# Valentine's Day The first gift arrived on the morning of the fourteenth. A box wrapped in silver paper, tied with a red ribbon. No name, no card. Just the box sitting on the doormat like a confession. Deepa stared at it for a long moment before picking it up. It was light—whatever was inside didn't weigh much. She looked down the empty corridor. The neighbors' doors were closed, their mornings sealed away behind wood and brass. No one had seen. No one was watching. But someone had left it there. Someone had thought of her enough to wrap a box in silver paper and choose red ribbon instead of blue or gold. Someone had climbed these stairs in the pre-dawn darkness and placed it at her door like an offering. She brought it inside and set it on the kitchen table. The apartment was quiet—that peculiar quiet of a Tuesday morning before the world wakes. Her husband had left for the office two hours ago. He had kissed her forehead absently while she pretended to still be sleeping. They had not spoken much these days. Speech had become unnecessary, or perhaps impossible. She could no longer find the words that fit between them. Deepa made tea. She stood by the window and watched the street fill gradually with people hurrying toward their purposes. The gift sat on the kitchen table, patient and mysterious. She did not open it. By noon, curiosity had exhausted her. She fetched a knife and cut through the ribbon. The paper fell away to reveal a box of chocolates—Swiss, expensive, the kind sold only at the shop in the mall. Inside the lid, someone had written in careful handwriting: *For the woman who smiles at me sometimes. But never speaks.* She read the words three times. Four times. Her hands trembled slightly as she held the box. Outside, the afternoon had turned grey. The sun, which had seemed so bright an hour ago, had disappeared behind clouds. The street below looked melancholy and resigned, as streets do when the weather changes. Deepa sat down and took a chocolate from the box. It was exquisite—dark, bitter, with a hint of something she could not name. Nougat, perhaps. Or regret. That evening, she waited for her husband to come home. He was late, as he often was. When he finally arrived, she was sitting in the living room with the lights dimmed, the empty chocolate box on her lap. "Why are you sitting in the dark?" he asked, not unkindly. "I received a gift," she said. "Today. This morning. A stranger left it at the door." She watched his face carefully. Nothing changed. He removed his shoes, his tie. He looked tired in the way men do when they carry the weight of work and silence both. "A gift?" he said. "From whom?" "I don't know. There was only a note. It said..." She paused, choosing her words. "It said the person admires me." He looked at the empty box in her lap. For a moment, something flickered in his expression—something that might have been jealousy, or anger, or perhaps something much sadder. Recognition, maybe. The recognition that somewhere along the way, he had ceased to be the person who left gifts on doorsteps. He had become the person who came home late and asked perfunctory questions. "You should throw it away," he said finally. "It's inappropriate." But she did not throw it away. She kept the box. She kept the note. She read it sometimes in the afternoons when the apartment was empty and the silence felt too complete. *For the woman who smiles at me sometimes. But never speaks.* She began to wonder who it was. The man at the bookshop who had recommended a novel to her last month? The colleague of her husband's whom she had met once at a dinner party? The stranger on the bus who had stood near her one morning and never gotten off? Days passed. No second gift came. No follow-up. No confession. It was as if that one morning had been a dream, a glitch in the ordinary sequence of events. And yet everything felt different now. She found herself smiling at people more often. At the grocer. At the postman. At strangers in the street. And with each smile, she wondered if it was the one that had been seen, the one that had been deemed worthy of silver paper and Swiss chocolate. One afternoon, she wrapped the empty chocolate box in brown paper and left it on the step of a neighbor she barely knew. She wrote no note. She left no explanation. She simply returned the gesture, a small anonymous kindness, to see if it might create a small crack in the ordinary world, a space where someone might feel, for just a moment, that they were worth remembering. It was not Valentine's Day anymore. It was February eighteenth, and the world had moved on to other concerns. But Deepa had learned something in those few days. She had learned that love—or its shadow, its whisper, its possibility—did not require reciprocation to matter. It only required that someone, somewhere, had thought of you enough to climb the stairs in the darkness. And sometimes, in the evening when her husband was not yet home and the apartment held only her and the shadows, she would take out the note and read it again, and smile at the person it was written for, even though she did not know their name. *For the woman who smiles at me sometimes. But never speaks.* She spoke to herself then, very quietly, so that no one could hear: "Thank you." And the gift, though it had been eaten long ago, remained.

