Ever ours
"Ever thine, ever mine. Ever ours."
They stood on the Brooklyn Bridge, she demurely beautiful under the twinkling lights that made every night a festivity on the suspension bridge in this part of the world; he, brooding about something that evaded her.
They had been together for a short while; a very short while of eighteen months. For others, the time might have been long enough to get married, have babies and make a lifetime before breaking up and probably moving on to other interesting prospects. For them, eighteen months were short enough to know each other and yet not know all of each other.
"Geet"
He whispered close to her ear while she stood leaning on the railing, gazing into the long stretch of twilight over the darkening waters. The hour of dusk was nearing, traffic thinning on the pedestrian stretch even as cars zoomed past on four lanes. It was a cold evening, snow whitened the bridge at edges and the path lay thinly layered in ice. The afternoon had drizzled snowflakes but the sky had clear lately.
"Geet"
He touched her upper arm softly, encasing her shoulder in his big hand covered in leather glove. This time he turned her to look at him. Her big brown eyes bore up into his and there were bigger, glassier tears swirling there. Her lips were moist and tender, cheeks cold, hard and pink under winter's fangs. Or was it something else?
He cupped her face in both his hands and made up his mind.
"You know I love you"
She smiled
"Yes I do"
"You've always known it, haven't you?"
"Yes"
"Then say it back today"
He urged her, pulled her up to his chest but her eyes cried more looking away.
"Listen to me Geet, I love you. I want to spend the rest of my days with you. Walk by me please"
She slowly met his dark eyes
"You never said it before today sir"
He smiled at her calling him Sir.'
They had met at a caf all those months ago, when she had been waitressing at nights at a Books & Cuppa joint where customers had access to a plethora of books and coffee. While Geet had, for the first time seen him sitting on a table reading a thick book on world wars and approached for his order; he in turn had observed her for days before that day. And then finally when she had been assigned to wait his table, he had grabbed the opportunity.
The handsome man he was, rugged but beautiful, it hadn't taken his charms long to work her virgin heart over. She, a classical romantic at soul had started falling for her customer whom she would see every night at her caf and approach with a smile and "What can I get you Sir?" even before she knew it. Her mornings were spent at medical school and evenings in the caf until late night when he would walk her to her apartment and meet her in the afternoons thrice a week. And so they had progressed, their friendship had progressed.
Though their relationship had changed since, the Sir' still remained.
"Then I say it now"
Maan emphasized holding her close
"This is all I want. You are all I want. Will you marry me Geet?"
Her expressions changed suddenly and a look of disbelief crossed her. The tears coursing down stopped and she looked incredulous.
"Are you serious?"
"You doubt me?"
"Off course"
He gave a hoarse laugh
"I love you. Now. Say it please, accept me"
"Sir, I..."
"No"
He interrupted
"Call me by my name. Call me Maan"
Her lips curled up and eyes started watering again, cold shivering her more than ever in his warm arms.
"Then yes, I will marry you Maan"
He pressed his lips to hers and nothing in the world remained the way it was until the previous moment. Life changed, skies changed, they changed. In that second they became one. He kissed her so soft and sweet, she lost every inch of her sense, her nerve ends tingled as his mouth captured hers.
"Ab zindagi ki har subah tumse shuru hogi; aur har raat tum par khatam"
He said breaking apart.
"Ab zindagi ki har subah aapse shuru hogi; aur har raat aap par khatam"
She repeated.
Her forehead rested against his stubbled chin as they held on to each other in a rush of love and ecstasy. The smile that lit up his face that moment was reverential, almost on the verge of sacred to the heavens above. They rested in that moment for long before he produced a little silver lock from his pocket and removed one glove from his hand. She looked on dumbfounded as he patted his pockets again and came up with a key.
"We lock our love here"
He showed her the lock and key so she grinned.
And like so many other lovers who had locked their love on Brooklyn Bridge and thrown the key away into the water, they went on to lock their life together on the railing of that bridge. She held the key in her hand after locking it and eyed it with deference.
"Now we throw it away"
He murmured holding her fist that had the key.
