Dear AB and BC,

(As a child, I thought love was AB and BC. When they held hands in 1980s Madras, I melted into a puddle, even as I overanalysed the scandal. And when they hold hands now, after many many years of cannotlivewithouteachother marriage, it reminds me that there is hope for happily ever afters.)

I have been meaning to write you both a note for awhile now. But you know how this is : I think sappy thoughts and I think them some more but between the thinking and writing, I find a clinical reason not to send it. But meeting you for a little bit last week was exactly the impetus I needed.

As always : fabulous milestone with the [work] and I have no doubt this is just another start. You are both such great examples to follow and to see people come back and make a difference (and a real, accessible difference at that) successfully is exactly what we need in this generation to prompt us to return and do our bit(s).

What is more, as personal mentors, you are both the perfect blue print for aspiration. Every time I see you both, I remember the larger goals : those checklists that usually take the no-priority back seat when you are busy collecting degrees.

I remember the important stuff when I see you two : keeping in mind the people that matter (usually, old friends and invisible ones that actually make the difference), being generous with your home and your heart, being respectful of each other without it turning into benign platitude, being madly in love.

And why am I writing to you now? So you know that you both give me hope. So you know that even when I do not keep in touch, you both have helped me write and rewrite my priority checklist. So you both know that you have played an important part in my fighting hard at the right things, letting go of the ones I had to, and knowing (in difficult measure) the difference. So you both know that when I think of the kind of love that holds and heals, shapes and saves, I think of yours.

It is true, like you said to my pre-teen self. What else is there to fight for?

x

Dear PC,

There is something about being home (and by this I mean peed in home - not foryo home) that forces you to readdress (however unsuccessfully) ambiguities of your past. I have been home for just over ten days now - just enough time for one that has not lived here in ten years to get restless - and while I stay largely quiet, I am still pulled into generic conversations about life trajectories that are anything but generic.

For instance -

Extended family visiting from the Gelf, after initial niceties : "We are very broad minded - you have to get married when you are ready"

(Code - When are you getting married? Everyone worries about you. It might already be too late to dip into the iyer pool of eligible SF software engineers)

Random Maami I do not even know that well, says over my mother's freshest filter coffee "Yen Ponnum Kalyanathiku Munaadi Ippida thaan iruntha" (my daughter was also like this before she got married)

(Code - All you new age independent pseudo intellectual girls will have to realize that we will win over you with our pressures of commitment and when we do, you will succumb willingly and be happy)

Fat astrologer, in general conversation, again - "unnaku ithulelaam nambika irukaathey - romba modern ponnu !" (you do not believe in all of this do you? - you are very modern!) and then, to my mother "let her marry whoever she wants - even a north indian - do not ask her before she is a little older - say, next year".

(Code - I have no clue when your daughter will get married. I am just being vague to make you feel happy - even though, it is clear, there is no parallel universe in which you thought you would find this girl a husband. And yes, when I include north Indian in the realm of her matrimonial possibilities- I am trying to show my absolute broad mindedness to the extreme chance that she is all the crazy rebellious things I think she might be.

The chance that she might marry a white boy? What? A white Boy? What? People do that? )

Like I said - I have been home for more than ten days. The initial novelty of a You Ess visitor has faded - Madras has taken me by both blazing red horns and doomed me to its eternally caustic hell of not so polite conversation.

If it was not providing me with so much amusement, I would sigh.

x

Dear Cal,

Have I told you I love Calcutta? I am happy every time I am here - its dirty, people do not follow traffic rules, the weather is revolting - all of that is true. But it makes me so happy on the inside. And in this hopeless romantic avataar, I walk the streets happy, drink cha (yes, unsweet) at Oxford on Park Street (and then again at a matka wala near Russel), breathe in the air and smile silly at large pink billboards that old couples built in the 1950s (do you know about Flurys?). I have only been here a day, but somehow I am young again and I believe.

Anyway, this is not about Calcutta. At least it is not entirely about Calcutta.

I was having maas and radha bhalabhi at a friend's house for dinner and his dad, while narating his love story (it is still unclear how I get people to talk about this stuff - but anyway) said to me : "everything else is rubbish. love is the only thing worth fighting for" (he married his wife when he was 23, against much opposition and when I did not look excited about the idea, felt the need to convince me that being clinical about romance was a crime).

Have you been?

x

Dear Tempt,

I think of you endlessly.

First in careless, sideway thoughts of old lanes that we once walked on (without ever knowing that we will think of it since) and rivers we took sideways photos in. In monkey paths and earthen pots, small notes and drunk detail.

And then again, in more frequent, pointed measure : did you like your coffee with sugar? did you wear braces growing up? what did you look like when you were a child? where do you want to be when you were all "growned up"? (what do your parents do?) : small, unnecessary questions that I should know answers to, had I known you the way I know other people - with time and casual distance. But you and I have only had our abrupt chats about nothing in particular and punctuated with little awkward silences that you call "good weird".

But no, you barged (and re-barged) into my life with your silk words and unreachable charm (how do you do it?) : first shy and distant and then flirtatious in ways I can only now see (in keen retrospect). And I have been basking in that shine of all things precious : of new love and old feels that emerge urgently, even if gently. I have tied myself to my phone, re-read your SMSs in the corner of crowded, nostalgic reunions and slept with my arms reaching for notes that you sent me by hand.

Yet, now that we have stepped back and I have had the luxury to think - I realize that I have not had a second to think it might be more you than me that has caused this crazy haze we find ourselves in. Perhaps you are just this glorious larger than life way, and I am who you are sharing it with now. Perhaps this is not because I am the One (or even that there is a One) or this is It (if there is such an It) but because you are all the glorious things you are and I happen to have walked into that happy maze of sweet confusion.

But what if I am wrong? What if this is not you and this is Us and this could be the most wondrous thing ever if I let it be? What if this is everything you say it is - right and perfect and the sort of thing that leads to yellow kitchens and copper pots - and I am just, out of character, in not falling for this piece of delicious romance?

I have only one explanation. For once, I cannot. I am content and happy in a working relationship that holds and heals and I cannot let it go. Not because it is working anymore and I think that has any more potential than you. But because if I let it go, I would have let go the part of me that is working.

And with named children and this newly emerging sense of a stable self, I need to hold tight that part.

But I think of you. Endlessly.

x