The Wait........................

Anne was sitting on that bench in the park, busy in her own thoughts, thinking of how her life is going and despite everything being right, how all of a sudden the entire world became wrong. The sun started rising from west and setting in east. How stars started staring at the moon in the sun studded sky. How everything, everything in the entire universe became so wrong all of a sudden.

Everything was just so right a few days ago.

She had all dreams in her thoughts she knew what she wanted from her life and Kay was ready to get all that for her. She used to think I m so fortunate......... so blessed.

And just two days later, today, her entire world is turned to pieces. She is turned to pieces and she cant even let a drop of tear roll down her cheeks.She has to smile, smile for him, cause she knows, if Kay sees even one tear drop in her eyes he would back-off. She was sitting and wandering over her spilled life, she is broken to peices, if this must be said, she is in shatters, a single touch and she would be floored. But outwardly she looked so calm, composed and concise. Nobody can even guess what a huge torment is going on in her mind.

She shook her head as if to shake the thought off her mind.

Anne was sitting at her favorite place, this park always made her feel so peaceful and calm. She was thinking of how Kay came to her office that evening to pick her up, the way that cute smile was glued to his face and the way he was so overwhelmed that he couldnt speak at all. She started smiling but a second later, she couldnt smile again. She felt as if her throat would choak and she would burst into tears.

To divert her thoughts, she started looking towards the gate of the park.

She saw an elderly couple. The man parked the bike infront of the gate and held the lady's hand and helped her off the bike. The lady smilingly looked at him, even from such a great distance Anne could figure out the amount of love that was overflowing from the lady's eyes for the man.

Anne smiled as she always did whenever she saw any couple deeply in love. She closed her eyes for a second, prayed for them and then said

"Amen!! " and looked at the sky.

The man helped the lady in the park, after walking for a short distance the lady stood there looking at the man and he had a naughty grin on his face. They were behaving like teenage
lovers and they looked really "cute". By this time she was so interested in this "teenage couple" that she forgot her own "troubles". Now, the lady was standing there and the man was kneeling down, he had something in his hands that wasnt very clearly visible but it was clear that he was "proposing" the lady. Out of curiosity, Anne walked towards the couple, the couple was just not bothered about the entire world. The lady was standing and the man was still kneeling down. Anne saw there were some tear drops in the eyes of the man, the lady bent down, kissed the man's forehead and said.

"Yes, I will." She wiped off the tears from his eyes.

Anne smiled and once again said "Amen!".

The man then asked the lady...

"So should I get you some chocolates??"

She said "Yes, you owe me a dozen." He reached into his pocket and took two chocolates out, said

"As of now I just have two, and as you know I don't carry a wallet or plastic money so cant buy more."

She smiled and took them.

"I wont share these," She said and giggled.

Anne listened to it, by no means was this couple behaving their age. She was just mesmerized.

A minute later, the couple were talking, Anne was looking , or should I say staring, at them and smiling. The lady said

"I still have that teddy bear, those cd's and the "Love story" with me."

He was just looking at her admiringly, just like a teenage-lover looks at his new beloved. He looked at her and said

"And I still see the same pendant hanging in your chain." She smiled and said,

" Take another look, now, this pendant shows the twenty-four years of love that I ve shared with it, when you weren't here."

She bend her head down and stared at the grass for a while, lifted her head up and said

" I love you."

The man held her hand and kissed the palm. She just sat there looking at him. Then the man said

"Hey we will be late, lets start off."

Both of them stood up, the man tried to hold the woman by her elbow, but she didn't let him rather asked him

"Do you still think you can lift me??"


Anne was surprised, she just looked at the man, he was some fifty-five-ish and the lady some fifty-ish though she had a well maintained body, but it would still be difficult for this old man to lift her, thought Anne. He said

"No...............!!!"

and like a lil boy rushed towards the gate. But the lady didn't even budge an inch, she was standing there like a lil kid asking for a candy.

The man returned with a defeated look, looked at her again, put one of his arms near her knees and the other near her nape, but she turned towards him, hugged him and giggled.

That was a real long hug. It appeared to Anne as if they just didn't want to let go off the hug. Anne felt as if she was in some paradise watching Venus play one of her love-jingles. After quiet a while, they started walking towards the gate, the lady on the man's left arm. They looked just so perfect.

Reaching the gate, the women walked towards the bike, the man said

"Not there my love!! its a long journey, lets take a car."

She looked puzzled. The man looked at a brand new car standing there with the chauffeur. There was another man standing there. The old man handed the bike keys to this person and opened the car door for the lady and helped her get into the car. He then went to the other side and sat in the car there.

