Love, Longing And Emails
Humra Quraishi
The Last Email by Mridula Garg Speaking Tiger, New Delhi, 2018, 226 pp., 299
August 2018, volume 42, No 8

There lies tucked in the pages of this novel a moving love story. Nah, not  the kind that Hollywood or Bollywood or Tollywood comes up with. On the contrary, this love story is ever so gentle and moving that you simply flow along with words tucked in the emails exchanged between the two: Kevin, a vicar devoted to the political struggle for Scottish independence and Maya, a well-known Hindi author. The two had known and loved each other ever so passionately in the New Delhi of the late 70s, and then parted, re-establishing contact after a gap of almost forty years via emails.

It’s these emails webbed together by Mridula Garg in the novel that keep nudging one to flow along. There is an interplay of emotions without traces of lust or superficial sways. Right from the first email that Kevin wrote to Maya in the summer of 2008 to re-establish contact with her, till the very last email sent on August 24, 2015, there is not only a subtle yearning that never goes overboard, but also that vital connect that is a rarity in today’s relationships. These emails are a conversation between two adults who are compatible with each other and politically aware. Mind you, both of them are married, residing with their spouses and children in two different continents, yet, to use a cliché, there is much meeting of the minds and souls; love of a strain deeper than physical want.

It is best to read this novel in a single sitting to be able to grasp the intensity of the exchange. It starts off in a matter-of-fact way—‘Dear Maya, we received a request for your contact details via our website www.womenwrititng.com from Kevin Wilson. Please see this mail below—forwarded message from K@crossroads.com to womenwriting@gmail.com “I have been reading some of the excellent writings of Maya J. in English translation, and would like to make contact with her again. We were acquainted in India many years ago, but I have lost touch. On your website you offer to pass on any request for contact details. Could you ask her to contact me by email?”’

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