Betaal’s Love Letter to Vikram. You did not see this coming
Beloved Vikram,
I am reduced to a thing that wants Vikram. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. (Do not call me a plagiarist; I am merely borrowing lines from Vita Sackville-West, for I am no poet.) You must not laugh at me; I know that when I compare my desperation to that of a human it makes no sense. I am no human, I hang from a tamarind tree in the forest near Godavari. I have trademark, ghost-like long white hair. And I have a creepy face that is meant to be scary. Don’t mock my love, oh beloved. Don’t go to that bitchy little wife of yours and say, look at this creep, he lives a life of denial.
But ask yourself, oh master, am I really the one living in denial? You may say that whatever happened that night in the jungle was not love, it was at best, a crime of passion. The crime bit hurt. More than the amount of physical hurt I felt first day we had coitus. You wanted to experiment, I wanted to experiment. You could say that this is not your regular thing. You do not want to get involved in practices that should not be named. But I will name them. I will. We indulged in necrophilia and it was good! More than good, it was awesome. In a fit of passion you told me this was your true calling. You wanted this to happen like you have never wanted anything ever. That dull human wife of yours can’t even give you a boner, you told me. So then why can’t we be together? Why do you have to share your bed with a being that eats and poops, snores and farts? When that is not what you want from life? And it wasn’t just the one time, was it? O brave king! We did it continuously for the last fifteen days of togetherness. We did it 238 times. (Yes, I am loser, I kept count. But this was a special time of my endlessly dead life in this jungle, on this tree, where I have been hanging upside down for centuries.) Then what was that, if not love? You are fooling yourself by saying that it was just lust. That my dead, dried up, all white corpse seemed to rush the blood flow to all the right areas. That it was mere excitement, which is only natural. When dead flesh rubs against the alive one, sparks do happen. But they don’t, my Vikramaditya.
It is no joke, dear loved one. It just can’t be physical attraction. Can it be? Tell me you don’t remember the stroking of my bony fingers against your hairy chest? Tell me you did not like removing the strands of hair that would cover my pretty dead face? Tell me you did not steal your wife’s lipstick for me to “bring some colour in my life?” Tell me if you did not enjoy the touch of my cold body against your warm one? Tell me you did not feel the heat!
What law is this that keeps us lovers apart? Savitri, that irritating hag, went to Yamaraja to bring her husband, Satyavan (wonder what kind of a ridiculous name this is) back. You can’t even come to the forest? Leave your wife, what good is she, if she can’t even fulfill your most basic, most animal-like dreams? Leave her, and leave your kingdom, that is what you want. That day, slightly high on the good weed I had scored for us from the neighbouring forest pimp, as we sat on the banks of Godavari, listening to the soothing noises the river made, you told me you wanted to renounce your throne. That you were done with this material life, had you not, Swami? Then why won’t you leave all that. Just do it. And come to me. I will cook for you, we can hunt together, and sometimes even haunt together. It is so much fun here, in the open. These humans are easily spooked, that is why I fell for you, my brave king. Arjuna is nothing in front of you. You are the bravest. It takes immense amount of courage to see love in the eyes of a dead corpse. But you did. You are special to me. And I know I am special to you too. Just leave everything and come, meet me. I won’t bore you with another moralistic riddle. I swear. I know you couldn’t crack the last one and that has upset you. I am such a sourpuss for asking you pointless questions. That won’t happen again.
Come to me once, leaving behind the material world. Or call me there to join yours. Embrace me openly. Come out of the closet already! I miss you a lot, oh loved one. I love you. Yes, I said it. And I am not ashamed of saying it again. I. Love. You. And I know you love me too. I am ending this letter now. I have to; I am running out of blood to write. Don’t get creeped out. It’s not my blood, obviously. Lol. I found this fresh corpse in the jungle and thought I’d use his blood for effect. Most lovers sign their letters with blood, I wrote the entire letter with it. Just for you. Just to tell you that there is another corpse lying in the jungle. And to let you know that I am open to the idea of a threesome now, I won’t get jealous like last time.
I want to spend this eternity with you, Vikram.
Please come.
Yours and only yours,
(Whiter and handsomer than Edward Cullen, that bitch)
Betaal