LLC04: A Tale of Two Letters

Chapter 1: Love, Lies & Literature

They were in love, as people in love are: silly, maudlin, pathetic, free; truly, deeply, frustratingly so.

They met in a funeral, and effortlessly found much to be common, much more to be shared. They lived in different cities. They looked different. She had a tawny front, and some devilish thing about her which made her look much more mature and philosophical than her age could afford. And he was as every literature student is – astonished (to a certain degree, with everything, from a lost photograph to a beautiful girl). They started texting, and one drunk evening fell in love. He kissed her then for the first time and found her to be an old book, delicate, soft, enticing, with a quaint fragrance of beauty and compassion.

Her eyes were black, he noticed it after a month or so. It was a startling discovery. He always thought he would fall in love with a girl with blue eyes, or brown or maybe even bluish green, but never black. Black is so common, every other person has that color. But he noticed, her black was a different black. A more dense black. Black, as the sky is in a rainy night, rather as the night itself. A mesmerizing black. A contemplative black.

Three months passed since the funeral.

They lay clothed in each other’s space, seeing the magnificence of their faces as seen from the closest point, where the two noses meet. They slowly moved their hands on each other’s body to find a resting place better than the previous. His lips rushed towards her neck and her nose visited his cheeks. He loved to kiss her, it came naturally to him to kiss her, as soon as he first saw her, he thought, “I will kiss her..” and she loved to be kissed by him. She was the princess and his lips owed her service. They were inseparable as the river and the songs and as the owl and the tales. They were everywhere they wanted to be. They dreamt the same dreams. They filled the same space. They, in their sheer presence, put time to shame, and the general life demanded more of their passion. They were what one wants to be. They were what one never forgets. They were in love.

But even in those moments of serene secrecy they knew it would all end. It was all an elaborate show where actors took their parts a little too seriously. They knew they couldn’t opt for a happy ending. They didn’t know why – it was too hard to find why. But they knew. They saw it in each other’s eyes. He saw it first. In her heavy sigh, in her resting eyes he saw it. She saw it then in his calm face cunningly deceived by his raging heart. They slowly let each other slide away. His hands left her heavenly waist, her nose walked backwards from his warm lips. They were now just holding hands looking at the inexpressive ceiling. The cold hotel-room air settled in the space thus formed. There wasn’t a trace of comfortable warmness, just there a few minutes ago. They looked at each other for answers. The boy kissed her on the forehead. She knew a kiss there means nothing.

They didn’t know why. But there were reasons of course. Reasons bigger than their intimacy. Inevitable reasons. They were always there. Even when they kissed. Even when they knew it unreasonable to part ways. The fatal decisiveness of reason was always there. They could have fled away from it, could have fought it. Some people do. But they didn’t. Many people don’t. Now it all came down to justify that separation was reasonable. It, again, was an arduous task.

It was an important year for both of them. So foolish to be expecting so much from each other, for loving is a busy task. Then who would convince the families. It was betrayal to be sneaking away in a hotel-room. Yes, the act did have a sinister ring to it. And money too. So unfortunate to be loving at a young age. They would have to share the hotel bill. It was a foolish thing, all this. A sumptuously foolish thing. A satisfactory foolish thing. The boy slept. The girl was awake.

She saw his face. A washed face. A face made paler by the sepia tint of the night lamp. She found him exciting when she first saw him. He would talk of Othello, of Antony, of Cleopatra. Oh, he was so mesmerized by Cleopatra. He would read her The Trial on phone and then would forcefully, with a rhetoric of demagogue, insist her to watch the screen adaptation of it. He would speak of Mrs.Dalloway, of Maggie, of Porphyria’s Lover. He would sing her songs. He would make her laugh.

Yet he made her cry, for everything was so difficult with him. Who wants to be with a person so detached from reality? Not the grim reality. But the good reality. Because who would be so foolish to deny that? To deny that good things happen too. A man who wouldn’t even try to make things work, once he knew they wouldn’t?  A boy. He would talk of a future so indifferent, so lonely, that it became impossible for her to cope with the drama, the insecurities, the truth as he saw it. The truth? What was the truth? Weren’t their proximity a truth? Wasn’t the dark image of a lonely future merely an aesthetic yearning of separation? Weren’t things he said myopic ignorant lies?

They may have been the truths he lived everyday. They were the lies she couldn’t accept.

…………….

Chapter 2: The Elusive Art of Hand-Writing

There. It was complete. It looked short. Her crafty hand-writing made it look a letter of importance, like the scrolls of doom, or of festivity, in ancient civilizations. She sat there perusing the solitary line written on the paper for few minutes. She read it again and again. At first it sounded dramatic, sentimental, unclear, and a little too harsh. Further readings made it sound appropriate. And after a few more looks it became the only truth. The only clear way. A little dramatic, but well, love is dramatic, she said to herself firmly. It was the perfect ending. She left the note lying there under the pen on that impeccable wooden table. She left.

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Chapter 3: Alternatives Of Death

There is nothing in it, he was told. He himself knew that.

People go away, vanish, die. Humanity has being doing this from time immemorial. They moved in groups never resting, always in hunt for a better place, a profitable environment, a secure surrounding. And then they vanished, conquered by nature, the ruthless monarch. Civilizations have been annihilated by floods and war. War..How great and foolish to die for a pretentious cause? Greater and more foolish still to let people die for a pretentious cause. People die. Do they?, for Death is a relative term. People die, because they aren’t around us. We can’t see them. We have lost them. They may well have found a peaceful stone or tree or a river. They are dead to us. A scanty dreadful term, ‘dead’. It instead should be named Evanescence, Eclipse or simply Exit. Death, does not exist. It may, for the person who dies, but still, who knows. It doesn’t even exist for us. A sense of loss is all death is guilty of. No. Not even that. People go away and there too is a sense of loss. It isn’t same as death someone would say, you always have the hope of seeing them again. But some of us hope to see even Gandhi again.

