I'm sorry, Jahan-Ara.

Dear J

It has been a year already. I have sent you over a dozen letters, received none in return. The dagger of this void, of this emptiness, buries itself much deeper into the recesses of my heart than any hot-knife words of yours ever could have. I have grown so terribly weary of swimming around aimlessly in this landlocked sea of black desolation that my life has now become.

I know that it’s all my fault. I cannot blame my family; I am responsible for them. I was responsible for them. I deserve this gut-wrenching pain; there is no one more aware of the fact than me. To compare my hurt to yours is laughable, however. A year has passed, and I still have no words. None that mean anything.

My letters till date have been nothing but empty steel vessels; struck once they ring so much, but the sounds are hollow in their ringing, depthless and shallow, just like my meaningless apologies. Long winded paragraphs about grief, about sorrow, about regret, about redemption. They are worthless. I, am worthless.

My words cannot heal the scars on your face; the burns on your tender hands are not as easily wiped off as the tears that stream down my cheek and leave stains and blotches on this letter that I’m trying to write with a hand that still trembles with the memory of yours once nestled in it. You are still beautiful, but it is my fault and mine alone that I must now convince you of this fact where once the whole world stood testament to it, singing proudly to its sweet magnificence. I cannot plead for forgiveness any longer; I do not deserve any such escape. This letter I write more to me than to you, for reliving, with no hopes of rekindling.

I would be lying if I said I still remembered the day I met you; for you are the only thing seared into my memory from that instance and the rest dissolves into obscurity; I recall neither the day, the time, nor the place. Context is redundant when it comes to you, it always has been. You just are; undeniable and unapologetic.

You captured my attention, you did, but I did not fall in love with you just then. Yes, I know you believe that love at first sight exists, but it’s not always the case, no?

Later, I watched you through the stained-glass windows of my lecture hall as you frolicked and gambolled around the vast campus of our university, a carefree schoolgirl under the shaky veneer of a college senior. Petting dogs and cuddling with cats, trying in vain to lure in the skittish squirrel that always scampered about the sprawling banyan tree in front of the old Arts building. You knew squirrels don’t even eat cashews; you did it every day nonetheless.

I think we talked for the first time on a day filled with first times, on Gandhi’s birthday, at the rally against the SB3A bill. I knew nothing about the subject, I’d simply turned up because all my friends were involved; organizing and agitating with the blood of revolution running hot in their veins. As if any of it mattered, I remember muttering to you. It was then and there I glimpsed the idealist rebel in you for the first time, the schoolgirl giving way to a girl that knew what she thought and wasn’t afraid of letting others know. Being the apathetic idiot that I am, I stood in complete awe the entire time you patiently explained the bill to me, with its dystopian implications and insidious consequences for the minorities and the little people. That was the day, perhaps, that I was ashamed of my ignorance and my privilege for the first time. And perhaps, the day it dawned on me that I might be falling in love. For the first time.

How I hated that forbidden feeling.

We never talked after that, not for a long month. I still saw you from time to time; we did live in student dorms, after all. I don’t think I ever told you this, but I was always positively intimidated. Such exuberance, such passion. Such unbridled feelings about everything that existed. True to your name, you adorned the world. The bearded men in sage clothes conducting white-people workshops at ashrams nearby could learn a thing or two about living, from you. I didn’t need to speak with you to understand that. But I couldn’t resist. There’s only so much beauty that you can appreciate from afar before you long to touch it somehow. So, I attempted to talk. And talk we did.

By the lake, in the woods, on a bench in a college park, or perched atop rocks on top of a hill. While walking, while riding bicycles. Driving, or hiking. I could not get enough. You were a fire brighter than a thousand burning diamonds; you lit my world with perspective. How could have I been so blind?

Intoxicated with illicit love, we were inseparable. So many rallies, so many debates. I actually stood for something, as I had never before. You showed me what principles were, what standing by them actually meant. My lust for your mind was just as strong as my lust for your lips. I wanted this; the fact that I shouldn’t only spurred me on further.

I was driven mad, I was a raging lunatic; when I couldn’t talk to you, I wanted to talk about you. But whom could I talk to? My friends are few, and they do not entertain foolishness. My family? The words crept up my throat every night that I could go home and sit at the table for dinner, nearly escaping my lips before I forced them down again, my gut twisting in anger and frustration. Anger at my family. Anger at the system that birthed them, a system that caused this heinous divide among people worshipping different Gods. The irony that we both were atheists was lost to this system as was the goodness of mankind.

