Letters from a New Address

Tori,

I want to run away somewhere. How much longer can I go on like this, holding my breath? Where do these battles in my mind end, these battles in my nerves? Didn't I have the right to a simple life like Apu and Durga? Maybe I would have been a little poor, foolish and shameless. But at least life would have been simple!

Rice would be cooked at night—just in that joy alone, I too could have celebrated night after night. If I had married at ten or eleven, like Apu's mother Sarbajaya, how wonderful it would have been—have you ever thought? I've been thinking about it a lot lately.

Making a household like Harihar Ray's—plain and simple, forever struggling—would surely have been very difficult. I know that the pressure of poverty would have made me want to put a rope around my neck from time to time. But still, life would have been simple! Just the fierce longing to stay alive—clinging to straws, clinging even to humiliation to survive!

Every other puja, a torn sari from the Mukherjee household women, old clothes for the two children, an old dhoti for the husband—I need a heart that can find happiness in just this much, Tori. I don't want this demanding, wanting mind anymore. Earn this, save that, we need to buy this, even if we have to sell the land I need so much money—in the crowd of all this I forget to breathe, I forget myself too.

Tori, save me. I've started weaving dreams of a village like Nischindipur. I know that life will be difficult, but this happiness of modern life—there's no satisfaction in it. I'm getting happiness without satisfaction, and year after year I'm destroying myself as the tax for that happiness. I don't want so much wanting and demanding anymore. I want simplicity, I want contentment. I want more flavor in less rice, I want sour fruit, I want tender coconut.

I'm going to Nischindipur next month. I'll write the next letter from there. You can come with me if you want. This isn't an urban invitation where you have to come just because I called! Come anytime, whenever you feel like it.

I still have a lot of packing left to do. I'll write to you again later.

Yours,
The new resident of Nischindipur