We have been talking to each other for a few years now. All we do is talk, talk and talk. It amuses and baffles me. These lines of a very popular song come to me, It’s only words and words are all I have to take your heart away. So apt for us!

I wonder! How I can talk to him from the middle of the night to the wee hours of morning.  “You know I love talking to you,” he says.  Various interesting subjects we speak on. Relationships, regional films, Salman Khan, what a man observes first in a woman. Scripts, music. Hear Katy Perry’s song Hot n Cold! “Hear it,” he says, “don’t watch the video.” And our talks go on and on…

Suddenly he pops this question,  “What is it that you want from life?” I am quiet for some time. There is a lot of depth in this one and I do not want to reply. Upheaval in my heart! What should I say? Anyways I took a safe road; rattled off all the things that I ever wanted to do. “Travel, own a home in Bangalore, make films, learn a foreign language – maybe French, learn a musical instrument etc, etc!”

“Don’t you want a soul mate?” He asked.

Soul mate…soul mate.. his voice keeps reverberating in my mind. What is a soul mate? Who is a soul mate?

I am confused. Relationships are so fragile. There is a want but I don’t know what I seek! There is void, an emptiness which needs to be filled. I am complicated, but then, who isn’t?   I guess people who are simple would enjoy joys of love because their expectations out of relationships are not very high. They go with the flow, adapt to situations. They would definitely find their partners.

What happens to a complicated creature like me? God has created androgynous souls – equally male and female. Theories postulate that the souls split into separate genders. Over a number of reincarnations, each half seeks the other. When all karmic debt is purged, the two will fuse together and return to ‘The Ultimate.’

Shiva and Sati; The Ardhanareshwara! Half man, half woman. Shiva worships his Shakti, and Shakti in turn, worships Shiva. Are they different? They are a unified whole!  Shiva and Sati are inseparable! That is why lifetime after lifetime they are each other’s consort.

I like this theory. I believe in it. The universe will guide me towards the person who is to be my soul mate.

This dream, this thought, his touch is what I feel every day. Not even for a moment have I given up on him. But for now his voice is all that I have.

Illustration by Reema Moudgil

Munira Diwan has been an advertising professional for the past 15 years. She has done a film direction course from Digital Academy and has made a 10 minute short film called Thing called Love. She  loves dabbling in arts and believes that creativity is her forte. She loves reading, writing, painting and listening to music and of course making short films.