đź’” Monsoon Mein Likha Gaya Woh Khat
(The Letter Written in the Rain – A Romantic Tragedy from Sindh)
By Faraz Parvez
Professor Dr. (Retired) Arshad Afzal
Retired Faculty Member, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, KSA
(Pseudonym of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal)
Khairpur, Sindh. Monsoon, 1998.
Every July, the old postman of Mehrabpur would walk the muddy lanes of the town carrying a faded blue envelope—sealed but never delivered.
It was addressed to Shehnaz Bhutto, daughter of a school principal, who had once been engaged to Azeem Chandio, a budding poet of Shikarpur.
They were the perfect storm: she wrote diaries in Urdu and Sindhi, he wrote verses that smelled of raat-ki-raani and revolution.
But their love was interrupted by tribal ego and class pride.
The letter was written on the eve of Azeem’s forced departure to Saudi Arabia, a decision made by his feudal uncle. He wrote of his longing, of the poems he would never recite, and of one promise:
“If this letter reaches you during the rain, know that I am still yours—drifting in clouds, etched in thunder.”
But the letter never reached Shehnaz.
It got soaked and smeared in the first monsoon flood, returned to the post office, and somehow preserved by the postman—who, every year, on the date it was written, walked again, unsure whether it was love or regret that compelled him.
In 2010, Shehnaz, now a schoolteacher in Sukkur, visited Khairpur for a seminar. At a small railway café, an old man handed her the blue envelope, yellowed by time.
She opened it under the drizzle. A smeared poem spoke:
Tere baal ab bhi baarish mein bheegte hain?
Mere khwabon mein ab bhi Sindh ke badal hote hain.
She didn’t cry. She just folded it, placed it in her purse, and watched the rain fall on the railway track where they once said goodbye.
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