A Letter Changed The Life

The wake-up letter

Sowjanya was struggling hard to open her eyes. She worked late all week, being a weekend partied the night before. She planned to sleep till brunch and told Naren not to disturb her. But for some reason, Naren started to wake her up.

After a few minutes, she could not any longer ignore him and woke up and asked, "Who died?" in a loud voice.

"No one died", replied a confused Naren.

"Don't conclude yet. I will kill you if there is no good reason to wake me up", replied Sowjanya.

"Read this letter. It is more than a good reason to wake you up", said Naren.

Sowjanya started reading the letter. It felt like a love letter a girl wrote to a guy. It concluded by saying, "If you don't come today, I will commit suicide."

After reading the letter, Sowjanya said, "Honey, can you bring me a knife."

"Hold-on, I know you will get angry when a girl wrote a love letter to me. But I am not going to leave you ever.", said Naren.

"Wait, I did not ask knife for that. I asked knife because you woke me up for this."

"This is a big thing. How can you be so calm?"

"Don't worry, that girl won't commit suicide," replied Sowjanya. And spoke in a low voice, "If anything, she will commit suicide after seeing you now."

"I am not worried about that. You said no girl would love me. Specifically when I was not earning."

"What has that got to do with this?"

"This letter came from one of my college mates. She never met me after college. So, she does not know I am rich."

"So, what?"

"Are you asking, so, what? It means you are not going to make fun of me."

"Wait, let me see the letter again."

After going through the letter again, she looked hard at her husband.

Naren asked, "What?"

"Do you think I am stupid?"

Not getting what Sowjanya meant, Naren said, "Tell me, what is it?"

"This letter has no from address. By the way, who writes letters in this day and age?"

"Yeah, I did not realize."

"Don't act all innocent. I know you wrote this letter to yourself and playing games."

"I am not that desperate. Let me prove to you this is true."

"How are you planning to do that?"

"No idea", replied Naren.

"I have one way," said Sowjanya.

"What is it?"

"Go out to the letterbox. Put the white powder we got, then pick for fingerprints."

"That is a good idea. But, who will we match it with?"

"You!" laughing out loud, replied Sowjanya.

Naren looked back at her with anger.

Ignore Naren, she pulled the covers up to go back to sleep.

Naren suddenly shouted, "Eureka, I got an idea."

"Whatever the idea is, go and do it far away from me", said an irritated Sowjanya.

An idea changes your life.

Naren started implementing his idea. As a first step, he unmuted the college group in WhatsApp after a long time. Next, he erased 2,000 plus Good morning, happy birthday, and happy new year messages.

Then jumped to action on the plan.

"Hi, all."

Hi, hi, hi, came 18 messages. Seeing so many replies, Naren was happy. Before he could take the next step in his quest, a separate conversation started.

"What are you making today, Madan?"

"Today, I am making Veg. Manchurian and Rotis" came the reply from Rajesh.

"I am making Gobi Manchurian and Butter Phulkas", added Ravindra.

Only men are replying, and all are talking about cooking. Naren started to doubt whether his plan was going to succeed or not.

"Can you give the recipe, Ravindra?" asked Madhavi.

A woman in the group replying gave some hope to Naren.

"Last time with your recipe, my husband made a wonderful khichdi", added Madhavi.

"Happy to be of help", said Ravindra and shared the link to his food blog.

Without wasting any further time, Naren got to his point.

"Do we have a Priya in our college?" typed a question in the group and started to wait eagerly. Priya was the name written on the letter. So, he decided to find all Priya's in the college and try to speak to her.

The notification on the group showed, "Madhavi, typing" for a long time. 

A few minutes went by, but there was no response. Now the notification showed multiple people typing. He was hoping for someone to say something. But nothing was coming forth.

While waiting, Naren tried to recollect who was Priya. The only Priya he could remember was the 70-year-old English teacher. 

"Is it true what my wife says? No girl would have fallen in love with me?"  a doubt started to creep in him. But he wiped off that thought quickly from his mind. 

That was when the group finally received a message.

"I went through all the recipes could not find the Gobi Manchurian anywhere." messaged Madhavi.

Angered, he wanted to throw the phone to the floor. He stopped himself and decided to wait. 

The message he waited for was received, finally. But only after Ravindra shared the recipe and a few more people shared some stupid jokes.

"Yeah, we have three Priya's in our college", replied Naveen.

He was happy to get the reply. But, he hated Naveen all through college. But he decided not to let it come between him and his new life. He picked up the phone and called Naveen.

