Of Love Letters

Alone, in his elevated hotel suite, Chitraang smiled the smile of having spent a successful day at office. This tour towards the other end of the world was hurried, but necessary. The sushi adventure this time worked out well too. His flight back home wasn't until the evening of the next day, and he could not wait to be home with Tehzeeb and their unborn child. As he spread out the letter from her next to his drink, he prepared to re-read it after his bath. This was a pleasant surprise, indeed. A letter from his wife. In it, she had claimed she knew nothing about how love-letters were written. Love-Letters, love, are written how she used to write them. He tried to push back the thought of Gauri, even as the warmth of Tehzeeb's letter yearned for his touch. Gauri. 

The bath lasted for a good fifteen minutes, during which he fought with himself and finally won over the restraint of not going through his layered past. He came out, his hair wet, smelling of listerine, the eagerness of a voyager setting out the mood for him. Couple of years back, he had scanned and recorded  all such documents in the safety of a cloud, unsure when it would feel like raining down on him. Tonight. He settled in the comfort of the sofa and looked for "Gauri" in his ipad. In the meantime, he picked up Tehzeeb's letter and went through it:

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.


Such a sweet letter. He wondered if she would mind him not replying yet. I could always lie that it got lost in transit. Convinced and content he folded it back carefully and kept it under a dry coaster. The file had opened. There were two letters from Gauri, entitled, Gauri_I and Gauri_Going. He clicked on the later. Taking a long swig from his glass, he began reading it:


Chitraang,

There are times when I wish I were a poet instead of choosing to study Astrophysics. I would be someone like Neruda then. Writing and devoting to you the cruelest little of lines in the most beautiful manner. For you deserve the best. But no, I am only a star-gazer and I cannot summon the sweetest way to call forth your attention. Like my love. Perhaps it fell short, somewhere. Somewhere in between my measuring of the unfathomable and the doing of the needful, my love must have fallen short. 

I think I have in fact been causal to the few rattles that you may have had with Tehzeeb. Frankly, I did not believe you both would last. But, as they say, the stars have lives that not many can live. I am not going to turn this into a testimonial about either of you, for the two of you truly have proven that laws of love do exist. 

Two people, so entirely different, yet happily complete with each other, are a rare sight to behold. In moments when my love for you crosses its civil limits, I wish it were me instead, with you. Am I being selfish, possessive? I do not care. Am I being irrational? I do not care, again. But, look, with that, am I hurting you? Yes. And that is why I leave. I do not wish to hurt you, Chitraang, not a bit. 

I am too much in love with you to either hurt you or not hurt myself.

On nights when you have the time or intention to gaze at the sky, and no one to tell you of names of stars, would you once think of me? Once?

No, I rather be an Astrophysicist than a poet.

Gauri.


It took several seconds to come out of the passion of this letter. Chitraang drank from his glass. It was almost five years old, this letter. To his surprise, he walked up to the window. From his Tokyo skyline, he looked up to the sky, seeking for a star. Before long he decided it was best not to return to Gauri_I.