Ma is the same as before, more or less. Ever since I've come home, she's been driving me crazy about marriage, marriage, marriage. When I get annoyed and want to leave, she starts crying again. She says she wants to die after seeing her child's and son-in-law's faces. Otherwise, her heart won't rest, apparently. Strange talk. Isn't the heart something that's bound to decay anyway? Believe me, there's no peace anywhere in this world. The people closest to us are our biggest enemies. They won't let me live my own way. I don't eat their food or wear their clothes, yet they're still after me! Tell me, what's your news? Why won't you marry me? And you won't let me marry anyone else either. What's your game? You're an even bigger enemy! You know, I've been suffering from terrible indecision for a long time now. I haven't told you. Our time is really running out—it's absolutely running out! Most likely I'll have to get married. I'm under tremendous pressure. The groom's family wants to have the wedding within five or six months. They keep asking for my opinion again and again. I don't feel like saying yes or no to anything. I don't want to get married at all. I'm sort of running away from it all, you could say. But my mother really wants me to go through with the marriage this time. It feels like all my dreams and desires will be crushed to dust. My body trembles seeing all this commotion around me. What should I do? Get married? Or stay with you? I can't tell anyone about staying with you like this, day after day. What am I supposed to do now? I'm thinking, let's live like a married couple for the next six months, to our hearts' content. You'll have all the rights of a husband, and I'll be like a wife. Whatever happens after that, happens. Actually, my mind isn't working properly. The ground is slipping from under my feet. For these six months, neither you nor I will make any complaints or accusations against each other. We'll live like a newly married couple. Just like people spend their first six months after marriage—you'll stay with me exactly like that. I'll also live the way one does in the first six months after marriage. I think I love you. I think I love you from deep inside. I want to live my own way for these six months. I want to really live at least once in my life. I want to fulfill my life in these six months. After six months, I absolutely don't want any shadow of you in my life or any shadow of me in yours. Everything I'm saying is true. You'll find much more truth. Let time come. But I still want you, babui! I want to be the mother of your child. I want to see him. I'm so curious to see who he'll look like. I want to shower him with love. Yes, he'll definitely come! He'll be an amazingly beautiful person. Just six more months...! I've extended it to six months, but it could be less or more. I wrote that piece "Former" the other day thinking of you. I don't know if you understood. Everything I'm saying is true. I'm not playing any prank here. Life doesn't run on pranks. That's street stuff. It's very hard for me to accept this. Nothing feels good. Okay, do one thing—think of it all as a prank and forget everything. Whatever will be, will be. I can't forget the memories. I love you. The fact that I can't shout this love out loud, that I can't hold onto you—right now I feel like I'm a failed person. I can't even do this little thing, though I have an old habit of leaving lovers. But I feel attachment for you, for our dream-born child—my heart is crying. He was supposed to come into this world. I was supposed to have a home, a family, a world full of happiness. I can't accept at all that you'll fall into my old pattern. There are some habits you can't bear to watch become old before your eyes. Have I ever loved anyone this much? I can't remember! You know what? Actually, you're the one who won't let me stay. Why don't you just tell me once to stay—I'll set the whole world aside and stay with you just fine. You're thinking of my happiness, yet you can't understand that you are all my happiness. You'll understand. Let time come. That day you'll cry and scream. You'll shut the door and wail one day. Maybe that day I'll be busy deciding on a child's name with my head against someone else's chest. You told me that love develops from living together—then why hasn't it happened between your brother and your sister-in-law after all these years? Are you going to teach me about love? Can you love just by wanting to? If you can love just by wanting to, then so be it. You try loving someone else and show me. You love me. Yes, I'm certain. You can't say much out loud, can't show it much, but you do love me. Did you have breakfast before leaving home this morning? Don't be angry. I'll only ask for a few more months. After that, it's all over. You're about to lose the greatest treasure of this life... just thinking about it makes my chest thump! I feel worse for you. The responsibility of keeping you well is slipping from my shoulders—I have to think about accepting that too! More than not having you, I'm sad that I won't be able to keep you well anymore. You don't know how to take care of yourself—all this time I gladly took care of you. Now who will? I'm about to lose my most precious privilege. What could be more painful than this! Believe me, you won't be able to stay away from me. Maybe in time's cycle everything will be set right. All grief and wounds do heal. Time fixes everything. Strengthen your heart! I see you've recently learned to hide emotions and tears like me. I can't remember the last time I felt this much pain! My right hand is breaking before my eyes... I can't do anything! In a few