Summer

I read the mail calling for submissions for this issue of Udaan, and to be honest, I was planning not to submit anything this time. I could lie or distort the truth about the reason, but I am not going to. The truth behind my unwillingness was, I was pissed at some individuals from the campus. My illusion about our entire campus being a set of educated engineers ceased to exist as I overheard some opinions about broad-scale social topics. Here, by broad-scale social topics, I mean topics ranging from religion, sexuality, body shaming, and many more. I thought I would be wasting my time and energy by writing for such a backward-thinking herd. The anger that ignited in me was from a few individuals whose number I could count on my fingers. It would be idiotic of me to judge the entirety of our campus from such a small number of individuals, and I will not say (write) a word about that from here onwards.

The current paragraph might come off as narcissistic and self-bragging, but this is the only reason for writing this entire piece. As I read the mail, one of my friends from the 2018 batch called and told me that he had gone through my last few articles on Udaan and liked them. This also reminded me of a few of you who reached out to me personally and had lovely feedback about the articles. I might not get another chance, so I wanted to thank Udaan and its readers for providing my limited, weird, and quirky words a place to exist and love to thrive.

The above paragraph was hard for me to write, and with that being said, we can stop. Still, I wanted this write-up to be at least partly about writing in itself, but not the usual formal kind of writing: Mails, Essays, Speeches, Reports. The kind of writing where you trade 3 AM sleep for a bunch of words and a whole lot of misery. I will attempt to do so in the form of a letter written to a quasi-fictional girl.

A Little Dictionary time: Quasi-fictional-The girl is real, the name is not.

Summer,

I hope you are miserable.

It has been months since I have heard that voice of yours—low, almost non-existent, yet so strong and drawing and mesmerizing. It has been months since I received one of those grammatically flawless WhatsApp texts or even a simple "Hmm" that you would use a million times. And it has been months since I went to your Instagram in incognito mode and watched you sing— नींद सेजो आँ ख का हैवास्ता वह तूलगे—all while that stubborn hair of yours can't seem to find its place and keeps roaming all over your forehead. But it has been only around eleven point-something seconds since I thought about you.

The last few days of life have been very peaceful and joyful for me, and I came to a terrible but true realization that NOT writing anything had played a significant role in that happiness. I asked myself a question: Why exactly did I start writing? The part of me, which is logical, educated, civilized, and has a considerable ego, says that writing began as something I liked to do—something in that passion-vassion wala domain. However, the part of me which likes the ugly naked truth knows that writing had nothing to do with passion or making people smile or any of that theatricality covered BS. It was a mere reaction. A side effect of you. Each word I ever wrote was a letter to your solitude. Each stupid joke I made on WhatsApp statuses was a lame attempt to make you smile. Each crippled verse of my poetry was a lyric to your music. I know you do not like me writing all that romantic stuff filled with heavy Shakespearey words and moons and stars and blah and blah. I can't help it. Don't worry though, I do not plan to send this last one to you. You already have enough of these stupid letters.

I am supposed to be inside the library making DH tables for robots and constructing velocity diagrams for energy turbines. Instead, here I am, sitting beside a brook, making utterly hopeless romantic attempts to draw your name on the water surface. Drawn with that stupid stick, letters of your name appear on the surface, merely for a moment, only to disappear into a mist of nothingness. Many love/life gurus suggest that "just friends" wala thingie is okay and, most importantly, possible. Utter BS. I can't stand a word from you without falling in love all over, all again. If we talk, then our loop begins again, ending in the inevitable eventuality of both of us getting hurt.

So, we don't talk ever, okay? But, the world is round and small, and just in case, if you ever see me somewhere, just in case if our eyes meet somewhere, or just in case if our paths cross somewhere…

Cross me without saying a word or muttering a lyric. Cross me without any sign of life or emotion on that beautiful face of yours. Don't wave at me or look me in the eye, because love, in my mind, even your friendly "Hello" is going to sound like "Kiss me like there's no tomorrow."

I can never wish you misery. You know that.

Lastly,

किसी शाम देखना तु मुड़कर ज़िंदगी को,

मिलूंगा मैं तुझे गुजरे समय में एक गांठ बनकर…

तेरे खुद को दिए झूठे जवाबो पर एक सवाल बनकर।