The Dark Side Of The Moon

“Nandini, you are beautiful”.

The scent of fresh dew lingered in the air as he kissed her forehead. The mountains stood like tall fortresses against a cloudy sky at the distance. Always watching over her, like a mother. The sun itself had barely risen. The village still wore the subdued quiet of dawn. Only sounds were of the cuckoos softly consoling their little ones in the nests high up in the trees. There was something about this morning that almost made it seem like a treasure as it eased in gently, unwrapping the world anew.

He took her in his arms, using all his strength to be gentle, and let his lips touch hers so lightly he could hardly feel it.

She had never thought of herself as beautiful. But today, here, in his arms, she could feel a swirl of emotions bursting through her veins. In this very moment, she knew she is everything beautiful that has ever been written about. Everything and yet, more.

Theirs was young wolves’s love. Completely blind and completely deaf.

“I want my parents to like you, just as much as I do”.

His parents were visiting the next week and he had written to them, telling them all about her. They seemed just as eager to meet her.

Nandini had been all about simplicity. Radiating warmth and confidence in every little thing that she did. Perhaps that is why her skin glowed so. Her beauty illuminated her eyes and softened her features. Bright and cheerful she was, like the blooming dandelions. One could always see her dance through the lush green fields where her feet became the soil, and her eyes as if the summer’s green had all girded up in sheaves. She would often stop and toss her head back to look up at the mighty mountains, and laugh.. a laugh that burst through her very soul, tingling her every nerve and lighting up the entire village.

As a little girl, her father would walk her to the top of the mountain ridge at the edge of their farm to watch the sunset. She loved the bright pink butterflies lazily flitting in and around the grass, as she dipped her tiny feet into the clear, bubbling brook nearby.

That had been many years ago, and things were different now. The brook was dry, and her father.. he was gone. But she still liked to climb up, to find the perfect view of the sun, dancing atop the crest of the mountains, sky awash and ablaze with colors found at the heart of a fire. Only as the stars would begin their faintest twinkles from within the blanket of darkening lilac, gently pulling away the splendor of the day, would she climb back down.

Nandini had seen him in that exact spot, with that same demeanor, on several occasions. He was tall, slender with raven black hair. He stood motionless, watching the streams of sunlight fall through the thick wall of trees that bordered her backyard, lost in deep thought.

“You know some might say you have been stalking me”.

“May be I am”, came the reply.

Rudra let his smile widen into a brilliant grin that had her beaming at him. She was laughing now, feeling absolutely delirious. The little pond next to them glistened in the warm glow of the sun, mirroring the dazzling assemblage of colorful butterflies that had gathered above them. The ripples ruffling the stillness of the surface and shattering the reflection of the clear blue sky.

Afterwards, she couldn’t describe what it was. The feelings that resounded in her body had no words to anchor them in memory. But it felt right. Her soul danced from her body to meet with his, drawing him closer so she could cherish the desire that she felt within.

A few years had gone by since they had first talked to each other. They had grown closer with time, spending many evenings just holding each other, stealing kisses under the deep, blue skies. The love they shared was the kind that intertwined their very souls. They had it all.

The week they had together before Rudra’s parents arrived, went by quick as a flash. Today was the big day. Nandini knew it with the shaking of her limbs, the tensing of her muscles and the giddy spell she was all too familiar with when awaiting something important. What if they didn’t like her? What if they thought she was unfit for their son? How often had she been told that she was ugly.. been called Śyāma, the dark side of the moon?

There was a strangeness to the sunlight this morning, as if a layer of tinted filter had been placed in front of the sky. Everything was cast in honeyed tones, beautiful, yet unnerving. He had picked up his parents from the railway station, ensuring that they were comfortably settled in, before he brought her out to formally introduce her.

His parents had their eyes transfixed on her from the moment she stepped into the room. As she walked closer, his mother rose and looked at her with piercing eyes, the palest of gray; as if she had spent her life in a perpetual shadow. Her face wore a false smile, like a wolf watching its prey.

She felt that the sky was starting to crowd with darkening clouds, closing both the light and her hope.

“She is too dark”, his mother declared.

A wave of inferiority engulfed her. She just stood there. Insulted. Hurt. His parents did not see her voracious zeal for life. They did not see her pleasant, dimpled smile. They did not see her delicate gait when she had walked towards them. No. All that they saw in her was the deep brown hues.

A feeling of worthlessness suddenly seemed to slam into her chest, knocking her over until her legs could no longer hold her up. The tray that had held the coffee she made for them went crashing on the floor. She sank to her knees with her arms stretched out, almost begging, as she saw them walk away. Instinctively, Rudra ran after them, leaving her alone in the cold, dark living room of the house that they had called their home since the last few years.

She tried to hold it in, but her pain threatened to burst like a gush from her skin. Tears began to trickle, one after another, down her cheeks. The muffled sobs wracked against her chest as she was overwhelmed with what had just happened. The sky seemed to gather into itself a blanket of gray cloud, desperate to hide the ugly incident from the heavens.

Nandini was bullied for her incredibly dark skin all through her childhood. His mother’s words had brought back all those bitter memories from school, chipping away her self-confidence and spirit.

“I did not choose this skin color; it’s how I was born!”

