Stardust.

His reminiscent smile engulfed my pride,

Pulling off puzzle pieces of our defamed past apart.

Reconciling with the agony,

I lost myself in those perfidious  sparks.

The miasma of treacherous scarlet illusions environed me
As I defied its warring cries to rive.
Clinging onto the arms of a fugitive lover,
I found my tryst under the benighted sky.

So I let down my guards
And watched the glooms evanesce with time
As he took me back to our paradise
Leaving stardust behind.

................................................

     Am I dreaming ? Could he really be here? My heart is failing to maintain its eccentric acceleration  as I struggled to catch my breath. And in just fractions of seconds I find myself  sailing through these inanimate years that I lived before the unthinkable happened........

12 years ago....

16th November 1999.

Solan, Himachal Pradesh,

India.

"Why isn't he home yet? It's been three weeks since the day he was supposed to sign off. Where is he?", I sobbed restlessly hoping for any news from him.

The attendant said, "We are trying our best to locate him. You need to have patience. Please cooperate with us. An avalanche took place in his assigned area. Please give us a while to find his body."

Did I hear right? His body? For a few seconds I just wouldn't react to his insane reply. Tears ran down my cheeks as the phone slipped down from my lifeless hands.

          My mother held me from behind as I felt my ground crack by the attendant's unbidden words. I think she said something to me but all I the infinite noises of my fiancé, Caption Abhishek Shekhawat's absence had taken over my senses. I couldn't believe how strong gravity's pull can be as I fall on my knees, failing to avoid the inevitable.

           On march 3rd, two days after our engagement he left for his duty to Siachen. Who would have known back then what life had in store for us? I spent my next few years just trying find any trace of his existence without any success. My family had given up, believing his body had submitted itself in the snow.

            The soaring cries and  cynics had flawed every bit of my soulless heart that blamed fate for the way life had turned out. And finally in 2003, I decided to move apart from my defamed past. So I left for Mumbai to start a new life.  I cut of from every possible being who could remind me of his unjust abandonment. But every try of mine tell go off these scarlet illusions succumbed. I wasn't really ready to let go and I believed it to be the reason for my tussle.  

         And today, 12 years later, I see him standing at my doorstep still flaunting our engagement ring.

Tears flooded from my eyes trying to to reconcile with the agony. Startled by his arrival, I couldn't trust my judgement. 

         "I can explain, love", he said, mumbling about his past 12 years of which the first five years he was in coma after the avalanche had blocked his veins in a small hermit town. And how he struggled to regain his memory in the following years.
            I pressed my eyes and said, "Please stop!" as they released the tears of comfort and disbelieve.

 That's when he took my hand, startled to still see the engagement ring and his eyes gazed into mine with amazement, "Even after all these years?"
       I replied, "how could I have given up when my heart still belonged to you?"

In response he embraced me so hard that I felt miasma of my pains evanesce and now We were back to each other, to our paradise, leaving stardust behind.