Love-Letter (I)

Dear Chitraang,

There is nothing quite like writing a letter, really. This particular occasion is graced by an event though. Last evening, after dinner, as Naanima was ceremoniously decking up her paan with a limewash and finely grated betelnuts, and I sneaked in right at the moment when she would add the pinch of zarda to the chamanbahaar, she called me in and asked me to sit beside her. She was being washed by a dash of moonlight, and it felt like I was part of a chapter in a book. I will confess something. I like her somewhat more, because she can speak English. I mean because she, for her time, and our religion, is well-educated. Makes me feel terribly proud. And enlightens me about my hidden biases. 

You know Chitraang, she gave away her fountain pen to me, along with the small-sized paan. I felt as excited as the first time that we went for a walk. We -- you and me. The newness of the age-old and most celebrated feeling, was benumbing, humbling. I do not know how you felt. I was, on the other hand, feeling like...feeling like...a hundred things. As if I had put a flag on a cliff, Everest actually. Then I was running around in the first rains in Vienna. I felt like showing you off. You graduated into becoming my treasured possession, my first Jimmy Choo, my Omega. I could feel the flush on my cheeks. The rush of blood through my veins, perhaps for the first time.

I do not know if that was love I had felt, now that we are 'we' and supposed to be knotted in love. It feels more laidback, doesn't it -- our being together, our mundane everydays, not to neglect our disappointingly less than ambitious future plans? 

Yet, holding this pen and thinking of no one to write to, but you, mostly and mainly about nothing, exerts the beauty of 'us' to me. 

Chitraang, you are somewhere in the other end of the world now, a part of you rooted in me; it is impossible to believe that I have known you for the longest time. I saw you as a young boy in your cricket whites, and loved you in your torn engineer jeans through the dignity with which you stood by me, against the tiniest of tall reasons as are 'what-would-people-say'. Like we have known each other through ages.

Do I sound sloppy? Or are you sighing it off as the hormones? Whatever it is (Naanima's pen too), I feel good writing to you. I do not know what is written in love-letters. We never got that chance, trust advancement of technology to ruin it for us. You think this qualifies as one? 

PS: That last sentence, as I was writing it, gave me, strangely, the same feeling as I described earlier. Please Chitraang, I will be so happy if you write back saying you felt happy receiving it, even if it reaches me later than you do.

And oh, I do love you! (That is the way to end it, isn't it?) Feeling snuggly silly too.

Stupidly,

Tehzeeb.