A BUNCH OF OLD LETTERS (SHORT STORY)

I ran and joined them both. Aah! These were the people whom I knew well. My dear friends! The three of us sat by the fort. 

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After a long time, and after talking about many things, I found out that Minakshi and Salim were no longer meeting each other. Neena, too, had drifted away from Raju because Minakshi had asked her to. Raju still kept talking about Neena very excitedly. He was happy with whatever he had experienced with her. Then, the three of us took an oath that we would never, ever let a girl interfere with our friendship. I was the loudest while taking this oath.

When I reached home, Father’s English tuition was going on. Humming a song about true friendship, I went straight to the kitchen. I took some water out of the earthen pot, but before I could gulp it down, I realised, there was a new face in the class. I kept the glass back near the pot and came out. In the corner, next to Father, sat Minakshi. I was astounded. She looked at me and smiled, and then started to look back into her notebook. Minakshi’s smile conveyed that there was some secret conspiracy between the two of us. My heart began racing madly. Before I could go and take refuge in the kitchen, Father shot a question at me.

‘Sunil, what’s the Hindi word for “predictable”?’ I kept staring at my father, and then I looked at my mother’s black-and-white photograph. Several layers of dust had settled on the plastic garland around it. Minakshi’s eyes were loaded with mischief, and I was quite predictable in this situation. I wanted to say there was no Hindi word for predictable.

‘Come and sit here.’ With a great degree of authority, Father commanded me so I came and sat next to Minakshi. My mind was occupied with predictable things. I knew what was to follow. Each time that Minakshi would come home for tuitions, I would keep going round and round in circles between the tuition room and the kitchen, like a hungry lion in a cage, but wouldn’t say anything to her. The reason being not the oath that I had taken with my friends, but because I was a coward: fearful and predictable. I would never let Salim know that Minakshi now came to my house for tuitions. The simple reason for this was the deeply entrenched jealousy within me. I would find excuses to speak to my father during the tuitions, laced with heavy-duty English words. My father would assist me with this; after all, he was my father! I would not say the whole sentence, for I couldn’t run the risk of faltering. Then one fine day, Minakshi could lose interest in English and this chapter, too, would end. And then, for years, I would keep thinking... what if! What if I had mustered enough courage to speak to Minakshi? Maybe the story would have been different.

Excerpted with permission from A Night in the Hills by Manav Kaul, Westland Books