It was four in the evening and the flight had already been delayed for two hours when the airlines announced its cancellation. Diya rang up home to inform her parents that she wouldn’t be able to make it to Krish’s wedding. Krish and she had grown up together; their parents had worked in the same organisation for years and shared a close relationship. As it is she wondered what had gone wrong with her friend to have fallen in love with a sardar and that too one who had a proper beard and moustache. Eek! How could someone love a person with a moustache and that too a sardar!! She herself was about to get engaged with a friend. He was smart, caring and they’d been together since college. That was all that mattered – this thing about love was a little beyond comprehension. As she disconnected the call and started to walk towards the exit, the airlines announced that the flight would finally take off but after another short delay. She wondered if going to Chennai after such a long wait at the airport would be worth the effort and finally gave in and walked towards the check in counter.
Krish gave her a quick run down about the whole affair as they got ready for the dinner. She definitely was in love – and that too with a sardar! When Diya finally met Karan - the groom, he seemed to be a nice and warm person. Atleast Krish was happy and that was all that mattered. He introduced his family through the crowd and pointed out his parents and brother to her. Even though she couldn’t make out half of them because of the crowd and the din of the loud music, she pretended as if she’d seen them all. They all would be sardars - bearded and turbaned. As Krish pointed out Arjun, her brother-in-law, she expected the young boy in “Kuchh Kuchh Hota Hai” – counting stars at night, to come running! Sardar kids were always so cute – she wondered what happened to them once they grew up – how could a butterfly change into a hairy caterpillar instead of it being the other way around. Anyways, she could not see any small kid but only the helm of an off white Jodhpur jacket. Her head moved back as she craned her neck up to see a tall, smart and handsome man with neatly cropped hair. Her heart skipped a beat.
Our eyes met through the dancing petals as they slowly bowed to the magic of the moment gracefully gliding onto the floor as my brother, Karan, and his (now) wife, Krish, completed the last few rites of their marriage. Was she really looking at me or was I just imagining things? Even Nimoji, my only friend in the wedding seemed to think that she was and smiled glancing knowingly towards her. I didn’t even know her name and was leaving the next day - had to go back to my unit which was in the Siachen Glacier. Just as I started moving towards her, father called and I lost her in the crowd. Why did these things happen to me only?
It was night and the reception in honour of the newly weds had started. My eyes searched for her but she was nowhere to be seen and as if to add to my woes, I’d been asked to run a dozen errands. Most of the guests had left by the time I’d finished the last one and got back. Dejected I walked straight to the food counter to have dinner. And there she was – as beautiful as ever - sitting right next to the dinner counter talking to Prithvi. Talking to Prithvi!! What was he doing talking to her? This couldn’t be happening! As if God was right there listening to me, Prithvi left to get some water. I walked over and introduced myself – “Hi! I’m Arjun. Karan’s brother”. Oh God! Why did they have to make a movie by this name ... this sounded so clichéd! “Hi! I’m Captain Arjun”. “Captain? Captain of what?”. Now this was an unusual one. “Captain of what? Captain in the Indian Army”. “And I am Lady Diana”, she replied. Now we were getting somewhere. That was a nice name except that it sounded very familiar. I’ll figure that out later, I thought and asked her if she’d like to join me for dinner. Join me for dinner! Now what in the world could have made me say that. This was not going anywhere nice. Why would she want to join me for dinner? And as if she’d read my thoughts, she told me that she’d already had her dinner. “Then would you like to give me company while I have mine?” Now I was convinced that I’d been taken over by some evil spirit which did not want me to get to know her. Why would she want to watch me eat? “And why do you think would I want to watch you eat?” Oh God! She could read my thoughts too! For once I was relieved when Prithvi walked in and asked her for a dance. That atleast stopped me from making more of these faux pas. The only good thing about the whole evening was that she came to say goodbye to me after about half an hour - the half an hour that I spent eating the tastiest worst meal of my life. Why couldn’t I have asked her for a dance? Where did the dinner come in from? I’d spent only five minutes with her – five minutes in which I made a complete fool of myself. Couldn’t you somehow rewind time and let me ask her for a dance?