 
I've posted various little pieces on Valentine's Day over the years—on the 14th of February, that is. If you string them all together and add a bit more to the mix, you end up with something like a tale and a half of love instead of the full seven tales. But in the process of doing that, I noticed the result didn't quite sing. It lost its rhythm, felt disjointed. So I'm rewriting this piece, driven mostly by what I call my wall of thoughts. Let me be clear about one thing: when I wrote this, my relationship status was single. So you'll find more here about those without a lover or beloved. Coupled friends, please forgive me—you might want to skip this one.

Oh, and I go by "wall of thoughts" on Facebook.

Everyone has a little love in them, even romance itself! But not everyone has that one person to love, or they've lost them. What might a solitary voice sound like on Valentine's Day? Well, something like this—

Let the flowers bloom or not, today is Valentine's Day . . . . . . Huzzah!!

What does the crow care if the fruit ripens? . . . . . . What stupid nonsense!!

Didn't like that? Fine, here's another:

For you, happy Valentine!
For me, alas Valentine!
That's all I understand by divine design!
So many lines in this life of mine!
Bad? It's fine, it's more than fine!!

Still not satisfied? What can be done! No love to speak of, so I'll hunt for a scrap of solace in a couple of heartfelt lines about love itself—and even that's gone now, is it? So come on, friend, let's eat puffed rice and ease the burden of rice on our tables! A handful of puffed rice beats a handful of love any day. My mustard-oil-anointed greetings to all on Puffed Rice Day. I'm not sorry for naming it that. They say a man who loses his cow loses his mind too. A man who loses his love loses his pen. Well, I'm typing on a keyboard. Where did the pen come from? I told you—nothing works right! Pen, keyboard, mind! Nothing at all!!

I've heard love comes but once, in silence. In my life, love has come over and over, loudly, making quite a commotion. In the thunderous arrival of such boisterous love, the music of its coming has deafened my ears. Now I'm mostly love-deaf. I've forgotten the art of hearing the silent footsteps of quiet love. I'll have to go to an ENT surgeon and bring back some Keds laces. I've heard that if you thread a Keds lace in one ear and out the other, then swing your head side to side in time with that song "Sway, little girl, sway, shimmy shimmy sway," the blockage in your ears comes loose? Oh good heavens, what nonsense have I dreamed up now! When love is lost, even your fingers stop working right. Fingers, hands, or something else entirely? What am I saying? I'll crash the brakes! Definitely! Let me stop here!

If you say you'll be my Valentine, I could break every single law in the kingdom for you! Agreed? Say it—agreed?

I mean, I don't exactly know what laws exist in any kingdom. But I could definitely smash a couple of them to pieces, like glass bangles. Absolutely certain! Just say—I love you!

So for those whose lives have no love, no beloved, no one to say "I love you" to—couldn't we establish some kind of allowance? In the case of tutors, those who are genuinely single should get a raise of 574 taka. And those who aren't single but go around pretending to be—let their beloved become mine instead. Oh, what joy would fill the sky and air! Where would I keep so many lovers? Oh, the bliss of it! I wish I could love someone who would love me back, and we could be together all our lives without any family, social, or religious barriers standing in the way. There's so much else I want to say too. Shall I just blurt it all out right now?

Let it go, let it be.

Whether someone gives you flowers or not,
today is Valentine’s Day.

Fourteen years ago, a friend wrote to me,
on the spring breeze….. I love you! she said, voice trembling with feeling.

Everything is there, yet….. why does it feel so lonely?

