The Love That Was Our Youth

I found myself standing at a crowded Gariahat when crossing the road and the tram lines, with the glitter of the red building and the neon lights of the shop named "Traders Assembly" she paused as a tram was passing.
The tram covered her.
I let myself take shelter in a tea shop preventing her to look at him. He can see her as clear as the just lit evening stars.
All the light fell on her face. She was wearing a maroon Kurti and jeans that ended at her knee. There was a scarf covering her neck and part of her upper breast. Sweat glittered on her forehead. She looked strangely fresh. Her eyes blinked. The halo of lights somehow managed to focus on that Goddess's face and her delicate lips hold a smile, the reason of which no one knew. The reason for that smile will be a mystery for eternity. Something that made this moment sublime and blessed. The whole of Calcutta was at a halt as the white team passed by and she is bringing back life crossed the tram lines.
She was absurdly beautiful.
He gasped like many waiting at the bus stop when she passed them. They all were helpless. They have to look at her.
He came out and with pride in my heart made myself appeared before her.
The rain came at that moment, after a hot sultry day.
We looked at the sky. We hold hands.
Then as if forgetting everything we stand at the road with our face upwards.
We took every drop of the first rain in us.
'Isn't it beautiful? Everything?'
She utters. Her voice filled up with joyful surrender.
"Like You". I spoke.
"Me?"
"Don't you know, how absurdly beautiful you are?"
"You must be in love!"
"What else I can do with you beside me?"

At twenty-one, whoever can think of finishing it up? Life was then a big, charming orange sun where with moments, rain came and danced, moon slept with us naked in the bed, and birds woke up us from the sleep. Exams, unions, buying books from secondhand bookshops, rushing to library where I often lost the cause of reading and thought about her, meeting outside at Golpark and having spicy Momos at the roadside, gulping it all down by hot chai.
We walked miles then as don't had money. When I got my tuition money, I was the Hero then. I stopped the first taxi I found and I would open the door for her.

Money was a thing that we flew in air. Until the end of the month when walking to the nearest phone booth and calling her, would become too tight.
It was too late when at the brink of separation we knew, we were lovers.

We were a couple crossing the invisible bridges of time. We walk from the east of the sun to the west of the light. We took all the glow of the sun and reached the moon asking her the color of the night. We wore silk then, transparent look through and were in love. Nothing can touch us not even poverty not even the hanging crowd in busses not even the killing loneliness at night starting at mirror with uncertain future. But what is future? It is as invisible a myth like the past. If anything remains that is present.
And the memories we carry.
Hence, we preserve every touch every kiss every madness of our youth and bodies and the soul and we move ahead knowing nothing lasts not even this relationship and in hundred years we would be all gone and nothing matters. But I know I will keep our story, well enough to be read by generation of lovers of departed couples of solitary souls. We were at city at village at sea and mountains at desert. We were lost. We were always on the road and laughed at eternity.
Don't you listen to it now?