months, I won't be able to send you random abusive messages like before, will I? I knew you'd break down, that's why I didn't have the courage to say this for so long. I know you can't bear it. Still I'll say, please, don't do this—I can't breathe. Look at a poem. It's on the wall. I wrote it crying silently behind closed doors. You'll cry for a day or two and be fine, but you are my lifetime's tears. You'll remain stuck in my throat like regret until I die. You don't even know what a huge part of my living you are! No, that's wrong. Actually, you do know. You know very well. I'm just saying all this. Listen today: as long as you were here, my life was exactly like a rainbow. With you here, I wanted to live more days than my allotted lifespan. I'd never felt such a longing to live before. I promise you, after you came into my life, I became terribly afraid of death. I always tried to live with my whole being. I used to think, why is life so short? When I saw your melancholy posts on my feed, my chest would ache. The pain was because I couldn't keep you happy despite such sincere efforts. It really hurt! Sometimes I would become melancholy because I could sense certain things about the future. I knew such a day would come for us. You perhaps never understood this until today. What a shame that you couldn't see eighty percent of who I am. There's nothing left for us to do, is there? You know, if we could have stayed together, something wonderful would have happened. Both you and I could have lived a few more years beyond our lifespan. Yes, life would have been beautiful. It definitely would have been. We would have wanted to live more. I would have remained your life force. Like Picasso, wonderful new things would have emerged from your paintbrush too. After I leave, your ability will decrease by fifty percent. You'll see. You'll get tired of drawing. Dissatisfaction will come. So many of our stories and poems remain unfinished. When I'm gone, there'll be a huge change in your entire psychology. Sometimes I wonder, do I really have to leave? Is our separation really inevitable? I have loved you so much, filled to the brim completely. No one in this world has ever loved anyone this well. My longing for domesticity has been somewhat satisfied. Thank you! Thank you. Seeing the boundless love in your eyes for children first awakened my desire to become a mother. Nothing feels good to me. I can't think of anything. And yes, don't cry like a child at all. We still have plenty of time. Do you remember, I used to always tell you, aren't we getting late? I'd write and then delete it. You'll get to know life much better. Wait. Without darkness, you can't understand the essence of light. Our time is really going, isn't it? One life, so many turns! This lane, that lane, hundreds of lanes! Will we remain like this? Or won't we? Ah, life keeps moving, only happiness gets stuck. Much will change for both of us. Time, living, thinking, even habits. What will remain unchanged? Tell me your prediction? Ah. If time could be framed like pictures, I would have framed these moments. Some moments leave people indebted to God for life. Ah, we too have lived in such moments! Our memories—only memories will remain unchanged, everything else will change. In the evening, when it's time for you to return, someone else will come back. I'll make the breakfasts I made for you for someone else. Even the path you take when leaving will change. Both our lives and life's turns will change... everything. Ah, how beautiful life is, yet we never truly know life! We realize it only after it's too late—alas, it's too late! One day, exhausted, both you and I will search for someone out of habit... we'll grope around and find nothing. We'll have to bathe in tears day and night! It pains me to think of all this. Still I know the void will be filled, leaving only the mark beneath the void. I never thought I could become so habituated to love like this!
Don’t let me stay! Give me just a little space. Life is only one, and see—it slips away in the blink of an eye! Why are you making me leave? A single moment, just one moment can turn a person’s entire life toward another path! I still have so many words, so much writing, stories and poems left to tell you! If we stay together, this world will receive something extraordinary. So many people will be better off. You’re thinking about all the people in the world, yet you can’t see that I need you to survive, that I desperately need your help! I want to be a humanitarian worker rather than just a housewife.
So be it then—let us not be! I’m leaving this in your hands. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t let you go. It was Shaon who saved one Humayun, wasn’t it? People may have various opinions about it, but the life belonged to the person who was Humayun—his wishes and thoughts were the only things that mattered. I know very well that my leaving will inevitably lead to your destruction. I want to think about your happiness. For that, I’m willing to make any compromise. Alright, let’s drop all this! Let’s practice from today. Learn to prepare yourself to be without me. Learn to walk alone. That’s what you’ll have to do anyway!
I deleted your nickname on Messenger. The person isn’t there anymore! What’s the point of keeping the name? How will I live without you? My very existence feels meaningless! I know you’re not here. Not at all. You’re nowhere. Maybe my child’s father never really existed! My chest feels completely empty. I feel somehow destitute. If you truly believe in your heart that I don’t exist, then perhaps I really don’t—at least in your eyes. Otherwise, I would remain!
