"Would you read my fortune?"
"Of course" he said, with a twinkle in his eyes. Cupping mine in his warm extended hands, symbolically unfolding the secrets that were held within these loving fingers.
And so the story began that a lass would tread the long rocky road to Aurangabad, the famed last resting place for the tyrannical Mughal ruler, Aurangzeb. For the longest reign, the cruellest rule within the largest Mughal domain, this man's resting platform that served as a transfer route to the abode above, was stripped to the simplest form, perfumed only by fallen rose petals with long golden pencil minarets of the nearby mosque looking forlornly down at a man that once turned his back on the wide propagation of secular India to embrace a hugely fundamental iron fist of a rule that brought many an Arabian Night fantasy to their knees.
The city today was a hub of throbbing commercial activity, draped with a length of desert sandy cloth that hugged her voluptuous curves meandering the pasty brick buildings interspersing with the blue and egg white sack wrappers making up the homes of the homeless, dotted by mud strawed huts where man and beast co-exist in a harmonious balance that fed Aurangzeb's ancient city from a day to day, one small pebble a way along the long road to fertile extensions of mustard fields, sunflower gardens, wild vegetation, and tiny buds of cotton pockets. Cows, goats, dogs and chickens in the numbers built by the jumping heels of the young, signifying the fertility and the reproductive ability of a part of India that had seen relatively more rain than most of the Northern parts of late.
I would see a land that only appeared in my dreams, of pink sunsets and smells of lush green when the rain pellets left long time ago on the swaying grass under a winter's breeze. Like the wavy fingers of svelte dancing maidens, they bade me farewell as I made my way to the Ellora and Ajantha Caves, luring me to let down my guard and fall into a gentle hypnosis.
"What would I see?" my urging voice asked before I knew that I would be told.
I saw so many wonderful things akin to how one felt when he looked into the chambers of a king. Many astounding relics of times preceding the birth of Christ, paintings down in ways before anyone would put onto an organised form the art of creation. Carvings and sculptures born from monolithic erections, stories told through hands that lay cold buried today of their many sights and beliefs, thoughts and voices all articulating the ancient, the mythical, the mysterious. A times of gods, goddesses, demons and believers, it was a world then that the ancient traveller would have no problem dreaming of passing as time took obeisance to the opening mountains, no boulders or obstacles were too intimidating to overcome. Yes, this was a time when the world was indeed small yet diverse. The holy union of the Sumerian / Persian, Chinese Buddhism, Roman Egyptian and Indus notions were beautifully locked in perpetuity here. Again, wonderful things, amazing achievements and all these hidden for some years - close to a millennium for the case of Ajantha - at times, perhaps protected from the plundering rapists of invaders and thieves.
"And what challenges would we entail along your journey?" he asked.
What could be, then, more romantic than spending time productively, positively when you have to stand in front of the train station, knowing that your connecting train will only leave the platform in nine hours, at a glaringly sleepy hour of one in the morning? The middle part of India that we journeyed into lay out a feast of sights, like how a good host will decorate a long dining table for your pleasure. On the gutted fresh muddy fields, women took a break from back breaking work of harvesting and primming their land, working with a faithful ox, hushing away a crow, while kids ran in a crickety way up small hills of spiky grass waving at our passing train. Pune, a pit stop that we took interesting observation of how India morphed from the overly assertive yet hardened Northern attitude to a tropical easygoing Southern tune. It's not lazy, it's not rudeness, it's just how India has an amazing way of growing in different angles like the great rivers cutting through their arteries of train treks, servicing, feeding, keeping the nation in their grace. Thirty hours, bonding, getting to know, meeting new faces and laughing into the night with the simplest of humour that only the two of you understood...
As I sighed in a longing yet nostalgic breath, here sitting in Bengaluru, I loved how this city again, charmed me surprisingly without the blaring, hustler way of bigger cities I had encountered. The temperate weather and the old colonial layout of bricks and mortar, of umbrellas of trees lining the streets, of the people, the food. We move to Mysore tomorrow to spend another wonderful year of Christmas. We were in Bali last year, and I never would have thought that the great womb the spun the sacred knowledge of yoga, the grand courage of Tipu, the one that many a British Raj abhorred, the Durga Hill, a time to just be together...
"And you shall be loved by a man of brown eyes, curly hair, and you will have many children and your home will be filled with many dogs, animals like chickens and baby goats, you will live happily ever after..."
I looked into his eyes. That again, was when I realised how lucky and by no random chance that I had found someone to share all such unforgettable and defining experiences in life.
Merry Christmas hubby, and with all my love today, tomorrow and forever.
