfortable; soaking her in with his eyes. Despite the distance, with their backs resting on the opposite passage walls, he could smell her lemony fragrance. She could sense his eyes on her face. How he could look at her for hours. How she had never seen that love in anyone else’s eyes.

“Such a strange tree,” she pointed out to a pine tree, whose silhouette stood against with the venue lighting. “The trunk is branching out only on one side. It’s incomplete. Like me.”

“Doesn’t stop it from becoming the tallest tree in its vicinity still, does it?” Said he, the eternal optimist.

The carpet underneath their feet was matted with fern-like flowers of the silver oak tree; spectacular in different shades of yellow, orange, and red. Had they met in similar circumstances a decade ago, they’d have joked that the nature had showered flowers on their way to their mandap. Those were the days. They had planned their life, their children’s names, and even their retirement. Before he changed his mind and became a saint.

“So I guess this must be your last human avatar? Before you attain moksha from this cycle of life and death?”

“Says who?”

“Why, I hear all your speeches and lectures. I presume that’s the end goal for all yogis. Unity with god, self-realization, and freedom from bodily forms.”

“You’re well read!”

“I’m a swell stalker.”

The first blush of the evening appeared on his face. He was quick to resume his saintliness:

“Well, that’s not the goal for me. I want to be born again. My soul will be reborn because it’s tied to you. It desires you and your companionship. Maybe, in my next life, when you will be my Yogini, we can try for moksha together.” Those were well thought-of words. He uttered them with such depth and frankness, that Sunaina knew he’d be meditating for that.  

Come to think of it, it was she who nicknamed him Yogi. Most others still called him Yogen. A short of his real name, Yogendra.

A rush of thousand unmet desires welled up in her heart, and flowed in silent tears from her eyes. Yogi stiffened, he had not yet trained his mind to bear her tears. His mouth went dry.

The tears didn’t abate. When was it that she last cried? Who else could she cry with? The bold, independent Sunaina, source of strength for so many. Why couldn’t life accord her this one wish? She found herself progressively swept by the force of her grief. Unable to notice the guests who moved past. The hotel staff who turned around to see her. Even her own image of a grown up woman weeping and crumbling like a lost child. She let them flow…the unfulfilled dreams, the grief, and the sadness of years…she cried to her heart’s content. Till her hair was in disarray and pallu wet with tears.

A helpless Yogi rushed to her aid, holding her up by her shoulders.

“Please Soni…remember you are my first experience of godliness.”

He sounded miserable but honest. Hadn’t he told her a thousand times that she was the reason for him becoming a seeker? Who urged him to find his truest self? In whose love he had had the first and most gratifying experience of losing himself?

She raised her anguished face to his.

“Then marry me Yogi. You can be a saint without being a celibate.”

Yogi didn’t answer. He held her face to his chest. Much like a mother holds a child who’s just got his best toy broken.

“I married you long ago Soni. I just can’t commit to worldly attachments, but I’m married to you.” Sunaina heard these words as much though his voice as through his vocal chords.

The scene of Holi. They had turned seventeen. The amorousness in their friendship had become obvious to others before it became visible to them. They were riding on their scooty as Deepak trailed behind. Without warning her, he accelerated the bike and turned behind the community park. He stopped, looked over to see if Deepak had caught up. He took the red color from his pocket and smeared the parting of her hair. “Now we are each other’s for life,” he promised. Sunaina was dumb with joy and shock.

They’d lost track of time. Finally, the tears receded. Pangs of grief gave way to sobs of acceptance. That was the thing about their togetherness. Nothing could remain wrong when they are together. In the twenty two years they were together, they did argue, but somehow it never went into a fight. They loved each other too much to cause hurt. They still did.

“And what of our children?” She questioned him in feigned annoyance, wiping her last tears.

“Because I am in you, they will be like me, whosoever your legal husband.” He smiled and embraced her.

She picked up a fern of a fresh flower lying on the carpet. After touching it to his lips, then to her, she placed one end of the strand in her hair bun. Took his hands in her, back in control of her emotions. The Soni he so admired.

“You know what Yogi, you are like this silver oak flower. Contradictory, but a beautiful contradiction. Silver in name, and golden in colour. And yet, the most gorgeous of all trees,” she both complimented and rebuked him in the same breath.

Back in the lawn, the priest started chanting prayers of the marriage ritual.

Holding his hands, she looked into his eyes. “Come my Yogi, let’s get married once again.” And the two walked on the flower strewn path arm in arm, towards the mandap, like husband and wife.