I admit the last few issues were indulgent on my part. I don’t know how you felt about them, but thank you for reading them. Anyway, TL;DR - today we end this second season of letters.
Back in February when we started this season, winter was waning and a summer of hope was on the anvil. Things didn’t turn out that way. It was a relief to share things with you, to read your replies, to see this dreadful summer through together.
Now another season is upon us. The rains have arrived, albeit earlier than usual. Today was a middling day, bursts of heavy rain followed by bright sunshine. I was back at my window, looking out at this moody affair. And I felt it is time to pause.
It is strange to end this season abruptly on this Thursday evening. I thought of writing to you till the end of the month, then end with a good #45 in July to bid you goodbye. But like the rains this year, this day too has arrived early.
So here we are, June 17th 2021, a year to the day the first of these letters went. It felt apt to conclude this second season of Bombay Daak.
You’ve been a true ray of sunshine in this year that’s gone by. We have grown from a handful to now hundreds here. Thank you very much, my dear reader for being part of these two seasons. It’s been a joy to write to you through the rains last year, and all of this summer.
Hope to write to you soon again with another season of letters.
I end this one with a Dom Moraes classic I sent out last year, this time with the complete poem.
Stay safe.
Another Weather
Winged things move in the fleecy pelt of heaven.
The horses stroke the grass with their great hooves.
Often this weather, when a wind has driven
Insects and dust through air, the landscape moves,
Tilting itself one way, until this wind,
Shifting the world, has purified my mind.
For this weather I think I see things clearer.
All spring I drank until my money went,
Weeping for the horizon. Now I’m nearer.
Things happen here without my full consent.
And I accept them all. What is my choice?
I have few muscles; I must trust my voice.
My voice calls out in darkness, but it is calm
And very gentle: and it tells me this
Only: that it will come to no great harm
For the cathedral where its lodging is
Was built far off, and should the world get worse,
Two friends alone will find it: death and verse.
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder"
-Sweaters in Bombay