Cradled by the waters in Southern India, throbs the modest city of Pondicherry, now known as Puducherry. This erstwhile French colony still bears traces of its past.

It was my third visit to this seaside haunt. Night-time is particularly peaceful here, the sea rolling rather silently. Down the clean broad paved walk or boulevard, popularly called the Promenade Beach, float a few stray voices, trespassing on the stillness around and eavesdropping on our gentle whispers. On our back was an assembly line of resorts and holiday-homes, now dimly lit, as people in these parts, I noticed, retire early for the night.

I sat cozily in the warm tenderness of my companion and stole hasty glances at the soft glow on her serene face. I took her hand in mine. At once, she cast a shy look around, embarrassed even by the sparse presence of strangers, and tried to wriggle her hand out of my grip. Stunned by the impulsiveness of her effort, I panicked, “No, no, don’t. Don’t you draw your hand away.” She stared at me, surprised. The moon above was enchanting and we were in Pondicherry on our maiden wedding anniversary.

Such rare and intense moments vie to lay bare the secret recesses of the mind. I bent towards my companion and began, “For more than a decade, until I met you, I was an absolute loner; nobody at home, no plans for a family of my own, all friends flitting on the surface and none too deep. I was already past 40, working hard as an officer in a nationalised bank.

“It was on a night like this, a couple of years back. I was on an official visit to Pondicherry, surveying some sites for the upcoming branches of our bank. And, that was also my first trip to this lovable town…”

By now the Promenade Beach wore a completely deserted look, the street-lamps having been considerably dimmed. Luminous under a radiant moon and a starlit canopy, the subdued rumblings of the sea went on, unabated. My companion nudged me slightly, “Why do you pause?”

I resumed, “After an unusually early dinner on a late evening like this, I was loitering on the beach, intoxicated by the glittering expanse of lush waters before me. As night crept in, I decided to retire to my hotel and go through office files. The hotel-compound was eerily quiet as I took the lift to the fourth floor. I turned in the key and the suite opened to a small parlour with a sofa, two chairs, and a glass table; a door at the right led to a comfortable inner room with a large bed, a wardrobe, a small television-set, a mini refrigerator, and some other accessories; and, in one corner of this inner room, a dainty door opened out to a decent balcony that overlooked the seamless sea.

“When I entered the suite and shut the door behind me, the room suddenly plunged into darkness. ‘Loadshedding then is not a prerogative of Bengal,’ I quipped and chuckled. Moonlight strode gallantly into the room, tingeing the darkness with a rich hue. It poured in overwhelmingly from the balcony, through the open windows, and spilt all over.

“As I stepped into the parlour and headed for the sofa, a soft slender figure suddenly brushed against my shoulder and rubbed past me and sallied forth into the inner room, leaving behind a momentary trail of fresh jasmine fragrance and the swish of a saree. Discomforted, I instinctively followed the figure into the adjacent room. I switched on the torch in my mobile-set and flashed it around, expecting to see her scurry past again; but, there was no trace of life or movement. I rushed out into the balcony only to find a resplendent moonshine sleeping softly upon the silent night outside, upon the long stretch of the Promenade Beach, and upon the heaving waters beyond.

“Just then, the lights turned on and the suite dazzled in the whiteness of the fluorescent tubes. Frantically, I looked for that strange figure in the parlour, in the bedroom, now and then casting fervid glances from the balcony at the pathway down the beach. However, the form seemed to have miraculously melted into the dreamy moon-washed night.

“As I tossed in bed past midnight, uncanny reckonings tiptoed into my distraught mind. Was that preternatural figure a human form, was it some nocturnal being, or perhaps an ethereal spirit? I even stumbled into deciphering affinities between that vanished figure and a long-endearing image of a tender companion who had always resided in the suppressed longings of my imagination, and had accompanied me as I grew up alone into what I then believed, a confirmed bachelor.

“During the weeklong stay in Pondicherry, my office had made lavish arrangements for sightseeing. Today I have no qualms in confessing that in the impressive academia at Pondicherry Central University, in the all-embracing affability of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, in the harmonious consciousness of Auroville, in the meditative stance at Matrimandir, in the exuberance of an endless sea, even in the fresh Milk Pedas’ that dissolve deliciously in the mouth and are now packaged in attractive paper-boxes sporting the adjunct ‘Taste of Puducherry’, I recognised deep within me a repressed yearning for a release from my vacuous loneliness.

