She was walking slowly with her sticks in one hand and holding hand of an old man in another. In her red jacket, she was looking elegant. While the man was in black suits. That sight of old couple walking hand in hand is surely not common now a days but yes desirable by all.

Like an idiot, I went ahead and greeted them with a big smile. They both responded with smile. And there you go, I asked the man, since how long you holding her hand ? With an innocent smile, he replied “She never left my hand”. Ahan !! Tring tring !! The bell rang in my mind.. She never left hand !! I mean this happens. There were people who believed in commitment.

We sat together, I ordered latte for them. And started exploring and understanding few more stories of their life. Was curious to know, how it all started ? how they managed ? And how they are still together ?

Life is not beautiful. It is a blank sheet. We either fill colours or throw dirt. They have been together from past 40 years. It all started with simple friendship. They never thought and felt that they are meant for each other. The lady said, sharing my thoughts, problems with him was kinda routine for me. We never dated and yet how we came close, we never realised.

She said, there’s always a phase. A phase where you don’t know what you doing. There’s a phase when you are young and you have men drooling all over you. You get best men, you get rich men, you get most handsome men, but you hardly get true man. She kept smiling and talking. And I was just listening. I was listening and smiling.

A true man is not the one who would not argue with you, who would never disagree with you. He is certainly not the one with whom you have to be with all day. But a true man, who understands your silence. A true man accepts all your flaws and stays with you no matter how you are. She again smiled and took his hand in her small palm. The old man smiled. I felt he is probably blushing from inside. He was calm and happy.

Listening them and being in their company, I felt as if I am in antique shop. Full of beautiful artifacts and rich heritage but can’t be found so easily.

Truly, this age and time is running so fast that each of us has no time to sit and think once what we are losing by moving so fast. Relations and feelings are that very specific and desirable part of life which each of us want and yet we fail to take care of it.

Most of us want to buy bouquets of flowers from shop and want to adore it but how many of us would like to be a Gardner of that garden where these desirable flowers are grown ? Flowers bought from shop gives us pleasure for a day or two. Flowers grown in our garden, where we sweat spend time and take care gives us inner satisfaction and completeness.

A relation is also like a flower, we need to be a gardner not a customer. And once we realise this, we would certainly be able to hold hand of our partner for long. We all want to grow old with a hand in our hand and yet we don’t realise that to have that hand for long we need to accept challenges,  hold our desires, control our greed and be a gardner 🙂

The couple said “you can keep changing flowers in vase but once you grow flower in your garden it remains forever”. I was touched !

Simple words but have depth in it.

Our coffee finished and we waved to each other.

He took her hand and they walked slowly …..