Sometimes, she would look at the postage stamps that were crammed into the square or rectangle envelopes she’d receive and imagine the letter writer – sitting at their desk somewhere in the Soviet Union, or perhaps during a lunch break in the fields of Punjab. Or in the ornate halls of Ranakpour, perhaps? Surely Abhimanyu would have heard her songs. What did he think of them? Did he not feel compelled to write in his critique? The one letter she craved never arrived. The listener she wanted to reach remained elusive. She didn’t miss Abhimanyu per se, she told herself every day, just the discussions they had about music. She wanted to know his objective opinion, putting aside everything else they had shared in the past. She was confident of being able to cut out the ugly parts and focus on the platonic aspects of their relationship – that of a singer and a listener. Wasn’t that the essence of what she shared with Abhimanyu anyway? Why couldn’t it be just that? Had their hearts and minds played a trick that made them look for something that wasn’t there? Had she exercised some restraint, she thought, maybe they could have been the best of friends – friends that had deep conversations about music and art. Meera realized that an hour’s worth of unadulterated dialogue about music was far more satisfying to her than a week of recording songs. A thousand fan mails – some even written in blood – praising her talent, were somehow missing the point. She wasn’t convinced that the world was accurately interpreting what she was saying. That somehow, her listeners were not able to fathom the emotions she wanted to convey. She felt that only Abhimanyu would be able to truly understand what was being expressed and hear what was not even said. He would be able to place a finger on the despair in her voice – something she had worked so hard on and dug deep to bring forth. In fact, Meera was sure that Abhimanyu would be able to decipher her own songs and find meaning in them that had escaped her. Why that was the case, she couldn’t tell. Why did his opinion still matter so much to her? Such thoughts kept her from fully enjoying her success.

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