Anne just could not resist the temptation of following them. She picked up her car and followed them. The car drove out of the city. Anne continued to follow. She could figure out the two lovers in the back seat, the lady's head on the man's shoulder and the car was running.

The two cars continued to run for over two hours, that's when Anne realized it was almost dawn that she followed them for, now they were in the nearby city. The love-birds were still in their car. The car stopped at one place which, Anne figured out, was a temple. The man got off the cab, opened the door for the lady and helped her out of the car very carefully. He was treating her so delicately as if she were some princess or may be a newly-wed wife. And the lady too was really graceful and elegant.

This was the first time Anne noticed them from such a short distance. The pair looked like an ultimate pair.

"One in a million"

Anne thought. The pair walked towards the temple. The lady was wearing a blue denim jeans with a sleeveless , collared white T-shirt. The man was wearing a loose T-shirt and khakis. Noway were they dressed like an old couple. Anne was admiring them. She too stopped and parked her car and got off to see what they were doing.

The couple went into the temple. The lady took off her ring, handed it to the man and told

"My ring is for five gran."

The man did the same and said

"Ten"

handed his ring to the lady. Two of them went into the temple. The man took her hand in his and said

"This is the gath-bandh...."

The lady took out the ring, held the man's left hand and put the ring on his ring finger. The man did the same and kissed her hand too. The temple priest was astonished and so was Anne. The Man then said

" So Ms Kamini Bannerji Do u take Mr Varun Bhatia as your wedded husband and promise to comfort him in good health and bad and thru all the thick and thin in life" The lady said

"I do.."

The man smiled "Me too".....

And then said "So I declare the two of you as Man and lady. You may kiss now."

The lady stared at him and said "No!!".

He smiled and said "C'mon I m your husband now."

She said " You always were."

The two of them smiled and started to move towards the car.

Now, Anne could not stand this any longer. She walked upto them and said

" Hi! I am sorry I have been following you since last evening. I don't know how you would take it but I just wanted to know something, was... all that you did here 'your marriage'??"

The man smiled and said

"Yes My child"

"So you weren't married last evening."Both of them looked at each other, smiled and said in a chorus

"No".

Anne was confused she said

"Please don't mind me asking , but I m really really confused. I know I shouldn't be asking this, its too personal but I want to know about the two of you. The way I saw you last evening and till now, I was under the impression that you are husband and wife."

The man smiled

" She is my long time beloved. I loved her when I was some 27-28 and she was 24-25. We wanted to get married she is the only child of her parents and knew that they would never be ready for an inter-caste marriage so she made me get married to a girl who happened to love me since her childhood though I never loved her."

And he looked at her, the lady had a smile on her face and looked down at the floor.

" However she herself could never accept a marriage, under her parents pressure, she did get married to a person but could not sustain the marriage and separated from her husband within three years of her marriage. And surprisingly I was never informed about this. We lived in two different cities now. We talked once in a while over the phone and she always said she was happy. And my wife, happened to die within 4 years of my marriage. I too had the impression that she was happy, kept telling her that I too was happy and everything is fine."

The man paused for another minute, admiringly looked at the lady and continued "Yesterday, I came to her , asked her out for a movie and while we were sitting in the park, we realized that we were lying to each other for past twenty years just to keep the other person's happiness intact though none of us was happy. That's when we thought of coming to this place, the place where we went during our courtship. And now we are married. She is mine forever for this life and for lots to come. She is my wife."

The lady went closer to the man and held his hand. She said

"I was always yours".

Anne smiled to them, hugged both of them said

"Congratulations for your marriage and I wish you have a wonderful life forever."

Anne turned around and started moving. Suddenly she stopped, came back to them and said

"I want to tell you something, I too was about to take the same decision, I have asked my lover to marry the girl whom he loved before I entered his life, she had dumped him and went

on for her career. Now she realized how much he loved her so she had come back and since I know my parents would never agree for our marriage I was trying to talk him into this marriage."

Anne said all of this in one go. Then she heaved a sigh.....

"Ah!!"

"But now, I m going back to get him into my life, I know I love him and he loves me too. I don't want to wait twenty years to tell him that I cannot love anybody else but him."

Anne went near the lady held her hand kissed it and gave a peck to the man as well

" Thank you so much Sire and madame. You don't know what you have given me."

She turned around moved out of the temple picked up her fone dialled a number and said

"I am coming. Please wait."

"Nothing, all I can tell you is I love you and cannot live without you and I know you too want to live only with me."

She disconnected the call , looked back at the two "love-angels" waved at them and walked to her car. Now Anne was driving her car back to the city.She no longer had a blue mood,

The sun was rising from east , the stars were smiling at the moon and she was happy.......