Fiction in f Minor - Post 1

Chapter 1


Neel had just hefted the book from its lonely perch at the very end of the 'W' shelves, when the inland letter card slipped out of its pages and fluttered onto the floor below. Curious, he knelt to pick it up.

In format, it was much like an aerogram: cheap blue postal notepaper, creased to fold closed once written upon; pre-printed postage and space for addressing on the outside.

Alyssa Ahmed, 18, Alimuddin St. Calcutta 16, read the address. A Muslima. Probably an avid reader. Evidently a forgetful one, since she had forgotten her bookmark inside the volume, before returning it at the end of her checkout. Neel glanced down at the cover of the book: Shoes of the Fisherman – by Morris West.

He scanned the publisher's introduction on the dust jacket. The Fisherman was St. Peter. A novel about the Vatican and the Papacy, no less. It amused him, briefly, that he was a Hindu, holding a book of decidedly Christian theme, that had last been borrowed by a Muslim. Secular India!

Neel put the letter in the back pocket of his jeans. He wouldn’t read it, of course! He couldn’t possibly. Absently, he added Morris West to his other selections, and descended the stairs to join the queue for checkout.

“Due back in thirty days”, said the bespectacled clerk dutifully, carefully inking her rubber stamp in purple ink from her stamp pad. As she meticulously stamped the due dates on the strips of paper glued to the back-flyleaves of each volume for exactly that purpose, Neel made to hand the letter over. Then, on an impulse, he decided to hold on to it.

As he stepped from the air-conditioned quiet of the British Council Library into the blast of heat and humidity of noisy Theatre Road outside, Neel's mind kept wandering to the letter in his pocket. Who might have written Alyssa that letter? A relative? Perhaps a sibling? A boyfriend? Ah, that was better! Or was it, now? He couldn't tell for sure!

On the bus-ride home from Theater Road to his college digs near the Botanical Gardens, one question kept playing over and over in his head: Who was Alyssa Ahmed?


[continued in Post 2>> ]

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