My dear Swaralipi,
How are you? Do you miss Mother? Do you ever think of Father?
Tell me, are you sulking, wondering why I didn't bring you into this world? Don't be angry—you're better off not being born! The world has become so corrupt. The light here is polluted, the air is poisoned, and even the people have grown uncivilized.
If I ever feel I could bring you into the world and give you a beautiful, safe life, that day I'll truly bring you here. You'll curl up against me all day, mewing like a kitten, and I'll marvel at every second spent with you. When you laugh, I'll laugh too. When you cry, I'll still laugh. Holding you close, I'll wash away the thousand-year sorrow of my solitude.
You know, what terrible longing awakens in my chest to see you!
In my thirst to see you, my eyes feel like they might fall right out of my head! The intensity of wanting to touch you just a little, the yearning to hold you tight against my chest—it makes me desperate!
Your existence grips me fiercely. You would learn to walk before my eyes, one step at a time, learn to speak little nonsense words bit by bit, call me 'Ma,' and fill the house with your sweet commotion all day long. Sometimes your father would come to see you, and the moment you saw him, you'd leap into his arms. In his hands would be chocolates, toys, and so many other things for you! How wonderfully happy you'd be!
I'd write in my diary every day about the moments of your growing up, bit by bit. When you're all grown up someday, you'll read your mother's diary. You'll be brilliant like your father, peace-loving like your mother. Father will teach you math and science, and Mother will teach you how to be human. You'll grow up little by little before my eyes, and we'll grow old little by little. My thoughts and consciousness will be filled with nothing but you.
Your father's world is vast—there won't be much room for you there. In Father's separate world, there'll be a shortage of time for you, a shortage of love; but with Mother, you'll never lack for anything.
If you were here, Mother would write poems about you every day, compose songs every day, build vast palaces of words on diary pages with her daily wordplay.
You and I would live in a neat, beautiful two-room home. One room for us, the other filled with dolls and all your favorite toys. In the drawing room would be a black piano—watching you, I'd weave melodies on the piano every day. My happiness would know no bounds. My whole world would be just you, me, and your father. If you were here, I'd write so many things that your father couldn't finish reading them all.
No, none of this happened! I never got to see you. Day by day you're becoming more indistinct, and all the writings about you are becoming half-dead too! How many songs, poems, stories, how many diary pages of joy and sorrow ended unborn, just like you! With your non-birth, so many hauntingly beautiful diary pages also remained unbirthed.
Dear daughter, let me give you some sad news. Your mother no longer throws herself at your father's feet crying as she used to, no longer feels restless to write stories about you as before. Your mother has become terribly practical now!
And your father is as practical about his life as ever. He doesn't have much time to think about you. He has a little doll just like you. He loves that doll and the doll's mother terribly. Just as you were an entire world to me, your father has an entire world with the doll and the doll's mother. He'll never even remember you. There's no need to remember!
I miss you terribly from time to time. I promise I'll write you letters occasionally. Sometimes I'll close my eyes and imagine you. As long as life doesn't make me too busy, I'll keep you alive in my imagination for a few more days. You're a person of imagination, of love, of memory—as long as I remember you, you'll live, and if I forget you, that would be your death!
Dear Swaralipi, forgive me. I couldn't bring you into this world, I couldn't become an extraordinary mother either, and the diary I was writing about you never got finished. Your not being born isn't just your non-existence—it's the non-birth of many of my poems, songs, and stories; because you were my pen, and your father was my right hand.
Now we are nothing to each other. How terrible, how unbelievable that this happened, yet your mother and father didn't even notice, isn't that right?
Don't be angry—if there really is birth after death, we will meet. I'll see you and your grandmother for the first time in life. As the fruit of all my virtue, I'll see you both together. If reincarnation is false, then we'll never, ever meet again. What sorrow! What sorrow!
Not today. Some other day, Mother will write to you again—just don't fade away till then! Will you remember?
Yours, Your Mother