This is the result of an exercise for my English course in which we read Unaccustomed Earth. The prompt was to write a letter from Hema to Kaushik (or vice versa), set at the moment of Kaushik's death.
I stand here, preparing to marry Navin, but it's you I see in my mind's eye, you I'm thinking of. How ironic — you, the object of my schoolgirl crush, all these years later were my lover. And yet there is no way we could have married. You could make no compromises in your life — no space to adapt to my life, my work; nor to marry me and become my husband, not just a lover. I've moved on, Kaushik. I understand that schoolgirlish whim must sometimes be sublimated to reason. It would have been folly to have abandoned Navin to carry on with you.
Now I can find no photos you've taken these past few days. Although I have no proof, no facts, I am led to wonder if you have, like me, moved on — moved on, as your mother did thirty years ago. This sense of loss, Kaushik — did you feel it then? Or were you too hardy to feel, a rational, pragmatic creature such as I? But pragmatism will not erase my memories, for better or for worse.