My sister-in-law refused to give her contact details to me. All that I got to know was her name – Diya. On the day I was to catch my flight to Leh, Krish, very magnanimously, gave me her email ID. I somehow managed to get myself manifested in the next day’s flight and ran to the nearest cyber cafe. After waiting for about two hours outside the cafe and checking my mail inbox atleast a dozen times I got a reply from her. What followed was the movie “you’ve got m@il” truncated into an hour. I finally got her number and spoke to her. We laughed about the dinner and she confided how she’d enjoyed pulling my leg. The next morning I caught my flight to Leh.
Siachen had no means of communications – at least not with the “normal” world. After a couple of weeks of absolute misery, God answered my prayers and sent an Enmarsat (a satellite phone). So what if it was seven odd kilometres from my base. I’d walk down or take a ride to reach that place and hang around till night so that I could get to talk to her for longer durations after all the others who wanted to make calls had left. One night my immediate boss in that location enquired about our relationship and wanted to know what was between us. Not convinced with my reply that we were only friends, he decided to call her up and find out for himself. It was one in the night when he got through to her number. I don’t know if it was the sleep or the irritation of being called at one in the night by someone who she didn’t even know, but she said that she loved me. I was too happy for words and the silence that followed was broken by a simple, questioning and expectant “Well?”. Well? Well what? What was I supposed to say? She asked me if I loved her too. I told her that I’d tell her tomorrow and disconnected the call. My revenge for the dinner was complete. Did I love her? Did I love her? More than anything in this world!
The next step was telling father and convincing him that the five minutes I’d spent with a girl he wouldn’t even remember, had driven me insane enough to spend the rest of my life with her. His reaction was very expected and polite. Like the Brits, he was very subtle in suggesting that I hardly knew her and perhaps it would be nice if I chose someone from our own religion if not our caste. A hint which in plain Indian language meant – forget it! But the optimist that I was – I took that as a hint that I needed to spend more time with her. So the next holidays, instead of going home, we toured Jaipur and Udaipur. What could be a better than this to get to know her? We were so happy together and felt so complete in each others company.
Before I knew it, my holidays were over and it was time to go back to my unit. In the months that followed, we kept talking and writing to each other. However, inspite of all my reasoning and pleading father refused to give his consent to the whole affair. Bowing to his wishes, I asked her to move on with her life as I could never think of hurting my family. Life suddenly turned into a shade of lifeless grey. As if fate had also been bribed, I was asked to go to a post on the line of control. It was an isolated place – with no means of communications. The three months spent there seemed like three years. My heart literally bled from what I had done to her and what I’d lost out in life. I’d spend days sitting out there in the open, staring into oblivion. Even the Pakis got sick of me and stopped threatening that they’d shoot me – perhaps the anguish of love – if not love itself – transcends all boundaries. When I came down from the post I decided that something had to be done – I couldn’t continue living the life of a loser. But there was more in store. Easy are not the ways of love. The parliament was attacked and tension grew at the border. I moved from Siachen to Kargil. Going on leave was a foregone conclusion. All communications had been cut for security reasons so I couldn’t even talk to her. Due to shortage of officers I was asked to move to one of the forward most posts again. Gun duels raged everyday and once after a particularly intense round of firing, I realised that life was too short to keep everyone happy – you got only one chance at it and you were a looser if you didn’t utilise that.
As soon as the ceasefire was announced, I asked my boss to de-induct me from the post since I wanted to sort some personal issues out. I was lucky to have a helicopter flying out that way and by nightfall I was back in civilisation – or whatever came closest to the rocky hell of those hills. Telephone lines had been connected again and I rang her up to apologise and plead for another chance. Through tears of joy, sorrow and love, we made peace. The sky seemed so much brighter (so what if there weren’t any clouds), my step seemed lighter (so what if I’d lost six kilos on the post) and I was hopelessly in love – so thats what the whole world seemed to be smiling about. Life was beautiful. I was detailed to go to Leh to organise a function. It was going to take a few days there. So I rang her up and asked her to come to Leh. Shocked, she asked me the reason. Reason? To get married – simple! So what if the government couldn’t do it – I had to send across a strong message – we meant business – or rather – marriage!