When people leave to never come back they don’t matter. She left. She didn’t matter to him, not after that.

A sense of loss. He rued not being in control in that precise moment. He rued following the blandishing mirage a day more. He had decided to end it all himself. They would make love for the last time and then he would tell her how improbable it all was. It was all planned with the tenacity and perfection of a cruel murder. But she ruined it all. She wrote a letter.

What’s the point of writing a letter when something reasonable could be done. He would have talked her out of it. He even had in mind the poignant phrase “I am not the right guy for you”. He had a moving speech prepared. But she ruined it all. He would have talked her out of love. But she ended it by a letter – if one can call an obscure line on a piece of paper a letter. It wasn’t a note either. It was too dramatic to be a note. At the head was written the name of the boy with Dear, and at the end the name of the girl without Yours. In between was the solitary, sibylline line of seven words. He had read it ample times to be dreaming about it. And he hated her afresh every time he read it.

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Chapter 4: Homer, Apples And Life

It was a dream, she had. She was in a dark circular classroom, with something being shown on the projector. It had a semi-circular seating arrangement, as if in some old theater, with rows of cushioned lounges stretching from one end to another. They were maroon in color. There was Beethoven’s symphony playing somewhere outside. Maybe some students were preparing for a play. She was in the second last row. He was there too. Her head rested on his lap and his hands caressed her hair, her lips, her neck. She was looking at him, the images on the projector flashed dimly on his face. But he wasn’t looking at her. He never looked at her. It was a nightmare.

…………..

Later in her life, someone proposed her. He made it so beautiful, so proposal-like. She was in a room full of flowers, precious roses and all. She loved flowers. He was standing there with all the lovely pretenses and smiles. He loved her. She loved him too, it seemed. You can see someone in love, easily spot them in thick of crowds, wearing their gaily gestures, and frolic smiles.

Someone proposed her that day, and she said yes.

Later she had two beautiful girls with him. They both looked like their mother. That was what everybody said. Later she would think of all the right choices she made. Later she would think of those Delhi Cantonment rides. Later she would laugh at her folly of being drunk in almost all crucial times. Later she would have found Homer more refreshing than Shakespeare. Later she would be amazed that earlier she really hated apples. Later she would think of that boy with whom she had a childish affair. Later she would mull over the inevitable what-could-have-beens. Later she found herself to be more happy than ever. And the nightmares, well, what would be life without them?

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Chapter 5: Hotel Rooms

How long does it take to come out of love?

Eight years passed since the funeral. He was almost a professional writer now – dressed ostensibly naive with a thick stubble, and sporting a grave face. He was out on a date with a girl much younger. He was finishing his coffee. It was too dark a place to be drinking coffee. The kind of light which reflects one’s best face. Prominent cheeks, tip of nose, twinkling eyes. The girl with him sat there smoking her cigarette, forming brilliant figures in that still cafe air unknowingly. She looked beautiful in that light. She looked beautiful in every light. She passed her half burnt cigarette to him and slowly grazed his neck with her hand, with her lips touching his ears.

“Do you behave this strange on your first dates?”, she whispered and kissed him on his ears, slowly moving his face towards her. She kissed him then on his nose, his chin, his lips.

“We should leave..”, he replied.

………….

Hotel rooms everywhere have the quality of being eerily disinterested. You can live an important part of your life there without affecting their tranquility. You’ll be a changed man next day. They will have the same neat sheets and downy pillows and sterilized air. You’ll be a desperate man next day. You’ll not be neat, nor clean.

Accretions of decayed past, humid emotions, nauseating memories, hollowed insides, suffocating outsides. An important world bearing unimportant individuals. Nothing to hold on to. Only some beautiful photographs and beguiling letters.

He felt cold. He reached out for his shirt. He dressed up in middle of the night. He saw her sleeping contently. He covered her bare shoulders, with the slightly askew quilt. He sat there looking at her for about half an hour. He had never been that oblivious his entire life. He could think of nothing. When you lose the sense to appreciate beauty, you know your life is miserable. The world lay bare. He was draped in black. He also came to know something interesting about himself that night. He couldn’t love anymore.

How long does it take to come out of love?

Eight years. And a lifetime. He had to go.

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Chapter 6: Tale of Two Letters

“Dear, ………                                May, 2007
A kiss on the forehead means nothing.
………”

 He had it with him for eight years. That seven word letter. Probably the shortest letter ever. Probably the cruelest one. It was something he wished didn’t happen. An untamed misery plaguing his existence. He lost that night to that beautiful girl. A letter hollowed him out. It was clever he had to admit. But it wasn’t the truth. In his arrogance he believed it to be. But, it never was, not that night, never. For these eight years he had a reply written at the back of the same letter which he thought he would post one day. It read:

“May, 2007
 You are right. It doesn’t.”

 He never had the courage to post it. But after all these years he could not lie to himself. It would be a travesty if he did so. He cut off those lines he wrote. He wrote on that same paper a new reply:

“Dear, ……..                    November 2015
I wish you were right about that.
……..”

He didn’t know why he felt something almost close to joy when he wrote that. He loved her. What else could he say? What else was there to be said? He perused her letter for a while and then flipped the page to see his new reply. A whole life spent on a fake premise. A lost cause. He smiled. He was in love. In love with that girl he met at a funeral. Still. He folded that letter neatly and kept it again safely in his wallet.

He didn’t have the courage to post it either.

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