Once a woman loves someone, she can manufacture simple, natural explanations for every kind of wrong, every unreasonable thing he does. This remarkable gift lies dormant in every woman until love awakens it with terrible force. Even if it means standing against the whole world, she dreams of living out her days in the private, unassailable conviction that “no matter what, I simply cannot live without him.” The girl who won first place in every debate competition at school and college—she too finds the joy of living in surrendering to life’s logic. It isn’t that women have less sense. But when a woman falls in love, her sense doesn’t diminish—no, that’s wrong—when she falls in love, she has no sense left at all. Women’s favorite food is bamboo soup. You wrote all this. Fine, fine! How cruel you are! And today, talking to you, I’ve proven I can be three times crueler than you. And if I hadn’t done that mischief suddenly, would I even have called? Never in my life! What were you before? What have you become? Can a person change so much? Is your head always full of such things? I know—the only reason you’re in touch with me is because of that one thing. The truth is, you don’t stay in touch. I do. The day you’re completely indifferent to me, there’ll be no contact between us anymore. I’m waiting for that day. I’ve learned to wait for so many things these past few days! Oh! How much I think about! How much useless nonsense I enjoy turning over in my mind! And yet—what has this person you done to me? The things you say when we talk! And still I’m happy—for whatever reason, we talked for seventeen minutes! You spoke to me just like someone close, someone intimate. Whether it’s an act or whether there’s some special reason, you said it all the same! Does it ever occur to you, even once, how much it hurts me to take what you say? And yet I keep saying whatever you want to hear. I’ve learned to speak according to your mind, your wishes. What else can I do? If I don’t match your tone, your rhythm, then you won’t put up with this endless suffering of mine without reason. Right? That’s right, isn’t it?
But there’s one thing that brings me some peace—this is the first time you’ve called me of your own accord. I know, I was the one who messaged you on Facebook. But still, you answered. I understand you didn’t call for my sake. You called to ask about those ridiculous actresses of yours. Why do you have so much charm? I was hanging on your every word, laughing as I replied. A gust of wind was sweeping through my chest. Do you know what I felt? I felt I would go numb in a moment. Trying to answer what you were saying, it felt like I was piercing my own heart with a fork. You know how they marinate chicken in sour yogurt before roasting it, how they pierce it all over with a fork? If you can, look it up sometime. That’s exactly what I was doing—piercing and tearing into my own heart with a fork. How do boys become so cruel? I know you don’t know what’s in my heart. If you did, you wouldn’t speak so carelessly. But I suffered so much when you wanted to include me in that game, that one where… You’re right, you always are. Girls love everything about the person they love. After you hung up, I kept comforting my heart with laughter, saying to myself, “However he may be, I love him! What does it matter if he’s like that? He has a beautiful mind, knowledge, infinite wisdom. Someone with all of that could never be contemptible. Why should I worry about his personal nature? I fell in love with him before I even came to him. And because I loved him, I ran to him.” Those who don’t fall in love easily—when they finally do fall, they become completely blind. Love is the only legitimate addiction in the world. Yet there is no more terrible addiction than this. When such new addicts are wounded even once, they are utterly destroyed. Why do some people not let them be themselves? Why do some people become desperate to make them fall in love? And when they’ve made them fall in love, why do they push them away for no reason at all? Why pull close if the ending is always distance? Why do cruel people rob them of everything and laugh the victor’s laugh? Who, when, where ever became a hero by driving a knife into a lifeless chest? If someone has already accepted defeat, what is there left to triumph over? Why must the gentlest heart endure the most merciless cruelty, day after day? They say the cruelest death in the world is burning in fire. I wonder—is falling in love an even crueler death than that? Don’t you see me? Someone like me, and yet I do such mad things! I don’t know what you think of me. Because I love you, I surrendered to you. Otherwise, you’d never have caught me. Won’t you take even a little responsibility for this?
