The
girl was sick and she has been for a long time. People around her knew it, the
ones who loved her knew it and she knew it as well. They all understood the
imminent future, the unavoidable. Nonetheless, no one talked about it in open.
The girl, however was little different from others, she was fond of joking
about it. "I really need to fast forward my life, I don't have all
day, you know" She used to say very often and that too with a weak smile,
because that is all which her sickness permitted.
She wasn't always sick, but her sickness has had her for so long, hardly anyone
remembered what it was like before. Once in a while, in her smile or the
sparkle in her eye, one would get to see the girl that she once was, nothing
more.
She used to sing, they said. She had the loveliest of the voice, nothing like
the raspy voice which she has now because of coughing for so long.
She used to read, all the love poems. They were her favorites; she liked the
melody that she could create by humming those poems in her voice.
She used to write, stories of times long gone by. She liked the charm of the
old world. Things were simpler then, she'd say. You fall sick, you die.
She liked listening to stories of the magical world. The stories with angels,
demons, gods, goddesses, fairies, witches, she loved them. She believed that
fairies do exist. She wasn't so old, you know.
She had the weird habit of making friends with really old people. She had many
friends who had seen a decade for her every year. More so, they all treated her
like an equal rather than like a grandchild. Though she wasn't old, she wasn't
a child, you know.
She believed in all the unbelievable things. Gods, destiny, karma and
reincarnation because maybe she needed to. She never had the luxury to start
with non-believing and take a U-turn after a few years. She hadn't got all day,
you know.
Once
she had met a boy at the places where sick people typically meet, a hospital.
On one of her not so infrequent trips there. He was on the bed beside her bed.
He was sick too and used to come there once in a while. They started talking;
actually, she made him talk to her about things she liked to hear about. He was
the shy kind, you know.
They
were together for a week, and like it happens for sick people, they fell in
love too quickly. She liked to hold his hand while talking to him, he liked
that too. Their loved ones felt a little awkward, but they pretended that they
didn’t notice it and nothing was unusual. Secretly they were happy for them and
a little scared too.
The
boy was discharged after a week and he had to go back to his home town which
was some distance away from her place. They promised each other to write a letter
every day.
They
wrote letters to each other, every single day. They wrote about their
childhood, of the days when they were not sick, of the days when they will get
better, about what they could do if they were not sick, of the views from their
windows, of the loved ones who were now tired taking care of them and their
failed attempts to hide their sadness, of the funny relatives who would come to
visit them and ask them silly questions, of the medicine they fake swallowed
and spat out later, of the need to be near each other and of the dreams of holding each other’s hands.
They were sure that they couldn’t live without each other.
The
letters kept coming and she kept replying. In the morning she will wait for the
postman to deliver the letter, and then she will read it a few times. In the
afternoon she will think about what to write and in the evening she will write
the reply. The postman was one of her old friend, she would hand over her reply
to him and take the new letter from him. Her whole life was no longer about her
sickness; there was something more important in her life now, the letters.
Though,
she was happier and a tad healthier (maybe because of letters, maybe because of
love, who knows), she knew that she was getting attached to these letters too
much. Her belief in unbelievable things made her believe that days of her life
were tied to these letters now. She was going to live till these letters kept
coming. She didn’t tell anyone but she hoped that they boy would know and to be
sure, she wrote it in one of her letters too.
The
letters kept coming and she kept getting better. One day she felt good enough
to go on a trip to meet the boy and she went to his town. She reached his house
and found his mother. She told her that the boy passed away a month ago, but he
has made her promise to keep writing letters. So she kept writing. She told her
that he wanted her to get better and live a long life.
The girl was heartbroken and she cried for days.One day, when she woke up in the morning, she smiled and told her loved one
that she is going to get better. Later in her life she became a teacher and taught in a university. She wrote a letter to the boy every day, she never posted those letters and kept them in her diary.
The End
Inspired by:
"The Last Leaf" by O'Henry and Lootera (Movie) by Vikramaditya Motwane
My Sister's Keeper (Movie) based on the Book of the same name by Jodie Picoult
One of the million dollar question while watching an intelligent actor in bad movie is, why in the God's name he did this movie ? Here is my theory about why Ranbir Kapoor did Besharam. He has now done a Rajneeti, Wake up Sid, Rockstar and YZHD, which means he is now a established actor in bollywood. For him, the next logical step is to become a bollywood superstar. What better way to do it than do a non-sense pot boiler without a semblance of sense or a script. If Besharam makes money, he becomes the 4th KHAN ,THE superstar and will finally grow out of the tag of the "next" superstar. Unfortunately, even for someone like me who enjoys his Dabang and Rowdy Rathore, Besharam hardly has any redeeming quality about it. It seems like a string of poor jokes and sequences where easy laughs are difficult to come by and any emotional connect is a distant dream with lousy characters, below average music and "mis"direction. It is hard to believe that this is the same director who made Dabangg. Maybe the claim that most khans ghost direct (yes even someone like Salman) is true. 
