# The Letter Without an Envelope The postman was bewildered. In all his twenty years delivering mail, he had never seen anything quite like it. A letter, yes—but without an envelope. Just paper, folded twice, sealed with wax the color of dried blood. No address. No name. Nothing but those three crimson drops that held it shut. He stood at the gate of the Chatterjee house, turning it over in his weathered hands. The paper was expensive—he could tell by the weight of it, the cream-colored surface that caught the morning light. But who sends a letter without an envelope? And more puzzling still: how did he know to deliver it here? Mrs. Chatterjee was watering the jasmine when she saw him hesitate. She recognized that expression—the helplessness of a man confronted with something outside the rules of his world. "What is it, Ramu?" she called out, setting down her watering can. He approached slowly, as though the letter might combust at any moment. "This came this morning, ma'am. I don't know how. It was in the bundle—but there's no address. I checked three times." She took it from him, and something flickered across her face. A muscle tightened in her jaw. "It's all right," she said quietly. "Leave it with me." He lingered another moment, sensing there was a story here—the kind of story that doesn't get written down, only whispered between neighbors on monsoon afternoons. But he was a practical man, and he had seventeen more houses to visit. He nodded and moved on. Mrs. Chatterjee stood in the garden, holding the letter the way one might hold a bird that has flown back after years, uncertain whether it still remembered your hands. Her daughter found her there an hour later, the letter unopened on the garden bench, the wax seals still intact. "Maa?" Anjali's voice was uncertain. "Is everything all right?" Mrs. Chatterjee didn't turn around. "Do you remember," she said slowly, "when you were small, I told you that some letters are meant to arrive without anyone knowing how? That there are things in this world that find their way to us, not because we deserve them, but because they simply must?" "No," Anjali said. "You never said that." "Didn't I?" Mrs. Chatterjee smiled—a small, sad, luminous thing. "Perhaps I was thinking it all along." She picked up the letter, felt its weight again, and this time she turned it over and broke the seals. The paper was covered in handwriting that had grown uneven with age, or perhaps with emotion. Just two sentences. Anjali tried to read them over her mother's shoulder, but Mrs. Chatterjee folded it away too quickly. "Who is it from?" Anjali asked. Her mother didn't answer for a long time. When she did, her voice was distant, as if returning from a great distance. "Someone who couldn't send it any other way." That evening, Mrs. Chatterjee burned the letter in the kitchen fire, watched the paper curl and blacken, the wax seals pop and hiss. The handwriting went up in ash and light and finally, nothing. And when Anjali asked again the next morning—as children do with mysteries—her mother simply said, "Some letters answer themselves just by arriving. The reading of them is the easy part." The postman never did solve the mystery. He retired two years later and, on his last day, he mentioned it to his supervisor—that strange letter with no envelope, no address, the one that somehow knew exactly where to go. His supervisor shrugged. "Happens more than you'd think," the old man said, and didn't elaborate. Perhaps that was the truest thing anyone ever said about it. Because there are, after all, letters in this world that have no need of envelopes—messages that find their way to the heart not through postal systems, but through the invisible currents that run between people who have loved each other, or who once did, or who never quite had the chance. Those letters arrive when they must. And sometimes—perhaps always—they travel best when nobody knows how they came.

Letter One

…………………………

I know you won’t even read this. And yet………

Listen to me! Yes,
I’m talking to you!

These days, I don’t suppose
you think of me at all! Or do you, once in a while?
Is there still time in this world for an old thing like me?
Doesn’t feel like it! In all that crowd of new things,
the thought that I might still peek through—it takes such courage even to imagine.
And I’ve lost even that courage now. There was a time when I’d fuss and worry,
whether you did or didn’t, at least I’d have something to say.
We women, once we love someone, we make them ours entirely—
as much as we belong to our mother and father! We convince ourselves
that somewhere in this whole world, there exists at least one man
who doesn’t lie; that he is my beloved.
When I have that one person beside me, I can tell the whole rest of the world
to go to hell whenever I please!
Tell me, when do you men actually miss someone? Do you really?
Or do you just play at it? She’s getting old, needs replacing; let me test the waters first,
keep her in hand until I find something new—that’s what “missing” means in your dictionary, isn’t it?
And yet you manage to live with such shallow thoughts! It makes me despise myself
when I think of your boundless, refined taste! Every man becomes a skilled actor
in service of his body’s demands!
A man’s mind lives in his body, while a woman’s mind
lives only in her mind. This very contradiction draws two people together,
and alas! pushes them apart as well!

