Love, Ketaki

Dearest Arnab,

I notice that it is mostly night when this restlessness comes upon me. It is mostly night when I cannot tolerate being told to brush my teeth or to go to sleep. It is mostly night when I remember that I have not written like this in a long time. It is mostly night when the hurt of humanity hurts me, and the horrors visited upon it visit me too.

It starts on the journey back home, on the yellow tinted road as the trucks go past and every truck has a little cylinder with 'AIR' painted on it, and a little pail, always empty, hanging near it. The immediate future is a shimmering snake, red spotted from brake lights. The night air is cool but not innocent like morning air. The insides of a dead dog lie spilled on the road. A principle has been violated this day and the guilty night is a helpless murderess with an implacable facade.

The night is heavy, full of dreamt, unsought things. And so the wind laughs quietly against my face, at all that I had planned but did not do. But the night is not accusing, it conspires in my restlessness and it soothes me into inactivity. Inactivity is not a sin now, it is the sin of the day, and it is the day that takes the blame, as is right and valid. Sometimes it rains. The roof of the bus is an irregular melody, a disharmonious drum.

Sometimes I listen to music in the bus. Then my mind is a descriptive essay. Then the window is a video. The man at the corner shop lights a rhythmic cigarette, a woman holding up her sari makes a melodious crossing, the girl on the bike moves forward to talk to the boy riding it; and the whole is a pulsing note, a beating chord, a vibrant song. With a video.

Every night is a note to your loss. It is signed

“Love,
Ketaki”.