Dear Stephie,
We have not been in touch for years. Neither you wished to reach out to me nor did I want to bridge the gap of silence between us. However, the reasons were different for both of us.
We carried the burden of loving the same man.
I had lost him to you and you lost him to eternity. What a cruel joke! Pity, neither you nor me could keep him forever. Yet, we do live on with guilt – I, for hating you for your act of theft and you for having stolen my love treasure.
Ours is not a triangle. Ours is a direct fight between two women, over the rights of one body. And both of us have played out our game of violence over his body.
But if either of us were to be confronted with the fact, we would both deny it.
Was it our love or our egos? Was it our hatred or our gaming minds? Was it our super-ego or our extreme desire to fool ourselves to believe that one of us is greater than the other? Or, was it our fatal desire to prove that one was better than the other? What was it we were trying to establish by playing this game with each other over him?
But what the hell! The right to be ourselves is ours – vile, wicked, malicious, and angry that we are. Yet, we must deceive each other and our own selves and hide our real selves – we are bitches, both of us.
I have chosen to write this letter to you in order to tell you once and for all I despised you for your courage to steal him away from right under my nose. I tried to break you up but was convinced that he wanted to be with you, only when you were around. But, when you were away, out of town, it is me he returned to. Our passion for each other doubled during those times….
Then how can you say, he was yours? And even if he was, you have lost him just as I have, to eternity.
What is over is over. What remains is here and now…. A moment pregnant with the curse of closure.
I want to tell you I have purposely kept away from you, from sending a condolence letter as well when I came to know of his passing away. Who ever condones the death of a whore’s husband?
But, today I need to close the chapter with you too….I need to end this story of hate, not for your sake but for mine. It is purely a selfish reason.
I am pretty certain that if ever you receive this letter, you will in turn say, “Who is Usha?” It will be the same for you as well – selfish, you before me. And that is why I call both of us, bitches. Our egos are bigger than our selves. It has always been so.
I am not sorry for the past, nor for the feelings I havefor you. But I do need to ask permission to close this chapter with you, these pageswe have both written with tears, jealousy, anger and venom for each other. And I hope with that, we will have both, finally moved on, knowing there is nothing more to share between us….
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Memsaab, Usha heard a voice behind her. It was her driver. She turned to look at him.
“The gates will close Madam. You have been sitting here for last two hours”.
Usha gathered herself, bringing herself to the present moment. She stared at the stone walls of the Monkey Point, trying to fix her mind on the face of one stone that resembled a monkey. Yes, she had come here to look for the monkey among the stones, but what she got engaged in was the monkey in her mind. At last she had written the long awaited letter to her ex-husband’s wife.
A deep sigh escaped her mouth as she lifted herself to walk in slow steps towards her car.
“Let’s go”, she said simply, “the gates have closed.”
NB Art By Smriti Vohra