Oh, this love!
It is a great mystery, a great ugliness, a great vulgarity!
Whether you have it or not, it brings ruin. Without love, people weep in secret corners,
and once they’ve tasted it, they weep with their whole chests laid bare.
Love is a fickle goddess! You need her for happiness and for sorrow alike.
I’ve lived this long and still don’t understand—what is this love, really,
this creation without a creator? The woman who receives a man’s true love
is truly blessed by fate!
When the Creator shaped man, he gave him the impulse of the senses
before he gave him the capacity for love, and man has never allowed the first
to rise above the second. I ask myself: can men truly love?
All they understand when they hear “woman” is just her body!
And yet I’ve seen this too—when a man truly loves someone,
he doesn’t come begging at her body’s door quite so desperately.
Once a person has tasted the richness of the mind,
does the body’s demand still loom so large? No, I don’t think so.
Long ago, in my girlhood, after reading Somoresh’s *Mind of My Own*,
I prayed in silence: “God, I don’t want wealth or riches! Just give me one dreamer!”
God’s deafness to my prayer was never cured in this lifetime. I’ve seen a man
who, even after cancer took his beloved’s breasts and womb,
didn’t abandon her, stayed beside her as before,
made his whole life a worship of her, even when that temple was shattered.
He showed me that one can live and die in devotion
to something beyond the body’s shrine. I know such things don’t really happen.
Why would they? What does a woman have, after all? Damned men!
You understand the body, but the mind—the mind you’ll never know!

Day by day you are becoming less and less. And yet I’m fine, believe me, I’m doing well……not for myself—but for the people clustered around my heart—yet what cruelty…!! They want me to be well for my own sake….. I wonder, is that even possible?

Who will make them understand that even being well now feels like a dream to me! And yet there was a time when I was truly fine! So why did you come? And if you had to come, why did you hold my hand through that false performance? That hand—which you saw as nothing but a transit point in your game of passing around, that hand didn’t grip yours with such certainty, such trust, believing it would hold someone else’s hand someday! I remember how skillfully you wove your words then, drawing me close. Was it only for that? Don’t you men ever learn that love exists beyond flesh alone? In love’s vast curriculum, you’ve remained forever children! I feel such pity for you. You understand bodies, not love! In those precious moments, men lose themselves in a fleeting intoxication, they stumble and fall—but for women, those few seconds are an entire lifetime! This is why I see it now: boys are nothing but boys. The body ages, yes, but the heart—it blooms in a thousand colors with each passing moment—men have never sought that knowledge. Men spend their whole lives chasing after bodies. With one heart alone, they wander from body to body, silently murdering a thousand emotions, a thousand feelings, a thousand heartbeats.

Material men want to grow, want to rise…..they want to cry out to the world in a piercing voice, “I exist too!” Men grow large, but through the cracks in that growth, humanity and character often leak away…..and at the end of it all, a vast army of men stripped of humanity, devoid of character, sit in the high seats of society and roam about freely, chests puffed out. Who will tell them that this enormous visible body means nothing—only one invisible soul persists through it all…….You grow bigger every day. My old man is growing and disappearing. Now when I reach out my hand to my man, he isn’t there; he’s busy, terribly busy! If there’s love in the heart, time will always be found! Even on the phone he feels so far away. I’ve been stuck on his call-waiting list for ages now; in my inbox I see only ‘Sent Messages’—it’s been so long. And yet I keep calling, keep calling! Nothing more—just once let him pick up and say at least this much: “I’m doing well.” That doesn’t happen anymore, yet every day I find myself dialing that old number again. If by some miracle he does pick up, I get to hear his voice for a few seconds at least! That shameless, wretched heart of a woman!

