MAYA - PART 1

Nothing in that moment of tranquil sun suggested anything wrong. I was standing in a dreamy room overlooking the Parvati Valley in the laps of Himalayas.

She liked nature so much that she painted her own little outdoors on the walls.

A rising, glistening sun froze-rising forever on the golden sky that was her wall. It complemented the real one for most part of the year, like brothers posing one in front of the other.

She had told me that her mornings began comparing the real and her wall sun. Real and surreal. Both were both to her depending on mood.

On the opposite wall was a dark and dense valley, again, just like the one outside. It played heavily on the minds of first-time visitors to her shack. But it comforted her, she said. Sometimes, over and against the real view.

I first saw Maya in the clouds - somewhere over the Caspian Sea. She was standing in front of the restroom from where I was taking forever to come out. New places make it harder for me to go!

I remember this fleeting second vividly.

Because no sooner did my form come out of the air loo than, she eyed me down and up, almost like saying, 'Look down'.

I followed her eyes in reverse and zipped up at a lightning speed! For the 100 miles self-aware distance back to my seat, I trying to convince myself that this didn't just happen (although it was not the first time I forgot).

It was 11:55 am when the flight landed at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, an island, which gave false impressions of what was to be encountered in the city. But I knew my capital like the back of my hand so no surprises - not for me.

As I came out of the Terminal, a voice from behind made me turn back. She was jogging and jostling towards me. Nervously, I looked down to recheck if it was another reminder.

"Hello there! Could you just help me reach New Delhi Metro Station?"

"Sure," I sounded more than replied.

We glided in the Metro Airport Line silently. She sat next to me almost dozing off on my shoulder. Once at New Delhi station, she enquired about the best way to reach a particular hotel on Parliament Street. After helping her with luggage and information, I went my way, happy to have helped a foreigner.

Trust deficit, understandably, was as common as the air we breathe, especially in Delhi. I slept well that night thinking I won a point for the city, my country; as if someone was keeping score. Indeed there were other scores being settled that night... in Delhi and elsewhere under the starry sky.

Three weeks later, I was at a literature festival in Jaipur. On a particularly chilly but otherwise warm environment of the venue, I heard my shoulders, "Hello; So you are a literature enthusiast?"

Turning around, it took a while for me to register who it was.

The plane girl walked up to me.

"Yes, I am and you too it seems?" I said pleasant and unsure.

"I am sorry but your name is...?" "Prashant," I replied.

" PRASHANT- meaning Pacific- the water body?".

"Well, since you have put in that bit of research, you might as well know its another meaning - extremely calm, peaceful." "Nothing to do with water. Not in my case," I quipped.

"I am Maya," she finally introduced herself, putting out her hand.

"Maya... the supernatural power or the illusion of the phenomenal world?'' My turn.

"None," she smiled. "Actually Maya, in my case, DOES mean water. It is Aramaic."

"Aramaic... huh... so are you Jewish?" I asked playing catch up. (Aramaic is a sister language of Hebrew or so I made my lightening calculation.)

"Yes, I am from Israel. Have you been there?"

"No," I said.

And this 'No' led to - India and Israel, about what each of us was doing 3 weeks back on that flight from London, in London, lit fests, books, politics.

"So Maya... How could you have trusted me back in Delhi with the address?"

"You seem to have learnt all the travel advisories which I am sure counsel otherwise."

She smiled like a movie detective who is about to make an explosive revelation while under-playing it.

"Prashant, I was privy to your unguarded self in that flight. Coming back to my seat, I realised you sat right in front of me. You were quite comfortably perched like a steady hand bag, hardly a wayward tilt. Though I could not see your face, I could sense the comfort of the girl sitting next to your, what I could only imagine to be a, dignified image. She seemed feverish, drowsy, as you would have known better- beautiful, yet reassured in her seat."

"Female kind, especially travellers like me have a knack of differentiating between a 'comforting' and a 'getting too comfortable' shoulder."

"So, I calculated that I could trust you with locating my address, at the least."

"You sound like a MOSSAD agent to me!" I said impressed by her and a little proud of myself.

"I could be...," she smiled uncannily.

Four years after that blissful Jaipur morning, Maya was found dead in her shack in Kasol, Himachal Pradesh.

Drug abuse, overdose or whatever.

There was I standing in the same shack. The series of events leading up to my position all zoomed, swirled and halted in my memory. I lifted the scatters and my heavy self. "What..."

(Gathering...still)