Letter to a Miss Special Unknown

by Jeevanjyoti Chakraborty

[box]What happens when a wife discovers a love letter that her husband had written long ago? Jeevanjyoti Chakraborty unravels the emotions and the strange truth of a marriage through a story.[/box]

“What is this? What is the meaning of this? After all these years… I have to see this… I can’t believe you would keep this from me…”

Asha’s voice had turned that familiar hoarse that always indicated with portentous infallibility that she was clearly and presently agitated. But the agitation and the aggression had an added quality this time, something which the target of her latest invective – Satya, her husband, just could not recognize. He had seen her tired, frustrated, irritated. He had learnt to handle her irrational fears. He had grown accustomed to her compulsive need to “portray” her family – their family – as the unrealistic epitome of textbook decency as if the rest of the world – more so their immediate neighbours – were the constant judges of a never-ending reality show capturing each and every moment of their family. But this was different from all that. There was a grievous foreboding in that confused bunch of angry words beyond those everyday cosmetic anxieties.

So Satya did what every man learns to do, in the face of blinding bewilderment, courtesy the rites of passage from boyhood to manhood – he played it cool. Nonchalantly and with that cultured steady voice, Satya asked his wife, “What’s wrong? What’s the meaning of what? What are you talking about?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know what this is… tell me you don’t recognise this letter … or whatever fragment is left of it… I know it is your writing… go on … have a look at it… tell me!” Satya had half-expected this escalation of agitation. But the ominous-looking scrap in Asha’s extended hand caught him off-guard. No matter what it was going to reveal itself to be, that limp, yellowing delicate relic was, in all its raw reality, a hard unmistakable justification of his wife’s ire. Asha had drawn the lines of battle, and that ancient-looking “letter” was challenging Satya to face the truth.

Still, valiantly displaying the cool facade while every fibre of his body willed him on to wrench it from his wife with a nervous frenzy, Satya gently took the “letter”. Half a glance later, his heart, at once, leapt with chivalrous joy. Another half a glance later, old friend Experience eclipsed that glorious light of relief, and his heart sank. He then understood that strange quality in Asha’s voice. It was of sad betrayal. The cool facade melted away as he stood silently, shivering with cold sweat, his eyes transfixed on his own writing and his thoughts far, far away. This was a new kind of battle. And he had no idea how to wage this. And retreat – so unexceptionally injurious to ego but effective in hopeless situations – was not even an option here. He would have to fight this one out.

The harbinger of this strange turn of events – that innocuous looking scrap, was a torn out page from a diary. The broken corner still showed the year. It was from twelve years ago. Three years before Satya had married Asha. It was a love letter. A different kind of love letter though… one that was addressed to his future wife – whoever she turned out to be; for Satya had not even met Asha then! At that particular stage of his life, he had felt the fresh excitement brewed up by his parents and responsible relatives as they discussed his marriage arrangements with increasing regularity. The image of that still unknown girl he would, one day, start living the rest of his life with … seemed very fancifully romantic. Until one day, buoyed by the delicate passion of recently discovered romanticism, he decided to pen a love letter to his would-be wife. To rationalize this strange act, he told himself that this would be the only chance he would ever have of actually writing a love letter – after all, every boy should write at least one in his lifetime! Plus, how wonderfully surprising and romantic it would be when he actually showed this to his wife later in that magical married life he would be entering soon. What better gift could he give to that special girl who was waiting for him in the future! Ah… the romance of his youth… that mysterious, innocent love. This was the stuff of movies – he backed himself. And he penned that letter pouring into it, for her – his future wife – his heart and soul; surrendering himself to her love, and promising to honour and protect her. He had indeed fallen in love with his future wife. She just didn’t know it yet! He tore away those three pages and put them in his “Important stuff” box.

And then, like so many romantic escapades of childhood whose foibles extend in no small measure to one’s youth, he forgot about that letter. Reality had caught up with him. And when he married Asha, three years later, those three pages of youthful chivalry lay waiting in vacant despair of their forgotten magic.

In the mean time, “Important stuff” had gotten to be more than a boxful which led to their strategic division into two boxes, the partition being swiftly executed with little care to spare. For, Time and Life had ensured that “Just-Nostalgic” supplanted “Important” and the stuff therein got shoved back into the dusty corners of past relevance. Yet, when treated with contempt, the past carries enough potency to lie waiting with vengeful agony at some corner of the future. And that is exactly what happened. What should have come as a purely delightful surprise to Asha, had, instead, jolted their steady, uneventful life into unwanted agitation. The partition of that once-important stuff into two separate boxes had separated the three pages of Satya’s letter. The first two went into one box while the last fragment, the inanimate protagonist of our strange story, went into the other. What Asha found was this last fragment. With all the anxiety and irrational irritancy of his wife that Satya could not wish away, he just could not hold her unreasonably culpable for the anger and betrayal she felt when she read these last words of his in that “love letter”:

“… many nights, I have dreamt of you and held you in my arms. Sang to the stars and danced with you on fragrant rivers of eden. You build a paradise around me.