"Ever thine, ever mine, ever ours"
He promised
"What does that mean?"
"It was Beethoven's love letter to his beloved"
Maan brushed his warm palm over her cheek, taking her face in his hands.
"That I am ever yours, you are ever mine. That we are meant together"
He kissed her fist which contained the key and guided her to abandon it into the waters, not for a moment leaving her gaze.
"Will that be your wedding vow to me?"
She asked.
"Off course. What about you?"
She pretended to make a face and shrug and his face fell.
"Morn and night, in your sight"
Her silken oath caressed the shell of his ear as she stood on tip toe. He turned suddenly and caught her in a kiss.
-----------------------------
Later, as dusk overtook the paltry skies and gloom enveloped the long stretch where they still stood; he proposed to marry her in four months.
"Isn't that too early?"
She argued
"Four months, four short months. That's it. That's all I am giving you"
He said enveloping her from behind, his arm curling around her shoulder blades and head dipping to peck her on the cheek as they saw the skies transform on the horizon. And she smiled. The dusky twilight hours were times of brooding and cynical thoughts for the world. For them, that time of the day never remained the same. Because dusk became equivalent to locking-love-proposals and twilight, the time for confessions and promises. The cold wintry air swirled around them and nothing remained the same.
Nothing ever remained the same.
Because the week after that, Maan was beckoned by duty.
The air force captain had been called to the ever volatile region of Middle East to fly his fighter planes. The Israelis had been at loggerheads with Palestinians since forever. But now the Jewish and Islamic ideologies had come to rest on arms and bullets and bombs over a small stretch of land called Gaza. The world and the USA had been silent observers for as long as they could, while the two countries fought over a minor piece of land. But now the fires were rousing to inextinguishable amounts. US citizens stuck in the terrorized nations needed evacuation; the innocents in Gaza needed protection.
And Maan Singh Khurana, an American born Indian was called upon for his services.
She didn't see him then. His letters had come however, at regular intervals. His emails had been Geet's constant companions for more than two months as he wrote to her about how humanity was breathing its last in that part of the world and how life was no more important than a crumpled sheet of paper. He would tell her how much he missed her and how badly he wanted to come home. And in the next letter he would again talk about cruelty of people to people and how he wanted to save each and every one. How every last life there mattered more than his.
-----------------------------
Geet,
I write to you from an alien land. I wish I could come home to you. In staying away from you after almost two years of constant togetherness is when I realize how badly I miss you. The love in my heart swells double to what it was yesterday. And then double of what it is today will it be tomorrow. And when I start marveling at the amount of love multiplying within me for you in this terrorizing excuse of a world, I realize it grows every minute, every hour.
When I am not on rescue missions or flying over burning strips of land, when I am not brooding over rising death tolls or strategizing my next move, all I think of is you. Think of me and pray these wars end. And I shall come back to you.
Yours ever,
Maan.
-----------------------------
She would love reading his letters, for he would express himself like he had never before in person. She would reply in earnest and wait for his next letter. Sorry as she was for the state of the Middle East as she saw it through his words; her heart swelled with every word of love he wrote; waiting with baited breath for him to return. His constant letters made her believe in him, in his courage and strength. She knew it was only a matter of time before the words in his Emails would flow from his mouth and he would be in front of her to hold and kiss.
-----------------------------
Dearest Geet,
This is a terrible excuse of a country. I mean, which nation shakes hands on cease fire and then attack in the dark of the night like a coward savage? That is what the Israelis are doing here at Gaza. They fired and blew up three refugee camps in UN protected areas, opening fires on schools that sheltered children. Children and women! Yesterday they delivered a healthy crying baby from a dead woman's womb. How can humanity be so cruel? A child born motherless
Here are childless mothers stone faced and half dead, and orphans who cry wherever you look around, men crippled and wounded; soldiers still firm. I almost come to the verge of boiling point and my tears are shackled only by the dams of my uniform and the ego of being a man. This is a savage world Geet.
I thank the supreme powers everyday that neither you nor I were born here.
Now I need to leave for another air strike.
Morn and night, you are in my sight.
