Shiva and Uma

There once was a man called Shiva who lived as an ex-patriot in a strange and far-away land. He worked very hard at the top of a multi-storied office tower. He worked for many years with single-minded concentration. He had no time or energy for love. He had relationships but they usually meant very little to him. He had no time for anything but his work. His apartment held no food or luxuries. His robe, no casual clothes, just suits and ties, briefcase and cufflinks. He rarely saw or spoke to his family. He had few friends as he didn’t have the time or energy friendships demanded. All his energy was devoted to work. Because Shiva was so honest, so generous and good, the Goddess Lakshmi stayed near him and shared with him the wealth of the world. He had accumulated great amounts of gold and money.

He had many employees in the tower. They all respected and admired him but like most, they did not get close to him. Nevertheless he would sometimes go out drinking after work with his favourite employee, Kama. Kama was known and loved by everyone, particularly his female friends. Shiva and Kama would go out drinking and Kama would introduce Shiva to his girlfriends. One night Kama introduced Shiva to his good friend, Uma, the lady with the beautiful eyes. When Shiva saw Uma he thought that she was very attractive. When he talked to her his attraction grew. She seemed to have values similar to his, she was smart and she made him laugh. He felt very comfortable and happy when he was with her.

The Gods saw that Shiva liked Uma and thought it would be interesting and amusing to see what would happen if Shiva and Uma got together. The Gods knew that Shiva was capable of passion but they also knew that this trait was deeply embedded within his controlled defences. The Gods thought it would be intriguing to see what would happen if Shiva let down his armour in a relationship with Uma. They knew that with Uma Shiva would have to lose control because Uma was a very strong and independent woman.

Kama passed Uma’s telephone number to Shiva who immediately called her. The first time he called, Shiva and Uma talked for two hours. It seemed there were endless things they could talk about. Shiva asked Uma out and they had dinner in a beautiful restaurant. He felt so much happiness when he was with her. They grew closer and closer and felt happier and happier to be together. Shiva had never actually felt this before, he had had relationships but not real relationships where the two people share their innermost secrets and fears and those secrets and fears find space and solace in each others’ hearts and souls. More than anything Shiva and Uma were friends and within that friendship a love grew, a love unlike any love that Shiva had experienced. Deep down he had always believed that such feelings would interfere with his work in the tower. He had always avoided women like Uma. But now, being with her just seemed so right and he felt that she was the woman for him.

Uma’s love for Shiva grew deeper and stronger. At first she thought that it was his love for her that fuelled her passion, but as time went on and she got to know him she realised that she loved him for his honesty, his integrity, his generosity and his kind heart. She actually loved him for all the same reasons that the Goddess Lakshmi loved him. As her love for Shiva grew Uma began to see him as the man for her. She became more deeply attached to him and committed to the relationship.

As their intimacy grew both Shiva and Uma confided in each other more and more. Uma found it very hard to constrain her feelings and she expressed them freely with Shiva. Uma felt safe and secure in Shiva’s love for her and she rarely censored the things that she said or thought. There were times when Shiva seemed very distant from Uma, especially when he was busy working in the tower. At these times he would treat her in the same way that he had treated all his other lovers. He needed single-minded focus to conduct his work and Uma distracted him. When Uma felt neglected she would tell Shiva, she shared all her feelings with him. She thought that he had been up in the tower, away from the world for so long that he didn’t know how to have a relationship, he didn’t know how to share his life with her. When she said these things to Shiva he saw them as criticism and felt angry with Uma. Because Shiva shared more of himself with Uma than he had with anyone and because Shiva cared for Uma so much, he began to feel vulnerable. As Shiva had been very careful in the past to avoid such feelings they were unfamiliar to him and they made him uncomfortable. His love for Uma and his anger intertwined and produced an emotional state very similar to fire.

Shiva and Uma started to have arguments. These arguments were very angry and would end with Uma in tears. This upset Shiva further because he was unused to seeing people display emotions like that. He was unhappy. He felt that he was making Uma unhappy yet he felt powerless to do anything to prevent it. He didn’t realise that he had far more power over Uma than he thought and that a single kind word or a flower could make her walk on sunshine for days later, while a cutting remark could sting like salt in a wound. Shiva’s work began to suffer. He tried but it seemed the more he tried the more unhappy Uma became. Uma thought that if they just talked about things, that everything would be okay, but the more she talked to Shiva about her feelings, the less interested he seemed. As Shiva felt that Uma’s feelings were outside his control he decided that he would ignore them, as he did with other things that he could not control. Uma saw Shiva’s dismissal of her feelings as a form of neglect. Because of this, Uma was blind to the other things that Shiva did to try and make her happy, she thought that Shiva wasn’t trying. She wanted to feel close to Shiva like she had in the beginning and she kept feeling more and more distant from him. The arguments became more frequent. As it appeared that the whole situation was out of his control, Shiva decided that he must let go, he must stop feeling love for Uma because feeling love and care for her took his focus from his work and it was just too difficult. The less love he showed for Uma the more upset she became until one day she went away.

Later they talked on the telephone but by this time Shiva had moved on. He had convinced himself that he had stopped caring for Uma. Both Shiva and Uma knew deep down that Shiva still cared, but somehow he had become unable to show it. He felt unable to care about anything that was outside his control. He was unable to let himself be that vulnerable. Uma longed to be with Shiva but she longed to be with the Shiva that she knew was deep within, not the defensive and angry Shiva that he had become. She was tired of trying to make Shiva see her reality, of trying to make Shiva care like he used to when it was clear that he had given up long ago.

Uma cried and cried for several days and several nights. She could not sleep and she could not eat. As time went on she slowly got better and eventually began to love people again. She knew deep within that she would always look for the kind of love that Shiva had given her in the beginning, that deep and boundless love that made her feel so strong and free. She also knew that she would look for good honest men like Shiva. Somehow she knew that she would never find someone else like that.

Shiva was not upset when they split, it was true that he had given up a long time ago. He had decided right or wrong that this kind of love was a bad thing. He longed for the easy relationships he had had before, where his heart had not been open, where he had not been vulnerable and where the woman would keep secret her dark fears and demand things only indirectly. He now knew what real love involved, a loss of power and an inevitable vulnerability. This insight was the fire that made him angry at love and anybody who would inspire those feelings in him.

Later Shiva met Maya. Maya fell in love with Shiva but it was not a love like Uma’s. Maya loved Shiva because the goddess Lakshmi loved him not for the same reasons that the goddess Lakshmi loved him, as had Uma. Because Maya loved not Shiva but what riches Shiva could give her, she didn’t mind when Shiva stayed in the tower and didn’t call her, she didn’t mind when Shiva stopped romancing her, she didn’t mind that she was not a priority in Shiva’s life. Shiva felt comfortable with Maya and they married and lived together forever. They had a life. It was not happy, it was not sad. It was a life.