The Storms of Love

The Odds & Bits Series : IV

There are many stories of love in Indic literature … stories that would cause honey to flow from beehives. One in particular … entitled Shakuntala … by Rabindranath Tagore … won the Nobel Prize … in 1913. It apparently brought the epitome … of love's expression … to the world's community. However like everything else … things change … and I wonder … if a love story today … that epitomizes love and relates to the world's experience … might be just slightly different.

 

A Christian missionary … on an assignment to a native population … in some part of the world … has a daughter who grows up with the father's zeal … and the benevolent nature of faith and concern … for the less civilized … of the world's community. In her daily activities … she meets a young native boy … naked except for a little fibre … taken from the inside of tree barks.

 

It was a picture of innocence between the two teens … she'll follow him to his village … on his fishing trips … and the two of them … were an unlikely pair in the experience of the folks … living there. The father seemed to appreciate the simple innocence of the kids … but the mother … in her dreams … felt an unusual relation to the heathen environment … as if she was beginning to be one of them.

 

She spoke to father … and with father's agreement … they packed the daughter back to Chelsea … to stay with the mother's sister. Upon her return … the daughter … began to integrate back into English society … but found attitudes there … somewhat restricted … and figured English society … was hypocritical and bigoted. Thereafter she met … this young American boy … while she was in college. He at least seemed to represent possibilities … for new experiences … and had an open mind … that was free from established and pre-conceived notions of things.

 

They decide to tie the knot … and she takes off for America with him … joking along the way … that she feels like the pilgrim fathers. In America they set up home … have kids … and life is in many ways … all that she thought it ought to be.

 

In time … her daughter brought home a nice American kid … that set off mother's dreams … about a city full of robots … robotic men ... robotic mice … cockroaches … butterflies … birds … plants and sky. She wanted to speak to her husband … but didn't know what to say … instead her responses … grew into a self-possessiveness … and was soon bringing considerable pressures … on their marriage.

 

After a prolonged period of self restraint on issues … she makes a trip one day … to Vanuatu … where her father had done his missionary service in her youth. She seeks the boy she used to know … meets his family … and finds out that … he's on a diplomatic assignment for the Vanuatu government … and is the ambassador to Washington DC. She returns … calls him … and they agree to meet up … the following week.

 

But he's changed in many ways … the Pierre Cardin suits … crocodile shoes … Mercedes … and Longines wrist watch … was just too much for her. She comes home … takes a good look at herself … does a complete make-over … and takes to herbs and talisman. On occasion … in the quiet suburb where she lived … her neighbors used to see her … especially during the Halloween season … standing buck naked beside a small fire in her backyard … waving to the stars and  … talking to them.

 

This obviously will not win the Nobel Prize … but … it does it for me. To borrow a line from Erich Segal ( edit ) … ' I don't know what I would say of her … that she was full of love … promises … excitability … and that she loved life.  In reference to Segal's …  Love Story  … this would represent an improvement. She doesn't end up dying … but is with the stars.