Dear Charlie,

I know it’s rude of me to have not replied to any of your letters. Frankly, I was mesmerised by your candor and doubted if I had any interesting thing to say. Now I realise each one of us has things to say, stories to write, and magic to weave, but we don’t believe in we do. For instance, I don’t have many friends as you do, but people have told me stories they refrain telling to their best friends, because you know we all fear to be judged and hide a part of us from everybody.

I still think about that bibliophile and her struggle with romance. She read voraciously,but, mind you, books don’t fill an empty soul. She was broken, deep down, somewhere—I could see it. Her eyes whispered sadness. She hid it well—she wore glasses. There is something really tragic about broken people.The choices they make, the people they choose to love and the path they travel-all culminate tohurt them.

I liked her, you know, but she shrugged me off. “Atlas Shrugged? I hear that book is dope! But let me finish Shantaram first.”

“Oh yeah, I have to whatsapp you the list of books I have. It totally slipped my mind.”

I didn’t pursue her but I saw other guys did. She just couldn’t let them love her for who she was. She went out with an acquaintance of mine a couple of times. I saw he treated her well, but after a while she cut him off. He was perplexed but, I knew, she craved for heartbreak, not love. She ended up with someone, one who didn’t deserve her. It was her life,her book, and she was the author. She had a flair for drama.

I find it weird that I know a lot about a lot of people who I’m no longer in touchwith. I wonder if they remember telling me things precious to them. I wonder if they remember me at all. It is funny in a way that you can tell your deepest secret to someoneand not think about them, ever again. If I tell someone something I hadn’t told anyone else, I would want to know, years later, if they are doing good, if they remember that there was a day I let them peek into the deepest crevices of my heart. And that day I felt they cared.

The other day, I was ruminating about this friend of mine from college. He was self-righteous and hell-bent arrogant. He wouldn’t give a damn to anybody else but himself. You could talk with him, perhaps be friends with him, but he wouldn’t care. Much of that came from his grandfather whom he revered. His old man was free-spirited yet scholastic, non-conformist yet idealist, esteemed but resorting to profanity at times. He wasbedazzled by his granddad and his larger than life persona, a persona he tried desperately, and succeeded more or less, to emulate.

“He hated politicians. He tagged them ‘motherfuckers’, who ruined Nepal.”

“Yes, yes in Nepali.”

“We had no problem, mom, dad, di, hajurmuwa, we were all cool with it. Who would dare to point a finger him anyway!” He chortled heavily.

When he told me about his grandfather, I could see the sparkle in his eyes. Someday, he would tell me how he was a noted researcher of his time, in zoology or botany—I don’t remember that part very much. He even went to the US as a research fellow; his work apparently received American media’s coverage as well. Being the chauvinist he was,he returned home to Nepal. I could feel it, the friend of mine, was burdened by hisrich heritage. “Dad is as good as Hajurbuwa, he can fix anything and everything, just that he is not an engineer.” Somewhere in his mind, he had decided he would never be as worthy as his grandfather. He lived in the self-created bubble of his own inadequacy.

We humans are ultra-complex. Past haunts us and future eludes us. I think I should have told him, he exuded strong and determined core and if only he could tap on that. I wish someone has told him since then, but again, like his grandfather he wouldn’t listen to people. What a shame! What a waste of a life that could have been.

And you might ask, if I told them my stories, my struggles, my triumphs, my heart-breaks and my joys. I didn’t. People like to share their emotions. You just have to wait for them to get started. They might be apprehensive at first, but even theshyest of the people let it loose when they find a dedicated ear. But listening is a virtue only few possess. I knew early on that I was among the blessed few.

As I write you this piece, I am filled with nothing but gratitude. I havecarried these people and memories for way too long. It pains me that they would never know how I have made friends with them and cherished their memories as my own. We would never meet and discuss over a cup of coffee how much I admired herdiscovering herself through books, how much I miss his grandpa. It still hurts me that he succumbed to cancer not as a warrior but a defeatist.

But maybe they think about me in the dead of the night and remember that exchange of glance when I had gained a peek into their soul.

I read your letters over and over again. For the first time, they made me dive intomyself and, Oh God, I felt so vulnerable. One thing that made me comfortable to write to you is that you have known sadness and I knew instantly, that you’d understand. I am proud of how far you have come and you inspire me to face my demons. It’s scary down here; I wish I could numb it. I do at times, but they return with larger army. Their bellicose rhetoric won’t outlast me, I promise. By the way, I have woven your letters into a beautiful binding. Let us name it, I don’t know, something empowering to people of our tribe. Shy and introverts like us can still live a sweet life, right? Eureka! The Perks of Being a Wallflower!

Best regards,

Niraj