Maan.
-----------------------------
It was now precisely seven months and twenty three days since they had stood on the Brooklyn Bridge together, looking forward to a new life. And it was five months since his letters had stopped coming. Morn and night, you are in my sight'; his last words. She had been confused and panic stricken in the first few weeks when his jet went missing. The authorities had declared him missing but not dead. She had clung to hope, even when numerous Emails to him had gone unanswered. She wrote to him every day and every night in hope of at least once in a day his phone beeping and alerting him; wherever he was.
It was getting intolerable, hopeless even. Hope was dying with every passing day and despair coming to life with every new night.
Every dawn came with a new promise to hear from him, to hear from the authorities. And every consequent dusk set with a day lost, a day wasted without news about sir.
There were invisible walls separating them, but the fight for him was all she had ever known. She had fought for him with herself. All Geet had ever wanted was to become a doctor and achieve the self respect and self satisfaction she had been always denied as an orphan in India. She had worked doubly hard to get where she was on scholarships. And when her life's goal was bright and clear in front of her eyes, within the bounds of her arms reach, her paths had crossed with a man who left her smitten. The romantic in her had come alive. She had fought with herself to be with him and in their traverses together come to lose herself in order to win him.
And now, when she had started living in the possibilities of living with him, her reason to love, and her reason to fight had been brutally snatched away from her.
The cheery mood of spring was dampened, almost eclipsed in the darkness of his absence. His letters stopped but she never stopped writing.
Dear Sir,
Every day I am lost. Every night I am alone. I know not where you are and I feel I might as well be dead. But then I think what if you were alive? What if I kill myself today and you come home tomorrow searching for me? I despair in that death which will kill the prospect of a life with you. I am going mad here. Life makes no sense, neither does death. Wherever you are, please be alive. Please come back.
Yours breathing,
Geet.
She cried and cried. And then slept and slept...
-----------------------------
Dear Sir,
Another day passed and you are not here. It's soon going to be summer. Spring is ending. No news of you still, and that means no bad news. I am running out of patience here. Studies don't interest me anymore. Please live for me and pray I can live for you.
Until you come back,
Geet.
-----------------------------
Summers approached and she was a little more cheery. The Middle East was still at war, fighting and killing and the land of Gaza, now barren and lifeless lay bloodied, waiting to go to the victor. She kept writing to him, on and on. Sometimes so weary and sad she would be that she would type a single sentence, ask him to come home and sleep. On others she would write pages and pages of their memories together, of her plans for their future, of her wait for him.
And then one day an Email came.
It wasn't from his ID but it was from him.
Sender: Jack Cooperman
Receiver: Geet Handa
Subject: No Subject
Time: 00:19 a.m.
Live dr. geet
M
She was ecstatic, almost on the verge of tears at his sign. It was him, it indeed was him. But then her tears cleared, fell away from her eye lashes and her heaves silenced into calm cries giving way to sense. She read and re read his one and only line, three words; Live dr. geet. What he meant by them she knew not, but it compressed her heart in weak moments. What if it meant that he was never coming back and asking her to live on?
No, he couldn't. He couldn't be so cruel.
But he wasn't dead. And that was something, wasn't it? She told herself whenever her heart cried at his urge to live.
Dear Sir,
You ask me to live. I can't. Without you, I can't.
Yesterday was a brighter day. Somehow I was happier and kinder to myself. Because I felt you would come. Felt you would be alright and safe out there in that torn world, helping people and saving lives. All your Emails re read, I felt better and more alive. You asked me to live, but I can't. I met your friend Adi as I do every night nowadays, as he sits by in the caf and talks to me of any news about you; which is no news.' He said I looked more like a human today because I was talking to him. I know not what he meant by that but only that I might have been an alien these past days without realizing myself.
Adi said that three airplanes had been missing and none of their pilots had been declared dead until now. One of them is you. And now I know you are out there somewhere.
I've been waiting for you Sir,
G.
