# The Pride of Discontent The letter arrived on a Tuesday morning, carried by the postman who always wore a smile that seemed borrowed from someone else's face. Rahim didn't recognize the handwriting—it was careful, deliberate, the kind of script that takes time to compose. He turned the envelope over twice before opening it. Dear Rahim, It has been seven years. I suppose you've forgotten what my voice sounds like by now. That's alright. I've forgotten many things myself—how to laugh without calculating the effort it takes, how to sit in silence without it feeling like an accusation. But I haven't forgotten you, and perhaps that's the burden I deserve to carry. I'm writing because I'm dying, and it occurred to me that I might at least owe you an explanation. Though I'm not sure what I could possibly say that would justify these years of silence. We were never good at apologies, were we? You with your proud silences, and me with my endless, useless words. Do you remember that evening by the river? When you said you couldn't live with someone who didn't believe in you? I was so angry then—furious, really—because I did believe in you. I believed in you so completely that I couldn't bear to tell you the truth: that I was terrified. Terrified that your dreams were too large, that I would only shrink them with my presence, my doubts, my very ordinary needs. So I chose anger instead of honesty. I let you think I'd stopped loving you when the real crime was that I loved you too much to stay. Rahim sat in the courtyard, the letter trembling slightly in his hands. The morning had turned cold without his noticing. He read the letter three times, each time slower than before, as if the words might rearrange themselves into something he could answer. The years between them rose up like a wall. Not the clean wall of a decision made and accepted, but something messier—the accumulated weight of moments that hadn't happened, conversations that never took place, a whole parallel life that existed only in the space they'd left empty. He'd built that wall himself, brick by brick. Every time he'd seen someone who resembled her from a distance and crossed the street. Every time he'd nearly called but hung up the phone. Every time he'd told himself that his pride was worth more than his longing. That his wounded dignity was a better companion than love that had failed. But pride, he was learning too late, is the kind of hunger that never quite fills you. It only makes you thinner. At the bottom of the letter, in smaller script: I don't expect you to write back. I don't expect forgiveness, or even understanding. But I wanted you to know that I never stopped thinking about the person you were trying to become. And that perhaps the cruelest thing we do is not the leaving itself, but the way we convince ourselves that what we've lost was never worth having in the first place. If you want to know where I am, ask the postman. He'll know. —Leila Rahim folded the letter carefully and placed it on the small table beside him. The morning was fully bright now, the kind of brightness that shows you everything you've been avoiding in the shadows. He sat very still, feeling the weight of seven years settle on his chest—not as a punishment, but as a fact. A true thing, at last. The postman would return tomorrow. Or perhaps the day after. There was no hurry now. There had never been any hurry. But there was something else now too, something sharper than pride: the terrible clarity of understanding that we are always choosing, in every moment, what kind of person we wish to be. And that sometimes the cost of our choices is that we become someone we no longer wish to know. He picked up the letter again and held it to the light, as if he might read something new in its spaces, in what had been left unsaid. The paper was thin, expensive. The kind you choose when you want your words to matter. Outside, the city moved on with its indifferent rhythm. Inside, Rahim sat in the courtyard and learned, finally, the difference between being right and being alive.

April 11, 2026 2 min read By Sushanta Paul

Roddur! My innermost soul is trembling. I can do nothing, understand nothing. I am utterly, desperately insignificant.

I am afraid, Roddur; perhaps after this I will be cast far away.

Roddur! I am living, doing what must be done to survive, and I have even kept some dreams alive so that living might feel bearable. Everything is in order, and yet—nowhere is there satisfaction, nowhere is there peace. All my pleasures, my joys—they are only accepted pleasures, tolerated happiness. That spontaneous delight, that unforced joy—it was surrendered somewhere at the very beginning of life itself.

To soothe this hunger, I have turned to God's threshold; I have tried to seat Him in the place of love, in the place where that one person lived, and yet even God cannot occupy that space. Why does he—he who no longer exists in my life, whom I have relinquished—why does he alone command the greatest seat with such dominion?

I wish we had never met, that there had been no contact of any kind. An entire lifetime's hunger carries a grudge against him. I only want to be well.

The turbulence within, the anguish, the suffering—I cannot tell anyone, cannot share it with anyone—not with my own, not with the close, not with the dear. Everyone must see me smile; everyone must see that I am well. Those who are not well are tiresome. How many people live with such torment! This world does not know how to love. This world holds only judgment and selfishness. The moment a person leaves this world, their judgment ends.

Once I was beautiful; I saw the world as beautiful, saw people as beautiful. Now I have become ugly, and everything appears ugly to me. Hideously, terrifyingly ugly.

One person's suffering darkens another's heart, so I do not wish to speak of suffering. I have wanted nothing from life, Roddur! It took me so long to understand what life even is. The one I love, I will never reach; those I wanted to be with will never accept me—I accepted these things long ago.

I never wished to be diminished before anyone. With those I am with, I have never sought love or care—only a little peace and dignity. A person who merely wishes to survive still needs people; they too become victims of family politics. I cannot even understand the source of such hatred. In bearing all of this, I see the world as grotesque.

I have no grief anywhere, only one torment—some people mock me, humiliate me, wish to diminish me. I only ever wanted to live with dignity, my head held high. Such is my fate.

These days I am physically unwell most of the time; I cannot think deeply about anything anymore.
Yet amid all this, I have one consolation. I know that even if the whole world turns one way, I have one person who will understand me.

Let me tell you something true—I never wanted there to be any connection between a half-dead person and a restless dreamer, any conversation between someone in utter sorrow and someone successful. I never wished for any relation between a person merely trying to survive and a person shaking the world with success. How many times I have tried to leave this behind, but some invisible force would not let me. It has made me speak to you, again and again.

I believe in everyone's freedom. Especially from bonds that cause pain—one should be freed quickly. But I could not free you, could not free myself. Now I no longer wish to be free. What is happening is good; what will happen will also be good. There is no harm that could ever come through you and me, nowhere, in no way.

Harm will never come to others through us.

You and I are of one mind. Even if we bear the weight of all the world’s suffering upon our own heads, we will never allow the smallest hurt to befall anyone, not ever. To carry sorrow together—that is true union.

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