Muna, are you listening?
I heard that you write letters to my address—some signed, some unsigned? That when evening falls you grow melancholy and gaze up at the sky? That in the crowd of stars you search and search, trying to figure out which star is me?
Why do you do this, Muna? How can your letters reach a dead man, tell me? The one who is gone—don't pull at him like this anymore.
Who told you that when people die they become stars? After death, people become one with soil and decay. I died and turned to soil long ago, but you're still alive; so why haven't you changed yet, Muna? How I long to see you change!
I want you to change, to marry and become the mother of four or five children. To become a bent old woman with dozens of grandchildren by your side, bowed under the weight of old age, and then suddenly die in your sleep. There's a certain joy in dying happy, you know!
Live a hundred years, Muna! Don't die so young and raw like me. I died before these two eyes could fill themselves with the sight of your love. What sense does that make, tell me? There are no vitamins in life after death, Muna. To get vitamins you have to live beautifully, grow old the good way. All the vitamins are in growing old laughing with your teeth showing.
Listen Muna, let me tell you something. I didn't become a star when I died. From the day I died, I've been living within you. I live in your laughter, in your imagination, in the glitter of your nose ring, in the pleats of your sari, in the black dot on your forehead and the kohl smudged beneath your eyes. By dying I became you, and you—instead of looking for me within yourself—you look for me in the sky?
You know what, Muna, dying has been quite profitable for Baker! If I hadn't died, would I have understood what love really is? When they went to hang Baker on the gallows, they ended up hanging him in your mind instead! When a person dies, they become time itself, you understand? Ha ha ha
Whenever you think of our sweet words and suddenly break into laughter, I come alive then, Muna! When you suddenly burst into tears thinking of me in your sadness and gloom, I see darkness here then. When you stand before the mirror combing your hair and humming a song, that song starts playing on my radio here, floating on the wind. Song is a very strong thing, Muna; people die, but songs live on.
Why have you stopped all your laughter and joy like this? Laugh, Muna; when you laugh, I come alive. Don't cry, Muna; when you cry, I see darkness. You know how terribly afraid I am of darkness, how bad it makes me feel. When I see you suffering, it twists my chest and fills me with anguish, Muna!
If you can, forget me, Muna... forget me. Only in forgetting are there vitamins. A dead person can give nothing but sorrow.
Yours, Baker