Have you ever truly understood that this vast visible world is ruled by an invisible realm of feeling? That other world has no words—only sensation. You were never given the key to a world built entirely of feeling. You stand at its threshold, waiting, until at last you grasp that the door to the realm of feeling opens only through feeling itself. Then begins the performance. You become someone close, drawing others near as you wish. The words you never speak aloud, yet carry in your heart and mind—words we either fail to understand or refuse to let ourselves understand—these have no history written anywhere. Our buried sorrows lie buried in this male-ordered world, upon the false stage of counterfeit joy. From creation until now, all the words ever spoken on this earth, gathered together, will never equal the weight of what remains unspoken. Women want you to grasp, even a little, the words they never say. And you want only for all unspoken things to end in physical satisfaction. In your reckoning, only that matters—only that is currency, only that is tangible—and therefore, utterly real.

These useless tears—if they were a person, I’d have beaten them into a plank long ago! Tears don’t even dry. Are you afraid? No, don’t be. What happened was never just your fantasy alone—I too had a hand in it! Call it not consent, then—call it blind faith; even so! For a woman, faith is simple arithmetic; for a man, consent is currency. Your game, my destiny! Do you remember nothing? Can anyone really lie so completely? With such born cunning, such practiced skill in weaving lies that bury truth entirely—how expertly men play with women’s most fragile places! When we discover ourselves discarded like used tissue paper, no one stands beside us anymore. ……. No, I won’t strike you. There’s only one thing that keeps me company through all this pain—tears, that thousand-year-old, most faithful friend.

There was a time I watched you—you didn’t hesitate even a nanosecond to send a message! You’d say, “This isn’t a message, it’s my heart! Touch your screen, and you’ll feel me.” And now! I understand, I understand it all. And yet somehow, senseless thoughts keep creeping in…… Alas! I’m not even worth a nanosecond anymore! Even a small ‘hi’ has to travel seven seas and thirteen rivers before it reaches me, and who knows where it goes, what boys’ games it gets lost in along the way—no history will ever record it. Now sending you a message is like submitting a practical notebook for SSC, HSC exams. We’d write those notebooks with such care—sleepless nights, torturing our bodies, colored pens and pencils, decorations arranged with rulers and compasses—and the teachers would barely glance before tossing them into the corner of the veranda! In my sorrow, sometimes I’d wish to just write whatever came to mind. I remember once, I actually did. I couldn’t sleep for nights, terrified the teachers might see it. Happy days don’t return; only days of sorrow return. The new tavern-keeper pours the same old wine…… And all this resentment, all this pain I’m pouring out now—I know exactly where it will end up: in your message archive, or worse, in spam. I know that too.

We women are a hopelessly foolish lot! If someone smiles and says, “I love you,” we go ahead and dream up happiness from it. Women have a special, inborn gift for longing after love. Men understand all this, they know exactly when, how, and how much—even how long—to weave their spell of words, how much time to invest. In the beginning, yes, it takes some effort, requires heavy investment. But after that? Nothing but returns, nothing but returns! Such a safe, risk-free, certain investment is rare in this world. Ugh! ……… When we women love someone, we love all of them. Their good and bad both—we construct justified reasons to accept everything. We even think that without the bad, they’d be incomplete! Women understand this as deeply as no man in the world ever could, not even a fraction of it. So when a girl loves a boy, she loves the whole person without judging his good or bad. But look—when a boy loves a girl, he loves only her good qualities. As her good qualities fade, so does his love. And if from the start he sees little good in her, he feeds his love with his body instead.

Living is so hard; I want to curse you, but all that comes from inside me is goodwill, nothing else. You go on living quite comfortably in your old ways. Truth is, I’m not doing well. I could count precisely, tell you exactly how many breaths I’ve drawn in peace these past days.

…………..Still, be well!

Letter Two

……………………………

For the first time in my life, I feel the urge to vanish into myself. Badly. I want to run away, to stay hidden. But where can I run? Where can I hide? I don’t know. I only know this much—I can’t anymore. “You just have to manage, dear!” These words sound so worn-out now. They only choke me more! How could they possibly understand how much I’m suffering!

Please leave me alone! When a person wants to hide something, when politeness won’t let the mask slip into rudeness, when you can’t bear to think of anyone as close anymore—then perhaps you speak in English to keep the distance. Is it cowardice? Or discomfort? I couldn’t say anything that day. I just stared at her face. I remember clearly—her eyes weren’t looking into mine. In those eyes averted the other way, I saw that day a terrible coldness. If I hadn’t managed to slip away silently from her presence, I might never have known that I could forgive someone with just a smile on their face like that!

