The Love Story

The Love Story



It all happened when the sun was at its brightest in a city described as
the soul of India – “The Ancient City of Kashi”. It is a place where life meets death in the holy river of Ganges. I approached the river with caution and at the same time, with blind devotion to the mysticism and mysteriousness of life. I closed my eyes not to be overwhelmed by the river’s grandiosity and gently leaned forward to touch the water. I felt a current ran through my hands, straight through my arm that led my eyes to open and withdraw… I was shaken by the collective energy that charged the worshipped body of water floating with dead bodies of holy men and ashes of those who devoted their life in worship of Her. The candles floating with flowers drifted away as I stepped back in awe…

I was met with a dark youth, with pain in his eyes but a sincere friendliness in his smile. Raju. He brought me to this quaint dark alley of bustling businesses but with an air possessed with the fragrance of rose and sandalwood. The faint burning incenses fed flickers of light in that path with small streaks of beams from the spaces between the roofs. A passing sight of a young man walking beside me in his silent being remained in the corner of my eye; only to be caught unaware of the brushing of our shoulders as I rushed to the hotel door. Have you ever walked beside someone and almost suspend in time as you breathe in their soul’s peace? It was a glimpse of a powerful quiet still moment. When one asks me the reason why I chose to marry someone who did not share a common language with me, not a culture, not an education and not a single chain of similar interest, I give a standard reply in a form of similar questions. “Have you ever met someone who ceases the restlessness of your soul or had your heart feel that it needed not to beat any longer because it felt it could rest in his hands?” It was that profound peace that I felt as I gazed into those eyes.

What transpired between the last lines and the next ones would be the flow of love letters by hand inside a stamp filled envelope from India and the continuous ringing of long distance calls. This was followed by our journeys in the mountains of Thailand and Cambodia’s Ankor. In these times, the stillness of my soul saw that I was not only at peace in the quiet of his being but I found peace in mine. I saw him celebrating me at my best and worst; without stepping back in fear. I wondered how that frail thin frame of his withstood the shock of my eccentricities. He remained gazing through my eyes in non-bewildered calm.

As I write about this now, I feel that I could inhale the smells of Thailand and Cambodia; from the food to the dusty roads and the roaring oceans. I am reminded of his kiss outside the operating room as the doctors rushed me in for a caesarian operation and the look in his eyes when he held our first child. I can close my eyes and have the movie-like scenes run in my mind, holding our child in his arms making our way from the streets of Calcutta to sleeping on the station floors of Howrah.

We held hands as we braved through the winds of change. His powerful and tradition preserving Indian culture did not permit our inter-union of faiths and nations. My Filipino modern society wondered at the sight of a dark skinned young boy whom they expected to smell like curry- but didn’t. It’s been six long years now and our families have never yet met. The oceans are bound to be crossed one day. And it is our prayer that like what brought us together, love will also see through in their eyes. We regret not having them in our wedding day, barefoot after a rainy day, facing the ocean with shells to line our path.

However, his mother paid us the first visit here in the mountain after we moved back to this great land. I met her with the same love I had for my husband grateful for her womb who cradled a great soul. I bowed and touched her feet in reverence as she would hope her future Indian daughter in-law would do. I reached back to the center of my chest to show that with respect I touch her feet, and with love she also belongs to my heart. She hesitated in my need to do it, but laid her hand gently on my head for her blessings.

His only brother remains to refuse talking to or meeting me to this day… After all, I was the soul who defied the ancient sacred ceremonies and the generations of traditions.

Months passed and his father paid us a visit. We talked and laughed for hours and I served him his tea, and best of all, he gives this sweet surprise of having been served the way he would have hoped his Indian daughter would do. He has given his blessings and said, “I am finally ready to go, now that I have met you and my grand daughter”.

After six years of marriage, we both were in for a surprise. We thought that those years were our most intense and powerful moments; running away together madly-in-love in exotic foreign lands, tying the knot just after rains in the beach, holding our precious fruit of love in our hands and moving forward to settle to another land.

The surprise was that we both were brought back to the state of our first meeting. That is, the state of finding peace in ourselves; unconditionally loved and accepted by each other. The only difference is that when we first met, we knew without knowing how or why. And at present, we affirm the knowingness with our relationship. None of these came without storms or earth shaking emotions. It has been challenged by our cultural conveniences, parenting views and individual differences. But none also lasted longer than an earth’s rotation.

We found a way to believe that rightness and wrongness are illusions in our relationship. We learned that only in freedom and in unconditional acceptance of who we are constantly changing into, is the rock of our truth. To choose that, over and again, brings us closer to the truth of who we truly are and why we are here.

I hope for our daughter to be able to gaze into the truth of her soul and see the same in the man she will one day lay eyes on… I pray that she remembers, that only a complete whole can complement another.

p.s. I asked for Rahul’s permission to write our story, but he replied saying that the details are sacred to him and that those memories will only live in his heart and in no one else’s memory. Thus, his decision will be honored in this blog entry.