Dear Sucharita,
On the cramped balcony of my flat, the dawn sky lies still with perfect tranquillity. The white clusters of tuberose in their pots drift in drowsy enchantment. The red-footed pair of pet pigeons pulse with the day's restlessness waiting to begin. It is at such moments that I think of you and take up my pen.
Yes, I know my recently published novel has been well-received by readers. The hero and heroine have become living symbols of life's experience, merging into the joys and sorrows, pleasures and pains of their readers. Readers are satisfied with my flawless portrayal of life. Hence their profound respect for me. On some special day, through a ceremony adorned with flowers and perhaps a song or two, you wish to felicitate me as a representative of readers, wreathing your heart's gratitude around me. That's why you sent me an invitation. But do you know the real truth? I simply don't have the mental state to stand before your gathering and accept anything. If anyone interprets my refusal or absence from your meeting as my arrogance or an inflated, pompous nature, they would certainly do me an injustice. To prevent any such misunderstanding, I take up this pen to write to you.
Ever since receiving your invitation yesterday, the conflict between my lifelong contradictory selves has erupted with fierce intensity once again. Two completely different worlds have always tossed me about like a small ball, and each time I have surrendered without protest to both sides; because both worlds are equally real to me. Some hypnotic force, completely unknown to me, detaches me from my everyday world and carries me away. Like a child playing with dolls, I play with the reflections of life I've created in my imagination. I break them, build them, rearrange them according to my whims. A new world is born. My work ends. I return to the courtyard of my daily life, where my husband, children, relatives await. After my creation is complete, I want to forget my heroes and heroines entirely. Do you know why? Because I know they become obstacles to peace and happiness in my domestic world surrounded by husband, children, and relatives.
When I first attempted to write a story, surely today's flourishing self was born in that small sprout of those early days, but then no one congratulated me. No one came forward to smooth my difficult journey even slightly. Rather, everyone was embarrassed, somewhat annoyed, by the emergence of a new being within me that transcended the usual rules and boundaries. I always had proof of this. Thinking I was wasting time writing piles of pointless words, my father constantly worried about my future. Mother complained that I wasn't growing up with the proper qualities of other girls. While everyone else was preparing themselves to become accomplished future housewives, it would be reasonable for me too to limit myself to that field of education. Otherwise, domestic misery was assured. My siblings and friends often made the same complaint—that I was apparently a living exception. They didn't find me quite of their tribe. So even when they wanted to get along with me, they would stumble in their attempts, their minds would turn stubborn. They would become irritated with me.
I understood that no one in my circle was satisfied with me. No one trusted me. Yet I was desperately trying to adapt to my environment. From childhood, staying with mother, I helped with household work and tried to learn myself. I wanted to fill my siblings with affection and love. When relatives visited, I would welcome them cheerfully with hospitality, just as today I try to keep my husband satisfied with devoted care, wanting to surround my child with loving tenderness. I want to keep everything in a whole household—from little details to its happiness, peace, and order—under the guidance of skilled hands. But I observe with wonder that the result of this effort was the same in the past as it is today. What I received then as the fruit of eager desire, I receive today as well. The gap between my two contradictory worlds remains the same.
My own way of moving through life, my own perspective for knowing and seeing the world, my mind's countless distant hopes and aspirations still keep me isolated from familiar boundaries. Even today, while moving through my familiar world, I suddenly find myself flung onto some solitary island. Where I am eternally alone, exiled, yet my ever-hungry soul's longing to merge with every speck of dust in my household, with my loved ones' thoughts and imagination, pains me. So, driven by my individual self, in work, responsibility, and duty, I want to dissolve myself among everyone in the family. I want to immerse myself in household tasks big and small. I want to bring a little beauty here and there in the household through my presence, to watch over everyone's comfort and happiness, and exist like the rain shower of the monsoon.
If someone's self-interest rears its head in my path of duty, if the venomous snake of a malicious mind filled with envy and hatred raises its hood to torment me with its bite, I want to accept it. Even if I must ignore philosophy's pronouncements, beauty's standards, or conscience's rules, I don't want to reject it. I want to be like the people around me who forget their dilemmas and are accustomed to life, and I sometimes almost envy the accepting capacity of those who can lead simple, undisturbed lives while acknowledging the shame of this world's dust and grime, its squalid appearance.
This is how I want to trim the desires and longings of my artistic self and merge with the dust particles of the world. I want to become one with relatives and family. I want to see them in the reflection of my own mind. I want to see myself in the reflection of their minds. I try to keep the rhythm of my life under my control like a skilled musician. I want to keep myself restrained with clenched strength.
But one day all my efforts become futile. Without my knowing, my tight fist grows loose. Some melody's magic accumulated in the nooks and corners of my daily life, fragments of someone's pain-struck life, sometimes the consciousness of some wildflower growing neglected beside my path enters through some opening to confuse me, and that hypnotic force takes me again to that solitary island where I become completely different, where the garland of countless stars in that island's sky becomes my necklace, swaying around me. I become an entirely different person. Then I want to startle the world around me with my newly awakened light, to anoint myself with new identities.
I only watch how stars appear one by one in the peaceful evening sky, how the tuberose in my pot opens its eyes in half-shyness, half-fragrance. Leaving all responsibilities, duties, and limited worlds behind, I simply move forward. I cannot and will not be able to unite my artistic self and personal self, whose mutual conflict always pierces me with anguish. Both are equally necessary to me and equally sensitive in my divided life.
The desire to cross the sky is real for the bird. But the bird doesn't spend all day and night with wings spread in the sky's breast. It returns again and again to its nest atop the tree, because this too is one aspect of the bird's nature. Both natures are equally real for the bird. If, like the bird, my two selves had not reached fulfillment with equal truth, my life would not be so conflict-ridden.
That's why I was saying I don't have the mental state to stand at your gathering and accept congratulations. Because I want to forget this chapter. This chapter of mine makes my familiar world of husband, children, and relatives seem unfamiliar, creates conflict within me, takes away my peace of mind. I hope now you will understand the reason behind my refusal. Don't mistake my absence for arrogance or false pomposity about myself. I trust that, having taken on the responsibility of understanding others' minds as well as explaining myself, you will free me from any possibility of misunderstanding. With countless affections from my heart, I conclude for today.
Yours,
Gitali Dutta