Aida

"Every true love and friendship  is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough."~  Elif Shafak 

I could endlessly read books and have them enrich the very depths of my soul. i can be plunged into deep despair and come out floating on a cloud - all within one day, all within the magical boundaries of the first and the last page. I had often head about Forty Rules of Love - but i had the privilege of reading it last year and transformational it was.

This is a story of Rahul and Aida. You could look at them and feel a flow of sorts - a conscious stream taking it's time to meander through the forests and fields trying to find a destination. They represented the continuous movement of that stream but also the stillness of it, were it given a chance to settle down in some plain for a bit. Their journey tossed and turned them around but they continued to withstand the harshness of it all and continued on their path towards a common goal that they had envisioned for themselves.

Aida was the life of any gathering she went to, you could put her in the midst of any set of people and she would charm everyone with her wit and her gregarious laughter that didn't care how loud it was. In a country and society that always told women to be a certain way, to fit into a certain mould and conform to certain set standards, she had learnt to defy convention and choose paths that were anything but conformist. She had worked at a prestigious law firm only to realise that it didn't make her heart sing and so she took off on a sabbatical to Andretta, a tiny little village in Himachal Pradesh, nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas. She had heard about a pottery school there which offered 3 month course to explore the art of mud and all things grounding that define it. When she had first heard of this at a dinner party, she sipped at her wine and wondered how cool it would be to go away and do something like this for three months, but the ping of her phone brought her back to Delhi and reality. Who was she kidding, she couldn't just walk up to her boss and ask for three months off. Also, what if she hated pottery - what would she do in Andretta for three months? So she abandoned the idea and shooed it away from her mind. The next time she oevrheard a conversation in a coffee shop where two girl friends were talking about how they should visit Andretta and see for themselves if they'd like to spend 3 months doing this course. That evening on the way back home, she wondered why she hadn't thought about that. What if she takes off to Andretta for a weekend and see how she feels being there ~ maybe the energies of the mountains will come calling to her and she will need to heed their call and bring herself to spend some time there in their arms. So Aida, decided to book a train to Pathankot and from there drive to Andretta via Palampur.

tbc