For Love

When I looked into ‘chinkis’ beady eyes for the first time on that dark lost path , I knew we were meant to be soul mates. It was almost a year ago, when I met that golden retriever for the first time

Yellow leaves were strewn on that tree tunneled poetic path, as if an invisible needle had stitched all of them to the cemented road, making a colorful carpet. I crossed that way everyday to get home after work. Walking through it I was reminded of the striking yet lonely maiden who looks with searching eyes to find something that did not exist. Sometimes I too was swallowed by its loneliness.

I had left work late that day and had missed my train; it was dark when I started on that path to reach home. Walking slowly, feeling the breeze on my skin, i was in a state so transparent yet so clogged up by the smoke of thought, I felt light headed, swaying in the course of the wind.

A pair of glowing eyes startled me. I felt fear gripping me like a swirling snake, crushing me in its spiral body. It was quiet late and the night, so dark, was deceiving. I looked closely, anticipating my chances of escape.

It was an old man, with an older dog, a Labrador. I went closer to the ‘couple’. A streak of light from the old lamppost made their eyes look simple, naïve. They both stared at me , and i stared back at them , and we knew that this evening would be etched in our minds forever.

After that day, every evening I would meet my old man sitting exactly on the same place, besides the rusted lamppost. They looked like a charcoal painting in the evening sun, smiling with their eyes.

I would take chinki for long walks; he had a lot of stamina for his age. We would talk silently, indebted by the nature. It was a selfless relation between us , I never bought food for chinki or it never gave me anything , it was just the love for each other’s company that kept us together. Sometimes we would sit together and watch the setting sun and I would whisper old Hindi songs in his big ears, he would fall asleep in that tranquil moment.

I would finish my work as fast as I could to reach on time to witness my very own charcoal picture by the lamppost. I started making excuses to my boss, to leave early, started shirking off responsibility; I was always caught up in those miraculous moments spent with my friend, caught up in time.

And then one day they were gone, just like that. The charcoal painting was broken; its habitants had left, leaving the frame hollow. I waited for long hours every day by the lamppost, waited for the old man and his dog, but they never walked in. They were like an illusion in the desert which had disappeared when I went to close.

I became restless, looked for a golden retriever everywhere, my heart would skip a beat when I saw a Labrador in the park, but instantly I would realize, it was not chinky .

Then one evening the park’s guard told me that the old man had died and the dog had been sent to a remote village in the interiors of Mahrashtra.

I was heartbroken, deceived by the laws of nature.. And then I realized that suddenly one day, people we love will be snatched away rudely without an admonition. And still people didn’t cease to love. Selflessly they committed their feelings, thoughts, their mind to something which was not permanent and in return they didn’t expect ‘the world’, they expected nothing.

Everything in love, ‘for’ love.