THE UNFINISHED KISS
Pg. 105

For a split second Natasha’s eyes closed, and she drifted away from the classroom, observing from a distance a fragment of an enchanting story, with a man she often saw in her dreams. But she never could see his face, or the end of the story.

She saw him from a distance riding on a fast Arabian horse to elope with her from her father’s home. She saw herself happily stretching her arms up to be picked up by this man. He whispered something in her ears. But all she could hear was the voice of the wind amid the endless desert. She was able to catch a faint fragrance of the night mixed with the sweat of a man and his horse.

Suddenly the desert’s wind brought her the voice of Ram. Natasha opened her eyes. There was nobody left in the classroom, except the two of them.

“I want to take you with me to India,” he said to Natasha softly. “Would you like to come?”

“To India? Yes, Ram! I would love to go with you,” exclaimed Natasha without hesitation. It seemed that her vision had something to do with Ram’s offer. It felt prophetic.

It was her deep driving desire to visit India and the Himalayas, to visit little villages with sages unknown to the world but who knew the world. She smiled inwardly, as if she were about to talk to herself, and told Ram what she saw in her vision.

Deep in his thought, he said:

“I suddenly remember what happened. There was no way that your father would give you to me. He was a very strong and powerful man, who taught me how to fight. But he didn’t think that I would make a good husband for you. He would have killed both of us, if he had known about our plans, but he could not stop us from loving each other. We secretly decided to run away. I picked you up on my horse from your father’s home, and we eloped. That is all I remember.”

Next day they were on the plane, not to India, but to Hong Kong.

“I will explain to you later,” said Ram, before Natasha asked him any questions. She learned quickly not to question Ram’s moves, but to trust that whatever he does is done for a reason and will be explained to her later, if necessary.

They boarded the plane in silence, without looking at each other or holding hands, as two strangers would do. Ram was impressed how easily she picked up and played his game.

But Natasha was not at ease. She sensed danger in taking this trip with Ram. The same danger that she had felt before eloping with him from her father’s home, as if her father’s spirit had come to haunt her. Yet, she did not want to guess who Ram was; she wanted to hear about it from Ram himself.

When the plane took off, Ram felt more relaxed. Overwhelmed and conquered by Natasha all over again, intuitively feeling their invisible bond, Ram felt happy. Yet, his mind was looking for the reason and logic to help him justify his actions to himself.

“Stupid old habit,” he thought and laughed at himself. “It is a good time to remind my ego to take the back seat, and to listen to what my heart has to say.”

He asked the flight attendant for two spring waters with lemon and no ice. The refreshing drink made him settle and recollect his thoughts, which were bombarding him from all directions.

Without saying a word Ram turned his head, and with a gentle glance that seemed an eternity of concentrated admiration of a most startling beauty, looked at Natasha’s face.

Her exotic eyes haunted him, as if a spirit from the past life came to revisit him. He had seen her before, somewhere, on a distant path in the mist of his memory beyond this incarnation.

He had seen her eyes dance before her ankle bells could be heard, somewhere, in the mystified land of his imagination, or in reality. Who knows?

He could not tolerate the concentration of his heart and his mind, and dismissed it, to gain relief and relax in his seat on the plane.

She felt his hypnotic eyes, silent and curious, casting a spell over her, as if he were demanding a total surrender to his power. She wanted to say something, but didn’t feel free to talk, surrounded by people sitting next to her. Her senses were excited and hungry.

Sitting next to Ram with her eyes closed, she felt his energy entering her body and soul, stirring emotions and conjuring them into images of tormenting delight.

Thinking and feeling, she did not move, or even make an attempt to move or talk, intoxicated by the spirit of romance lingering in the air, until Ram’s soft gentle voice whispered in her ear:

“You are so beautiful, my Natasha. Every time I look at you, I see the yearning that was not fulfilled. I see the embrace that was not completed. And I have come to complete this embrace. I have come to touch you. From a distance I could not touch you. I have a strange feeling that I touched you once, and consummated my love.

Then, I don’t see clearly… I know that it was in another smoky mystifying era. But I see how out of that smoky vision emerges a beauty, dressed in all the jewelry of the golden era, and the veils, and the clothing, and yet I also see you here in designer clothes, sitting next to me on a Boeing 747-400. But I don’t see the designer clothes. I see you walking towards me. With every step you take in your high heels, I hear ankle bells that are not there.

Who are you, my Natasha? Why have you come into my life? Why, against all odds, am I taking you on this trip? My heart yearns to know. But my mind stops me and says that I am foolish. This cannot be. This is a fantasy.”

Feeling very emotional, Natasha held herself back from getting on Ram’s lap and passionately kissing him all over. But on the outside she looked the same, cool and calm, and continued the discussion as if they were in the classroom.

“I often have a hard time figuring out what is fantasy and what is reality for me,” she confessed.

“Many wise men have tried to figure it out also,” said Ram with his comforting voice. “But what the mind cannot accept becomes fantasy. And what the soul wants and yearns to fulfill becomes the vision of life. It might seem to you like a blathering of a mad man,” said Ram and smiled.

“No, it doesn’t. If this is madness, then what is sanity, Ram?”

“Sanity makes us insane today. This world is insane, because we don’t know who we are, and why we are here. We don’t know for what purpose we have come back.”

“I often have the feeling that there is something incredibly important that I left unfinished and have come back to complete.”

“Try to remember, Natasha. Perhaps it is an unfinished kiss that brought you back to this moment?”

“Can you teach me to go back in time, Ram, so I can see that one whom I still yearn to kiss? Then I might know the one who often comes to my dreams. I know it is the same man, but I don’t usually see his face. Yet, I know in my heart who he is.

Is there a way that I can consciously transport myself into a different world, into a different plane, and into a different dimension to find out about my connection to him?”

“Yes. But first I am going to ask you one simple question, and I want you not to answer that question until you have verified in your heart what this question means to you.”...

Kiss of Karma
A Tale of a Yogi
Who Fell in Love With a Courtesan