Why did I do that? Why couldn’t I say anything to him? Why didn’t I ask him—all these years, what was it between us then? Why did he teach me so well to forget how to live without him? Why did I want to give up everything for him? Why did I push the whole world away and stay only with him for all these days? That girl who trusted someone outside her family for the first time—why did she have to learn the truth so brutally? Why does God bring such a girl into some boy’s rehearsal, a girl who never even dreamed of being an actress? With whom I spent so many ethereal, beautiful moments—why can’t boys remember her anymore? What is that art, that trick, by which every boy becomes the greatest lover in the world at those special moments? Why do boys forget the one friend who stood by them through the worst times? Why does someone dream of spending a whole life together and then simply disappear without reason? Why does forever mean only three years for some? Why does a person’s heart change when their circumstances change? Why do boys suddenly become disgustingly busy? Why does someone keep giving false hope even when they know they can’t provide shelter? Why does this small life change colors again and again for no reason at all?

They say you know a woman when her loved one is poor, and you know a man when he’s doing well. No one saw his worst days as closely as I did. I alone was there when he was drowning in depression. Whenever life turned gray for him, I held his hand and stood beside him and said, “What are you afraid of? I’m here!” This hand of mine still reaches out in the darkness… and today there is no one at the distance of this hand.

Aritro, I know you’re doing fine. Very fine. An expensive job, expensive clothes, expensive friends. Remember how many days we sat together in that cramped little room, eating lunch side by side? I used to have to ask you almost every time, “Will you have some money? Let me pay the bill…” Now you’ve moved up to a better position. Now you don’t need me anymore. Without Godhooli, Aritro’s best years are passing by just fine! Mr. Bose is terribly busy now! For the next few years, there’s no time to look in anyone else’s direction. Must climb higher, much higher! Life is running along now with colleagues and new friends. Aritro doesn’t lack for friends anymore. I’d really like to ask Aritro: “When you were lying in the clinic bed for days after your accident, where were all these friends of yours? Did anyone call once to ask how you were? Did anyone visit with food even once, Aritro Bose?” Now you’re doing quite well with your new friends. Fun, outings, parties, good times—that’s life! There was a time when Godhooli even paid for your rickshaw fare. You never wanted her to, but what could the poor thing do! She loved you! Better to get leprosy than to fall in love.

You know, Aritra,
there was a day you told me
that you couldn’t imagine your life without me.
That you couldn’t survive a single moment without me. You don’t believe it? Well, you shouldn’t.
When boys get too close to a girl’s body, you shouldn’t believe everything they say. But nobody ever told me this simple truth! So I had to learn the hard way, through mistake after mistake! I met you at the worst possible time, Aritra! When a man is completely established, completely secure, and if he gives his heart to a woman, that heart doesn’t change hands easily. Do you remember? You used to sneak away and walk around with Smita sometimes. When I found out, I was furious, absolutely livid. I cried and cried. I scolded you terribly. I told you, “No more! Let me go! Set me free!” You sat down at my knees and said, “Forgive me, darling. If you leave, my life will shatter into a thousand pieces. I promise I’ll never do it again. Promise!” When a man like you—so quick to anger—says “forgive me,” it’s impossible to refuse. I’m a woman, after all. So I forgot everything and held you tight that day, and I cried and cried. I told you, “I will never leave you. You walk forward on life’s path. I’m here beside you, and I always will be.” I kept my word. Your life is beautiful now, smooth, wonderful. Now you don’t need Goduli anymore.
Dear Aritra, didn’t you used to say you despise betrayal? That friend of yours—the one you helped day after day, giving him pocket money—he doesn’t even check on you now. If you call, he cuts the line. You used to say that a friend who isn’t there in hard times doesn’t deserve the name friend. That traitors are like worms in hell.—I heard it from your own lips. I really want to ask you, Aritra—but what are you?

