Letter : A youth’s love letter to a songstress

Youth’s love letter to a songstress

Dear Miss Maria,

If I tell you who I am, you would simply laugh away and would not pay any serious attention to this note. Sweet Songstress, it is yet time that you take life seriously. You are beautiful, charming and young and to crown all, your sweet notes attract a huge crowd. Your reputation as a singer is far and wide. It surprised me to learn and see so huge a crowd of admirers. I was one of them. I was on a short visit to Karachi. My local friends, who also admire you, talked very high of you. They were short of vocabulary in praise of your charming personality, your melodious voice and your hospitality to your visitors — one and all — rich or poor alike. Furthermore, they told me you were highly educated. Curiosity had the better part of valour and I decided to visit you. Whereas I had said a definite ‘no’ to my friends, I had already made a call much earlier than your usual hours. I was prepared to pay for an exclusive sitting. I was more anxious to meet you rather than hear you. But no temptation could induce your servant to admit me. He had just one word to all my allurements. “Please come at 9 p.m. and you would fine me absent. The gates are then open and everybody is welcome”. Instead of any annoyance, this intensified my curiosity and anxiety more. And then, I was the first to come and last to go. I saw you. I sat enchanted. I doubt If I have seen a more beautiful girl than you. You were a beauty exquisite. Let me not eulogize melodies. You had a lot of appreciation. Probably you do not need more.

But one factor surprised me. I had an approximate count of your collections that night. I really wondered why your servant refused to get me an exclusive interview, when I had offered him more than double that collection as your fee for just that exclusive sitting. I came the next day and once again argued with the servant. His reply was just the same. He I’d not even budge an inch to carry you a message. His mere repetition was “It is a principle with her and that finishes”. So I am left with no other alternative but this note.

I am back to Lahore and now venture to write you this note. May be you might be getting thousand and one such letters from your fans and admirers. But mine is a serious note and I appeal to your educated sense to give it a serious reading, a serious consideration and a serious application of your mind.

You may take your time to reply it. May be you may not care to reply it, yet decent as you are, I would expect a reply, be it any words. This would keep me off the suspense. You are extraordinarily beautiful. There is no say about it. Probably there may be no equal even. You are educated. I have heard it. What is your education nobody has told me of it.

You are making money and squandering it too. So I say, you are not rich. But have you thought out seriously that your beauty is a temporary phase. Ere long, you will lose your charm. Your admirers, the admirers of your youth and voice, will find interest so long as your youthful beauty is there, otherwise they may not come for you. I have learnt you have no bank balance. What, is to become of your old age? In my case, I am educated, rather highly qualified, beyond your imagination even. That I am young and good-looking, of that too I am confident. Along with it, I have money, enough to give you a decent princely living, though I may not have a lot to squander.

It was an internal urge, it was to satisfy a curiosity that brought me to your house otherwise I have no liking for songstresses, their songs or even cinema. It never means that I am cynic. Of that, to be sure, I am not. I am a bachelor but not a vagabond type. I have my limitations and live within these. I don not smoke or drink.

Now, without much ado, I give you a proposal. I want you to be my life companion. To be candid, I know there is no dearth of girls for me. Many a society girl claiming to be from high and blue blood, I have met at the club, where I go just occasionally to while some time and then equally to know the society and its setting. But somehow, none has appealed me. They love my money more than me.

For you I have developed a liking. It was a choice before seeing you even. Some inner voice guided me to this choice. In you I would kill two birds in one stroke. You have a lot of worldly experience. I know, once you come to the right path, you would not go astray. I for one, would never refer to your past and would equally ask you to forget about it. I for one have my past or present, except that I inherited all what I have. I have added to it rather than subtracted from it. I have my education in Pakistan and abroad. That way, I am highly educated and widely traveled. This arrangement would be giving me loving, beautiful and sweet-tongued wife. You will have a secure life. What have you then to say about it?

Yours in anxious awaiting,