The Mortar of Intellect You! You ask me to find you a lover! How on earth do you think I could do such a thing? Those days are gone! Yes, forget it, forget it! That’s exactly why I gave you a picture of someone so utterly plain, someone you could never possibly like. And even if you did take a fancy to her, I wouldn’t give you her details anyway. How strange it would be! To place the person of my heart into another’s hands with my own two hands? How could you think me so magnanimous? Well, you’ve already said it! I’ve accepted it. But why do you want to mix me in with everyone else? I’ve been hurt, terribly hurt! You could have at least not told me. If you want to be that way, fine. But should I be the same? You understand everything, yet you couldn’t understand this one thing? You yourself say that women can’t accept everything. So why speak to us that way? You’re so cruel! After we marry, don’t be like that. A woman will spend her whole life with you—don’t deceive her. I don’t know if she’ll do the same, but you have no one else in your heart, so don’t treat her this way. You see, your household’s goddess will become exactly what you desire. You won’t want to leave her for anywhere else. Oh, you whom God favors, God has truly reserved for you some celestial nymph from His heaven—and once you find her, you won’t even contact me or anyone else. That’s what I feel. I love you so much, terribly much. Be very happy. Take care. I’ll have some wonderful days ahead now because we’ve talked for so long. Thank God. Thank you so much too. And most of all, thank that picture. Thank the heroines in it. Thank Google for finding that image. Who knows who they are! Are you cursing me in your heart? Go on, go on, it doesn’t matter—it’s you doing it anyway, no one else. You’ve taught me gratitude. So, thank you to you as well. I love you so very much, I cherish you so very much.
Oh ho! A Leap Year’s greatest gift to me! Your phone. What a special day this is! Why didn’t I write something about it before, that day? This special day will come again in my life only after four years. Where will you and I be in four years? Perhaps we won’t even be in touch. But it’s impossible to forget that day’s memory. I wrote it down in marker on sturdy art paper: I called you at 10:35 at night. You cut the call. At 10:53 I sent you a missed call, trembling with fear. You called at 11:06, and we talked for 17 minutes and 23 seconds! I’ll stick this on my wall. You’re so very, very, very good. I love you, love you, love you. I can’t help but love you. Even if you become terribly bad, I’ll still love you, will always love you.
How much longer will I love you? Slowly, these feelings have grown so fierce, so deep, that mere survival feels impossible. I haven’t slept all night, and sleep still won’t come. What are you doing? Where are you? In Dhaka? Or somewhere else? When you speak, you make it sound as though you’ll appear this very moment, yet afterward—nothing. Not a word. Why don’t you understand, when you make a promise, that someone might cling to it, might count the days by it? I don’t even have the strength to write anymore. I’m gasping for breath. October, November, December, January, February, and now March. Do you understand what state I’m in? Can a person live like this? How much more will you drive me mad? I can’t anymore. Either love me or kill me. I’m helpless. I cannot think of anything beyond this. This is how I’m getting through each day. Kill me. I truly cannot go on, I truly cannot. There’s a limit to how much one can bear. Thinking endlessly like this, I am no longer myself. I am lost. In your neglect, your indifference, your disinterest—I’ve kept myself alive, yes, but I’ve lost myself. Please, won’t you find me again? How much more will I lose in you? How much more? You’re doing perfectly fine with yourself. I know it, I understand it—you’re terribly selfish. And yet why did I have to love you? Why did I bring this suffering upon myself? Why?
You are the sleep in my eyes. You are my sudden, unwavering dream. You are the lord of my heart. You are my strange wanting. You are all my madness. You are all my imagination. You are the reflection in my eyes. You are the mirror in my closed eyes. You are the sculpture I’ve carved from dreams. You are the small smile on my lips. Yet you are also the deep ache in my chest. You are the reason I grasp at a thousand moments of happiness. You are the rest I find in the gaps of my busy day. You are my tireless love. You are my daily search. You are a handful of joy in my life. You are my first desire and my unspoken love. You are the prince of my endless, unblinking gaze. You are my unrequited love. You are God’s favorite creation, my own. You are the precious jewel of my life. You are all my suffering, and then—love.
