A moment of love

The Christmas sun was setting at the Surathkal Beach. A pleasant breeze was blowing in from the sea. Seagulls were busily finishing their dinner - fishing out the numerous shells and tiny crabs that the waves brought to the shore. Silhouettes of birds flew across the red disc, which was fast dipping into a smoky cloud in the distance. The reddish glow in the sky would soon subdue into a faint glow, before fading out altogether.

The beach was almost deserted, throughout it's length of a couple of kilometres, except for a couple or two from the nearby college. Most of the students had gone home for the Year End holidays. Only those who were from distant parts of the country, had stayed back. The local children, done with their evening play with the waves, had gone back home.

I looked at her. She was sitting still, silently staring into the distance, with her unruly hair fluttering in the breeze. She tossed her hair back time to time, as it fell on her face. What was she thinking? 'The one who loves me, will understand my silence,' she had said once. I followed her gaze. I could almost see the thoughts running through her mind - the childhood games near the sea, her best friends, and a protective but helpless mother at home. And the evenings. The evenings were always bad.

I brushed the hair away from her face with my hand. 'It's been four years since we met, you remember?' I asked her, deliberately trying to break the chain of her thoughts. 'Who would have guessed at that time!'

'You did,' she replied quietly, putting her head on my shoulder. 'And I used to wish, too.' A smile broke out in her lips.

I put my arm around her, and pulled her close.

'A year before that, that was the first time I had been here,' I told her, looking away and towards the last red streak at the horizon. 'That was a Christmas too.' Memories came flooding into my mind.

Now it was her chance to read my mind. She turned my head towards her. I could feel her fingers interlock with mine. 'Both of us had a bad past,' she reminded me, 'but it was our past. It's all different now. Don't you think, it's our failures in the past that actually brought us together? It wouldn't have been 'us' without that.'

I nodded in agreement, and was instantly thankful for the events - good or bad - that had led us to the exact moment. It seemed I could spend my entire life, holding her in my arms, sitting by the seashore and gazing out into the sea. I looked upwards and thanked God who was watching us from somewhere there.

The lights of the ships had started getting brighter in the pitch-dark horizon, which was now erased of the faintest signs of the sunset. The beam from the lighthouse swept across the beach periodically. A chill was developing in the air.

I got up, and pulled her up. It was time to get back to the hotel.