A LETTER FROM HEAVEN

They say, authors don't die, they remain alive in their writings. But mine is a strange case, maybe because I'm not that great an author. I'll possibly not remain in people's imagination through my insignificant deliberations. This a realtime letter form the other world that is not intended for all, but only for the person concerned. Those who read it in the process may take it to be incidental.

Dear Piyush, 

Actually you should've been writing this letter to me from my position, and I should've been where you are now. It's cold and forlorn over here. You'd be rightly served if you were here. But look at the irony! I will ask God the reason for this as and when I can arrange for an approval to meet Him. 

Remember what you said while we met first when doing our MBA? 'Both of us have the brains and the means, both of us are Punjabis, and both have set our goals high. Why shouldn't we make it?' 

We made it big indeed at an early age. Our hotel catapulted to the top five in Chennai. We made money, reputation, and some subsidiary misdemeanour along with. The thing you didn't know is I had a way to charge myself emotionally through my stray pieces of literary work from time to time under a pen name. Finer senses never had a meaning for you.

We drank choicest scotches together in the evenings. I used to go back to my home that had only servants to inhabit besides me following my parents' death. You had a full house, and you never returned home before dawn. How could you? You were a Casanova. Girls fell for you like their lives depended on it. Why not? Your macho image, your killer looks, and your sugary tongue did the trick. 

In contrast, I never could cross the barriers of being ordinary. I envied you as a retired on my empty bed with no one waiting to embrace me in her warm arms. But trust me, more than lust it was loneliness that kept haunting me. 

Then I got married to Lillian, the girl from an orphanage of a missionary. I could empathise with her, as she was a prey to loneliness, like me.

We had a cozy and understanding relationship for a year to come, and our bond grew stronger. We believed in each other's complement, camaraderie. A nuptial bond grew up to a personal one.

Then the earth shook up below my feeble feet one day. I noticed you casting your lascivious glance at Lillian, mine own Lillian. Thankfully, Lillian didn't pay a heed to it. I expected this of her.

But Piyush, all the esteem that I garnered for you in all these years, was gone all of a sudden. How could you, of all the females, cast a lustful look at the wife of your best pal? 

I wished you were dead. And the almighty listened to my prayer. You died all of a sudden, slipping off a staircase! I wished I had a hand in it.

My hatred was such that I didn't even attend your funeral. Your death certificate reached in time, and I became the sole owner of our hotel. I thought it was a good riddance.

My joy lasted short. In a month's time Lillian deserted me, without any conceivable reason. I blamed myself: perhaps I was not good enough for her!

It hurt, it devastated, it tore me off. My despair reached to such an extent that I disposed off my dear hotel to some unknown person at a throw away price.

Human emotions are strange to gauge. The hotel that seemed dearer to my life once, didn't take time to part off with the blink of an eyelid! 

I lost all my interest in hotel business, or any sort of business for that matter. Life seemed a lopsided balance sheet with no credit and all debit to reflect. 

I started roaming around in a state of mental imbalance in search of peace.

A day I reached Mysore (call it Mysuru, the present term, if you may). 

A day I was roaming around on the streets when I discovered you to my utter shock and disbelief! I shuddered. And I shuddered even more as I saw Lillian, mine own flesh and blood, with you! You will never imagine the agony and pain a man has to undergo when he sees his simpleton, serene wife with another man, that too whom he had perceived to have died long ago. To make the matter worse, you both looked happy in each other's company!

I was a fool to confront you two in a fury. You made fun of me. You revealed how you cooked a plot together to prove you dead, to get hold of the insurance money, and to be in close proximity to each other! 

There was more. It was your man who purchased the hotel from me, and you still run it on his behalf! Did you ever think what might I have gone through to be deceived by two of his closest? No, you were not that sensitive.

And further proof of the same was given in no time. I was gagged, and thrown into a pool. I anticipated as much. 

Frankly, I didn't have any desire to live further and I had surrendered without putting up a fight. What was there to fight for to a person who had lost the battle of his life sometimes back?

Now that I am here in this dispassionate place, heaven or hell, whatever you name, I await your arrival some day. I know you'll be punished in time to come in God's own ways. He has many variants up His sleeve. 

I wish nobody is cheated the way I've been, but I know it will keep doing the rounds, as men and women are vile by nature.

I'm happy I conveyed my feelings to you, Piyush. If possible, read the letter to Lillian. Rest lies on your conscience.

Warm wishes,

Yours forever, 

Rakesh Chawla.