-----------------------------
As summer waned into autumn, her spirits started waning further. She would meet Adi every day in the caf, as he would come down to read and sip coffee. He was a colleague of Maan, an Engineer in the Air forces who had his work cut out to monitor radars from his homeland unlike Maan, who flew to the unknown. Adi would offer to walk her down to her apartment every time and she would decline every time. For that was sir's right. Only his.
And yet, Adi was beginning to break through her alien exteriors without her realizing. She would read with him sometimes, study even as her semester exams and practicals approached. They would sit together in the caf and read long after midnight.
-----------------------------
Dear Sir,
Please don't do this to me. I am depressed and broken and shattered and lifeless. I spend days stone faced in college not knowing what I learn. I spend nights half breathing at the caf serving my customers and exchanging a word or two with Adi who still has no news on you. He is good company but I don't know why he wouldn't leave me alone. I am no good to him. But then I know I need him; he is my only link to your whereabouts.
Afternoons are the most empty because without you I know nothing.
I might have been brave enough to be able to write a little happily in the last few letters but I am honest to you sir, I am breaking apart.
Come home,
Geet.
-----------------------------
She lost herself in a trail of memories as she always had whenever her mind had any free time in the world. Standing by the small window of her isolated little apartment in Manhattan, Geet closed her eyes as the last picture in front of her vision which was of a busy autumn evening, gay and lively set into her eyes. The lovely birch and pines had fiery orange boughs, thrusting down over swirling winds while the roads lay welcoming the onslaught of those crisp fall leaves. Everything about nature was just as it should be; only he wasn't there.
"Are you cold?"
Adi asked from behind and she shook her head lightly.
"Geet, Geet?"
He called again but she was lost in a world far away. She would still write to him every day, tell him to come back every day and love him every day. When she sat to pray at nights, she would remember to start by praying for all her friends and teachers, her benevolent caf master and patients and Adi and all those who had been her near and dear ones. At last when every prayer was said for, every loved one in her life remembered, she would pray for him.
"Geet are you listening to me?"
"Yes Adi"
She hummed
"Then there is something I wish to tell you"
Geet turned around frowning.
"It has been eight months now..."
"Seven months twenty three days"
She cut
"Yes. He was declared missing but we all know he is no mo..."
"Stop"
"He is never coming back"
"You talk nonsense now. Look it's a good autumn evening"
"Stop fooling yourself"
"Isn't it warm in the room? Perhaps I should open the windows"
"He is dead"
"What do you want?"
She shouted, tears suddenly springing to her eyes. Adi stopped and his face turned down.
"Stop breaking apart please"
He said.
She shook her head agitated, almost hysterically at the rush of thoughts of him being dead. Her body quaked violently, chilled to the bone as she was.
"Gee...Geet"
He held her to himself tightly; rubbing his hands up and down her arms to warm and soothe her.
"Shh, I'm here Geet. Shhh it's okay"
Adi hugged her tightly to his chest and she coiled her arms around him to find the anchor and strength inorder to come back to reality. Her head stopped bobbing and lips quivered no more, tears subsided and she rested on his chest for a moment longer. Such was the peace there that she heard no other sound.
After she pulled back, Adi lifted her hand and kissed it. When his lips left her fingers, she marveled at the glint of the platinum band on her ring finger where he had kissed. She smiled tentatively at him and a movement caught her peripheral vision.
Her heart stopped and breath froze because it was him.
"Sir"
She gasped, even as her head whizzed in the direction of the door, finding the culmination of all her hopes, all her prayers, all her life's worth come alive in the form of that one man. Her eyes roved him over, throat knotting tight at the weight he had lost and sunken marks that circled his eyes. His body was weak and thin, face bruised but almost healed. He was there in blood and flesh before her, not in words and stories or Emails and memories. He was alive and back in front of her, hers to hold again. What broke her heart though was the look of pain and ferocity that burnt in his dark eyes as they rested on the ring on her finger and her hand in Adi's.
"Sir I..."
He was gone.
Like a wisp of wind, he was gone as fast as he had come and she was left stricken. She blinked up at Adi who was as shocked as her but didn't waste any time and dashed behind him.