“It’s a marvel indeed that we may now visit these places together,” I mused. My wife nodded and prodded me gently, “Won’t you tell me all tonight?”  I began once more…

“By a twist of fate or by providential intervention, a month after I returned from Pondicherry to my home in Kolkata, I met you for the first time at Don’s family gathering. That endearing damsel, that age-old companion of my lonely imagination seemed to have suddenly revealed herself in you. I quietly drew Don aside and asked him straightaway, trying to conceal my excitement as much as feasible, ‘Who’s she?’ Don winked at me mischievously and said, ‘So do you want to end your bachelor days, boy?’

“It was Don, my childhood friend, who introduced me to you that evening, and then the rest is ‘our’ story together — yours and mine,” I gazed smugly at the effervescent waves waltzing under a full moon. “Perhaps you would never imagine how ardently I have aspired for your affections,” I admitted frankly.

“Well before a year had passed, I was on my second official visit to Pondicherry to submit some reports regarding one of the newly opened branches of our bank. I desperately wanted to put up at the same hotel and in that same suite, and had especially requested the clerk who was in charge of my booking, to do so. But at the reception-counter in Pondicherry, I was told that the suite I had formerly stayed in, was already occupied by a Swiss couple. An over-obliging manager explained to me that an even more luxurious suite had been reserved for me, only it was on the second floor instead of the fourth. Dejected, I followed the bell boy to my new suite.

“I have often wondered what it was that had upset me so hopelessly that day when the same-old suite was unavailable. Had I really expected that mysterious slender visitor to brush past me again and fill the room with her jasmine fragrance? “Anyway, as the probability of once more chancing upon that obscure figure became feeble, I grew disconcertingly distressed. It was as though the moonbeams were slipping away from my hands.

“I then realised I had somehow associated my fleeting encounter with that unknown form with predictions of luck in my dearly cherished relationship with you.

“Had the vanished figure been a fiat of my solitary fantasy, or had someone actually been there in my suite on that full moon night? I pondered uneasily over this long unresolved query. ‘Certain happenings in life are beyond being fathomed,’ I finally sighed and turned in bed, feverish.

“All night, a warm restlessness crept into my limbs and gripped my brains in a frenzied heat. I rose and sauntered to the balcony. Far from being starlit, the night-sky was grim and moonless; the waters across the glum pathway were dark and dismal.

“I awoke in the morning from a disturbed sleep with raging fever.”

“Oh!,” cried my wife and regarded me with concern. I liked her anxious look and went on, “My eyes burned in trepidation. I pined for your tender hands upon my forehead. Never had I known how complete had grown my emotional dependence on you and how gruesome was the fear of losing the chances of having you lifelong by my side.

“I submitted my reports to the head-office in Pondicherry at noon and convened a meeting as scheduled, and insisted on returning by road to Chennai that night itself. The next day, I took the flight to Kolkata, my booking brought forward on an urgent basis.

“Back in Kolkata, I was quarantined for a week. As soon as I joined office, I directly met your parents and pursued all arrangements for our marriage with a haste that must have embarrassed everybody.” A muffled laugh escaped my wife even as lucent moon-rays jostled in her jovial eyes.

“Generally people have dismissed my impulsive nature as the whim of a bachelor. … After that, you know the rest,” I stopped abruptly.

“Look!” I pointed out to a balcony on the fourth floor of a hotel just behind us across the boulevard. She turned and we looked together in the direction — the spacious balcony was quiet and basking in lonely moonlight, the large windows were shut, no light shone inside. “It was in that suite a couple of years back, around this time that the strange form brushed past me and magically dissolved into the night.”

I saw my companion observe the balcony with keen eagerness. “Why didn’t you reserve that suite for us this time?” she asked as we rose and started walking down the Promenade, past that suite, towards our hotel room. I threw up my hands in a candid gesture of relaxation, “With you by my side, heaven is here.”

“Do you know? A line by Sri Aurobindo has always lived in my consciousness,” I confided after a momentary lapse. She looked up at me enquiringly as I continued, “Love in its depths is a contact of the divine possibility or reality in oneself with the divine possibility or reality in the loved.”

I watched my companion breathe in the essence while I clutched both her hand securely in mine. She did try to draw them away, greatly embarrassed. And, once more, I panicked, “No, no, don’t do that. Treading along life’s pathways, should you ever meet the woman of your dreams, you must never let her go. A bachelor for many years and destitute of genuine attachment, I have realised this ultimate truth.”

I looked earnestly into her eyes and spoke assertively with unmistakable conviction and affection, “There’s a unique bliss in a comfortable compatibility of minds, in this warm togetherness, which is so different from the abysmal vacuity of stoic loneliness.”

She listened intently. I held on to her hand snugly and this time she let her hand rest in mine. I could sense the mild gleam in her smile mingle with the softness of the night-sky around, and glisten upon the moonstruck sea-waters that kissed the silent shores gently in fond delight, and then melt into hallowed vibrations of tender fulfilment.