Chapter 3 — The Letter

Chapter 3 of the Class 10 English Communicative Literature Reader, "The Letter", is a short story by Dhumaketu (pen name of Gaurishankar Govardhandas Josh) about an old man named Ali who walks to the post office every morning for five years, hoping for a letter from his daughter Miriam who left with a soldier to Punjab. The story explores themes of parental love, the anguish of separation, and an ironic transformation in the postmaster who initially dismisses Ali but comes to understand his grief only after experiencing a similar wait for news of his own ailing daughter.

• Ali's Daily Vigil at the Post Office — For five years, Ali rises at 4 a.m. and walks through the winter cold to reach the post office before it opens, always the first to arrive. Though he never once receives a letter, he waits with what the story calls "boundless faith and infinite patience," occupying the same seat every day while postmen and clerks mock him.
• Parental Love and the Pain of Separation — Ali was once a skilled hunter who cared little for the feelings of others. When his only child Miriam married and moved away, he understood for the first time what love and separation truly mean — a realisation so profound that he wept under a tree and abandoned hunting altogether, devoting himself instead to waiting for her letter.
• Irony of the Ending — Miriam's letter arrives only after Ali has died. The postmaster, who was rude to Ali during his lifetime, spends a sleepless night anxiously waiting for news of his own ill daughter — and in that one night gains the empathy it took Ali five years to inspire. He then carries the letter to Ali's grave, accompanied by the clerk Lakshmi Das.
• The Postmaster's Transformation — At the start of the story the postmaster is indifferent and dismissive, calling Ali a pest and dismissing him as mad. His personal crisis — waiting for news of his daughter — strips away his official haughtiness and "lays bare his human heart," so that he begins to see the essential human worth of every letter.
• The Supernatural Suggestion — On the night the postmaster waits for his own letter, he opens the door at five o'clock believing Ali has come — and sees an old man with unearthly light in his eyes. Lakshmi Das later confirms Ali died three months earlier. The story leaves it ambiguous whether the postmaster truly saw Ali's ghost or was deceived by his own guilt and imagination.

1. 01Author: Dhumaketu (pen name of Gaurishankar Govardhandas Josh, 1892–1965), a pioneer of the Gujarati short story; genre: fiction/short story.
2. 02Central theme: a father's undying love for his absent daughter and the universal grief of separation.
3. 03Main characters: Ali (Coachman Ali), an elderly former hunter; the postmaster; and Lakshmi Das, the clerk.
4. 04Ali gives up hunting when his daughter Miriam leaves with a soldier for Punjab, suddenly understanding the suffering of the birds he had killed — and of parents separated from their young.
5. 05He walks to the post office every morning for five years, is mocked by staff, yet never stops coming; he gives five gold guineas to Lakshmi Das and asks that his letter be forwarded to his grave.
6. 06Miriam's letter arrives only after Ali's death; the postmaster experiences a single sleepless night of the same anxious waiting Ali endured for five years, and is transformed by it.
7. 07Key literary devices: irony (the letter arrives too late), simile (the post office as Ali's "place of pilgrimage"), contrast (Ali's faith vs. the officials' indifference), and a supernatural/ambiguous ending.
8. 08The story is set in an unnamed Indian town at dawn in winter, and the atmospheric opening — cold, silence, darkness — establishes the mood of loneliness and longing that runs throughout.