Arohan - The Ascent

A Vision From the Future

Urvashi had been living a very uneventful life in Padrauna. And she enjoyed every bit of her mundane existence. It kept just just busy enough to forget every turmoil in her life and live each moment as if it were her very last.

Her routine started very early in the morning at around 5:00 am. She woke up, played some soothing instrumental music on her Spotify account and practised some yoga and breathing. She then when t through her lesson plan and prepped for the curriculum that she would teach at school.

She had been assured the middle sections, like 5, 6, 7 and she taught them Social and English.Their curriculum was quite intensive and required her to prepare well. Although she had the experience of having taught in the previous year, she did not want to sound lost for answers when the students asked her questions either.

So she dedicated the morning hours to prep work.

By 7:00 am she went to have bath. Draped a crisp cotton saree impeccable held in place by an army of safety pins. She tied her hair up in a French knot and had a huge , brightly coloured cotton bag, in which she carried all her prep work and sometimes a few homework copies for corrections as well. She would reach the school premises by 8:00 om and the children would start coming in from 8:30 am right up until 9:00 am.

Once the bell for the first call went off, the day just passed in such quick succession of classes, lunch breaks and classes gain, that Urvashi would have no time to even get herself a sip of water in between session. Sometimes, actually on most days, she stood for hours and by the end of the day, when she could sit back in her chair, it felt like the most luxurious thing a person could ask for.

There was one more reason Urvashi threw herself into the rigours of work. So that it could help her forget the letter, that came every once in a while from an unknown address. They would always be unsigned and without a "from" address.

They would be addressed her to always with a"Madam Ji"

She knew who sent these letter and she knew too why he sent them to him. But there was nothing in the letters to suggest that he remotely even wanted to harm her in any way.

Forget harming, the letters almost always held just one kind of message in them. They were at attempt to tell her, that he was living the life of honesty and that he had not given up on the dream she had set for him. Every once in awhile, they attempted to ask her to respond, but he could somehow, never get himself to ask the question directly. He would always say something like, "madam ji..." and just leave the rest of it unsaid.

But she could still understand . She could understand what he wanted to ask, but dared not, had  no face to ask. 

What disturbed Urvashi the most was how much the letter affected her. She would reads the letter and throw it away immediately. The letter would keep floating around the house unattended for some days and then unable to bear the sight of it, she would just shove into a folder. Over the months, the folder held 6 letters and they showed no signs of stopping.

Urvashi knew that in the age of Social media, all he needed to do was stalk her on any of the social media sites. So she deactivated all her social media. he did not even have her email account. And she knew pandit would definitely not give him that, without first asking her.

When Urvashi returned back into her home every evening, at dusk , as she settled down into her small sofa, trying to watch something on the TV, all her mind did was wander to thoughts of him, writing those letters to her, wherever he was. How close or far must he be, she fought herself wondering. Would he says the words out loud as he wrote those letter to her, would hectare out into nothing as he tried to fulfil his feelings down into words?