My friend is no longer alone. With her now is her daughter, radiant as a fairy. I pray that when she grows up, she will be even more enchanting than Humayun Ahmed’s heroines.

Friend, truly, when spring comes, I remember you.

There’s another one I remember too. Even now, sometimes, when I slip into her profile from another account, something twists inside my chest, something aches, and I feel it—like something’s missing, always missing! (Either I blocked her on Facebook, or she blocked me.)

Damn it! Pointless!

Was she ever real at all? How can someone who was never there, leave?

And yet, I genuinely wish her well.

There’s another I could remember. But she gave me no reason to. Why? Never mind that. *”Who loves to dig up sorrow in the heart?”* Better to dig the earth, pull up potatoes instead. Tagore’s command! How could I disobey?

I didn’t love her because she was precious. Rather, I found her precious *because* I loved her. Alas! That fool never understood, no matter what.

Sometimes I think, love is such a curse! If you have it, it burns; if you lose it, it aches; if you never had it, it burns and aches both!

I send spring’s greetings to Zuckerberg. On Facebook, *It’s Free*—may that line never change. Those whose days are still spent circling around Facebook, may they be well, at no cost to them.

Tell me, Zuckerberg, do you know how the heart catches fire when beautiful women come close in spring, draped in yellow or saffron silk? You don’t, do you? Don’t feel bad. Some foolish beauties don’t know it either! That’s why they don’t wear saris. Alas! Who will tell them that the sari is the most captivating garment in the world! Good heavens! The moment you see someone in a sari….. but what do these other beauties wear? Tatters. And looking at them, you think, even the monkeys at the zoo aren’t less beautiful, I mean, they’re not less beautiful! Of course, beautiful women seem best when they’re a bit simple. Why would a beautiful girl not have a mind? Why the worry?

Since when has Rabi Babu been playing in my head…. *Let those who are happy, stay happy*….

I am happy, she is happy. Who is happy? Whoever is happy, is happy. Happiness is happy, sorrow is happy. Everyone is very happy. Watching this performance of happiness, even the aging world grows happier by the moment. In this very happiness lies all happiness!

My Seven-Point Valentine’s Day Manifesto (plus one bonus):

One. Let “I love you” come from the heart, not the lips. Even if fresh love emerges with cigarette smoke, no problem.

Two. Let no couple in the world break apart. If need be, let the rickshaw break under their weight, let one of them or both tire, but let the couple endure.

Three. If someone breaks a relationship for no reason at all, let them be made to do ear-squatting push-ups publicly, at least one hundred and one times.

Four. May the flower business flourish; may the facial tissue business dwindle.

Five. Let the last breath of love before marriage happen not in bed, but in the marriage chamber.

Six. Those who have someone to love—may they receive their tutoring fees by the fifth of the next month. Let no one have to love on their father’s money. Let joy and sorrow be tasted on one’s own earnings.

Seven.

# A Beautiful Procession of Words

May beautiful words about love march from Facebook statuses into life itself. May no one ever have to swallow the kind of mockery I once endured from my sister-in-law—quoting Tagore, mind you—for writing verse about someone else’s wedding when my own remains unwritten. Never let anyone bear such a wound.

Please. Let those who wish to love me not call me ‘brother’ or ‘uncle’ or any such bloodless term. Let the rest hold me closer than their own kin.

These days I can’t bring myself to visit any campus in spring. The moment I step foot there, my heart collapses. I’m exhausted now, exhausted from keeping it broken. How much longer can one heart take such punishment? There’s only one, after all—poor thing. How many more lessons do I need? When you’re miserable, you know yourself best, they say. I’ve come to know my old self far too well. I don’t like what I see anymore. Hypocrisy doesn’t suit me. I can’t paste on a smile while the heart bleeds. Why—if god gave a man teeth but denied him love—why not just knock them all out in one blow? Why, why, why? What use are these gleaming teeth to me? What’s left to bite into?