Love-Letter (X)

Hriday,

I wrote your name and stopped, the faint yellow tint on my fingers snatching my attention. I had bhaat and paabda maacher jhol. The fish was quite fresh and Radha insisted to make me a curry for lunch itself. What do you call it, the 'mustard-oil affection' remaining on the fingers. Yes, may be. I had a sumptuous meal, complete with white curd, set at home, strewn overhead with sugar. When I scooped the first bit with my fingers, the white soaked up the yellow greedily, lusciously. How you hate it, I know, this very bengaliness. How you complain that it isn't complete without an Unienzyme thereafter. I had one too. 

When I washed my hands, I did use the liquid soap from the dispenser diligently, yet the yellow as I see has stayed, stubbornly. So, I went up and washed my hands again, off the oily-mustard and turmeric powder pigments. It smells of peach now, unnatural. After I finish writing, I will dab some moisturizer. That will regain some of the ordinariness of my hands, fair and persevering. 

You hate it, and yet, there you lie, succumb to such tortures as would have evoked a torrent otherwise. Today, of all days since the accident, I pity your condition. Thinking of you, lying in comatose, unable to sense the 'yellow' of my fingers and hurling the choicest of curses at me, pains me. The bed has taken your shape, beside the table and the room no longer has the sobriety of the volumes of books. It smells of, nay, not you -- of hospitals. People say I am a fool. 

I am, yes. 

When you get up from that bed, one day, tell them Hriday, how I hear your heart beat each night, against the non-responding vital stats of your static body. Your heart, after all, is you. And it resonates our fears with hopes.

Waiting for this to be read,

Padmini.