"Hi, Naveen."

"Who is this?" asked Naveen.

"Me, Naren. Your classmate in college", replied Naren.

"You? The cheater, who got the gold medal. I was supposed to get the gold medal."

Naren kept quiet as he needed Naveen's help.

"That lab assistant just liked you more and gave you more marks than me.

There were 80 more marks, even if I discount that thought to himself, Naren. 

Naveen went on for another 5 minutes about how he lost everything because of that. 

Not being able to bear any more of the rant, Naren asked the question he wanted to ask, "How do you know we have three Priyas in college?"

"You don't know even this, and you are a gold medalist?" asked Naveen.

"Please tell me."

"It is in the alumni database", replied Naveen.

Before he said any more words, Naren disconnected the call. He opened his laptop and logged into the alumni website in the quest for Priya.

Naveen was right, there were three Priyas listed on the website. He noted the emails and searched for them on all social media sites.

He got the first Priya on FB. Excited, he clicked on the profile. The profile photo had a nice profile picture. He wanted to have a close look, but to his bad time, her profile was locked. He sent a friend request and waited.

Meanwhile, he continued searching for the next Priya. He found her on Twitter. 

He found a link to a picture that had two beautiful looking women. He prayed to god that one of them should be the Priya who wrote him the letter. Then he read the comment on the tweet.

"The world can do what it wants, we are a couple. We both can be husband to other or wife to other. Who cares?"

Naren thought, "If they decide to go to the beach, who will be on the shore watching the shoes?". 

He decided to let them worry about that and continued his search. He found the last Priya on Instagram. He clicked open the link, and he was shocked. He took his laptop and ran to his wife. He need not have to wake her up, as she was up already. 

"Why are you running?"

"See this", said Naren pointing to the laptop.

Sowjanya could not believe his eyes. The whole page had candid pictures of Naren, with a girl standing far away looking at Naren. All had similar quotes, "Love of my life".

"Come on, how desperate are you?" Sowjanya asked Naren.

"What do you mean?"

"Before I woke up, you created a fake page also?"

"I did not. You know very well that I don't know to use IG and all. Even your father made fun of me the other day."

"Yeah, you are right."

"That is what I am trying to tell. Priya is real."

"Let me check with my brother who is this Priya."

"Before you make that phone call let us make a deal. If Priya exists, you should not make fun of me anymore."

"Okay."

"That is not all. You should cook dinner three times a week."

"No, one time a week."

"Okay, two times a week."

"Now, my conditions. If Priya does not exist or she did not write a love letter to you, then you give you go shopping with me every week."

"Please, not every week. Let it be twice in a month."

"So, you don't believe she exists. You wrote this letter to yourself."

"Deal, shopping every week."

"I have one more condition. That I will tell afterwards."

"Tell me now."

"You know you are winning, then why worry?"

"Okay, deal."

Life changed

"I told you not to hurry and spoil the food. Are you stupid?" asked Sowjanya's mother.

"Mom, I am in a hurry", shouted Sowjanya.

"Be patient a little. You only wanted me to teach the recipe. Now, why the hurry?"

"Please, mom, he can learn it tomorrow. Now he has to take me shopping."

"Ten more minutes", replied Sowjanya's mother. The turned to Naren and said, "Now, the smell is good. You can stop the stove."

Naren packed the food in the hot pack and came out of the kitchen. 

"Please get ready quickly. We have to go shopping", said Sowjanya.

After a half-an-hour, they reached the shopping centre. After parking and walking into the shopping complex, they saw brother-in-law's family. Naren and his brother-in-law nodded at each other. The women thought they were saying "Hi" to each other. 

What they meant was, "God only save us".

After the women were busy lost in shopping, the men started chatting.

"I am sorry", said the brother-in-law.

"Sorry, it is not going to help."

"Hmm!!"

"I am happy that you also got a punishment for your mean trick."

"I told you hundred times. I sent that letter before your marriage to my sister. "

"I never looked into that old letterbox ever. I was bored that day and opened it."

"I am the stupid one. I created an IG page for that girl."

"But, why?"

"Otherwise, I thought you don't trust the letter."

"I am the bigger stupid. I trusted the letter so much that I agreed to all conditions without even listening to them."

"So, the cooking classes from mother are really bad?"

"Now, I understand why so many maids left the job at your house", said a dejected Naren.

Sowjanya walked to Naren and handed him a few more bags. Then she asked him to get up, and took the wallet out of his pocket and walked away with the credit card.