# 41 - Very Short Story - True Love

[My attempt at a genre that doesn't come easily to me, but then again, what does?

Written sometime in 2013.]

“Dear Roshni,

I know it’s hardly been half an hour since we met, I can still smell that dreadfully expensive perfume you wore (my axe smells better by the way), but I can’t help it, I have to write this letter.

I know, I know, it’s old fashioned, why don’t I just Whatsapp or text you instead, right? It’s practical I admit, and quicker too, but you have no idea how great it feels to hand over a simple handwritten letter to you in person, and watch you read it, and see you react.

How many years has it been? How many years has it been since you and I have been….for the lack of a better word, seeing each other?

Seeing each other……that sounds so wrong, it’s as if the next chance you or I get, we will be seeing someone else.

Nope, you and I aren’t seeing each other, we are soul mates.

I can visualize you cringing, saying ‘that’s so damn corny Mayank, is that the best you can come up with?’

Yup, make all the faces you want, you know that’s us, soul mates.

We practically grew up as childhood sweethearts, except we didn’t realize it then, when and how we became a couple still remains a mystery.  

Maybe that’s the thing with soul mates, there’s no particular reason why we click, all I know is that we do, and no matter what, we will be together, now and forever.

Remember when you and your family went to Shimla that summer, way back in 2006? You told me not to call you for those three entire weeks, it would be too risky with your parents virtually breathing down your neck, I had bravely nodded my head, thinking inwardly, how the @%@$%@^ would I manage? Each day got progressively worse, and after five days, I literally fell sick, but it was that evening, you somehow managed to be alone for five minutes and called me up from an STD booth.

I don’t know who coined the phrase ‘music to my ears’, I guess he would’ve had a soul mate too, but that is exactly how I felt, and I don’t exaggerate when I say that I was dying to hear your voice. Thank god, you managed to call me every day after that.

As clichéd as it may sound, every time I see you, my heart skips a beat, every time you speak, or brush your hand over mine, I feel the excitement of first love, true love, the kind that went out of fashion decades back, the kind a Bollywood buff might call ishqwala love.

Okay, all this mushy writing has made me miss you a lot, and I think I am going to call you up right now. So I’ll just end this letter here.

Love,

Mayank

P.S. I love you, Roshni! I love you I love you I love you I love you!!!!! Don’t you ever leave me! I won’t say that I won’t be able to live without you, but I will just be a pale shadow of myself. Alive yet dead, but nothing like that terrible, terrible movie Zinda Laash!”

***

Finally stopping, Mayank read the letter over thrice.

Good enough. Now, where could he keep it, conspicuous yet not too obvious? A place his mother would definitely check. The desk? Naah, he never kept anything there but his books, which rarely interested his mother.

Mayank glanced around his room and had a brainwave.

Folding the paper neatly, he slid it into the back pocket of his jeans that he had kept away in the basket for cleaning.

Maa always double checked the pockets before putting clothes into the washing machine, and the next time she went through them, she would obviously find the letter, and since Mayank was the careless sort, she would assume that it was kept accidentally. 

No scope for suspicion. 

Maa being maa, she would read it and would breathe a sigh of relief.

“Anything this romantic was definitely for a girl, a girl named Roshni. Such a sweet name, Mayank was normal after all”, she’d think.

Mayank smiled to himself, the things he did to keep his sexuality a secret. 

He picked up his phone and started messaging Roshan, of course, his name was saved as ‘Roshni’. 

Image taken from here.