She ran across the fields, to her mountains. As she started the climb, the buttery red flames of the midday sun cascaded a prism of crimson, and tangerine beams flung over the sky. His mother’s words rang in her ears, stinging her heart mercilessly, stoking and fueling the fire raging within her. She continued her climb up the boulders. The trail narrowed as fallen trees and rocks impeded her progress.

For a moment, she shut her eyes tight, wanting life to return to how it was before his parents had arrived. The maze of “if onlys” that she was caught within was causing her to find fault with herself, turning over in her mind what she could, should, have done differently.

The truth is that the world is a sick place, infested with superficial, heartless beings who feed on people’s insecurities and helplessness.

She moved briskly on the rocky ground as she made the steep climb. These mountains, she had known them all her life. And in them she had found her mother. She had clung to her many a times and had traced paths in her where none existed. And she knew that a single misstep could mean falling to her death. But right now, all she needed was to nuzzle up against the thorny roots, to lie down with her head on the hard, uneven ground and cry.

As the sun melted into the clouds leaving behind a cluster of stars gently greeting the dark night, her thoughts seemed to sift through all that had happened, so finely detailed. His handsome face. The love that creased his features. The fiery red orb above them that was a silent witness to their all-consuming passion, only a week ago.

Perched on the edge of the mountain that she grew up climbing, she looked down at the deathly hollow below. The path winding down always seemed gentler than the one that brought her up. The sky was black with shame, and rose up slowly, smudging out the evening stars. She walked to a quiet spot at the far end of the cliff and sat under a shady tree, looking down and feeling the warm tropical air caress her skin. Small gusts of wind blew across her face, making her skin shiver lightly. She missed her father’s embrace and recalled the days that they had spent together atop the very same hillock when she was a child. Life was perfect then!

Sadness floated through her veins, dulling her mind. Her spirit was laced with a toxic gloom that consumed her, banishing all other feelings. A dark haze had settled inside her that nothing could blow away. The world seemed lost to her. And she knew of nothing that could bring it back into focus.

Three months later…

One fine morning, with the sun casting the trees in the backyard with virescent hues, bringing warm brown tones to the earth, Rudra walked towards her, as she was busy gardening in the backyard.

“Nandini, would you want to take a walk with me?” he asked.

She had no time to wipe her face, tidy her hair, or even dust herself down! She had spent the day tending to her plants and the sun had only deepened her complexion. That said, she was happy to just see him and got to her feet. The sunlight streamed in white, pure as never before and yet liquid gold at the same time. Her steps were now lighter and her face tilted towards the brilliant shafts of light breaking through the canopy above. Perhaps this was happiness, what came when a battle was over, she considered.

They walked past the pond that was at the other end of the backyard and over to the hill at the edge of the farm. Their shadows intertwined like their fingers once had. She tried desperately not to think about the last time she had seen him. She tried to compose herself by taking a long, deep breath to drain her mind of all thoughts.

He stepped closer to her. Bereft now of the slightest breeze, the leaves hung limply on the trees with no rustling. It was as if nature was conspiring to keep her from the reassurance that she craved. The grief, now all too familiar started to seep back into her heart. Even her breath seemed to die, the very second it is born.

A tear trembled out from Rudra’s eye as he stood there with her eyes fixed on him. He had needed his parents to accept her— it wasn’t enough if he loved her. But after all these months since that day, his heart wept as he looked into her moist eyes, her gaze asking questions he did not have answers to.

He could still hear the words his mother had said that day. Words, that can never be unspoken. A memory that was seared in his mind forever, ready to resurface and torment him whenever he was in a quiet moment. He had felt that he was caught in a moment between action and consequence, fleeting but eternal. He had run after his parents, trying to reason with them.. not realizing that he had left her behind, alone.

I have to make it right.

It was absurd. To define the beauty of a person by the color of her skin. Would the size of the idol in the temple determine the blessings that one received? His mother had insulted the woman he loved, while he stood watching helplessly. He knew, whenever he would recall the most emotional moment of his life, his personal hall of shame, this would be where the memory would always begin.

“Forgive me for I have not been the man you deserve.”

Silence hung in the air. She wanted to hug him, to tell him that the guilt is not his alone. Her own frailty and insecurity had played a part, too. But she stopped herself.

“You are not your mother…”, she said.

He smiled, knowing in his heart that she had said something perfect, what he had hoped he might hear. Time seemed to stand still, like a spectator watching him. He too, stood fixated in his spot, as if tied to the ground with invisible chains. It had taken him a few months to break the shackles of what his parents had called ‘a custom’. He was now surer than ever that she was the one for him.

“You make me happier than I ever thought I could be and if you let me I will spend the rest of my life trying to make you feel the same way.

Nandini, will you marry me?”

A startling low rumble rang through the cool air. Tiny trickles of water hit the ground with their pitter-patter, as the rain formed tiny beads over her face. Nandini simply closed her eyes and savored the moment.

Kissed by the rain and glistening, the wet ground was now cold under her feet, tickling her toes. She took a few steps forward with her head tilted towards the gray sky as the rain continued to fall like heaven’s own poetry. Each drop a word in a song that had its own music, which called to her in ways she could not explain.

She loved the rain. Everything about the rain. The whispering hum as the raindrops plummeted to the forsaken ground, the unanticipated flashes of lightning or the rolls of ominous thunder. She loved it all. As the drizzle caressed her skin, promising a new dawn, a new beginning, she steeled herself to only think of the future. This was her second chance at happiness.

“Yes”, she whispered.