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.
---------------------------------------------------------
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.
---------------------------------------------------------
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.
