Writing a Letter

'It is your forte', said one, while the other agreed with, 'it takes a special flair. Perhaps in your case it is genetic.'

Hell yes. I write letters. And that is what I do best. Fictional, metaphorical, categorical, even creative. What is it about writing a letter that makes it so special? It is after all only a conversation, and often one-sided at that. Or, at the most, an imaginative response to a reaction.

Distance asked for a letter. Technology deleted its essence. Love called for it to indulge in. And then, one day, it plummeted into a passion, which over-lookers said was actually an obsession. How the hell did it matter. It did not deter my constant addressing of name-place-anything but an animal-thing. We grew onto each other, without a pen or a paper. It became my voice. A voice that so long would often tremor in indecisiveness. The letter allowed such discrepancies. It was, after all, personal. Even though hundreds of unknown numbers went on to read them. Some, very saintly, even proposed the voyeuristic element of doing so, and stopped reading. I deliberated a closure too. Yet, the letter writing returned. Like I was on a train track I could not get off, it was my journey, not the end-point of where I reached.

While it is only a casual conversation, and not the skeletal models of learning found in grammar books, a letter, unlike a conversation, demands attention. The halo that invisibly hangs over it, is pious, even infatuating. It benumbs the recipient to believe in the sanctity of words, however sinful or deceiving. Not the bill asking for an emptying of pockets, nor the application which wishes for a positive response, the letter is predictable in that it unfolds surprises. The accomplishment of having someone who would listen patiently, and keep the opinions to himself for the moment is a rare bliss. Yes, what a letter does is lets you have the last word.

Till such time a reply is received. And in that gap of not receiving the reply, I become the Omnipotent and Omnipresent narrator of shared instances. Writing a letter -- for self, or for someone else -- is an isolated picnic, between me, my feelings and my words. It isolates to remind me how complete I am, selfish too, but content. The last word after all belongs to the one who signs off, doesn't it?