Translation...

By the time I reached there, almost everybody had arrived. But I wasn’t anxious for them but for someone who wasn’t there as yet. My mind was captured by different thoughts; what if her father didn’t allow; what if something else might have happened, but all these abstracts thought vanished away when I heard the donkey cart approaching closer. It seemed the whole environment had come to a halt; the cold breeze had paused and suddenly the birds had forgotten to chant for the moment. Everything was silently shouting “It was her”. She along with her siblings was walking towards me. The spark in her younger sister’s eyes was telling that she had recognized me. She whispered something in her older sister’s ear and that is when she looked up at me. Whatever I felt after our first eye contact; pain, desire, crave and alienation - everything came to an end after this second brief eye contact.

In a moment, she went by leaving me with her warm presence. It seemed that everything came back to life; the birds started chanting and the breeze continued to refresh the surroundings. There are very few moments you want to live again and again. And this was one of them. But unfortunately, like every other thing this too had to stay with me forever, in my memories.