He stared at the envelope that had been placed moments before on his desk by the class monitor. He had been rendered speechless with the realisation that he was one of the few in his class who had actually received the letter. He could feel hushed conversations breaking around him, clearly gossiping about him. He glanced diagonally to see a classmate rip open the similar looking envelope even he had received. A group of boys immediately huddled around, all of them trying to read it together.
A nudge on his left made him turn his face.
"Aren't you going to open it Arnav?" his friend asked, quietly pointing towards the letter sitting innocently on his desk.
Arnav's gazed back at it, as if silently debating what to do with it. He looked at the crowd of eager faces all around him. Then he suddenly got up, grabbed the letter and ran out of the class not stopping till he reached the boys lavatory at the end of the corridor. As he locked himself into one of the cubicles the autosensing light flickered on the ceiling. He closed the lid of the pot and gingerly sat down still clutching the envelope tightly in his hands. After a long moment, he gently ripped one of the edges and eased the paper enclosed within.
With trembling hands he unfolded the light pink paper.
Hello!
This is very strange as I've never done anything like this before. I don't even know if you are going to read this or just dump it in the trash but I really wanted to try this.
If you are reading this, then I'm really glad. It means you have taken your first step towards me :)
I know you must be having a lot of friends and you probably don't need any new ones. But if you feel like talking about something, anything... that you can't talk to your friends, you can share it with me. I don't know if you'll write back, but I hope you will.
-Jalebi
PS- I know we are supposed to refer to each other as the reference numbers they have allotted to us, but those numbers are just so weird. So I've picked an alias for myself.
Arnav Singh Raizada didn't realise when the tears had started flowing down his cherubic cheeks. He wiped them off with the sleeve of his full shirt and then started rereading the letter, not hearing the bell that declared the end of the school day.
***
INDEX
~ Character Sketch ... Page 8 ~
~ Part 1... page 8 ~
~ Part2...page 14 ~
~ Part 7... Page 41 ~ (letter 1)
~ Part 10... Page 65 ~ (letter 2 and 3)
~ Part 11... Page 76 ~ (letter 4)
~ Part 12... Page 80 ~ (letter 5)
~ Part 13... Page 87 ~ (letter 6)
~ Part 14... Page 92 ~ (letter 7 and 8)
~ Part 15... Page 99 ~ (letter 9)
~ Part 16... Page 106 ~ (lots of letters)
~ Part 17... Page 116 ~ (letter 32, 33, 34)
~ Part 18... Page 122 ~ (letter 35, 36)
~ Part 20... Page 132 ~ (letters 37, 38)
~ Part 21... Page 138 ~ (letters 39, 40)
THREAD TWO: https://www.indiaforums.com/forum/topic/4260699
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