Magic

My love story is a crazy story - one that has so many coincidences, you’d think it was a scripted movie. As a scientist, I have internalised the age old adage that “In nature there are no coincidences” but the human mind assigns this label to what it considers inexplicable (or calls it God’s will, destiny, fate, the universe bringing it together, among a host of different things). I’m only documenting my side of the story here. Ask her for hers 😜

The first coincidence starts with the way we met. Rewind to December 2020 when I’ve just moved to Himachal Pradesh as part of my fellowship and am exploring my local area. I am supposed to be heavily busy with spadework, scouting for villages that can eventually be our project locations. But the Christmas weekend presented itself to me as a golden opportunity to check out the Holy Grail for noob hippies like me - Parvati Valley. And so I set out, with a plan to meet 2 friends from college at Kasol.

Getting to Kasol and meeting them was an adventure in itself. I almost wouldn’t have made it to Kasol, if it wasn’t for a chirpy and talkative taxi driver with a keen interest in the fact that I was from Chennai rescuing me and my travel plans. The following morning, my friend tells me that her friend from school days was meeting us at Kasol after a gruelling overnight journey from Chandigarh to Manali and then to where we were in Kasol. “Meh whatever. We’re not going to cancel our Tosh plan right?”

“Illa da we’ll go ahead to Tosh whether they want to join us or not.”

Perfect. Just what I wanted. I came there to meet my friends and explore the valley, not meet their long lost acquaintances. At around 11am the retinue from Manali arrives at the idyllic Israeli café we were seated at, overlooking the too crowded roads of Kasol. 2 men and a goddess walk onto the terrace lugging bags and cameras. They don’t look very tired but they proclaim their intention to first eat before even looking up to introduce themselves. Fair enough. 

I step aside a little to give them space at the breakfast table and go to the parapet wall overlooking the street. I could barely hear the Parvati river over the din of tourists, taxi honks and the occasional bus that blocked the entire road. (Archana later told me she got a very cold vibe from me initially - this is probably why)

And so after they’d had breakfast we head out. All this while I can barely take my eyes off her. I’m chatting with my friends, chatting with some of the others, with her too. But my body automatically moved towards her so we could walk together and share a conversation. My attraction towards her was immediate and just magical. Here was a woman who knew the pull of a conversation, the subtle hints I was dropping, was actually interested in my half-baked poetry, and just the most energetic and DDG woman I had ever met!

And so we get into a taxi bound for a village deeper in the Valley but because of the insane traffic (it was the Christmas weekend what did we expect?) we spent 2h to go from Kasol to Barshaini, a trip that should’ve taken a fraction of that time.

That’s us walking side-by-side in Barshaini - me in orange and her in black

That taxi ride is when we really met. Maybe I wasn’t giving off cold vibes anymore, or maybe the long wait to get to our destination catalysed conversation, but by the time we got off at Barshaini, we were walking shoulder-to-shoulder sharing anecdotes and laughs. Her eyes shone like the sunlight bouncing off the white quartz around us, her voice as refreshing as the Parvati river’s gentle trundle, her smile as captivating as the glistening snow-capped peaks encircled around.

I knew then that she was magic. Trekking up the mountain face, Ani (one of the friends I had gotten there with) needed to sit to catch his breath more often than we had to. But I waited and let the others pass by. I knew the otherworldly feeling wasn’t just one-way traffic when Archu sat down beside me, not a single bead of sweat on her brow. I don’t know maybe the conversation was too interesting to allow it to be interrupted? I don’t remember much about what exactly we were talking about - I just remember we were so completely engrossed with each other.

Eventually making our way to the village of Kalga, we stop at a shack in the main market area and take off our bags to explore the place. It is already dark by the time we get there, what with it being the height of the Himalayan winter. There was some confusion regarding our place of stay for the night so we meandered around the village, taking in the sights, smells and sounds.

As we finally figured out where we were to stay, and made our way up dark, slippery and ice-covered slopes of the remotest village in the Himalayas I had yet been to, we heard the wolf-like howl of jungle dogs. This truly was the wilderness. Our place of stay was a quaint wooden cabin at the very end of the village flanked by another smaller shack on one side, and the unending pine forest of white, brown and green uphill of us.

The cabin we stayed at in Kalga. In foreground: the then stranger I now call my fiancée!

This cabin had a tandoor room for heating purposes. The room where it all happened. Cramped into a space meant for one person and sharing a blanket, we spent the night talking of my stories and hers, my dreams and hers, all the while unable to take our eyes off each other. That’s when I knew that my life was going to change forever. I had no clue how much back then. I just thought I’d met a bomb ass girl made of fire. I didn’t know I was going to propose to her on our 3rd date back then.

And so after that sleepless night under the starriest sky is ever seen (trick of the mind? I don’t know), I headed back to Nirmand with a heavy heart. Heavy because my journey was taking me back to what I’d come to the Himalayas for, away from this shiny angel. But as life would have it, she was just as interested in me as I was in her. That’s why a mere 20 minutes after I’d left the cabin the following morning, she replied instantly to my message that simply said, “C’est moi.”

And this is the story of how we met. The rest is as they say, history. Fast forward to October 15, 2021 when I’m nervously pacing around a room in a resort in Mumbai thinking of all of the ways this could go, suited up and touching my pocket every 4 seconds to check that the box was still there. Done decorating the room and rehearsed what I wanted to say a million times but nervousness doesn’t see logic. As I read the 5-page letter out to her that day, all I could see was her. Not what we’d been through, not the journey I was embarking on with her, just Archana.

All I could see was her blush accentuated by her recently pinked hair, her eyes that had already said what I wanted to hear before she said it, her smile that made my heart completely stop and forget about the world, the twitch of her lips as she heard all that I had to say, her skin that shone brighter than a star, and the moisture in her eyes she was fighting hard to hold back.

Long story short - she said yes!