Now I send you text after text, and every once in a while, if you feel a little pity, you reply: Please don’t disturb me. I’m busy. That’s it! And yet I stare at those words for hours and hours, mesmerized. I pray for you. Whatever state I’m in, I just want you to be well. Tell me, are you really that busy? You’re eating properly, aren’t you? You won’t even let me ask. I know—you don’t lack for people to care about you now. Everyone loves you! In good times, there’s never a shortage of people who love you. So much love! Is it even possible? There was once a night—not a single night—when you didn’t say goodnight to me. Before you slept, you had to blow Goduli a kiss on the phone. That was the unwritten rule. I really want to know: does that old rule still exist? Now whose kiss brings sleep to Aritra’s eyes?
Late into the night you sit scrolling through Facebook.
I still think the way I always did: why doesn’t this man take even a little care of himself? He’ll ruin his health. Why do I think like this? Alas! The shameless heart of a woman! She understands everything and yet understands nothing at all!

I never planned anything for my own birthday. Birthdays would come and go. But yours—yours was always something I planned for. Always! How to wish you, how to surprise you, how to keep you happy on your birthday, how to cook your favorite dishes, where to take you, the research I’d do on which Punjabi to buy you, which saree of yours I’d wear while holding your hand, which flower to pin in my hair, how to line my eyes with kohl. And so much more! I know you don’t even remember any of it now. This birthday I wished you so many times, and you didn’t reply even once. You’ve blocked me on Facebook. I’ve been lurking on your wall all day from another account like some shameless creature, you know? How many girls have you at least sent a smiley in response to their wishes. I so wanted to touch that smiley! I got nothing! How lucky they are! I was so jealous! Tell me, Mr. Bose, do you like all this attention from girls? Did so many girls chase after you when you were a “nobody”? They’re here now because you’ve made it somewhere. Don’t you really understand anything?

Everyone praises you now. It makes me happy, and it breaks my heart. I think, oh! No one saw his real self, no one knew it. Only I know in this whole world. Sometimes I want to tell everyone everything. Tell them that we were supposed to get married right after you got the job. We were supposed to spend our honeymoon in the twilight hours at this very moment. Twilight didn’t dream those dreams alone like a fool. It was Mr. Aritro who taught Twilight how to dream! I know how well Mr. Aritro makes coffee. I also knew that after marriage, making coffee would be his responsibility. Today I so want to drag out before everyone all the hollow words of your integrity, heap upon heap of false promises, all those things from those days. Let everyone know what Mr. Aritro looks like without his mask!

You’re very angry, aren’t you? Terribly? I used to love when you’d scold me! I accepted everything! You never even wanted to know how much I was suffering accepting it all! I need you right now! But I can’t leave the house. You used to say, “I don’t understand all this. Will you come or not!” I’ve left so many times! Managing the household to slip out—you can’t imagine how hard that is! You don’t remember anything? Not a thing? Fine, fine! Once you get what you want, it’s all over! You’re a man after all! I accepted you just as you were. I didn’t have to change for you; I changed myself instead.

You wanted Twilight not to build a career. Not to worry about a job. Just to be by Aritro’s side. And I accepted that too. I would live only for Aritro. I customized everything about myself to suit your taste. And now? I can’t live like this anymore! Please Aritro, understand my heart just once the way I understand yours. For the first time! Please! I’ve really tried so hard to live normally, but I can’t. Can you live like this?

I never wanted you to come into my life. I wouldn’t even reply to your texts. So why did you come? Why did you say, from now on, every dream we have—none of it belongs to you alone, or to me alone, but to us? I’m not saying I was happy before you arrived. I was in pain. I’d grown used to it. But why did you have to come and wash away all my suffering with fountains of joy? You came, stayed for a while, and left. Was I nothing but a transit point for you? A stop on your way to somewhere else? Once you reached your destination, you went your way, and I went mine? Is that what your conscience decided? Well, well, Mr. Bose, well done! My life had next to nothing to begin with, and when you came, whatever little remained—just enough to call it survival—you took that too and walked away! The Aritri of three years ago bears no resemblance to today’s Mr. Bose. How did this man manage to lie to me? How did he paint false dreams, kingdoms in the air? How could he extend that hand—the hand that now belongs to someone else? Now I understand some other girl pleases you more? Why didn’t she before? I joined Facebook for you alone. I opened Viber, WhatsApp for you alone. I went on Imo just to video call you. I crawled out of my lifelong shell just for you. I became a stranger to myself, all because I loved you. Aritri, I desperately need to know—why did you pull out a foolish girl like me, someone content in shadows and solitude? Why, why, why? Wasn’t there anyone else for those fleeting moments of happiness? Why me?

