The time to love is now
Could we spend the evening near that lotus pond today? It will be a great nostalgic experience sitting beside it and recalling our beautiful courtship days,” Seva asks hesitatingly, unsure of her husband Shreshth’s response.
Shreshth looks up at Seva from his laptop and replies irritatingly, “Grow up, Seva. We are no longer teenagers. The Japanese delegation will visit the office tomorrow, so please let me focus on preparing my presentation. You also focus on preparing the dinner.”
Seva begins to prepare dinner, but she can barely contain her tears. Even on Sundays, Shreshth can’t find time for her. Bhakti and Pratham, their children, are settled abroad. She often feels lonely and perhaps unloved. When lonely, she recalls how madly Shreshth was in love with her. He would borrow her friend’s bicycle and ride for half an hour to reach that lotus pond where she would be waiting. Then, they would talk until it was dark.
One such evening, when the sun was setting, casting an orange reflection on the pond, Seva mustered the courage to express her deepest fears. “Will we keep meeting here, near this pond? Will the fragrance of our love last, or will it get stale?” tears welled in her eyes as she asked Shreshth.
Shreshth, cupping her face in his hands, looked lovingly into her eyes and, while wiping her tears, said, “Ours will be an immortal love story. I will keep loving you as long as stars are in the sky… and as intensely as the sun.” Seva has never forgotten that moment and can live her whole life with the memory of that moment of love—indeed, she has been doing so for decades.
“Could we spend the evening near that lotus pond today? It will be a great nostalgic experience sitting beside it and recalling our beautiful courtship days.” Seva’s words of the last evening pierce through the deafening silence every time Shreshth looks at her body wrapped in the red sari she had worn for their wedding.
Shreshth is crying like an inconsolable little child. “How can she be dead? She was talking to me last evening. How can someone sleep and not wake up the next morning? How can that be?” Shreshth finds her death too abrupt, bizarre, and cruel.
When his brother comforts and consoles him, he wipes his tears and stops crying—but not for long. After a brief pause, he suddenly gets up, walks up to Seva’s feet side, puts his head on Seva’s feet, and starts crying again, “Please forgive me, Seva.
I will take you to the pond as many times as you want. Just return once, and I will become the Shreshth you always longed for. I beg you, Seva, please do not punish me like this. How will I ever be able to live without you?”
Scenes of the life they spent together flash through Shreshth’s mind as he sits at her feet, looking intently at her uncovered face for one last time. He realises Seva, true to her name, always served and cared for him with intense love.
Unlike his colleagues’ wives, she never asked for costly saris, jewellery or designer bags; all she ever asked was his presence and their togetherness—and he could not give her even that. Unbearable guilt and regret fill Shreshth’s heart as he realises this.
While volunteering to serve terminally ill people in a hospital as a young man, I had the privilege of spending time with people in their last days and listening to their life stories and regrets about their lives. Shreshth was one of them. Interestingly, I never found anyone on their deathbed regretting how others treated them; most regretted not finding enough time to show love and care for others.
Many felt they spent too much time trying to win arguments and prove their significance, status, power and relative superiority. By doing so, unbeknownst to them, they frittered away most opportunities to connect with others at a deep spiritual level by empathising, sharing, loving, valuing and serving others.
Strangely, people receive far more love, respect, admiration and flowers when they are dead than when they, being alive, could accept and appreciate these. If we could value and love people as much when they are still alive, we would have fewer regrets and be more forgiving and grateful.
The world, too, would be a far more peaceful, kinder and happier place to live. However, like Shreshth, most people realise the value of people, relationships, health and other invaluable things only when they are about to lose or have already lost these.
Wise people don’t aspire to be in heaven in the afterlife. They know, however beautiful, that the future is merely an imagination and can be experienced only when it arrives.
Therefore, they focus on making heaven here and now by meeting, loving, valuing, empathising with, and serving people as if they were the only gods they would ever meet.
Anil Bhatnagar is a corporate trainer, motivational speaker, and the author of Success 24x7, among several other books. Email: thrive.ab@gmail.com