Wood is burning. Straw is smoking. Fire is roaring. Sparks are flying. Ash is settling. Cold is trembling. Mist is gathering. Embers are glowing. Bodies are warming. Tents are rising. A barbecue is laid out. Songs are floating. Tagore is returning. Lalon is singing. Earth is beating. Talk is flowing. Cameras are clicking. Mountains are stirring. Leaves are weeping. Rivers are calling. Wind is guiding. Night is intoxicated. Silence is speaking. The year is ending. The year is coming. Joy is falling. Love is burning…….You wrote that once. Do you remember? Will you take me there? Come on, please! Just you and me, and that night. No one else. Will you? I’ve been yearning—on some autumn evening, to walk that mountain path from ‘Kanchenjunga,’ to tell stories with you, to walk alongside you……but it doesn’t have to be just walking—come on, let’s walk!
Forgetting you? That’s the least of it. Day after day, I’ve grown to love you so deeply that I find myself yearning for you almost constantly. What can I do? Tell me. I don’t want to bother you one bit, and yet I can’t seem to quiet my own mind. Now I understand why Subhra used to irritate me so much! What felt like annoyance to me was, for her, a kind of destiny—something she couldn’t escape no matter what. Do girls bother boys for the same reason boys bother girls? I wish I could be born a boy, just once, so that maybe—just maybe—I could understand your mind a little better. My heart and my conscience pull me in opposite directions, and they pull hard. Most of the time conscience wins, my heart yields to it, grows restless, keeps me restless, and then I start all this madness again. Hey! Are you listening? Will you ever listen? Why did I have to follow you? Why did I have to follow you blindly like that? Blind following anyone is dangerous—you really do go blind, slowly but surely. Why did I have to watch your videos? I wouldn’t have let any of this happen otherwise. Why did you have to share those pictures of your bookshelf? That’s where I lost myself! I may have approached you without shame, but why did you have to respond? And why did I—shameless as I am—keep talking to you even after that first day? Why? Why are there no answers to these whys in the world? Why should I spend my whole day thinking of you? How strange! Don’t I have anything else to do? Am I living for you now? You occupy my mind, fine. But why are you stirring up such a longing in my entire chest? What turmoil carries my days away? Tell me—do I love you by choice? Or by force? I’ll never have you, never even touch the edge of your sleeve. So what good is all this thinking about you? You don’t even think of me by accident. And whenever we do talk, you ask me to find someone else instead. I think I should hate you. But that’s truly impossible! Well then, should I stay away from loving you? No, doing that would kill me! So what is this then? Why do I think of you? I try so hard, you know, to find the answer. But I can’t. When I look at your pictures, I just can’t stop. I only look and look and look. It feels as if I could stare forever. Your eyes are like that, your smile is like that, your art, your style, your fashion—all of it is like that. That’s why I keep seeing and marveling, wondering how much care God took in making you, in crafting every part of you. He spent so much time creating you. That’s why I believe you are God’s beloved, His cherished one.
Perhaps you’re wondering—those who aren’t quite as beautiful, or not like you, are they God’s unloved? I don’t know that, I don’t think about it, and I don’t want to. Why? But let me tell you, listen. Since I was born into this world, I have loved many faces and personalities, made them my own, held them dear. Revered them, and will go on revering them for all my days. Some of them are my crushes. Yes, Tagore is among them too. But this is the first time—without my knowing it—my heart has been crying out, once, twice, again and again: “You are God’s beloved.” God sent you to this world with such tremendous care, such deliberate making. Some people were sent to you so that you might make them weep. It is no fault of yours—that is simply your assignment! Look, I love Tagore so much that if his thoughts had a soul, I would bow to them every single day in my mind. And yet, in these twenty years, it has never even occurred to me that he is God’s chosen vessel! So why then are you the reason for such thoughts in me, such faith? Do I think this way because I love you, or did I fall in love precisely because such thoughts entered my mind? My insides are a factory of questions. Thank God you don’t sit beside me in flesh and blood! If you did, I would surely go mad. Thousands upon thousands of questions, and yet no one to give a single answer. Why am I so restless? It hurts, and yet I want to know. Please don’t kill me… It hurts so much that I cannot think of anything. And yet look—I keep telling you everything in my mind. How