Cradle of Memories

While he busies himself in the streets of Kolkata making and counting green banknotes, Holy waits on him caressing her silent love with the certainty that the true love in Nonglei, below the surface of greed, will emerge. Only in her absence, he realises to understand the love Holy has nurtured, and with which she waited. By then she has already left for Phuket, but not without the promise that Nonglei will join her.

Soon it occurs to him that he ought to follow her and prove his love on one of the beaches of Phuket. Adamant and ever surer, he sets out to find her. But what he discovers when he has traversed halfway is that the place, where she should be waiting for him with arms wide open, has just been assailed and flattened by tsunami.

Through the wreckage and debris over the entirely flattened island, he looks for any trace of Holy. His earnest attempts proves futile, he, nevertheless, returns with the realization that his feelings are genuine.

At this juncture he is left with either to remain soaked in an agony rendered by the realized love or to gather himself to execute the promise he has once given himself. The promise to curate all their collective memories and thus to live surrounded by them. He finally convinces himself that he is ought to celebrate their past, for remaining sunk in it will only manifest his failure to comprehend the beauty introduced and groomed for them by Holy. The task, in an artistic interpretation, is the equivalent of curating classical paintings or artifacts.

The attempt results in living a reclusive life. In other words, his senses are ruled by the efforts. He, however, maintains a delicate balance by taking up a job in an establishment. This routine continues until one rainy day on which the city is claimed by torrential downpour. Shanarembi arrives as a serendipity. The kindness they initially extend to each other is simply the fondness people do to those with whom they feel instantly connected. This eventually crystallizes to a mutual love when both are tested by an extreme circumstance in Nonglei’s life.

Known, understood and tested, thus they build a hope synonymous with future. But what remains clear to him, despite the romantic discovery, is that Shanarembi’s arrival doesn’t mean stamping out Holy’s memories; instead it adds more to what he has built with Holy. It is clear she would have loved it as it is the involuntary composition of a perfect mosaic in which the beautifully curated past sits next to the present in perfect harmony. But this is with perfect appreciation of how the beautiful past has shaped the present, and therefore has made it ever more purified and polished like any magnum opus.

The story, woven in lyrical prose, highlights how love can embolden individuals, and instead of ruining, it can uplift, nurture, groom and enable life to touch a pinnacle in the form of a cradle meticulously fitted or adorned with beautiful memories in place of choosing to put it aside. Every act, every moment in life comes in the form of a treasure, but it needs an alchemist to transform it. Like alchemy, love itself is a sacred art that can make people identify and see the rarest of the rare beauty in human heart.