My exam is tomorrow, and I can’t study a thing. I’m lying to Mother. I told my brother on the phone I’m studying. Aritri, it hurts so much! There’s this hollow, aching thing inside my chest all the time. I feel like crying so badly—every time tears spill over, I run to the bathroom sink. Mother thinks I’m studying. I can’t do this anymore. All I see is you. If only you’d come and place your hand on my head like you used to, Aritri! Every moment I think, any second now your text will come: “What’s our madam up to? Huh?” You’ll knock on WhatsApp, tell me to come on Imo, say you’re dying to see me! If you’d just said that much—”You know how I am when I’m angry. I was just upset, that’s all. Come on, smile for me!”—I swear I would have forgotten everything and run back into your arms. But nothing comes, nothing at all! I just stare at my phone. With every touch on the screen, the battery drains, and so does my life.

I know
I will not live. How could you
destroy my life like this and simply leave? Five, six nights I don’t sleep—either I lie awake, or half-asleep; and even in that half-sleep you come to me in dreams, you take my hand and walk with me, you play with my hair and I laugh, giggling uncontrollably. Because you forbade it, I don’t cut my hair anymore. Every night my pillow grows wet with tears. My head aches terribly, my vision blurs—Doctor Uncle says I need glasses. Every morning I’m sick, my head spins round and round. Everyone asks me, What’s happened to you? You’re going mad! You need to sleep properly. But I know—until the moment of my death, I will never sleep again. All my strength has gone somewhere, I don’t know where. I cannot walk normally. When I cross the street I walk so slowly, so slowly, yet no car comes and crushes me. Why am I alive? So many people die on the roads, why don’t I?

You are not beside me, and I have never learned to think of it that way. I cannot. I will never be able to take another’s hand. Never, not even in death. I will not belong to anyone else, Aritro. I had said, “I will wait. As long as you’re finding your feet, no matter what storms come, I will hold things together. Don’t think you’re alone. Until my last breath, I am beside you.” And now? What is this? How much have I begged you. I told you, whatever you ask, I’m willing to do it—just don’t leave me. You said you don’t like being tied down, you don’t like expectations, you don’t like commitment. So you never liked these things before me either? Why didn’t you ever say so! Will you never commit to anyone again? Take these girls hovering around you now—will you commit to one of them? I told you I would wait. And I did. I never let anything else enter my mind but you. I told my family I wouldn’t marry before I finished my degree, no matter what proposals came. I sent them all back. I fought so hard to keep all my promises to you. But you? Didn’t you feel even a little affection for this twilight we had? Do you remember, Mr. Bose, when you proposed to this twilight and I wouldn’t respond, how you went mad day after day? You were heartbroken. You’d call and cry like a child, saying all sorts of confused things, as if I was tearing your very life out of your chest. When university closed, you’d stand outside my house all day just to catch a glimpse of me. I felt so much pity for you, I was angry at myself, so I said yes, I fell in love with you, and slowly, over time, I came to truly love you. And now? I never liked cigarettes, I swore to myself that my husband would never smoke. Yet I accepted someone like you, just because I love you. You taught me, “Come on, for God’s sake! Can you live without cigarettes? Life is in the smoke itself. Life is for cigarettes, with cigarettes, on cigarettes!” Life! You’ve destroyed life itself! Where am I supposed to find another one? Don’t stay silent, Mr. Bose! Speak! Is everything so easy? Does life just slip away in an instant? You sent a text: Forgive & forget! I can forgive you, but how do I forget? How is it possible? After everything! Perhaps for you none of this matters! But for me, that was life itself! How am I supposed to live? Everything is finished for me. How is it possible! How!