shameless I am, you hear nothing, and yet my prattle never ends. I just keep saying all this worthless nonsense, I mean, just keep writing all this pointlessness. Why do I write? Because the pain wants to burst from my chest, is that it? I can never speak to you, not even one word, let alone tell you all this. Just one small word—”love”—and yet even centuries of writing would not exhaust it. Believe me, it hurts terribly to write, and still the writing does not end. More, I want to write more. You will never know how many nights I lie awake, only to sit down at dawn and write for you again. Why do I do all this? Simply because I love you? Or is it becoming a bad habit of mine, day by day? Such a tiny word—”I love you”—and yet I can never say it to you, never will. When I stand before you, all my emotion, all my feeling, I swallow it down like spit. Is all this just nonsense? Does it mean anything? If someone gave me two choices and said, either tell him you love him or die, I would gladly choose to die smiling. Is this what love is? To keep the heart’s words locked in the chest—is that the final truth? But where does so much love come from? I could curse love with the foulest, most obscene words and be done with it forever! I want to pull this bag of pain from the middle of my chest and cast it away! I’ve been carrying it, and every day it grows a little heavier, and this is how I go on living. But in what happiness? In hope of what? What enchantment is this? ……… Just touch me a little, please! Will you hold my hand? Come on, just once—won’t you place your hand so gently on my head? What would happen if you touched my forehead? Tell me, am I burning with too much fever? God, why won’t you make me ill? Hey! Hey! Hey! Why won’t you talk to me? I will talk to you, I will, I will, I will!
If you keep quiet, they’ll catch you completely …………. no, nothing at all!Some fierce and radiant beauty, already sailing in the ship of a relationship (meaning, already in a relationship), the only way to keep your eyes and heart quiet around her is to block her. Let it be cruelty, but you have to survive!………You wrote that. What you didn’t write was: why does loving someone who isn’t entangled in any relationship still wound you? Why is it always the wrong person who storms into your heart and ransacks everything? Why do you want to gaze at him for eternity, when looking at him even once sets your eyes on fire? Why do you want to spend your whole life talking with someone, when talking to him for even a moment is harder than driving a knife through your own chest? Does the heart only ever arrive at wrong conclusions? Every sin has a kind of sweetness to it. The burden of avoiding the sweetness of sin is a heavy burden! Some sins exist that the regret of not committing them fills entire lifetimes. Why does sin pull harder than virtue? Everything, all the happiness of the world—why does it live in the sin of claiming rights over what isn’t yours, what will never be yours? Why does the sin of drawing close give more oxygen than the virtue of staying away? Why is the color of tears’ henna stain the deepest, so it deceives and obscures the truth itself? Why, after blindly loving someone long enough, do you actually become blind? And to the wrong person, no less? Why? Why? Why???
There’s no end to this pain, I know. Day after day it only grows, and it will grow more. Just thinking about what will happen on your wedding day brings fever and shivers through my body. Even the thought of that moment numbs everything. I’ve become so helpless from loving you! Have you ever felt this way about someone? I know perfectly well that not having you is far better than having you. Because you could never love me the way I love you, so I don’t even want you. I don’t want you, and yet I’m sitting here loving you fiercely. The fear of losing you is far greater than the ache of not having you—though I never had you in the first place, what is there to lose? Is this the fate of love, then—to suffer meaninglessly like this? Do you understand even a little how wretched my situation is? Even with a stone on my chest, can it hurt this much? Why am I nursing you inside my heart like this, grain by grain? I’ve loved you impossibly, devastatingly. What do I do now? You can mistreat me, cause me a thousand kinds of pain, and still you won’t stop me. Because I’ve learned to love you without having you. I have no power to come to you, and yet somehow the conviction of having the right to love you madly has been born in me, fiercely and completely. I came to you because I loved you. Otherwise, the question would never have arisen. So no matter how hard you try, you can’t hurt me. All the pain I’m suffering—I created it myself. You don’t have the power to wound me! To forget you, either you have to end me yourself, or hurt me and humiliate me so thoroughly that I end myself before you. I want to scream and say, “It’s this boy I love!”
