TAJ - A LOVE STORY

    

                The training was hard, the life harder and the mission impossible. He loved a woman and wanted her, and they promised him many like her, waiting for him in paradise.  The AK 47’s and the explosive ammunition, evoked his fire prowess and hardened his resolve.  Mumbai was maximum city, a city of dreams. He would ensure that the city was awake that night, so that he owned all the dreams that belonged there.  He was a broker of death, a trader of dreams.  The city would be painted red, and then he would ride the rainbow of death to paradise.  He was the lone wolf, the tiger prawn among the shrimps, assigned to devour the cadavers the night brought out.  Two of his brothers had already lit the inferno of death on the lifeline of the city.  The others ensconced  in a five star, sent up enough smoke to mask the remaining in the skies.  The circular dome of power which resembled a space ship was his target.  He had to travel in his RDX suit in that space ship to reach his virgins.

                She stood blocking his way in that deserted street, carrying her unsold roses, all white, none of them red. He was the knight in armour and she stood staring at him, clutching the white roses close to her heart.  It was her eyes that took him back to the journey that began in the sleepy valley of deodar trees. The same eyes that were forbidden to look at him, the eyes that had set him out to seek more to redeem one was now piercing his heart.   As his gaze bore down on her, she didn’t quiver, the shivers were his.  Her eyes didn’t flinch but his heart did a somersault.  He felt that Dante could not have expressed it better of a paradise regained. One for all suddenly made more sense than all for one. He laid the guns at her feet and she placed the white roses in his hand. Farewell to arms was in fact a welcome to her arms.

                  As they walked hand in hand, the guns and roses sinking slowly in the waters, smoke clouding the sky and sirens wailing for the dead, he looked back at the edifice that would have been his tomb. It was safe for now. Later when they counted the dead, he would be alive in her arms.  They would never look for the one that got away!