Once an ocean...

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और भी दुःख हैं ज़माने में मुहब्बत के सिवा

राहतें और भी हैं वस्ल की राहत के सिवा
मुझ से पहली सी मुहब्बत मेरे महबूब न माँग !

                                            - Faiz Ahmed Faiz

(Other pains too exist in the world, beyond love.

Pleasures too than that of the union of lovers.
Ask me not, my Beloved, for that love, I once had.)

     Once upon a time, like in those classic fairy tales, "love" happened. And then as in the stark reality of human existence, "life" happened.

     Years later when we both met, she stared into my eyes. She told me though there were traces of love, she could not find that ocean of love that I once had in me for her.

     I told her the ocean of love was for what she then was and not for what she now is.

     She corrected me when she said her concern was not if the ocean of love is still there for her, but that she could not find the ocean at all.

     I told her the ocean of love was in him who I then was and not in him who I now am.

     She asked me what happened to the ocean which was so vast and majestic.

     I told her the traces that she found now in me were what was back then the ocean.

     She was surprised and asked me how was it possible that the vast ocean of those days now seemed to be only traces.

     I told her maybe like me, she too had drowned in that ocean of life, the awareness of whose infiniteness shakes our perspectives so much so that what seemed oceans then, seem to be mere traces now.