One. I don’t love her anymore, so why does it matter who she’s with? Why do I lose sleep over it? I blocked her myself, yet I find myself sitting for hours on a fake account, scrolling through her profile for no reason at all, feeling a strange kind of happiness. Why does a casual invitation—a simple “hey”—make my heart flutter, why do I stare at her name without blinking? I can’t stand her, and yet I can’t stand anyone else being near her. Two. Girls are born with an infinite capacity to fall for the wrong people. I just called her a good girl, and look—she melted completely, fell apart entirely. . . . Two kinds of words. Who’s the first one? Who’s the second? Who are you writing about, or are you writing about people in general? Or are you just writing to write? You know what? It makes me angry. It does. Because girls read your words, listen to what you say, and they just keep falling for the wrong ones—one after another. Sometimes, by accident, boys fall for them too. And you sit up there, smirking to yourself, writing away. These people who fall—I think there are three kinds of them. One. They’re not used to falling, so they drown struggling. The pain of falling is a terrible pain. Poor things—they can’t bear it. Two. They keep chasing, desperate for attention. Then one day they tire. Someone else comes along, gives them what they want, and takes them away. As they leave, they make a face at you—a sneer. Three. And then there are these—they neither struggle nor drown. They just sit quietly, forever, looking at you. They want nothing. They keep all the storms of their heart locked inside. Which category do I fall into? Whichever one it is, I’m suffering terribly. Listen to me, please. Even if it’s through some invisible force, just hear me once. I’m not asking you to love me. Just listen. There are so many inexplicable, unreal, magical, dark forces, unseen powers in this world—if only my longing could reach you through them! I can’t explain to you how restless I feel. Why don’t I just die? You tell me—ten percent of everything we say, even unconsciously every day, reaches God. Why isn’t this wish of mine being granted? I want to die. I want to die. I want to just fade away. I don’t want to live anymore. I want to die for you. I want to be dead before your wedding is fixed. I don’t want to live anymore. I don’t even want to kill myself. But if this keeps going, one day I’ll have a breakdown, and I’ll attempt it. There’s nothing I can do. I truly cannot hear the news of your wedding. Death would be a mercy compared to that. Please don’t kill me. You won’t, will you? Listen, one day I’ll just die on my own. But here’s what I want to know—all these days you’ve been hurting me like this, have you ever stopped to think about how much pain it is to swallow your tears just to stay alive?
So you sit there, calm as anything, having written something that takes your breath away? I haven’t been able to breathe properly for a solid hour and a half now. It’s getting worse by the minute. I want nothing more than to bolt straight home, but even that I can’t do. I’m sitting here in front of my students, writing this. I’m completely unraveled. There’s a fire burning inside me. I can’t breathe. I really can’t. How do I explain the state of my mind to you? This is how I’m living my days now. Ever since I read what you wrote yesterday, I’ve lost my senses. How do you write such things? Or do you just sit there while you’re writing, completely oblivious to the world around you? After reading your piece, I felt more than naked—as if I’d stripped myself bare before a mirror so completely that nothing was left hidden. It felt, for the first time, like one of your writings had brutally violated me. I can’t get up. My body has no strength left. If there were a knife in front of me, I’d plunge it into my chest. I want to tear out the flesh from the middle of my chest, cut it into pieces and be done with it. I didn’t see this blow coming at all. Do you want to hurt someone? Do you want your cruelest revenge? Do you want to finish them off completely? Just one thing—throw them into love. Is there any greater pain than this? I’m sitting here completely powerless. My face has gone pale. How will I ever be normal again? I’d be so much better off dead. You’re not human—you can’t be. No human being could write the way you do. How extraordinary. How will I go on living like this? I can’t be normal, not in any way. I wish I could hold onto something, something solid, and breathe. But there’s nothing. Right now I could wrap my hands around your collar and squeeze. God in heaven! What kind of torture is this? What hell on earth am I suffering while still alive? If only I could kill myself somehow! If there were no one holding me back, I’d really do it. If my father and older sister weren’t here, I’d truly do it. I have to live for them, for some reason. Not because I can’t have you, but because I love you I want to die now. This thing that doesn’t suit me at all, that has nothing to do with who I am, that I know in my bones is not me—and yet knowing all this, understanding it completely, I’m getting used to living with it day after day. This is a punishment. When you fall in love, you deserve this. And the only way to escape this punishment is death. And yet look—I can’t even die. This is a new kind of torture. When the easiest way out is to end yourself entirely, and you can’t even do that—that’s a tremendous punishment. Living while suffering the agony of death, watching it happen to me—it’s crawled right out of the pages of a novel and into my life, deceiving me in the cruelest way. I’m being consumed bit by bit. I can’t go on. I really can’t.
