LOVE - CYNTHIA

LOVE 

Love is listening to the silent wireless waves from your beloved.

Love is thinking about monogamy and polygamy and harem-building and celibacy.

Love is gazing at the star-filled sky and thinking of deep, eternal love.

Love is scoffing at Miss Worlds and Miss Universes. 

Love is pretending you don't love!

(Published by Anchor, #046, Jan 1, 2021)

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This is so kind of Anchor. What it means is that ANYONE anywhere can record any of My Anchor podcasts and SELL them - and Anchor will not take any money. As I have stressed again and again, I will not take a cent. But one thing worries Me - I do not want poor widows and wives and husbands and widowers and divorcees of late/present spouses (from whose books I have taken passsges to record in My own voice for My Anchor fm podcasts) to get NO MONEY - such as Shaon, second wife and widow of Bangladeshi author Humayun Ahmed, and his divorced first wife (I cannot recall her name), etc. - nor do I want living authors whose passsges I have recorded for My Anchor podcasts - such as popular Bong authors Sanjeev Chattopadhyay and Sankar - to get NO MONEY. But I am glad to say I have found the solution - widows and divorcees and wives and widowers of late spouses and living authors CAN ALSO SELL any of My Anchor podcasts they want to record and sell! And no poor guy in Delhi etc. would be called a "PIRATE" if he (or she!) sells My Anchor podcasts! What a relief! 

Kishalay Sinha [G] October 5, 2021

CYNTHIA

                                                                          When I was a graduate student in the department of physiology and biophysics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, there was an American girl, by the name of Cynthia Katherine Hammonds, also a graduate student (in the department of architecture), who stayed in the room opposite mine in the multi-storied hostel for graduate students. Do not be alarmed: the arrangement of rooms in the hostel is shown in the adjoining diagram, with two women sharing a common bathroom, and two men similarly sharing a common bathroom.

 

Now it so happened that Cynthia grew fond of me. How did I know? She must have noticed that I was a shy, serious student who never spoke to women on the campus, nor in the hostel. One day, when all the rooms on my floor were closed and nobody was visible in the long corridor, I happened to notice that she had written:

                                               

           Oops!

 

on the message-pad on her door. I was curious. I read the name on the door: Cynthia Katherine Hammonds. My intuition told me that Oops! was addressed to me.

 

I looked up the telephone directory in my room (there was a telephone in every room in the hostel, with a telephone directory listing the telephone numbers of residents of Urbana and Champaign and all graduate students in the hostel). I discovered from the telephone directory that Cynthia was a graduate student in the department of architecture.

 

Next day, she wrote on her message-pad:

 

       After all, I suffered for you today.

 

Those were the sweetest words I had ever read in my life.

 

Soon, I received conclusive confirmation of my guess that Cynthia had fallen in love with me. One evening (it was a cold January evening), as I returned to the hostel after a visit to a bookstore, I opened my door and went in, but left the bunch of keys outside, forgetting to take in the keys. Soon there was a knock on my door. I opened the door: a young woman in blue uniform (a member of the hostel staff) told me, "Sir, you have left your keys on the door." I thanked her, and took my keys. NEXT DAY, I saw written on Cynthia's door:

 

         Don't forget your keys!

 

Well, of course, I never spoke to her.  Indeed, I did not even know what she looked like. I left the university soon after, because my research interests lay elsewhere (not aging in insects, but resuscitation) and biology at that time seemed too un-mathematical to me. I went to Chicago and joined the department of mathematics, statistics, and computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago as a graduate student.

 

I regret to this day that I do not even have a mental picture of what Cynthia looked like. My wife is convinced that she must have been a fat, ugly woman. I hotly deny this. My wife is not convinced. Women can be so cruel. I feel so hurt and insulted. I tell my wife that I hope at least that Cynthia is alive (God bless her!), although I have no hope of ever locating her, never mind the Internet. She must have got married long ago, after all, and changed her suffix.

 

If only I knew what Cynthia looked like, if only I had a mental picture of sweet Cynthia ... 

(The short story was published in The Sentinel Sunday magazine mélange)

Kishalay Sinha [G] October 5, 2021