The River's Child

Remembering S. M. Shahrukh

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Remembering S. M. Shahrukh

He was funny, witty, irreverent, honest, brilliant and perhaps a little more. He was a trailblazer and definitely a humanist with a large heart. Such a combination also made him unforgettable to most. St Gregory’s School, Notre Dame College and Chemical Engineering from BUET were only the formal part of his education. Yes, he passed with flying colours. His interest and ability to learn, analyze objectively and retain the knowledge was more than average and the span of subjects was - yes, you guessed it - uncommonly wide. He loved books, movies, music, cricket, chess, photography - and ah, so many other things. He is known more for his writings and varied interests now than anything else. But when did he start writing? In 2011 he had a massive heart attack and was on life support. A triple emergency bypass surgery in Dhaka saved his life, but left him with a very ailing heart and amplified his indomitable spirit. He was in a state of heart failure. It was all during these eight years that he started to write op-eds, poems and short stories. He was highly proficient in both Bangla and English. He loved to drive and for the last 4 years he drove to different places like Mymensingh, Comilla, Chittagong, Kaptai, and others including his favorite Cox’s Bazar. Lately his health deteriorated further and about a month back he was hospitalized once again in a state of critical heart failure. Stabilized, he returned home. He was delightfully happy because he was to fly to Cox’s Bazar to spend a few days. On the morning of his flight, 31 July 2019, Picklu did not wake up. What else can we tell you? Suffice it to say, he was, and to us, he still is. Sardar Muhammad Shahrukh,

Picklu -

from the hearts and minds of Imaad (son) and Samina (wife)

S. M. Shahrukh

The Last Caretaker

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The Last Caretaker

(For Mikhail Joseph Martirosian (1930-2020), the last Caretaker of the Armenian Church, Armanitola, Old Dhaka.) Aftab Ahmad

There were walks he did not take in the sunset.
Didn’t have the luxury to quibble with sparrows,
Or see the occasional fireflies disappear and fret
Of distant battles of which he was told by some.
There was solace in gravestones cold, unknown.
He just kept the candles burning, flickering low,
Waiting for the Saviour who probably didn’t notice,
Him counting dawns with grass stems aglow.
A few crumbling murals was all he guarded.
Handful of rosaries, beads, fading memories,
Of people around who thought he was deranged,
Holding on to the past, maybe survive a little.
He was the unsung choir, hoping some would hear,
Now the pain in the Cross was no longer his to bear.

[AFTAB AHMAD is a bi-lingual poet and essayist from Bangladesh. A career public servant he began his professional life as a journalist, teacher and broadcaster. He has two collection of verses and a co-written verse drama in Bangla. His collection of English poem is awaiting publication later in the year.]

Three Line Wonders

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Three Line Wonders

I
Hoofmarks will fade;
A blowing wind will
Inherit the earth.
II
Peace numbs the land,
While dawn fights the shadows
Of gravestones.
III
The Sun checks in,
And the Moon departs.
Everyone is in the Cosmic Hotel.
IV
I miss your touch.
Road signs are more confusing,
In dreams.
V
Rains fall down
On hopes.
Roads, never-ending.
VI
Sometimes graves inspire
Monuments, follies.
Clouds leave no trace.
VII
The sea always comes back
To the peak.
Only pens run out of space.
VIII
There will be pain
Where she is drifting.
In the uncertain mist.
IX
Hope and heartache
Following one another.
Still limping through.
X
Heads remain bowed
In prayer.
Predator time stalks.
XI
Raindrops down the window pane.
I refuse to be strong
Before friends.
XII
A piece of earth
Without concrete
Hard legacies to come by.
XIII
It is in pigments and inks,
and empty spaces asking where
is the soul gone.
XIV
She stopped him in his track,
Broad back hunched.
She kept looking across the water.

[AFTAB AHMAD is a bi-lingual poet and essayist from Bangladesh. A career public servant he began his professional life as a journalist, teacher and broadcaster. He has two collection of verses and a co-written verse drama in Bangla. His collection of English poem is awaiting publication later in the year.]

