The Letter-Box

I ask a young man whom I have often seen standing here, 'Hadn't they shifted this letter-box from here?'

'Oh, this letter-box!' the young man gives the red pillar a surprised look. 'I'm seeing it for the first time.'

It is amazing how people overlook things as if they just didn't exist. Only this morning a man who lives next door said to me, 'Have I seen you before?' and just think of it, I have been living in the house next to his for the past several years. I thought I must be something invisible. Maybe a letter-box. I won't be surprised if a woman, a child or a man walked past me and taking me for a letter-box dropped a letter in my pocket.

In my younger days I used to surreptitiously read my elder brother's letter. I wondered how he had come to know about it for no one had ever seen me reading his letter. In the same manner the girl living in my neighborhood had come to know that I owned only three shirts,a blue shirt, a yellow one and a white one. And I had never worn these shirts together at the same time!

The letter-box's red color hits me in the eye. I never wore a red-colored garment. My mother sometimes wore a red sari but my grandmother invariably wore white dresses. I would often ask myself, didn't old women have red saris? One day I had opened my grandmother's box and examined its contents. It contained nothing but white clothes. White clothes look so pure. It is a marvel how people preserved purity in those days. They kept it locked in a box.

One day I found all the locks of our boxes in the house open. All the boxes had been swept clean. Along with other things those people had also stolen my grandmother's purity.

That girl wore skirts of variegated colors. I feared that one day the rising wind would lift up her skirt like my grandfather's upturned umbrella. We had only one umbrella in the house. My grandfather also used it as a walking stick and never went out without it. It was a constant wonder to me that he never forgot the umbrella behind. And lo and behold, one day he forgot to take the umbrella with him and never returned. By and by I learnt that he had forgotten many other things of his behind. For instance, his pair of glasses, some silver coins and rings which were lying locked in granny's box in a halo of purity.

After that theft in our house grandfather's pair of glasses were found lying in the lane. It completely beat me how that pair of glasses had managed to slip out of granny's box and walked down into the lane. I walked through the other lanes, with my eyes glued to the ground, hoping that I may yet be able to retrieve his other articles such as the silver coins and rings which might have walked out of our house and might be lying in some lane or the other. Even now when I return home I come with a feeling as if the tables and the chairs have put on feet in my absence. I find them lying near the door, as if looking for an opportunity to slip out of the house.

I wonder why a letter-box is always red. Father's eyes remained bloodshot most of the time. On seeing the red light at the road-crossings I am often reminded of his eyes. Sometimes I ran into him on the road and I would find it difficult to get away form him.

That girl was fond of red roses. She often reeled off the names of flowers, leaving me wondering whether flowers really had any names.

The boy standing by my side has no pockets. It's really an enigma to me. If he buys a thing where will he produce the money from? My mother and aunt used to keep their money somewhere in their clothes, securely tied up in knots. Every woman has a knot and she opens up only if one unties that knot. I had seen the statue of a woman half of whose body was bare and the other half covered with a sheet of cloth, having no knot in it. It seemed the sheet of cloth may rip open any moment and slip down from her body, rendering her naked, for that woman had no hands to keep the sheet from falling and exposing her body.

I had seen this statue of Venus in the house of that girl who wore skirts. At that time I was innocent of this knotty business. It was the girl's father's conjecture that the armless statue, when her arms were intact, must have been holding apples. But why apples, why not mangoes? According to a story I had heard from granny, a queen who had remained childless had given birth to a child after eating a mango. I thought my mother must have eaten a huge lot of mangoes. Whenever a chid was born in our house we would find mango and rosewood leaves strewn across our threshold.

I remember mother used to put heavy locks on all the almirahs in our house and it was a wonder to me how such small keys could open such big locks. I often tried to search those keys but could never lay my hands on them.

And then I suddenly realized that I had found the key. It made me happy to think that after living in the city for a long time I was for once remembering that house and the mango and the rosewood leaves.

I decided that the first thing I would on reaching home would be to mention them in a letter to father.

But it is quite possible that tomorrow when I go out to post that letter I may find that this letter-box has walked away and is standing right in the middle of the road surrounded by a crowd. Or it could be a man in place of the letter-box, drenched in blood, and a few blood-smeared letters peeping from his pocket, revealing his identity.

Brajeshwar Madaan is a short story/feature writer for Hindi magazines.