One of the one percent in 13 million.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Management and Economics assistant professor Richa Chaudhary only recently became a writer. “I started writing when I started being in deep pain,” she says, here at her flat in SG Homes, a Delhi region housing complex she shares with school-going daughter Ramanika. “My husband was diagnosed with cancer. I was scared. So I started writing e-mails to myself. The subject heading was always “me my soul talk.””

She had married Anurodh, a businessman, 22 years ago in their hometown Allahabad. It followed an eight-year-old courtship that began in the city’s university campus. He died last month. One recent evening, early this month, after returning from the college where she teaches, she settled down in her bedroom and wrote this poem.

“How could I lose you
So it is
As they say, but I still talk to you
Feel you, listen to you
We still live in each other, dream together, dance and sing together
But all say you are gone
But I know you can never go
How could you, as you will never
Go away leaving me,
As I and you are one soul
So, why do they say so
Let’s now define our love again to us
Beyond dimensions known to all
In all boundaries of life and world
We are always together in all known spaces of universe
Always holding hands and soul together
Singing our own tunes of rhythmic bliss
In our own sweet world
So, let all say what they say
Let me believe this, you and me are always together
In love and life
In health and sickness
In happiness and sadness
Forever my love.”

The Sunday that just went by was her wedding anniversary. That afternoon, she drove to a mall, to her husband’s favroite restaurant, with daughter and close relatives. They had “dahi kebab, chicken malai tikka, Pooran Singh ka tari wala chicken, and garlic nan.” These were his most beloved dishes. After returning home, she settled down in her bedroom and wrote this poem.

“Maybe you hear me, feel me and talk to me
But you know I hear you, feel you and talk to you
Conversations now are deeper
Soaked in my tears of love
I have you always in me
Smiling, laughing, conversing
So I will celebrate and live each day as you want me to
With you
Learning to smile again
With all broken from inside
Filled with only tears and despair
I will learn to smile again
Live again
Be again me
Stand tall to face all
With full strength and dignity
Proud of having you in my existence
In all moments of life and love
So Happy Anniversary to Us Again
Let’s feel together all moments of bliss
Forever.”

On her recent evolution as a writer, the assistant professor reveals that “in this painful journey of writing, I started to discover myself, and fell in love with my husband once again.”

[This is the 519th portrait of Mission Delhi project]