Dr. Prof. Yasmeen Kazi

Golden Bengal

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Golden Bengal

Golden Bengal, I love you too
I love your plains and your skies, blue
Rivers and boats are your lifeline
On which depend your people fine
Bhaiwayya Gaan on the flute
Transports my mind to fields of jute
Jackfruits, coconuts, fruits luscious
Pineapples, all delicious
Sudden showers and bursts of lightning
Followed again by the sun shining
Help to cool the humid weather
Making flowers, birds, insects gather
Jamdani, a fabric exquisite
Is intricately by experts crafted
Roshogolla, Shondesh are a treat
Pleasing the palate with a taste sweet
The Doel bird flies and sings beyond
Pink lilies in a pretty pond
These sights were all one day covered
With piles of bodies red in blood
Bullets were flying and bombs bursting
Horrors unseen before were lurking
Fifty years have now gone past
Better times have come at last
The golden jubilee year is here
People are full of song and cheer
This place was once a part of our land
Its people with us went hand in hand
The murky history is now over
Let’s become again friends forever

Samina Ahsan Shahrukh

PINK-ORANGE EVENING

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PINK-ORANGE EVENING

On a pink-orange evening I sit by the window,
Sipping a cuppa tea.
I think of things that never were
But I believed they ought to be.

I think of brown eyes and words that play,
Of sounds, I miss and rose-coloured days,
Of driven miles and unplanned ways.

And then I know that things are as they are to be.
It was the mind, it was the me
That expected all differently.

I sit by a window, sipping tea,
Reveling at the absurdity that life offers so magnificently,
And enjoy the pink-orange evening,
That, unbeknownst, was always meant to be.

Dhaka, 15 July 2024.

WHISPERS

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WHISPERS

The moon is just a breath away,
Far nearer than you seem today.
My whispers fall on window sills
That’s lighted this evening, pure and still.
Cracked pavements are ready to hold,
My kerchiefs were filled and ready to fold.
Perhaps the whispers fall on rain trees,
That forms the gorgeous green canopies.
Can you not hear the whispers silent but loud?
Will you not come by? Tear the shroud?

Dhaka, 22 June 2024.

Mallika Shakya

For those whose fathers did not leave behind their addresses

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For those whose fathers did not leave behind their addresses

Mother, will “that” come?
Yes dear, it will.
Just wait.
Having spent
dreams of an entire youth

Still
holding on
to all my patience waiting
at life’s sunset.
Putrefied in the corpses of thousand epochs, thousand millennia
waiting, I am, with hope
Still

Emptiness fills my begging bowl
a deep sigh wears my face
shining weapons, dear
like dews and pearls
have come and gone countless times, you see?

But tonight,
tonight is the night of Mahabhiniskraman
the night I drench
in my solitary pride.

Ceases now
the umbrella of dynastic protection
Rises
in the dark waters of moonless night, a full moon
And, a vow
That binds us together

I hear a primitive voice ring within:
The sun already set will now come and touch us
in pitch-darkness. Within you, within me
echoes on and on.
the voice
of primordiality lingers
soft and strong.

No need to stir even a strand of hair
But do open the door within, would you?
You and me, we, flung our hearts open.
You let your innocent babbles float
reinless in the wind
I wipe away my vermillion
caste away veil of modesty

You, the child born of me, I, your bearing mother
This
is complete already.
Like the ying-yang of sun and moon, needs
no qualification, no added visibility for it to be seen
I see it clearly, already dear

And, perhaps I am under the spell of antiquity
But convinced I am
That
The epicenter lies
within
Let us both stop
warming up to the storms
far out in the horizons

The rigid flows within itself
embroiled is the core of the frozen

You are all I need, dear, you who is the dream
of my entire youth. Take
from me your identity of seven generations
Come, rise, walk. Let
lazy daydreams canker in the belly
of decaying wood.

Let go
of superstitions, illusions
There is no male warrior in God’s creation to follow
for whom you must wave goodbye to me
There is no life in the universe
where this bond of maternity is not befitting.

It is true the world is teeming with chaotic crowds
And scattered here
and scattered there are
casual acquaintances we stumble upon
They are useful, they are kind
you could approach them, any that you fancy.
And in return for a hearty cup of tea, he may offer
in the register a fatherly name for you. .
What difference does this make after all?
Your revolutionary being shines within you, dear
You need not search glory outside of that inner conscience.

Tonight is the darkest of all nights
And here we are
You and I
children of darkness
Trust me, dear, “that”/ “he” will come
It will come as a feeling most distinct of all
Come and touch it will
In one of these still moments that are
endlessly lonely, endlessly dark, endlessly quiet.

TWO ROSES AFTER THE RAINSTORM

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Three Line Wonders

(Translated by Kumud Bhansali)

Downpour
a storm fell
and fell
off its stem
one rose
in the roars of thunder
suffocated
petals still sobbing
separated by
one hand, maybe
two feet
Still smiles
the one
on the stem
the one
fallen, lies
on the ground
The one on the stem
shed
its embracing arms
on the ground, that one
lost
feet to stand
Then came the rainwater
flooding
the field
Followed the wind
smashing
the plant
Both caught in own selves,
They do not speak
of the full moon
tonight.
The solitary purple night
holding calamitous chaos
cupping Kumbhakarna
wrangling a cobweb
in that corner
an insect caught
dying
slowly
Out there,
tiny bushes
fluttering in the wind
Even the mountains feel
their feet shaking
even if invisible
clouds snatch
their backpacks
run amok

The rose on the ground speaks
of dews
of dreams (and stampedes)
The rose on the stem aspires
the sky
the flying clouds
So
they park
for now,
conversation
about the sun.

