The whole night waves had kept on rising. Rushing to the sands and retreating, drenching them and then leaving them satiated or thirsting for more! I was certainly not alone that night when I discovered the murmur of the brook, the silence of the snowflakes and the songs of the boatmen all amalgamating, blending into a wonderful all pervading symphony transcending the confines of the horizon.

Then those shadows appeared on sand like saplings erupting out of the embrace of seeds, which had stayed, confined to the eerie realm of time all this while just awaiting your arrival. It was just the moment when I realized that you had been there all night. While I was listening to symphony of the waves you had been comforting the shadows in your embrace. Who were they?

Shadows drawn on the sandy canvas or two beings frozen in that frame of horizon confined to the lines drawn by you! I tried hard to verbalize a name for them but shadows carry no identities! And then they merged just like waves rushing forth and retreating back to merge into the vast stillness of the depths of ocean. Space, which had held them all along, made way and breeze too chose to become still to witness that moment of merger. The singularity of that moment, when the shadows became one, held the promise of holding the all-encompassing multi-plurality in its emergent being.

That was also the singular moment when eons ago the sands had welcomed with open arms the river in their embrace. The river too had come rushing down the peaks and traversing the plains just for that moment only. The skies had promised to reveal to her the locale of her ultimate destination. It was just that singular moment when waves giving up the stillness of ocean rushed forth to discover the ripple from where they had emerged once long ago. Their incessant symphony too bequeathed its notes to the echoes just to find the promised solace in the silence of drenched and satiated sands.

Every movement stood still in that stillness and the symphony of waves rushed back in the silence of the depth of ocean. But where were you? There were no footprints only drenched sands. I stood there rooted in that moment and you, as always, had moved on…