Yeong Ai

Hai Shi Shan Meng - Introduction

This phrase gave me quite a bit of grief, not because of the meaning – it is beautiful but because I had taken a lot of time before I could trace it down.

There were quite a few options, which I felt could be suitable for this tale –

Sarang (n) (Korean) meaning love, lit. "I wish to be with you till I die"

B'shert (n) (Hebrew) – lit. "destiny" refers to the seeking of a person by another person who will complement you and whom you will complement perfectly.

Amative (adj.) – disposed to love,...

But I was adamant for a Mandarin phrase and finally hit pay dirt with this phrase: Hai Shi Shan Meng.

Hai shi shan meng means my pledge of eternal love and loyalty lasts until the seas dry up and rocks decay. The first character is pronounced as hai, meaning sea; the second shi, meaning vow; the third is read as shan, meaning mountain; the last one meng, meaning swear or alliance. Together they form the implication of eternal vow.

Beautiful is it not?

This is was a birthday gift to Sharon for she actually went back, read O'Henry's short story and still liked Yuan Fen. This is what she said after she had read it "I am not sure whether this is a complete version. However, I found it very close to what you have written. Again, being an adaptation, the similarities were expected. When reading about Mr. Van Winkler and Ms. Vance, I couldn't help but imagine Sanskaar and Swara."

She, along with a few of my other readers wanted to know what would happen when Swara and Sanskaar realised the truth. It was too tempting to resist and the second tale is my take on how they might have come to learn that the chance encounter which they had dismissed as futile had actually given them their soul mates. A very short story, as mentioned, it deals with the reactions of Swara and Sanskaar (in a very short paragraph but, hopefully, should do the trick) when they discover that reward forgiving up a dream was having it for all eternity. 

I would love to hear from you, if it was worth writing it out or it should have been left undisturbed, as the Master story teller, O'Henry did.

Love,

Nyna