He’s got to be joking, Diya thought as she lay wondering at what they’d just spoken about. It was almost the end of the month and she’d spent whatever was in the bank shopping. They said that shopping was the best antidote to sorrow – and it sure worked. But she was broke and getting a return ticket to Leh was impossible. As she lay brooding over the problem, her roomie suggested that she check with the airlines if they could encash whatever frequent flier miles she’d accumulated for a return ticket to Leh. And to her surprise – they agreed! The taxi stood waiting outside to take her to the airport. She was late. Even if it was for one day only, she still needed to think what would be required in Leh. It seemed like all the cars of Delhi had decided to come onto the roads on that day itself resulting in the longest traffic jams ever. By the time she entered the airport, they were announcing the departure of the flight to Leh. She ran to the counter and enquired about the flight. The manager pointed out to an airplane which was taxi-ing out to the runway. This couldn’t be happening. How could she loose out on something after coming so close to it – this was torture – inhumane. Tears welled into her eyes and she started to sob at her helplessness. The manager enquired what had happened and Diya cooked up a story that her husband had been wounded in shelling in Kargil, was in a hospital there crying for her. That seemed to do the trick. He radioed to the plane. In five minutes she was running on the tarmac, the manager carrying her bag, while a stair was being rushed to the aircraft. The flight to Leh had taken off after a slight delay – and Diya was on board!
My Boss had to leave for Siachen where part of our set up still existed. This was ideal. I was in Leh and Diya’s flight had landed. We immediately rushed to the Patthar Sahib Gurudwara. The priest there was from our setup and it wouldn’t be a problem convincing him to marry us. However, when we reached the gurudwara, he chickened out and refused to marry us without my boss’s (who was his boss too) permission. We were stuck – the matter would be reported within minutes and we’d have people hunting for us to stop the marriage in half an hour. We rushed to the Kali temple in the Buddhist Monastery but they didn’t know how to perform marriage rites. All attempts to convince her for solemnising our marriage with God as witness failed. We searched all places in Leh which had any connection to God but drew a blank. Either the priest was not present there or he didn’t know how to conduct marriages or was too scared to marry a couple which had eloped. By afternoon I had become a certified tour guide for a religious tour of Leh. The last thing left was a gurudwara made in a small house by the few odd sikh families which stayed in Leh. When I approached the head priest, he told me that the decision would have to be taken by the Sabha. So a meeting of the Sabha was called which consisted of five sikh gentlemen in a run down shop in Leh market. After reasoning with them, sentimentally blackmailing them if they’d like a sikh to go to the mandir to get married and giving a small donation to the gurudwara, the marriage was fixed an hour later. We spent the next one hour trying to search for a suit in Leh market since my dahling Diya was in trousers and hadn’t even thought of getting a suit along. So much for all that packing! We finally found a pink one in one of the shops. The driver, cook and waiter alongwith me became the witnesses and a friend who was also posted there consented to do the kanyadaan.
She caught the next flight back and I informed everyone that we had got married – the marriage being a mere token of our commitment to each other. We told our families that we wouldn’t formalise it or start living with each other till they permitted us to do so and got us married properly. Chaos and mayhem followed. My boss went crazy and drove down immediately. Father disowned me. Some congratulated us, some laughed at the whole affair. Some supported us while others took the whole affair as a source of inspiration. After two years of separation, bickering, pleading, apologising and reiterating our love for each other, our parents finally gave in and decided to get us married – by both Hindu and Sikh rites. Love reigned supreme and we became one – forever!
This story is the true life incident of a couple who married eight years ago, are parents of a son and still madly in love with each other.
