Rain and Endings

I am not a big fan of downpour. Or letters. They get to me. If there is anything worse than being woken up in the morning by a strong smell of rain-washed earth that numbs your olfactory sense for a while, then it is having to go through mail while you sip your morning coffee!
It was one of those mornings and I woke up, feeling groggy, already picturing the day lying ahead of me- a dishevelled me splashing my way to the bus stop, getting sprayed on as cars arrogantly rushed by, oblivious to the plight of pedestrians like me, and frogs having popped out like weeds in my garden by the time I’d reach home! I wanted to break down and not go through the day at all. It is shocking how trivial things like those can almost make you want to quit!

Anyway, resisting the urge to go back to sleep, I got up and drew the curtains. Best to avoid looking at the dripping-sky as long as I could! I made myself a cup of coffee(it smelled like rain and,unfortunately, a little bit like mold as well) and spilled it down the drain. Reading the mail without a (moldy) coffee, had got to feel less distressing! There were three letters sitting on the table in front of me. Three people had decided to make me miserable. I don’t understand why people need to establish contact. Why don’t they just read something and be content? Why do they have this baffling impulse to reach the author? My editor calls it “fan-mail” and she calls me “ungrateful” (and a stuck-up,fat, airhead behind my back) but she doesn’t know how disturbing I find the whole concept! Oh, I am grateful to the people who find my stories “great”, “enjoyable” or “relateable”, and that should end there but it does not, and that is when the trouble starts!
Alright, I admit that most of my stories don’t have a definite ending but that is the way life works, doesn’t it? You cannot end something permanently, even if you are the author of that tale, because you cannot keep on unfolding things. How could you ever reach an end that way? Your protagonist might save the world and come back home a happy person, and as he lies down he might think about his estranged father and grab the phone to call him. Would he call him or decide against it? Would his father be happy to hear from him or would he be enraged? What’s the point of putting those details in a story? They can’t do much to the plot as it has already been taken care of! When my “fans” inquire about silly things like that, I just lose it! Create your own endings people, if you don’t like mine! Make the protagonist go on and on, dealing with one mundane day after another until you take him to his grave(for all I care) but just don’t pester with your questions! I never reply to any letters, I just read them and spend the rest of the day basking in irritability and anger.
Lets go back to that awfully wet morning. One of those three letters that day, had left me a little puzzled for it was a bit unusual . It was from a school girl, who, after gushing over my recently published story that had left her in tears,in paragraph after a paragraph(and how big a fan she was), had written something strange in the post script:
“P.S. I think you probably don’t know that I take the same bus as you. We sometimes even cross the same road to reach the bus stop! So on one of the rainy mornings, I hope to share my umberella with you! It is really bright and all the colours stand out more on a dark,rainy day. I wonder if I’d get a moment like that because you have every right to pay no heed to my silly offer. However, I just want you to know that my story, can quite possibly begin if you decide to accept my offer, but it definitely wouldn’t end on it!”
I drew back the curtains, clutching that funny, little letter in my hand, and looked at the leaking sky. I had decided to go with the day after all, keeping an eye out for a girl with a vibrant umberella. Did I share her umberella? I am way too terrible a writer to let you know that.

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