At the center: there's Rumi, a young boy who grows up in a normal family- yet flinchingly is devoured by the absence of his parents' relationship. Over the years of a silent and lonely family life, he is left inherited with a stack of letters that b...
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"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." - The Great Gatsby, F. Scott. Fitzgerald
When Rustom returned from the lonely funeral, he didn't go home. He went and took over from chotu. Then he went and had a seat at his hard chair, asked the young man with shorts how many customers had come, and how much did they earn, the records of the bills made, the change given back to the customers, and finally for a cup of tea himself.
Nobody could tell whether he had come from a funeral at all. It somehow didn't faze him. He barely knew Charles. He had spoken to him, yes, a handful of times, but that was it. There was nothing more. He went there because some people insisted he go because they had seen them talking; they figured that a friend should visit the final rites of a friend.
In his head, Rustom counted— a customer less.
***
"You were his only friend. So it would be best if you took them. See if they are important."
Before the cafe was being shut for the day before the dark crept and wept throughout, a man in khaki clothes entered the shop, the jeep standing outside, nobody noticing it.
"We checked everything," said the policeman, "even this," he motioned the carton that he'd collected and put it down on one of the tables. "But nothing to be found. Only letters. Lots of papers. From family. You are his friend. Sir thought to give you, as it is closed. You read and see if something for you, or if anything important."
Rustom swallowed dryly, and his lips seemed like he wanted to say something. No friend! He was not my friend. Only a customer! But he let his silence have him.
When the cop left, rigid and tired, starting the engine and drifting off by the turn towards the main road that'd lead to the flyover in Marine Drive, Rustom sighed with loud frustration. He thought that he had left the ghost behind after the funeral, that it was all gone. How can a person still linger after death?
This wasn't his job.
And so, on the way, he contemplated throwing the box away while walking home alone but didn't, out of pity, out of respect for the dead, for the gone.
He took it home and, through the corner of his eye, saw his wife noticing it and twitching her eyebrows in questioning, but walked past her in the hall and entered the semi-room where Rumi was.
Grown. Young. Reading.
"Beta," he walked in, "could you do me a favor?"
The son, obedient, looked up, only then realizing the presence of his father. He perked his chin up, then moved the marbles of his eyes to Rustom's hands and back up to meet the old wrinkled eyes in response.
"These are letters, a few," he suddenly paused, then continued, "from work."
Rumi did not need the hesitance on Rustom's face to know that it was a white lie, the red lie that splayed across those words. He knew well enough that his father had a restaurant that he had come to thousands of times to count (not possible to count on one's fingers). But he took the lies (letters) and gave a very faint smile.
