The undying flame of love

Many, many years ago, a sage was meditating on a Himalayan peak. Majestic dales and solitary vales sprawled around were all aglow with the divine streak.

Though the birds chirped songs, and rain poured down in throngs, he was unmovable, lost in a deep trance.

In winters, icy cold storms blew and snow around and over him was all aglow. His soul but was safe somewhere in the cosy warmth of transcendental realisation.

In autumn, wind-fallen leaves sailed down with slumberous tumble, and ripe fruits fell proudly, adventurously for a juicy, pleasant crumble. He still was somewhere else when the nature opened these marvellous jewels from her treasure trove.

In spring, wild flowers fully unfurled their fragrance and smile, and honey-bees engaged in dawn to dusk toil. He but was unmoved and transported into a state where the ecstasies of natural bounties don’t mean anything anymore.

Summer’s warm days sprayed desultory, eerie uneasiness around, and cool nights proudly embraced this son with his soul heaven-bound. Still it didn’t matter. He was undisturbed and was silently moving on his meditative path.

Once it was a full moon autumn night. A fairy was flying amid milky delight. A perfect calmness pervaded the solitary vales. Everything was asleep, bathed in the softest fluffy shades of the white. The fairy flew low over the peaks glowing under the moonlight. The seer was lost in his trance in front of his cave, the beauty of nature around meaningless to him.

She saw him and hovered around the sanctimonious air of his sagehood. A small, harmless mischief rustled in her young, innocent heart. She circled in the air above him. Her laughter touched the milky sea around him and created soft ripples. Her unbelievably soft dress rustled in the gentle breeze born of her circles. It but did not have any effect on him. He was engrossed too deep in the cosmic balance beyond the sensory contradictions and dualities. The more she looked, the more was the urge in her to bring him back to the beauty of this world, to fetch him from the deep ocean where his soul had dived.

His exquisitely masculine physique and persona created tempted sparks on her magic trick. She tried all juicily leering feminine tricks. But her desire-lorn swirls in the air failed to move him even a bit. Helplessly she descended on the earth. There were almost tears of hopelessness in her eyes. She sat in front of him with those rose-red lips pursed in a heart-breaking frown.

Her nymphatic eyes were lost in his handsome, bearded, sculptural face. It was mesmerizing. There was not a single worldly trace on his face. She herself was caught in a trance and lost the sense of time and the laws of the fairyland. The night sped away as if in a jiffy.

The day rose. The sun arrived with full earthly delight. There was terror in her eyes. The hope to return to her realm died. She had broken the law of her land by not returning on the same night after the brief terrestrial sojourn. The realisation crashed against her soft self like a thunderbolt. Her utmost sensuous bare shoulders heaved under the tremors of this unpardonable fault. A cry involuntarily tore through her slender throat. And then it was a still bigger violation.

His serenely flowing meditative phase met this sinful, full-stopping dot. His communion with the divinity was broken. His long-closed eyes opened. The world of his penance lay scattered. His fiercely burning eyes stared at the petalous flower in sobs and sighs. Her large flooded eyes pleaded for mercy. But the fire in his unforgiving eyes was unforgiving and cursing.

The fabric of his serenity was torn. The sage thundered, “You proud, vain woman of egoistic beauty, become an ugly bush of thorns!”

Mowed down by the spell of his cursing energy, an ugly bush stood in place of that angelic beauty. All shaken and ravaged he left the place. A thorny branch, meanwhile, got entangled in his loin cloth as if for meek, pleading forgiveness and brace. He but scornfully jerked it apart and headed to some other place for a new start.

Time then took to its heels on swift horses. The seasons changed. The spring’s colourful patterns were rearranged. The summer’s warm kisses melted the snows. The autumn’s harvest uncomplainingly fell to the air’s chiding blows. The winter’s snowy blanket covered the peaks. And rains lashed down in stormy freaks. This pleasant wavering of nature, however, couldn’t shake the sage from the meditative maze. Faraway down the hills, the accursed bush was shrouded in thorny haze. It struggled to sprout fruits and flowers. But even cursing has a testing time against soft, innocent glow of purity. How can something having a fairy core remain ugly and thorny for too long? Her pure soul entombed in that thorny shrine prayed for penance. And see, a flower of her fruits sprouts forth!

A flower blossomed among the thorns. So beautiful! Among the thorns and deadly pale brown branches, it appeared juxtaposed, like it had dropped from the heaven and got stuck there. It was the day when the enlightened sage arrived from the north. Contented with his cosmic realisation, he came down the beautiful dale. As he passed the bush, his purified soul sensed the thorny shrub’s plaintive wail. His feet disobeyed him and he couldn’t move. The lone flower among the thorns fell at his feet in holy-most obeisance and greet. He picked it up and was lost in its fragrance.

The thorn was ugly. The flower so beautiful and fragrant! What contradiction! Flowery heaven and thorny hell together! The latter born of his cursing condemnation; the flower born of the beauty behind the thorny bars. It was a jolting earthly realisation. Hadn’t he broken the beautifully set laws? Torrents of repentance gushed through him. He bid penance at the altar for a long time. His repenting self set around a reformative shrine. His soul drenched in painful chime. He braced the thorns with the love and affection purest of the pure. It gave him bleeding fingers so many times. He caressed and cared for it like it was the beautiful most flowery shrub. He was practicing his penance now, of love, of surrender, of repentance.

When his soul had been salvaged of the sin, nobody could bet against her for a win. There she blossomed in front of him. Beauty, charm and grace filled to the brim. Her smile was forgetting and forgiving. It was the beacon of her penance, of love, of beauty. Inside the stony walls of his heart, a new luminosity was now thriving. The sage embraced her. She, who had been separated from her loved ones, got the earthling she had fallen for. Happiness, bliss and calm opened a new door to the start of a fresh cycle of life, love and humanity.

All but the sage had been extinguished by the cataclysm. The lone and forlorn survivor he had been striking at the doors of heaven with his endless questions. Now there was no more pursuit. The endless had manifested in a small sip of love. Now they lived as a man and a woman. New hopes, aspirations and offsprings began to thrive.

Thus were sown the seeds of another spell and cycle of life, of creation. Their unchecked love in those flowery vales left countless exotic trails. Gurgling brooks gave company to her primordially sensuous laughter. His instinct’s procreating sprouts mingled in the mirthful waters of her receptiveness.