Sunday, November 24, 2013

Letter

Moon had stopped reflecting the light from the sun. Trees were waiting with bated breath to begin their photosynthesis process. Even the dewdrops had finished their job of silently staining the earth. However, the room still wore its nightly shade. It looked like a dungeon- like a womb- like the underneath of a bed that was refrained from getting exposed to light.

Suddenly the bell rang, cruelly shaking the soul of every particle.

He woke-up with a jolt. His night’s jerking didn’t do much trouble with any laid thing other than his dreams, but this sudden jerk didn’t share the same story. In this instance, the bedside table became the casualty. It toppled, making all things on it get wings for a little of a second. The unlit lamp, the milk glass, and the rose- all took the floor as their new dwelling.

“Preposterous!” he screamed, his voice reaching the ceiling fan and whirling back at him.

 He took a few blind steps, crushing the rose on his way, and opened the door.

The light entered, quickly colonizing every region it could.

A native woman, revealing a deep valley underneath her transparent sari, was standing with a letter in her hand. Stealing a look of him submerged in her tempestuous depths, she shyly managed to recall her purpose of visit. She quickly pushed the letter in his hand, and made an abrupt exit. But not before dropping a sweat in her cleavage and putting a smile on her face. And why wouldn’t she? Arousing Nehru wasn’t an every day affair. Atleast not for her.       

He closed the door, cancelled the darkness, sat on the edge of the bed, and brushed his thumb on the initials on the letter- Lady Mountbatten. For that moment, the wetness on his stained dhoti suddenly led a newfound life.  A smirk, trimming of the nose & ear hair, oiling the eyebrows, and other romantic essentials took the better of him.

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Some few miles away, in another room, the night had no cousin called morning.  There were a few distant siblings like power and greed, but they came-by in a masqueraded avatar. Such, that their presence or absence could never be certified.

The set of rooms adjoining our protagonist’s room could easily be an inspiration for an Edgar Allen Poe’s next piece. But for the moment, the possessor of this abode was our main contention of thought. Not that Poe is of any lesser significance, but then this place was called Jinnah’s House.   

Like the name, the exterior, the interior, anterior, posterior, and every weir, carried a peculiar, austere, and a given and taken autonomous feel. Here, life had so much sedated, that recognition had given way to a set of virtues that only a numb mind could fathom.

It was a quixotic scene.  Jinnah was inspecting that dot of dirt on his fingernail on the hand that was holding the scotch. Inspection was just an excuse. Just a few minutes back, a letter was dropped on his door. Not that letters were an unwelcome, but one with Gandhi’s initials was a source of happenstance. The tone of the letter was so full of humble and apologetic undercurrents that anyone opposed to the thought would forever take the pages of history as a bad guy. Gandhi was thus, a khadi wearing snake. An error of birth. A subject-verb agreement blunder. And no amount of personification, no amount of text, could describe the animosity which Jinnah carried for him.

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Letters. Depict. Emotions. It is a workaholic carrier. Of a scent. A romance. A fume. A rage. A beginning. An end.  It can easily be flown and be shredded, and used to pronounce fate. It’s always been a token of destruction- be it good or bad. And the more you want from it, the less you get from it. Satisfaction, was never a letter’s cousin.