It was July end and she was back in Chennai – that is where she lives, a good two thousand kilometers away from me. Back, I mean, from Delhi. We had met quite often while she was here and those surely had been magical days. And after she left I had missed her sorely. So I decided, or say erred, like many other victims of love have since time immemorial and will continue to in spite of my well-meant warnings, to write a letter to her, pouring out my feelings. My first love letter! I wrote under her friend’s name and she got in alright.
But not many days late she called to tell me that the letter had been discovered. By her parents, of course. Like a fish out of water, my game up, I asked, like everyone does in such situations, an inconsequential question:
“Didn’t you lock the drawer?” I had asked.
“I had!”
“Then? You said there were two keys, both in your possession!”
It so happened, she told me, that a third key existed. Her mother kept it. She wasn’t aware of it too until she came into her room after college and found the drawer open and the letter removed. And they say – ignorance is bliss!
Well, rest of it is usual! Her mom played a passing-theparcel, and gave the letter to her dad and any dad, on discovering a letter written by a lover to his daughter addressing her dangerous things like darling and sweetheart, leaps in the air and so did Mr. Bhargava, her father, and in that process hit the ceiling impairing his brain forever. I don’t blame him. It is perhaps natural, for I have seen documentaries that study a dad’s reaction on the discovery of his daughter’ darling and they all show the same thing. The dad goes mad. For him it is not merely a letter, but a time bomb, ticking away, threatening to blow his daughter away one day. And when a dada goes mad, he decided that his daughter must be kept in strictest of custodies, with barbed wires and all.
Tough times ensued and I reluctantly admit to have become something of a philosopher. Such was my condition that I managed to write a song on life, playing which on my guitar, brought me comfort. Though scarcely better than a crow’s serenade, it was of help, and so I reproduce it for you:
You haven’t pain your rent, Landlord isn’t much of a friend, He wants his 50 dollars 30 cents, Or you’ll be booked for offence, You’ll be kicked out, but
Find new house, new town. For life goes on.
Her name is Alice,
Yesterday you got your first kiss, Today she tells it is all over,
She saw you with another miss. Before you tell her it was only your sis, It’s a bye-bye-Alice.
Alices will go but Sallies will come, Don’t worry; life goes on.
You’ve finally found a new job,
Good pay, not much work on the shop, Your packet’s picked on the morning train, “Oh my God,” you’re late again.
The boss doesn’t listen, says you are outta job You are a rolling stone again.
Don’t worry they say “It can’t worse.” And life rolls on.
Got no girls to call your own,
No job, no money, no home,
You’ve been searching for a bench to sleep on. Everything’s so bleak ‘n forlorn.
Life’s a rollercoaster, with its ups and downs, Life goes on.
There’s one thong you’ve got to learn, Life’s full of twists ‘n turns,
You’ve got to break the rocks in the hot sun, For the tide to turn.
If there is night, there has to be dawn. Life goes on.
Yesterday may have been shit,
Today you may be a complete misfit,
But tomorrow’s a new day,
So don’t give up that weeny ray.
You’ve got to pray, dream, hope and move on, O-O-O Life goes on.
The band’s gone, the applause over, let us return to the story. Around two months had passed and like all matters, however hot initially, this one too cooled down, and life had indeed gone on. We (which strictly includes only Shreya and me) had hopes that her dad would allow her to come to Delhi in December as had been the plan. We managed to talk once a day and were satisfied. There had been no shock for a long time, until this day when her father had, no doubt, for some reason, ordered that his daughter must not be allowed to go to Delhi. And so, it was required that his daughter’s love must go to Chennai, of course. So, that’s the story of my first love letter and, well, the last.