Today it feels like the world really is three parts emptiness and the remaining part darkness. Do you truly see separation in my eyes? Tell me honestly! I saw separation in your eyes today. I hadn’t seen it all this time. I’ll tell you more—today I found you, and myself in your eyes, very unfamiliar. All these days, life felt joyful because you were here. I’ve never lived like this before. I truly don’t know what I could do to really make you understand. I feel failed and helpless in this situation. How many kinds of helplessness must a person endure and still keep living!
I’ve been a sorrowful person since birth. Sorrow is my daily existence. Except for you, not a single person has understood me as I am. This is a great helplessness of mine. Only you have kept me alive for a long year and a half! Without you, I think I’ll die. Just like lovebirds can’t live without each other, I too will simply die, suffocated! It feels like someone is tearing out something from my hands, digging through my chest and taking it away! Along with that, my entire existence is disappearing! Don’t let me stay, don’t give me a tiny place! I know how to adjust in very little space. I’ll adjust everything for you.
Give me back my happy family, my child, my beloved madman! You stay. If we two stay together, all kinds of strength and wisdom will come and possess us both. To me, you mean an entire life, an entire world! No one has ever loved each of my words as beautifully as you do. Everything about me is precious to you. Perhaps you don’t know this as much as I do.
I’ve never seen anyone else so desperate to understand my words, my writing, my emotions, my tears, and to make me happy—except you. You’ve never looked at my mistakes with critical eyes. You often used to say, “Listen, girl, you’re so beautiful in my eyes!” I learned to keep myself beautiful only for you. I wouldn’t do a single thing that I couldn’t talk to you about. I threw away every bad habit of mine after I fell in love with you. I was never afraid to make mistakes in front of you. You were the person with whom I had complete freedom to make mistakes. To survive in this world, one needs someone in front of whom one can make mistakes without hesitation. That person is disappearing from my life.
I’m terrified of marriage, absolutely terrified. He will never accept me the way you do. No one else in the world will accept me the way you do, nor will they ever be able to. I feel like crying thinking about all this. Life feels so easy with you—it doesn’t feel that easy with anyone else. You’re the only person who understands me, who can push the world aside to keep me happy. Life is moving toward so many complications—I can clearly see this.
You’re the only person who eats my disgusting cooking, my clumsy attempts, without complaint and with satisfaction. I know you gulp down even my inedible cooking with such eager eyes! Tell me, who else is there like you who will love me along with all my flaws? I feel terrible crying as I write this. People say love makes you cry. Yet my life testifies that my love never made me cry. I never had to cry because of you; rather, I learned to live because of you. That’s why I can’t accept this separation today.
I never tried to make myself perfect for you—you made me perfect. My mother, brothers, and sisters—whenever they get the chance, they’re busy pointing out all my mistakes and flaws, effortlessly proving me wrong! I’m terrified of making mistakes in front of them. I can never be natural in front of them. Only you never tried to catch my mistakes. You accepted me with all my wrongs and rights. You loved me like a mother, cared for me like a brother, sheltered me like a father’s shadow.
How easily you understand what I need and when! Who has ever understood me like this, who ever will again? My fiancé is busy catching my mistakes all the time. This is wrong with me, that is wrong with me. I can’t walk this way, I can’t walk that way. I can never be myself in front of him. I have to hide myself from him; I even tremble with fear when I see his call! How will I survive in his house, where everyone will be busy trying to correct me? I really don’t understand what kind of text to send in such a situation. I probably can’t write anything coherently—everything is becoming jumbled!
You know, except for you, not a second soul in the world knows that I feel for my father, love him, want him so much! Who else besides you knows me and the person inside me? Believe me, I don’t have to hide myself at all from you. It feels like you are me, I am you. We’re like each other’s mirrors. Why would one need to hide or perfect oneself in front of a mirror? My mirror is slipping away from my hands…
Truly, babu, I’ve never held anyone in my heart the way I hold you. No one has ever filled my father’s empty space the way you have. Not even my brothers. I never considered myself complete until you came. I always felt strangely incomplete throughout my life. After you came, I felt complete, I felt wealthy, I saw myself as a hundred times more beautiful than before! I won’t have any responsibility to keep myself together if you leave.
After you came, I never felt incomplete. No one in this life has ever made me this happy, no one has ever made me laugh this much. You’re like life to me. Sometimes I think you’re dearer than life itself! You’re terribly dear like a mother! I can’t stay without you! If I have to, I’ll feel like half a person again as before. I’ll feel like I’m not alive again. All desire to live will completely fade away! To me, you’re equal to an entire life.