"Sir, Maan...Sir"
She shouted from the top of the stairs, running down with the help of the banister at double speed even as she heard faster, firmer footsteps descending the floors below her. She peeped down from time to time until she had reached the third floor and he had left the building. She ran faster. Her feet, cold now even in the light boots made her run like never before. She caught sight of him getting lost in the jungle of humans down town and she followed like a parched man towards the river would. Only, her river was running away from her.
"Sir wait"
She screeched over the crowd again, panting and tired as the thinning weakening form of her own body protested. Her feet crushed the leaves below them, gravel and twigs crunching too. She ran and ran, pushing through crowds and shouting over banter; eyes never leaving sight of his brown cloak.
She saw him cross a road and when she came over, the signal turned. She was forced to wait but her eyes followed him until he turned a corner that she couldn't see. And so she couldn't wait anymore. Geet ran amidst cars, inviting cussing and ire of drivers and fellow pedestrians alike. But she cared not. For those few moments when she lost sight of him, Geet felt as if the world was snatched away from her yet again. But then she saw him walk over to the Brooklyn Bridge and her spirits rejuvenated. She stood a moment and breathed deeply before breaking into a run. The traffic on foot was light and without shouting for his name she dashed; saving all her energy for running. He had slowed his gait now, probably relaxed that she had lost him in crowd.
"You can't leave me again"
He was forced to stop at the cries in her voice. Her panting and heaves, the thin watery voice that was ready to melt into a puddle any moment made him stop. That was when Maan turned and eyed her for what she had become, a half dead shadow of her former self.
"Go back Geet"
He whispered, but his voice was not his. It was hoarser and thicker, as if his throat cracked at every word uttered.
"No. You are back, you are here. I am so happy sir"
"Stop please. Geet"
He stopped her advancing with a gesture of his right hand.
"But..."
"You are someone else's' now. I do not wish to disrupt your life"
He breathed.
"No, what non sense are you talking?"
She countered stepping towards him.
"Nonsense?"
He said pulling her left hand up with his right and showing her the ring.
"This isn't nonsense, is it?"
He looked away agitated, sighed after a second and met her gaze.
"Look, I know I wrote you to live and you should. I am happy you are happy. But go away now, don't make this any more difficult for me than it already is. Adi is a nice.."
She pulled him by the collar and sealed her lips to his, silencing his broken words. She kissed him hard, her lips coaxing his hard ones to open. And when he did, finally she breathed him in and dived home. She kissed him for a long moment, pushing him into the shadows by the railing while he held her loosely by the waist.
"Ever thine, ever mine, ever ours. Remember?"
She asked on his lips, kissing the angular jaw of his, layered in dark stubble. He flinched but held her loosely to himself; unable to push her off even when she didn't belong to him. He didn't turn to reciprocate either. She pulled back.
Removing the platinum band from her finger she held it up to him. In the gloom of an autumn evening and glowing overhead lights he could barely make out the tiny inscription, but his heart registered what her heart had wanted to say.
Morn and night, in your sight
It read. So he couldn't help repeat his promise to her all over again.
"Zindagi ki har subah tumse shuru hogi"
"Aur har raat aap pe khatam"
She completed and smiled then, an honest to god smile that enlightened her features and his soul.
"This was for the day we were supposed to get married. I was married to you on that very day we set for our togetherness"
She held up the ring in her hand and he covered her hand with his. Their fingers intertwined and the ring rested inside the cocoon of their joined hands.
"I'm sorry"
He said
"For what?"
"For everything. For going, for almost never coming back, for the doom that it brought on you"
Geet started crying then, wailing like a child; sobbing like the world was ending. Like a dam busted, she let go and threw herself into his arms like an abandoned stream into the vast seas. He caught her tightly, wrapping one arm around her back, holding her close as she cried and mourned and celebrated.
"So you are mine?"
He asked after a long moment when her crying had stopped and the bubble of nostalgia busted.
"Yes. Every morning and every night. How could you doubt that?"
She pushed him standing far away from him and tilting her chin up in defiance. He gave a watery laugh, shaking his head and advancing further.
