Surface Extract

A piece of text from Siddhartha Deb’s Surface:

A long time ago, when the world was a far better place than it is now, there was a divine couple, a god and a goddess deeply in love with each other. Their love was so perfect that a quarrel broke out between the two about who loved the other more. Even the court of the gods couldn’t settle the dispute, so the two agreed to put their love to the test by being born in human form. The challenge was to see who recognized the other first. They would have no knowledge of their heavenly past, being in possession of nothing more than average human memories of their human lives.

They are born in different corners of the kingdom of Manipur, she as a princess, he as a commoner. The years of their childhood pass in ignorance of each other, without a single encounter. Then the commoner comes to the court from the village one day, and they meet accidentally in the palace, and they recognize each other in the same instant. Their love is still without imperfection, still equal, but just then a battle breaks out between factions in the court and both are killed in the fighting. The dispute is unresolved.

So they take birth as human beings again, and again, and again, and each time the same thing happens. They meet as adults, recognize each other instantaneously, the kingdom is pitched into a war, and they die in the ensuing battle. People in Manipur believe that when things are very bad in our human world, when it is a time of war, it means that the two are around in human form, slowly drifting towards each other. Each is looking at the other without really knowing it, attracted towards the partner by the force of their divine love, and the terrible battle of our times will coincide with their mutual discovery.

……Their coming together in the human world with death following immediately is a sign of the perfection of their love and how it can’t be contained within the imperfection of our world. But there will be a time when they meet and admit that it is a draw, that they love each other equally, and that there is no more or less for either of them. They will see, they will recognize their love for each other, and they will not die. When that happens and their contest is over, our world will end in the final apocalypse.