Good morning. It’s half past six. Still asleep, are you? You sleep so beautifully. I’ve imagined it so many times—you lying beside me. Exhausted, worn down, sleep pooling heavy across your eyes. I watch without blinking, kiss you again and again, gently bite your lips. I lean close to your nose and breathe in your breath, draw it into my own body. My whole being wakes up! And I keep thinking—what if I could have you like this? I kiss you more and more. You sleep on, oblivious. I think about how many times you come to Dhaka, and not once do you remember me. It hurts, you know? Last time when you said on the phone you were in Uttara, I kept thinking—this person is so close, and yet they don’t even want to see me once. The next moment I think, why should they? Does that desire suit them? I felt our distance had shrunk. Not Dhaka to Rajshahi anymore, but Gulshan to Uttara. How close this person has come to me! I can’t touch them, but they’re within touching distance, aren’t they? Isn’t that something? Ugh! If only I could at least meet your eyes! I haven’t said anything out loud—I can’t, that’s my limitation. I’m not unhappy about it; that’s just my way. You know what I want anyway. Why don’t you say something first? I think you’re terribly cruel. You’d recommended Sunil’s book—*Love, Not Romance*. Such a book that speaks to the soul! Towards the end, when I was reading it, every hair on my body stood on end, and it kept looking at me with disbelief. What is love really? And what is affection? Is daily life revolving around one person love? And constantly feeling that same person—is that affection? Should I apply that Boiling Frog theory you taught me? Will it happen with me? I’m already hurting, and I’m bearing it. For nothing! I’m enduring the temperature of pain you’ve given me. Every day you raise it a little more. And I’m raising my tolerance to match it.
Look, I’m just saying what comes to mind, aren’t I? You’ve never even come close, so where was the chance for you to hurt me? I’m talking about bearing the temperature of my own love’s pain. My private, personal love is burning in your cruel, glowing hearth. A deeper, more intense blow of love is waiting for me. Am I just talking nonsense here? How many feelings am I hiding away in my diary? What good are all these trivial words to me? What won’t happen won’t happen. I’m not in pain anymore, not at this moment. It’s just you I think of. I see you every day, hear you every day, wait every day for your words. Your thoughts are my daily address. I check how long ago you were active on messenger. In case, just in case, something from your ID happens to come into my inbox, I wait in that purposeless hope. Yet I’ve never poked you once, never nagged, never bothered you about anything. But I can’t keep myself like this for long. One day I just poke you out of nowhere. Hi, hello—these meaningless pokes. Yesterday I messaged about a book; I really did need that information, and you didn’t even acknowledge it. Instead, you got annoyed in just two sentences. I felt so helpless. I was thinking—have I learned to bother people? Have I learned to be shameless? I keep trying to make someone like me who doesn’t even like my presence. How much more shameless do I have to be to earn love’s true reward? Does being shameless really work? Will that person suddenly develop affection through some magic? Or does annoyance just turn into plain hatred? I can bear lovelessness, but hatred? I can’t even think about it! That’s why I’m afraid—what if one day you block me in anger? I’ll go mad that day!
