And we were the neighbors who were in love with each other too.

It was true for wherever we pitched our tents during the period Eva and I traveled together in the mysterious valley of Lahaul and Spiti.

We would always pitch our tents by the riverside so that water was never a problem as well as it added a new dimension to the scenery around.

Playing with water was the best opportunity that the river by the side of the made available to us.

It also made an open toilet and the bathroom of our one-night world.

We had our kitchen served by its water too.

The interiors of our tents were our bedrooms, which we often shared with each other.

And the entire landscape outside the tents served as our drawing room where we sat, chatted, ran around and played games with each other to play the game of life more childlike than our ages permitted us at least from a traditional outlook.

She told me stories about her part of the world she had come from including the stories of the way she had come via.

Discussing the global issues was the best thing that we enjoyed together the most.

At times we fought very bitterly too, but then one single kiss from either side was enough to melt the bitterness away.

Whenever I thought that ultimately she would be parting company with me along with the camping world that we had created and shared together at different campsites along our way to Lahaul and Spiti, I felt I would be missing something at least for sometime in my life very much.

An emotional stupid me!

But she was emotional too, not less if not more.

And I still wonder why we didn't get swayed by our emotions and promise to be each other's partner for life at some intense moments of passions running high.

Perhaps because both of us were dead-against the institution called marriage that we didn't feel like binding each other with.

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"Marriage license? You mean that shit of paper, which can any moment be torn into pieces and dumped in the garbage box? Not interested!" - she had a scornful smile on her lips.

Is That A Valid Marriage License?

We were sitting by the side of the river on two big stones with our feet and legs inside the flow of the river, holding two hot cups of tea that I had made on my jungle stove; and now we were sitting sipping it tastefully.

"You mean you will never marry too!" - I was looking intently at her face.

"Will you?" - she looked at me with her two piercing eyes.

"I can't say no though I have no plans to, nor do have I any intentions like that as of now." - I tried to clear my unclear stand on it.

"But I can! I can say a no for sure. Because I know what marriage means..." - she left her sentence incomplete and started gazing into the water flowing under her feet.

"Why are you so bitter about it?" - I wanted to dig her deeper.

"Is there anything in it to feel sweet about at all? Do you think so?" - she turned her face toward mine.

"Why do we go for it then?" - she was older than I, and more experienced too!

"That's what I could never understand though I am trying to." - she smiled.

"Why did your parents marry then?" - I tried to bring her closer to the point.

"Marry? They bitched each other... in more ways than one. I am a product of a broken marriage and a broken family that tore its marriage license away flicking it into the air! So I am out now to play the game of life the way I find it right." - she stood up straight in the river flowing under her feet.

Is That A Valid Life?

I stood up too.

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Facts of life forced her to live a half life rather than full, quality wise as well as the duration of her stay on earth.

As she was born, she opened her eyes witnessing violence that took place as fierce fights between her mother and father, the father being my brother next to my eldest one.

She was badly frightened when any such episode took place in the family and the fright was clearly visible in her eyes.

Slowly and gradually this fright became the underlined part of her eye expressions for good.

Not only the eye expressions but also her total personality turned to be a scared soul.

So much so that when later in life at age 25 her father arranged for a very rich (the real reason for my brother's selection!) boy to marry her off, she couldn't speak a single word though she badly despised him inside.

Within one month after the marriage, she was back home. The boy was impotent, and the more he went desperate in the bed the more he turned violent both in bed and in life. Another stint of domestic violence in her life!

She got a divorce and started studying law. Within 3 years she had started practicing under a famous lawyer in the town.

Her father again started persuading her to marry. This time the boy was an Indian living in America.

She again couldn't speak a word owing to the kind of personality that the facts of life had turned her to be.

The nearer the date of her next marriage came, the more she started getting nervous within herself. By now she had started hating the very institution of marriage as such, which she didn't want to go again for.

One fateful night as she came back from a family celebration late, she consumed an entire tin of Baygon Spray, an insecticide; and cut her life half.

A half life that she lived!