When he pretends or ends.

Dearest Arnab,

Have you ever thought that maybe this is the only way to live in the 21st century. A little shrill, a little loud, a little hurt, all the time, all the way. No wonder our mouths have become pouts of discontent, no wonder they look like gashes of gaiety.

So maybe, that's why I see him every morning, this boy who touches a picture of ganesha every morning, a computerised image on the lcd screen of his computer, and then his forehead. Elephant God and Hewlett Packard monitor. Brrrr. It is cold. I think it always will be. I think it will get colder as the sun loses its heat, slowly. And I think we know that now, and are frightened of it. That is why we rush as we do, that is why our eyes look hunted, and our hands are hungry. That is why we cut down the trees that we love, poison the land we cherish. That is why we run away from the trees and the land, to not see their empty eyes and accusing broken-ness.

Maybe that is why I have run away from words, finding in their honesty a judge far more solemn, far more just, than the covenient crevices of my mind. The little nooks that I hide myself in, hoping not to see, never to see, what is so eternally, simply, blightingly, bitingly self-evident. That as surely as we are born, we must die; that as fast as I may run, cower in the nooks of my mind, whimper at the invisible lashes that lash out at me, within and without; that I must write, well or ill; that I must write, of inanities if I must; that I must write, and capture some lost glory, some absent faith, some non existent radiance; that most important, I must write, because I must write.

I must write, so that I may not hurt. So that I may not hurt when he scoffs or walks off. So that I may not hurt when he pretends or ends. So that I may always have the courage to love and to live.

In the world as I know it, I must write.

Love,
Ketaki