CHAPTER 23 - Emails of Love and Longing

Love, Loss, Loneliness and Longing, part 7

*Emails of Love and Longing

I used my newly-opened Hotmail account to send emails to my obsession Una Artoran. I used to every so often drop in a line or two to Una before going home, but later my emails to her rose to the count of at least two per day. Every day, before logging off, I wrote to Una without fail. I pounded on my keyboard and wrote lengthy emails for her to read and enjoy. After office hours I had all the time in the world and I loved writing whatever came to mind and whatever my heart had approved. (I had been a regular little literary snob just like anyone who is passionate about literature and books and warm tea/coffee). Una cast her beautiful eyes on my prolific emails and read them with much keenness – that was enough for me to know to keep writing to her. I’d afterward call her and talk to her about what I had to say about a specific thing or something she preferred. For us, our developing relationship mattered more than anything else; perhaps, with the sole exception of my emails making her day and mine alike.

Those days, I had a kind of dedicated approach towards writing and literature, books, and soirees; I still am committed, however, I feel that old spark is somehow missing. I have a passion for books and writing gives me some solace from the maddening world I live in. In my writings, I confess, every single detail is left to suggestion; I describe a lot almost to the point of overdoing it, trying too hard to please, use long-winding sentences, words that are ordinarily not used or found on the daily lexicon of a person – all of them find a berth in the much-harried pages of my stories! And as a result of that, I have suffered deep pangs of guilty-pleasure generating from my natural inclination towards writing so many words that suffer from what I call deep claustrophobia. I never think of taking into account whether or not the person I am writing to really does have the time and inclination to read, much less peruse, my laborious stuff.

Many a time and oft I used to feel sissy about the whole thing and abandon my curious, stuffy enterprise. But yet, you know, I preferred writing globe-swallowing stories no matter whether or not I stopped in my tracks and listened to a better opinion or two on how to do it the way it is meant to be done. To disengage from the vocation, I am indulging in will never be on my To-Do list. Not yet. I am not done yet! As far as writing emails to Una was concerned, I didn’t know when to stop my rambling, self-conscious prose and so I never did. I loved writing to her as much as she did reading it. Of all things that matter, writing straight from the heart was important. It is a time of plenty; blogging, tweeting, and SMS-ing are just a part of the big picture. And I am bumbling with fantastic enthusiasm and energy to write, write and write, and hopefully, get read.

[Note: Getting someone to read your stuff (or anything at all) is a monstrous challenge, almost to the size of an untamed Dinosaur! I mean you can get some people to see a T-Rex in a man-made Jurassic-era-like park, but to tell them to also read the swashbuckling Michael Crichton novel on which the film Jurassic Park is based is like committing hara-kiri...! I prefer being eaten by a Dinosaur then! Problem solved! they seem to say. In a day and age when people have no doubtless and less time available to them, they have inadvertently become more and more adept at some kind of self-effacing tactics (maybe at no fault of theirs) - preferring instead the cushy pads of cell phones and getting stuck in traffic jams, and watching TV. The universal excuse is: We scarcely get time to read a book or two. I say it is just not done.]

A lifesaver was my sweetheart Una who always got very anxious if the daily treat of my thesis-like emails didn’t reach her inbox. She never could think of giving them a miss, come hell or high water. That demonstration of love was not only inspirational but beyond doubt a sure blessing for me. So I kept up the tempo of my seriously indulgent writing as it is.

I distinctly recall once when she had attended an official luncheon at Ramada Hotel. Monami Roy and Padmashri Raoh also were invitees there.

Chaar Saheliyan, Chaar Paheliyan

All throughout the day in my office, a torrent of apprehensions kept beleaguering me even as I had wanted to hear her voice just once over the phone and my day would have been made. Back in 1998, there were no mobile phones and so immediately calling her up was beyond question. I remember, I sat displeased in my office cubicle on the 5th floor of Tesser Towers and was getting deeply anxious and edgy about her promised phone call. 

At last, post-lunch Una called on my office no. and I got talking to her. Great feelings of gratification had assailed me by from head to toe. By now I had known her intimately. Accustomed feelings of love and longing filled our pleading, embracing hearts. She teased me at first and narrated on the fabulous spread of Chinese, Indian and Mediterranean dishes: Chicken Manchuria, American Chopsuey (one of her favourites, so it automatically becomes my favourite too), Greek Salad, Butter Chicken, Chicken Tikka Masala, etc. - with the usual salvers of Dal Makhni, Tomato Rasam, and Tamarind Rice. We planned for a visit there sometime, but we never made it.

