Dear Mr. Watson,

You may not know who I am. But I know you very well. I have read all your blogs and all the little adventures that you have shared with Sherlock Holmes. I know all about you, you know. I know for a fact that you were Sherlock Holmes' flat mate. I know you considered him your best friend. I know you had a limp which magically disappeared after you met Sherlock Holmes and started on an adventurous journey. I know you were a military doctor who assisted Sherlock not just in his cases, but also in making him a better person, a better human being. And I also know that it was you who went grocery shopping, and never Sherlock. I know.

Now you may ask me how I know all these things. Well, Sherlock Holmes lived with me and my mother for a few months. For you and Ms. Hooper and Mrs Hudson and Mr. Lestrade and countless others, he died on 17 August 2010. But in reality, he was alive till 13 January 2011. Battling cancer. He knew that if he stayed with you for his remaining few months, he would be coddled, pitied and stopped from working. But more than that, he knew that he would do nothing but cause more pain, especially to you.

You must still be wondering how I know all this. It's because, inspired by you, Sherlock Holmes wrote something like a blog. He wrote in a diary. His five months with us were spent in getting to know me better and though I don't remember much (I was barely 8 years old then), I do recall hours under the sun and in the lab with a magnifying glass in hand, with him trying to explain to a completely clueless 8 year old the difference between two tobacco powders. The remaining hours of his time with us were spent behaving like an asshole, and shutting himself up in his room. It was only after he died and I chanced upon his diary so many years after his death that I realized what he really did closed in his room.

Now 10 years down the line, a lot of things have changed. I am 18 years old, and my mother confessed on my 18th birthday that Sherlock is my father. Please don't be shocked and hurt, Mr. Watson. Sherlock did not tell this to anyone, not even his own brother Mycroft, for fear that someone might know and our lives would be put in danger. And though I regret knowing it so late, I know what he did was in his own way the best thing he could do to protect us.

Sherlock met my mother when he was in hiding, dead for the whole world, and alive for only a few. I do not know under what circumstances they came together, because my mother will not talk of them, but I think it was the pressures of her then chosen profession and his impending loneliness and guilt of staying away from you that somehow brought them together. I guess my mother understood the reason for him not spending any time with us after his return from the dead. My only regret is that I was never given a chance to call him 'dad.'

I must tell you one thing, Mr. Watson. Sherlock, my dad, wrote a lot about you in his diary. I must say he's much better when it comes to expressing what he feels, and less of an asshole if he's writing rather than when he's speaking. He held you in high regard, Mr. Watson. I'm sending you a photocopy of his diary. You must forgive me for not sending you the original - it is the only souvenir I have of Sherlock Holmes, my father. Though I must quote one sentence from his diary for you -

"...whatever I say to him... John Watson has been the best friend I have known. Rather, the only friend I have known. It is from him that I've learnt how utterly incompetent I am when it comes to dealing with people and how utterly incomplete I would have been...had I not met John."

Mr. Watson, it was from this diary that I came to know how I have got the name that I now carry. My mother said that my father named me. It is just another proof of how important someone was to him.

I would love to meet you, Uncle John, if I may call you that. Thank you for being such a wonderful person in my father's life. He was a much happier person because of you.

Love and regards,

Hamish Sherlock Holmes.