Dearest Piyali,

Please, please, please tell me that you have opened this letter and not thrown it away in disgust just by looking at the sender’s name. I have been an idiot, obviously. I hope that by now Mukundo Babu has spoken to you, and you have consented. If not, either he, or you are a fool. Read this letter and go talk to him immediately.

You must forget my last letter. You know how I had gone on and on about what he was to me. What was plain before all our eyes, and what I had missed was, what you are to him, Piyali. You mean the world to him.

“Ah! I was right, Piyali. This girl does have good sense. See how sensibly she writes.”

“Just read…”

There is a lot I had gotten wrong, which I could explain… But I think the best I can do is try and reproduce what happened after your call about Pratibha and Pronab. (I don’t know either of them. But I think they are not as villainous as Mukundo Babu made them to be in the aftermath of your call.)

“Scoundrel!” was the first word he spoke as he disconnected the call. Now, I have to say it is such a charming word. You can hardly feel that the speaker means to be angry. But the intensity of his anger was unmistakable. I almost shuddered and felt for the guy at whom it was directed. “I will give my life for you, Saina,” he said next, taking my breath away, I admit, but I was prepared for the anti-climax, “Because you had once saved her from harm. Even at the cost of your own wounds resurfacing. If I can give my life for someone who saved her, do you think it unfair that I should want to take the life of someone who harms her?”

He stopped as he felt her eyes on him. “Yes. I had said that. And I am not ashamed,” he admitted with a straight face.

“What has happened?” I had to ask. “That idiot her Pishima has brought home. Pronab. He has been leading her on all this time. And now it turns out that he was in Haldia for some other girl altogether. And Pratibha! How could she be a part of this abominable scheme? I would kill them both.”

He stopped here.

“You said that too?”

“I did!” His face was tense.

“Jealousy may not make you murderous. Love does.”

He relaxed immediately on seeing her teasing smile.

“Piyali is in love with… Pronab?” I asked. I have to admit that I was almost on the verge of laughing. I remembered you mentioning your Pishima and his nephew. And there was no way I could believe that you were in love with this Pronab or whosoever. But I dared not laugh. He might have spared Pratibha or Pronab. But he would definitely have killed me, if I had laughed. However, I did dare ask him something. “You love her, don’t you?” His face paled. But he did not deny it. “Then take my advice. Before doing anything else, talk to her. Don’t go on a murder spree.” I had hoped he would laugh. But all my wit could only produce a small smile on his face. “I must leave immediately,” he said. And I did not try to stop him even for formality’s sake.

Piyali. If you are not in love with him, make yourself do it. You can’t regret. I envy you. But trust me, I am heartily ashamed of my last letter. Do me a favor, my friend, burn both these letters and do not exclude me from your wedding invitation. Talk to me as soon as you can. I am too ashamed to call you first. And yes – please don’t tell Mukundo Babu about all this. And if you must feel a need of absolute honesty with him at some point of time, ask him to be so good as to pretend before me that he doesn’t know about any of this.

“Oh, thank God!” he exclaimed, “That she wants me to pretend that I haven’t read these letters. Because honestly, I don’t know how I should have behaved after reading them.”

Piyali giggled.

“So, you believed her first letter? And that’s why you were really jealous, when I came to you in the morning?” he suddenly grew serious.

She nodded gravely.

“So, you had imagined me connected with every possible young woman,” he chuckled, “But not yourself.”

“You can laugh at me. But… you did praise both of them. You kept saying about Saina that she was more mature of the two of us.”

“Yes. And I still stand by it. Could you have written a letter like this?” he indicated towards the second letter.

She shook her head.

“See? But Piyali. I don’t fall in love with a girl the moment I praise something about her.”

“It takes years of correcting and bullying and scaring her?” she raised her eyebrows.

“Well… I can’t deny that. I guess it does…” he smiled.

“Then I don’t have too many rivals.”

“None!”

“Correct me then, if I am being naughty,” she said, buried her head in his chest and planted a kiss there.

He pulled her back. “I think that deserves a punishment and not a correction. But tell me something. Does it need to wait until the wedding?”

“No. I might grow naughtier by then.”

“Very well then.” Her lips were the first to be punished. But nothing else was to be spared either!

– The End –