You know, Aritro,
despite all I’ve done, there’s not a shred of guilt in me. Not a trace.
I loved you! Lately what infuriates me most is myself. It’s all my fault, isn’t it? Why did I choose to believe? But then the very next moment I think—didn’t you force me to trust you, day after day? What about that? My mistake was letting myself fall into this relationship. Didn’t you? But why am I the only one being punished? Why does it work this way?
A punishment with no end in sight.
Is there nothing else in this world whose punishment is endless? You’re well-established now. Good, fine! So I’m nothing. I’m not pretty to look at, I can’t speak beautifully, I can’t dress myself up and walk out into the world. What would people say if I walked beside you? I can’t even be introduced to society. I can’t talk properly to any boy, can’t be around them. Tell me, Aritro, didn’t you know all this already?
Did I hide anything from you? You used to say you didn’t trust women. That only after seeing me, for the first time in your life, did it feel like women could be trusted. I believed every single word you said, blindly. Even if the whole world said otherwise, I would hold fast to what you said as truth. And now you—you’ve made me distrust everyone in the world, and you’ve walked out of my life.

You know what disgusts me most? I still wait for you. I love you,
I love you desperately! Every word you spoke echoes ceaselessly in my ears. Every touch of yours—I can feel it with my eyes closed. Your scent, I keep sensing it, keep sensing it. The way you looked at me—just thinking of it scrambles me even now. You’re woven into every fiber of my being. I try so hard
to forget, to rage, to curse, to hate………… but I can’t, I simply can’t. There’s a sob caught somewhere deep in my chest, choking me. That dreaming of a life to live should carry such punishment, that living itself should hurt this much—I never understood that before. I don’t even know where this ends. Every day, in every moment, I cry.
I, who used to teach everyone how to live—I’ve lost today. I’ve lost, Aritro,
I’ve lost! I know defeat is wrong. It’s cowardice, it’s weakness,
it’s feebleness. I know all of it,
I understand. But the pain—it’s unbearable. So much that I lie helpless on my bed, drowning in an endless fog. I have no strength left,
not even the will. You know, now I wear glasses all the time so no one sees—I cry at any moment, I’m terrified someone will notice. At home I cry so carefully, so carefully, because if my brother sees, it will hurt him so, so much. After father died, my brother has never once scolded me harshly. All the terrible scoldings I’ve received in this life came from you. I think of how gently he treats me, like our mother would. How can I make them cry? When I leave home, on the way to university in the rickshaw, I cry so much, so much—there’s no way to describe it. The rickshaw drivers must be used to it by now; they don’t even turn around to ask anymore, “Sister, what happened to you?”

Oh! What have I done with my life…………

One consolation alone.
I know no one will ever love you the way I do. That is my victory!

A word from the author:

Listen, Goduli,
why are you like this? Why aren’t you thanking God that the wrong person left your life before it was too late? Why can’t you see that you didn’t have to waste years on a mistake? Why aren’t you thinking that the day he walked away from you—that was actually the day your real life began? Everything before that was a lie.

Let me tell you something,
listen:

One. Never make yourself essential to someone who doesn’t see you as essential. Whoever that person is.

Two. If someone can live just fine without you, thriving, breathing easy in their peace, then there’s no sense in holding your breath until you die for them.

Three. How long you were with him doesn’t matter. What matters is how much of the future you can erase him from.

Four. Don’t waste a single word on someone who means nothing to you. Each word you write carries weight—your emotion is sewn into it. Why are you letting your own feelings become so worthless?

Five. Give a person exactly as much value as they give you. Anything more, and they’ll mistake it for weakness.

Six. If someone wasn’t beside you in your darkest hour, what makes you think they’ll be there for a lifetime?

Seven. Never make mandatory what someone treats as optional.

Eight. You cannot build a life with someone who doesn’t feel your heartache. They will only hurt you endlessly. Then you’ll be trapped—unable to leave, unable to bear it.

Nine. If he won’t give you basic respect before marriage, what delusion makes you think he’ll cherish you after? On what faith do you believe this?

Ten. This girl! Listen! If you’re doing well right now, she’ll be devastated. At the very least, you could ruin her mood just by being happy! Can’t you do that much? Don’t you still love her? Is this so little to ask of love?

I have nothing more to say. If I saw you in person right now, I’d lift you up by the head and slam you down! What are hands for if not the mouth?