Author: Vidyut Gore

Some romances are meant to be.

Chandra, the beautiful Moon, gazed across the dark expanse of space at him, her existence visible only because of his blazing radiance. Suraj, the embodiment of the dazzling Sun, conjured into personhood in the minds of those who beheld him. His light bestowed power, allowing life, while she reflected it in her gentle radiance in the depths of the night.

His awareness found hers, a luminescent calm to his fiery eye, a lilting melody to his heavy sigh.
Chandra, the essence of the Moon, a mere satellite around a planet, one of many orbiting around him, was mesmerising, inviting the eye in a way he never could. Her gravitation inspired tides.

They tumbled through space. He blazed a purposeful path through the galaxy, while she twirled around her planet, flirting in and out of sight of him in a dance as predestined as it was awe-inspiring. They drifted in intricate geometries through the cosmos, ever compelled along a universal destiny.

The romance of their existence was immortalised in countless narrations by their witnesses throughout the ages.

In one such recounting, they transcended their realities and met on the one celestial body linking them both: Earth.

Suraj, the Sun, and Chandra, the Moon, ever separated by their very nature, by day and night, found a way around the physics, space, and time that conspired against them. In trigonometric cunning, they translated their souls into a context where they could meet as equals: the perceptions of those on Earth.

Unwilling to remain apart, Chandra and Suraj projected their essences to Earth, where the very land rose to receive them as the Himalayas.
But fate is rarely kind to lovers. It so happened that Chandra and Suraj both manifested their spirits on Earth, true, but on opposite sides of the Baralacha Pass. Celestial entities with no way to navigate the Earth, they lay cradled in the high mountains, their essences still separated by impervious rock.

And yet, the mad passion of lovers determined to meet persevered. The grief of their separation melted the frozen hearts of the barren realm. Molten glaciers wept into pristine lakes till their hearts overflowed. They carved their way through the barren desert-scape, their love nurturing life in that inhospitable terrain, to finally meet and lose themselves in each other.

And here the lovers lie still, as the Himalayan lakes Chandratal and Surajtal, meeting in a celestial romance on Earth as surely as their namesakes continue their timeless dance in the sky.