"Come here"
"Wait"
She halted him, her words punctuated with sighs and cries
"I am warning you, if you come any closer then I am not letting you go away ever. On any mission, any air strike, anywhere"
His face hardened and he looked still as a statue.
"Even if I wanted to, I couldn't"
He said. She frowned.
Maan removed his left hand from the cloak pocket, supported by the right one. It was bandaged and stiff, the fingers distorted, jutting out of the plaster. And even though Geet was a doctor in making and had seen worst, her heart clenched and fear lanced through her like gripping vice of a venomous snake. His hand was almost not his.
"Does this repel you?"
"What? No"
She chided.
"This angers me, this saddens me. That you had to go through the pain pains me sir"
He looked at his hand and chuckled before sliding it back into the pocket. She caught the hand in between hers and smoothed her fingers over it like a fairy's touch, worshipping the sacrifice he made, thanking the stars that it was only a part of him and not him that was taken away from her.
"What happened?"
She asked.
He sighed, looked around at the crowded bridge and took her hand in his good one. They started walking towards a secluded spot on the precipice of the railing, the night sky falling and moon rising in the distance over them.
"My plane was brought down by some fundamentalists. They captured me and kept me prisoner for a very long time. It was gory Geet, I would spare you the hideous details"
"No, tell me everything"
She turned to him as they walked.
"Never. I wouldn't taint your innocence for the world"
"Did they do this to you?
She pointed to the crippled hand.
"Yes"
"Tell me please"
She slowed her pace but he shook his head.
"Suffice that it was bad. I didn't know how many days or months passed inside the dungeons where I was kept. Only that the stones turned warmer during the day and cooled at nights. That is how I kept track of morning and night, kept you in my memoirs and prayed I would meet you soon or send across a message to you that I would never come back"
She squeezed his hand so that he smiled.
"One day I found another fellow fighter pilot down with me"
They continued walking
"He hid a satellite phone with him and was about to destroy it for there was no one he wished to inform home. He thought it better they would believe him dead. I took hold of his device and sent you the email"
He stopped walking.
"Even then I didn't have the heart to tell you that I was never coming back. Because I wanted to, I desperately wanted to. Before I could write you more, there was danger of the phone being discovered and we had to destroy it. I knew you would be disturbed, worried but I didn't know how to contact you again..."
"Say no more of that time Sir, say that you will be here with me, please say that you shall walk by me again"
He held her hand that had the ring fisted in it and took it into his own.
"Before I give you my hand and my heart and my life to keep and cherish forever; before I beckon your heart and love to keep and cherish for myself, I need to warn you of this one thing Geet. I would never be able to hold you the way I once used to, I won't be able to clutch your hand while we walk as I once used to, I won't be whole the way I once was"
"Yes, you won't"
She said
"You would be more. More than you ever were. For today I love you more than ever and tomorrow I will love you more than today. Every day you would mean more to me"
She confessed borrowing his own analogy.
"Ever thine, ever mine, ever ours. Remember?"
As the dusky twilight hours replicated that winter night in autumn, he slipped the ring on her finger where it had always belonged. The moon, pale red behind a light damask of clouds shied away when he pulled her in for a kiss and deepened slowly, steadily, his right hand holding her waist firmly and fingers splayed over her behind goading her towards him.
"Who said your hold isn't as whole as it once was?"
She drawled in a husky tone, her hips meeting his under the pressure of his hand. She removed his other hand from the cloak pocket and guided it to her back. And then as his hand belonged to the seductive man that he was, Maan's deformed hand goaded and clutched her with light feathery touches under the support of her own.
"We should be quite a show for the pedestrians Sir"
Geet panted out of his kisses. He smirked.
"For the umpteenth time, Maan"
He chided.
"Maan"
She rolled his name over her lips
"Ahhh that kills me Geet. My name on your lips takes me to heaven"
He kissed her again and they turned in unison as her body collided into the railing behind. Numerous locks tingled in unison and they knew that once locked, their love wasn't going to be unlocked very soon.
"Morn and night, you are in my sight"
He promised
"You are my dark, you my light"
She finished.
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