I found the complete meaning of being alive after I got you. My creativity has multiplied many times since I learned to think that you’re by my side. You’re a shelter, a dependence, a person with whom I can rest unburdened—at least for me. Your leaving means I become half a person, become less than human. Only you taught me to live! No one else has any contribution to my being alive.
Keep me in a corner of life—I know how to manage myself, how to live without harming others. I’ve never opened up or revealed myself to anyone except you. Everyone has some desire for happiness—I’ve been in darkness for so long and got a glimpse of light only this once in my life! I want to keep it. I truly want to keep you in my life. You need me. I need you. I feel I was born to create, not to lie useless in a corner of a house. I learned to think and say this with responsibility after you came into my life.
With you I’m safe, unburdened, fearless. I come to you to see myself completely, and when I go, I really do see myself. I’ve never had to think before speaking with you. I know I really cook terribly, but when you always eat with such “wow wow” satisfaction, how good it makes me feel! No one in my family has ever tried my tea, never said I can cook. I’m too afraid to cook for them. They keep saying belittling things to me all the time. But when cooking for you, I’m so happy. I’ve never fed anyone with such satisfaction in this life except you. When I’m with you, I feel like a much bigger person. I never feel low about anything when you’re beside me.
Whenever I try to cook something, they all gang up to find a thousand faults with me. I can’t do this, I can’t do that, this isn’t right, that isn’t right, I’m like this, I’m like that. Even when I visit home once a year, I have to endure their daily criticisms. I live in constant fear there. Except with you, there’s nowhere else in this world where I can exist fearlessly, without hesitation. Perhaps this is my failing. That’s why I keep myself so separate from everyone else.
No one has ever shown me such profound tenderness as you have, truly, no one! That there’s a gifted person within me—only you have ever said this, truly, no one else has ever said it, seen it, or understood it. What a child you are! When you come to me, you become utterly childlike. Why, perhaps even you don’t know yourself. And I become like a grown-up, constantly scolding and managing you. Yet I’m the kind of person who needs thirty people to manage me! Apart from you, I never accept anyone else’s words in this world without argument. I listen to everything you say. Absolutely everything! If I told this to anyone in my family, they wouldn’t believe it. You’re the one person whose discipline I eagerly long to accept! All my rebelliousness surrenders and sits quietly when I come to you.
We’ve never had a fight—isn’t that strange? Of course, when two people accept everything about each other, how could there be fights? We both support each other in the most extraordinary way, without either of us ever having to say anything. Naturally, we’ve both entered into each other’s being. We didn’t have to say anything, didn’t have to show anything. You never tried to impress me, nor did I try to impress you. Yet somehow we’ve entered each other’s hearts. We’ve been mirrors to one another for these past year and a half. This is a very rare thing. Truly rare.
I feel strangely melancholy now. It seems as though I’m watching myself end quietly before my own eyes, with a smile! I don’t even want to think about what lies ahead. I only want to hold you close and sit like that. Today you kept trying to compose yourself again and again. I noticed. Nothing about you escapes my attention. Today I desperately wanted to make myself light as a feather and drown in you.
Is there really nothing we can do?
I wanted to feel you more deeply today. It seemed like—why waste this precious little time in a shower of words? I won’t have my person close to me for much longer. I felt like crying so much today. I can’t cry in front of anyone, but I can in front of you. Today, for some reason, even trying my hardest, I couldn’t cry in front of you. I kept trying desperately to keep myself composed.
Is there really nothing we can do? We could still stay together. We’re here now. We’re not unhappy. We’re quite well, actually. There’s no wall of doubt between us. If you said you’d never leave me alone, then for you I could happily abandon home, society, the world—even paradise. If it happens that neither of us can bear to leave the other, even if this causes some damage to our creativity and happiness, we’ll stay together no matter what. If we see that staying together is causing more harm to both of us, then we’ll separate. Actually, life isn’t as difficult as we’re imagining it to be. This isn’t sacrifice for either of us, but rather purification of soul for both. If I leave, who knows what mistakes my mad one might make, and there’ll be no one to watch over him.
Should I show you some screenshots? Our conversation from when we first met. What we talked about the day after we first met. You know, I haven’t been able to read a single word for the past month or two. I was suffering from terrible indecision. I couldn’t tell anyone, couldn’t even tell you. I couldn’t reach any decision myself. Now I have only one decision: I cannot exist without you! Stay with me, we’ll conquer everything together, you’ll see. Please, let’s stay together? We’re staying, aren’t we?