Vaani's Longest Night

Of the many means to prepare for bed, one is with a book. It was a Chekov, Vaani's favourite. The tea had gone limp from neglect. But when page 63 opened to a crumpled piece of paper, ill-creased, she sat up and pulled her hair into a bun, readying herself for the little adventure that life had left to offer her. "Or yet to offer me?" she thought. One fold on she realised it was going to be a good night.

The writing on the letter was hardly beautiful in the true term, but in its tiny size and the immense depth it held, the letter was a revealation. It was all of four-five lines and addressed to one Sneha, "in a very Neruda manner," Vaani concluded:

"I will love you today like I have never loved you before, like you have never known me to be -- neither tired, nor passionate about our physicality. It will not be limited to your being close only. It will be a definitive change in me to grace your presence. Over the rains and towards dusks I will love you. When the kitchen is blooming and the garden is barren, when the cigarette packet is empty and when the fans are stirring on their own. I will love you today like you are around, and that would change the kitchen, and the garden, and the cigarette packet and the fan.

But love is like a song, it ends. And love is like a song, it can play all over again. 

Amit."

Vaani's mind was propelled by the wish to share it with someone. Anyone. She chose to bring up her phone, put it on front camera and began recording:

"Hello. I have just read a letter by Amit. I do not know who he is. You must be thinking I am creepy. But the fact is I am still thinking about it and not about the half finished Chekov I was earlier reading. It is a paragraph that letter, but a precis in its possibility. The tempestuous nature of the love, perhaps unrequited is like a faint smell that one wishes to trace. I think I am done."

She heard herself and dissatisfied with what she spoke, tried again:

"Hello. I was reading a book from the library and finding it inside, have read a letter by Amit. I do not know who he is. No, I am not sorry about encroaching into his privacy. You see his private feelings could be a template for love." She stopped mid-way. Shit, what am I doing? She read it again and this time took to typing on her phone:

"Dear Amit,

I read your beautiful letter not meant for me. 

I am suspended into the need to love someone just for the sake of dimension you have offered and which I wish to tread upon. My nights are dull and same and tonight, thanks to you, it is an explosion of emotions. 

It makes me pity myself.

I wish I were Sneha."

She did not post it anywhere, nor did she slip it on a paper and put it back in the book. Vaani spent most of her nights thereafter altering herself to an unknown Amit's unknown love.