They would never have accepted you; if anything, I would’ve been turned out of the house. Every day that I sat among them pretending everything was fine, ate away at me and my conscience, a cowardly piece at a time. And how dearly that cowardice cost me at the end.

I wish I could have spoken up. I wish I could have tried to make them see. Maybe things would have turned out to be a lot different. Maybe I still would have had a family. Maybe I still would have had you. Maybe the hands of mine that are now covered in hideous burns would have been covered with gentle kisses, instead. Maybe I could have come with you to meet your parents, at your house. Because you’d still have one.

I knew that they couldn’t find out. After all, you stood against everything they believed in, and I suppose the same was true the other way around. The dissonance I experienced everyday tore me apart in unimaginable ways. But I knew what the right path was, I always had known. I chose you. How could have I not?

I want to say that I’m furious at my brother and my father for what they did. Fury is selling it short, the way I felt earlier. I do not lie when I say I could have taken their lives.

Although what engulfs me now is not hatred nor fury, but a tremendous amount of sadness. It is a magnified dejection of sorts; there is only hopelessness and despair. For ours is a story being told in our country since the beginning of time itself. It’s living proof that man may change, but never fully. The fickle threads of regression slowly weave among themselves until they form a rope strong enough to pull, to make man falter in his never-ending quest towards progress. A sly glance here, a knowing smirk there; that is all it takes. That is all it has ever taken.

It has been waging forever, this war that is as old as time. We are not the first to be burned by its hateful hellfire, nor will we be the last. It divided our country all those years ago, and it continues to divide it even today. How high our hopes were, how the light shone in our eyes as we set out to show the world what was right and what wasn’t. The light has since faded, and where once we rode resplendent, fuelled by passionate optimism, I now stagger about like a bibulous madman, running on fumes of numb misanthropy.

How I wish that my mind would choose to bury that traumatic evening; to smother it, to entomb it inside the dark depths of memory. But I am afforded no such respite, and nor do I deserve it. The image of you crouching beside the bed, white-hot flames licking the walls behind you and the desk in front of you, tears running down your beautiful face as you tried to frantically stamp out the edge of your dress that had caught on fire, is emblazoned onto my consciousness with an intensity that shall not fade until the day I die.

The rest disappears into delirium, however. I have heard countless accounts of what happened since, but I confess my own doesn’t shine out brightly amongst them, for I did, perhaps, lift you up with my thin hands and tottered and swayed my way out of the blazing pile of soon to be rubble, but I do not remember any of it. They say they took us both to different hospitals; how typical. They also said that your breathing was feeble and mine was wild; I thrashed and flailed like one of those patients in the asylum over the hill, remembering you as you were without recollecting if I did anything about it. Apparently, I had not convinced myself that I had leeched you out of arson’s fiery kiss that my family had so lovingly bestowed upon you and yours.

I have no way of knowing, either. For after that evening, I never saw you again, nor did I hear from you. Neither you nor your family visited the remains ever since; I should know, for I went there, sat on a portion of charred debris and wept profusely every single day for six whole months. The tears slowly dried up, however, and were replaced by this cold embrace of hopelessness and uncertainty. Where did you go? What university do you now attend? What protests do you lead? Are you able to lead them? Are you alive? 

I do not know what to think anymore; let alone what to write. I feel like I’ve said enough over the months. I promise that I won’t ever burden you with a letter henceforth. 

I am sorry. I know that this letter started with me saying I won’t beg for forgiveness, but so have all of the others. I cannot help it.

I am so sorry. Not just for me. I’m sorry for you. I’m sorry that a pure soul such as yours was born in midst of a thousand cruel ones. I’m sorry that these thousand souls existed in the first place. 

I hope you found life again, wherever you are, because I have yet to meet someone who loves it more than you do. I don’t know if you read these. I hope that you do. I don’t know if you hate me. I hope that you do. I was a spineless insect. It does not matter that I saved you from a fire; for all that its worth, I pushed you inside in the first place.

For that, and for everything else, I am so very sorry.

I am yours forever,

R