I have felt I can conquer all sadness and gloom with you by my side. You are my Muse and my strength. Just be by my side. Always and always.

Yours to be and forever,

Satya”

It was obvious to Satya that, in his wife’s eyes, this looked like a love letter to some girl he had been with before their marriage. Even if she was kind enough to understand his romantic attachments before he met her, it was clearly unacceptable that he had conveniently forgotten to mention this mysterious “Muse” of his all these years. That, despite those protestations of honesty and open truthfulness, he would keep this away from Asha was evident proof that this Muse of his was not yet a thing of the past. Thanks to his careless memory, this magical thing he had so carefully concocted in a heady evening of romantic passion 12 years ago, had come back to cast its evil spell. Whatever it was, an innocent letter no longer it was.

Satya knew Asha deserved an explanation. Probably not. For what she really needed… even more importantly, what he really needed were those first two pages of his sullied innocence.

Asha had stood silent all this while – seething with bruised trust, wishing this had never happened. The stark silence of Satya with his cold sweat threw her heart into agonizing turmoil. Say something … anything… she wanted her fears to be wrong. Yet, how could they be? For here was hard evidence that her husband was no common bore, this was a Satya she had never seen, he had never waxed eloquent even during the honeymoon period. Why couldn’t Asha be his Muse? Didn’t he feel any of that chivalrous himself with her? Or, was it her that had killed the old romantic Satya? The pain of his silence was unbearable.

“So… what is it? Care to explain?”

Satya could just barely manage a “Yes.” Then slowly, gingerly, he told her of that letter he had written long ago hoping that Asha could find the barest smidgen of truth in what appeared, even to him, the most incredible story. He knew housewife Asha to be better than a gullible simpleton.

Asha, for her part, did not mind the story … she desperately needed something to believe in. At least, here, Satya was giving her something that she, even with all the hardened reasoning she had built in her arsenal, could not logically deny. “So, where are those two pages?”

“Umm… I think I have to call Ma. She had put away those boxes.” So the drama moved on from the minds of this couple to the physical act of fishing out two relics from another generation.  Just two pages of paper on which depended trust, love, honour and respect. Their son came home to distraught parents. Enquiries elicited grave “Not now”s. Everyone seemed purposefully intent on recovering some long lost treasure, which to the eight-year-old seemed something exciting. Of course, that resulted in lunch being served late which, however, was not so exciting. Finally, with the excitement of lost-at-sea crewmen, came the desperate “Ahoy”. It was Satya who found those golden folios tucked away, safer than he had actually anticipated…

As Asha sat down to read what promised to be the vindication of that delightful-if-indeed-true story of her husband, Satya heard a barely audible sigh … He immediately knew that Asha had read his first line: “My Dearest Future Wife,”… his innocence would, after all, remain unsullied.

In the mind of Asha, however, another battle cry had taken seed by the time she finished reading again – with covert joy this time – that ominous third page… “So, what happened to that old you? Did I do something … And if indeed I am your Muse… why can’t you make me feel like one? I mean this is ridiculous… I have heard people growing in love… you just went dry… ”

Satya, relieved and amused at this whole joke that his own past self had managed to pull on him, now lovingly gazed at the woman venting the nervous release of her own anxiety through a venomous earful. Then he sensed an almost imperceptible crack in her voice. And, finally that familiar glisten in her eyes. And then the most magical thing happened. That plump face brought on by age and inattentive care to maintaining a “girlish beauty” started melting away. The double chin disappeared. The random streaks vanished. He took a step forward and she turned and looked away. Her battle cry was a muffled choke now. He touched her. That old touch he hadn’t used in ages. That touch which a woman allows only to him with whom she feels the safest and the most at home with. The last vestiges of years of hard family life dissolved away between them. He turned her with a gentle firmness and took her in his arms while precious streams carried away her own guilt at all the suspicion and bitterness she had felt. As she found herself uncontrollably melting into him, she clutched his shirt. Finally, she directly looked at his face, and with the same magic that Satya had moments ago rediscovered his young wife, she saw that young Satya once again.

The love letter had, after all, kept its promise of magic. It had managed to unite two lovers who with all the bickering, the dryness and the boredom of traditional, routine, passionless family life, never knew that they had always been in love! A strangely warm and childishly pure love. That had been there always and always, and was to be forever.

Jeevanjyoti Chakraborty is doing his PhD at IIT Kharagpur in Microfluidics and Nanofluidics, specifically theoretical Electrokinetics, after obtaining an Integrated Degree of B.Tech and M.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from the same place in 2009. Jeevan believes that in science and technology, it takes a lifetime of effort and discipline to be really creative within the rules, and genius to bend those or form new ones. As a welcome break from that discipline, he finds that in literature, creativity comes with ease and with the immediate gratification of momentary inspiration. Even in this paradise of carefree thoughts, he loves the wacky and the improbable. He adores delightful twists, clever word-plays and ideas which turn conventional wisdom on its head.

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