In the following week, she called me to say she’s heading off to a pub with her office co-workers. Somebody wanted to give a treat, apparently and that’s why the rush I thought. The same night when she called back to say that she’s safely back home and propped on the sofa watching the movie The Marrying Man on the cable television she sounded a little drunk on the phone, and for the first time in our relationship, the ‘three magic words’ were exchanged.

Now, let the truth be told and being straightforward is nice, anything to do with Chicken usually revs up my craving and this incidentally had had me yelping away at Una and Monami when they called me from the restaurant on my office phone, and I gurgled: “Baar aarahi hai mu main…!” (My mouth is flooded!) The Hindi slang bemused them like crazy and a fit of super-duper girly chuckling stormed my ears and in consequence of that, it led me to double-up in laughter too in my office cabin, with Savitha sitting inches away! (I couldn’t help but give a sideways glance at our very own omnivorous cicada called Savitha Tandavi, who sat cross-legged, in a ram-rod stiff position, in the chair behind me breaking her heads off on the computer, turned a beetroot red (her trademark peculiarity) in her notoriously big bat-like ears! I sensed that she was getting unstoppably scandalous and like an enthu cutlet continued snooping on my lovey-dovey telephonic conversation with Una and Monami).

Nevertheless, I felt so acutely funny of myself and wet behind the ears: you know the inexperience of a baby, so recently born as to be still wet! Duh…!

I wrote to Una about plenty of things - my bike, breakfast, English flicks, friends, books, restaurants, actors, Hindi movies, and even office people. She nostalgically talked about Himachal Pradesh - her native, her love of pastel-hued salwar kameezes, chiffon sarees, coffee breaks, office people, long-drives, and plenty other things. Once when the Patrick Swayze film Dirty Dancing was shown at Sangeet, she went to see it escorting her office buddy Padmashree Raoh, who later became my friend too. Una loved my signature style ‘byee’. I generally specified that toward the end of each email I wrote to her.

I realized that I was in the sort of first-class company of groupie girls nicknamed Chaar Saheliyan, Chaar Paheliyan! From the gang of four like-minded young ladies such as Monami Roy and Savitha Tandavi, I had befriended by virtue of my courtship with Una Artoran, Padmashri Raoh was the last one to become friends with me, Arinvan Maliek. Una introduced me to Padmashri at her birthday party which was being celebrated at a small dhaba-like jaunt located somewhere near YMCA; the venue was not far away from their office on SD Road. I remember I had gate-crashed into Una’s all-girls birthday party; I didn’t intend to but I had gifts to be given to Una and I wanted to give them on the day of her birthday, that is on 10th December, and then drive away to my office on Raj Bhavan Road. How could I miss her birthday! I wouldn’t! Two days prior, I had gone to Walden bookstore and bought two paperback novels for her: The Diary of Anne Frank (by Anne Frank) and No Greater Love (by Danielle Steel) and fervently wished that she would read them. That’s why I dashed in to gift her the presents.

A few days before, I drove with Una all the way to the south of the city to attend our alma mater’s convocation conducted at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. The auditorium was crammed with students, ex-students, coordinators, administrators, parents, and other folks. We went onto the stage shook hands with Dr. Sugata Mitra, a renowned Physicist, and received our convocation certificates from him.

END OF PART 7 OF ‘LOVE, LOSS, LONELINESS AND LONGING, part 7’

(To be continued...)

By Arindam Moulick

*Note: The above story Chapter 23 – Emails of Love and Longing is reproduced here verbatim from the original story titled "The Memory of Love, a short story" (web link: http://arindammoulick.blogspot.in/2011/07/memory-of-love-short-story.html) published here in my blog Pebbles On The Beach. "The Memory of Love, a short story" was written in the year 2011 with different character names (but same storyline) is finding its way here as part of the chapter-wise presentation of my memoir "Lost Days of Glory, a Memoir". I have merely changed the character names of the original story with new names and additionally made some small changes (basically some words/sentences are put in a different way) in the overall narrative to suit the present storyline titled under “Chapter 23 – Emails of Love and Longing”. This is for the reader’s information only.

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. All incidences, places, and characters portrayed in the story are fictional and entirely imaginary. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. No similarity to any person either living or dead is intended or should be inferred.