Truth and Permanence

The truth and permanence of this transient world and this ephemeral life have been questioned by many – saints, religions, enlightened men and the frustrated ones.

I have read about it. Understood it. Agreed with it. And cared very little for it.
Today, for the first time, the question is welling up from within me, accompanied by a real sense of wonder.

Before me is a picture on the wall.
There are four people in it. They are all equal.

But it wasn’t always so.

In a not so distant past, one of them was special.
So much that the other three were part of a hazy background. The wall, the room which the picture adorned were hazy too.
I, my body, my face and limbs were a haze. Only a throbbing heart was real.
In fact, the whole world was a haze. I passed through it not noticing anything; only searching for him everywhere and finding him in everything.

Someone whose absence was unreal and whose imagined presence, a reality.
Someone who was my first waking thought. And my last.
Someone who effaced all that was past and pervaded all present and future.
A cinder in the eye. A mango hair between molars. Felt and lived every moment.
The only one felt and lived every moment.

All space and all time, stretching up to eternity was just him.
It was an absolute certainty that no matter what, I would love him forever. Till the end.
And I prayed, in my next life too.
In fact, I prayed I would come again just for him, even if God meant this to be my last life.

One day, it was over.

That didn’t surprise me.

But to my utter disbelief, I got over him.
When I did, all the haze melted, a concrete world claimed me and life went on, as if nothing had happened.

What surprises me is that, as I look at the picture on the wall, I feel no pain, no longing, not even a trace of that fever that had raged for years.
I search for the ache and I don’t find it.
He is effaced from my heart so completely, that it is difficult even to recollect the sensation of the love that had once been my life blood.
A block of granite has turned to vapour.

And that’s when I ask: if THAT love was not forever, what else in this world could be?
If such an intense feeling was mere illusion, what else in this world was true?
If a devotion that eternal did not endure, what else in this world could?
If a love all consuming could come to naught, if a well so deep could dry, if an emotion so strong could die, what else in the world was true, what else in life permanent?