The Song and the Souls

I saw her standing beside the river.


Again. And at the same moment of midnight.

The earth seem to be shimmering with moonlight.

The wind in a bit of rush.

Clouds in a mood of roaming.

And the whole city asleep.

City? Must be an exhaggeration.

It was once upon a time a city.

Now a fragments of broken dreams.

But seeing the lady tonight I cannot help to proceed towards her.

I have to know the reason.

Why a lady would stand by the riverside at this hour of night?

And for three consecutive days?

Why?



And just as I removed my shoes and stepped in the brown sand I found a sharp sound.

The sound from the passing wind.

The clouds moving fast.

Stars twinkling as if in rising hope.

Hope of what?

The lady answering?

I slowly came and stood beside her.



And before I open my lips the lady turned towards me.

And kept her finger over her lips.

A sign.

Of keeping silent.

I would anyway be silent.

Seeing her.

She is beautiful.

And much more than her.. Her beauty is innocent.

I cannot remember when last I have seen such a beauty.

A sacred beauty.



At that moment as I looked towards the river a pecuiliar thing happened.

The wind picked up.

And a strange noise started floating in the air.

A noise which resembles the sound of whistle.

A noise which also reminds one of a tune.

A tune in a flute.

But from where?

That sound originated?



As if it is the only begining of obsessed amazement the lady standing beside me opened her lips.



'Can you hear it?'

I nodded. 'Yes but where from it can come?'



The lady kept silent.

Between two of us as if linking the missing words the wind flow again.

With that sound of flute.

I stared at the river.

The river in moonlight looking like a gorgeous lady.

As if in her gentle waves she is writing on her own the curve and designs of the wind.

The transperent water droplets and broken waves carrying shadows.

Shadows of far across the lonely topography.

Far across the shades of the mountains.

The pictures of the sleeping city.

The images of the long time forgotten city.

I am about to get lost in an invitation of a different world and its different preoccupations and vanities with cherished acceptance of eternity when I came to conciousness.

As the lady beside me speak out.



'It is for three days I landed in this remarkable land in this part of South India and as I stay in a camp resort across the river I came for a stroll..across the river.

And that very first day..I found within the scattered ruins and the rocky terrain the river singing for me..this lovely song..a song which can be of no one but the river.

'The river?'

I asked in surprise.

'What else?'

I could not answer. Then said,

'I am searching.'

'I already searched and now got confirm.It is the offerings of the river herself.'

'But how is it possible?'

I asked.



The lady now looked at me with her bright big eyes. And in those eyes I found something more than obsession..may be within shining the joy of finding the answer..the joy of seeing her own perception..in the light of truth.'

'This is your first day..right.She said.'But I for the last three days came and stood for two hours. And I can found the river whispering in my ears..those untold stories..those unshared moments..those forgotten days..those betrayals..those signs of life which all..one day thrived..with all their dreams..smiles happiness and pains..and then one day at their one destined moment everything got extinct..all came to an end..a chapter of history came to be created and the present moments got framed into pages of past..this is life..isn't it?'



I forgot to answer.

As the lady before me said not only the truth but exactly those words by which I describe life..those belief..by which I trust life..those images by which I portray life.

I accepted.

'You are right.'

The lady again kept her eyes on me.

'You are right too. As in the world of reason this sound of flute..can not be possible.'

'Yes now I added. This sound can be the work of many things..the friction of wind..the flow of the river..the depth of the rocky valley..the sounds of the sleeping city and it all combines to present this sound.'



'Exactly.But it is needed for both of us to look at life at reality from the other side..in different eyes with a open heart and belief. Thus I can come here at this point of midnight.

At this place beside the river.

And can hear the song.'



'I have seen you for the last three nights here. Today I decided to ask you the reason.'

I said.

'So you found it?'

'Yes. And along with that I found something special.A gift of life. Which I would never had found sitting in the hotel. As if listening the song I went through the lost pages of time.I have only two words to say you.'

The lady looked at me.

'Thank You!'



And then after we kept silent.

Any other night any other place sitting beside a beautiful lady in a moonlit night riverside..our conversation would continue.

But not tonight.

We kept seated there for a long time.

No one calculated time.

No one counted moments.

No one felt embarassed.

No one felt insecured.

And noone asked each other their names..their identity.

Two stangers kept on seating side by side.

Unmoved.

Without words.

And between them continued the song of the river.

As if the most natural sound in the city of forgotten souls.

And at one moment the lady touched my hand.

I shivered.

I trembled.

Within a mystical night and a mysterious tune in an abandoned city of dreams in rocks..suddenly I felt that the earth ..the very old earth has got back to her primitive days..

Her ancient moments..

And we..sitting like two souls..

And between us the wheels of eternity rolled on..

And in this moonlit night..

Cool wave of wind..

Dwindling lights across the thatched huts..

And a strange smell of the river soil..

A man and woman seated with hands touched..

Or are we the shadows of the first men and women born in this earth?

Along the ancient bed of a fertile river?

And is it we are on the forgotten city of lost dreams..

Or is it we are on the..

Brink of a new civilisation to begin!