So, will this love of mine wither away one day? Or will it grow stronger with each passing day? In a park in England, a gentleman in his fifties once told a young man one evening, “I love just thinking about the fact that I’ve been in love with the same woman for the last thirty years!” When the young man heard this, he lit up with enthusiasm, congratulating the gentleman with “Great! Wow! Marvelous! Congrats! What a love!”—and then the gentleman quietly stopped him, lowered his head, and said in a tone of regret, “I would consider myself blessed if I could have told her this even once!”………… I’m thinking I’ll spend my life just like that uncle, I mean, I’ll have to spend it that way. I know I can do it—for as long as I live, I can go on loving you. What if I can’t? But surely it’s not possible that I could ever stop loving you? Of course, I don’t know where life will take me anymore!
Well, is there anyone better than you? Sure there is! My own father stands right before me. Don’t think I’m being sentimental—every girl’s hero is her father, and that’s true for me too, which is why I said what I did. My father is genuinely a good man. Just like yours. A simple, ordinary sort of person. He thinks beautifully, lives beautifully. Some people you see and something stirs in your heart—a kind of tenderness. My father is one of those. I saw it in my uncle too, and then later, I mean, from what you’ve written, I understood your father is the same way. Oh, and there’s another one. He’s my closest friend’s father. That uncle is so good that the poor girl is afraid to fall in love without telling him—she’s wracked with guilt. Hahahaha… I’ve never seen a father like a friend the way he is. You’ll be a father one day too. If you have a sweet little daughter, you’ll wrap her up tight and raise her carefully, won’t you? Tell me, just imagine—what if your daughter grows up and loves someone, and she cries day after day, and somehow you find out? Day after day hearing your own daughter cry like that—it’s one of the hardest things in the world to bear. No father can manage it. You certainly couldn’t stay indifferent. What would you do? Talk to the boy? But what if your precious doll won’t let you talk to the person she loves? Your daughter just keeps crying before your eyes, and she won’t even let her father stop those tears—there’s no greater helplessness in the world than that. Of course, don’t worry yourself. Your little doll won’t breathe a word of her secret sorrow to you. You won’t be able to tell from her smiling face how much pain fills her inside. Some boys are born to hurt girls—boys like you. Men like you have spent thousands of years hurting women, and just the same, some prince will be born somewhere in the world to hurt your little daughter. The prince will find the fairy and fall in love with her, causing her pain. Truly falling in love and truly making someone fall in love—both are difficult things. Men like you are born with the talent for the second, your daughters will be born with the talent for the first. It’s a fine example of a divine chain reaction. From the beginning of creation this reaction has been underway. And it will continue endlessly through the ages. In between, all that pain will compress and lodge itself in that tender, soft mass of flesh in the chest. And twisted, burning, it will become tears and fall. Tears fall most for the wrong man. The more wrong a person is in life, the more tears fall for them. We don’t easily let the right people into our lives, so we assume: to understand life is to understand how to live by shedding tears!
Girls possess an infinite capacity for concealing their pain. The more prideful a girl, the more perfectly she can hide her suffering. Are you afraid? Worried that you’ll never know the anguish of your beloved daughter, and will go through fatherhood in ignorance? Well then, let me teach you a small trick. From the day your little doll begins to transform into a fairy, from the day she starts to scatter the radiance of her beauty across the kingdom and drive all of nature into a frenzy—from that very day, before her sleep breaks each morning, go to her and gently lift her soft, delicate face and check that one place where she finds the most comfort; I mean her pillow, of course. Try to understand whether your precious fairy has spent the night weeping into it, soaking it with her tears, and then fallen asleep on that very wet pillow. Do check this, please! If you find it so, then try to ease away her sorrows, or at least lighten them. Those who cry from their hearts for you—yes, you may never come to know their grief. But do not let your little songbird suffer so. I think, just to see her, I could bear to go on living. Your daughter! Oh my! How beautiful she must be, mustn’t she? If you could only have a daughter—that would be just the thing. Girls are such enchantresses. Just try raising a daughter and see what it feels like! To love and nurture your own daughter—it is a great tragedy! You must build another’s precious life with all that you possess, grain by grain. Every girl’s father is a master craftsman of ornament—an ornament that shines as his own glory through the first half of his fatherhood, and as another’s splendor through the second.