Pag,
I got the book today. When I first saw it, I completely missed the first page. I rumbled through it looking for signs of you: pencil marks, cat hair, or oil-print of food you dropped while eating over the book all the while lying on the floor. I found the note. At the end of the note, I realized that there was Ruskin Bond on my book! I (dramatically) dropped the book. I re-read your letter. Your words were like the tight hug a blurry-faced man gave me in my dream last night. I had been longing for it. When I re-reread the letter it was like the warm bath I have been putting off for 2 days. Bathing makes me think and reflect. The next time felt like when I had had 2 spoonfuls of the nice jam you bought me from Dorabjees. I started happy weeping.
It had been so long since I heard your voice, even in my head. That you braved a 45-minute long line for me, after our encounter with India Post on Rakshabandhan, overwhelmed me. You had told me about Tehri then. You have a way of making me imagine places I have never seen, and feel things I had never known possible. Like the time I stalked you into being my friend. It was my first; before that love had come to be easy like it does to firstborns and women in Amravati.
So weeping, I ran to mummy, the only way I know to deal with a crisis. I don’t know what to do with all the special she makes me feel I told her. She held me close, touched my face, then pointing at the center of my chest, where the anxiety pit is, said: store it here. That’s where, along with baby R’s summer dress with dragonflies on it, Goldie’s jump-running in the grass, and my fallen hair, we have decided you will live.