December of the year
the last two roses
in withered fields
lying around
One on the stem
other on the ground.

HOUSES WITHIN A HOME

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HOUSES WITHIN A HOME

(Translated by Kumud Bhansali)

Two houses live
within my home
like two branches
sprawling
one to east
the other to west
Nature dispatched
a long dossier
to our address
this year. Stunned I am
remember? the seed planted
with mutuality with love.
One house grows taller
new pillar added
to its western face
Roofs refurbished
coats of new paint
mark weddings, feasts, festivals

plants fed
on fertilizers, courtiers
tend gardens
collect salaries
months after months
in return, you get
New Year’s tokens
And, in this way
a small civilization grows
(indeed, this house oozes pragmatism)
In the other house
dead wood
decays and
what is alive
lives and
grows tall
wrapped in the unkempt leafy
embraces
of wild creepers.
The house, returning to its wild, letting
birds peck
birdlings grow in its nests.
With thunderstorms,
one more
layer of dust piles
With rain,
water seeps
deepest into its veins
And when the winter hits,
freezing Sireto roam wildly from chimney to its very foundations
Speaks the house, wisely:
I have lived my life keeping it alive
forged kinship
of light with the sun,

of dreams with the moon
made friends
with the wild honey bees that live on the cliff
and tasted sweetest honey
made friends with the darkest of the nights
and heard quietest of the quiet hours
Come, my friend, roam
around my rooms my corridors
when the third hour of this moonless night strucks
You will see
history
of one century
striding
in my fields
stars of a thousand millennia
twinkling
in my sky
Speaks the house again:
Startle not, dear poet, I am your home within you
embrace me
And one day
You will have a
reunion with your very self
caught in the cage
perched on the shelf
in the corner of my tiny bedroom.

Mother Sati

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Mother Sati

(self translation)

Fetch me the palms of a Gabbar Singh
I must cover my lips against your kisses
Your mischief may get burnt and scatter like ashes

with the rupture of my volcanic pyre

I feel the lava creeping under my skin
Do not embrace me my child
I do not want the bomb ticking in me
To make you its suicide victim.

I am fatigued
You must protect yourself from me
If only you were capable of swimming away to the safe shores
I would have lovingly blessed you goodbye
Go, the most precious beat of my heart
Become a leaf, follow that thunder whinnying in the horizon
Become a drop, join the roaring sea out there.

Alas!
I hear no thunder
The sun rises and sets
Clouds flash, rains fall
Flat like a c-grade movie
Herbs bloom, wither, fall and rot
I serve myself the sampuru of dishes
Sleeping beauties all around me
What barren equanimity, bourgeois stoicism

The cringe in me is a déjà vu
I am rotting and falling off your tiny back
Strand by strand, lump by lump
Bishalakshi are my scents, Mahalakshmi sights
The soul and mind, Sakambari-Sankari
My motherhood, the Kamakhya

Your tears have dried out from crying, my child
Come, rest. This is what you need at this hour.

Let your name be written in some godly registers
Pray that the Great Thunder makes you its flute this time
I want a rupture in you
A molting
An awakening
My darling little caterpillar
May wings grow on your back

Wage a war on the enemy within, my child
Go on a killing spree of the Great Kali
Nothing less than a catastrophic momentum

Let your anxieties run amok so your height touches new skies
Embrace the anxiety within
And dare yourself to plunge into the depths of unknown

Life is Thunder, my child
Come, take a taste of rupture!

Sumaiya Tasnim

Tiny Droplets on the Bathroom Mirror.

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Tiny Droplets on the Bathroom Mirror.

The creases of the skin, red and white, plucked at the corners of the thumb like a wounded soldier. The little toenail is dry and bruised-like a marquina black marble that rolled on the sand for decades. When the water ripples gently down the curves of the skin, the irritation is eerily familiar. Perhaps, in the afterlife, God will clutch onto me, and when I awake, I will hop in the fields like a feline.
I often wish to be bathed like a newborn, slowly blinking on the cusp of an embrace, near the water that is pure, and I stay dubiously in the arms of some kind of organic warmth that is yet undiscovered.

Prose

Likhon Datta

Bach, Baul and Publicity in Life

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Bach, Baul and Publicity in Life

Did you know that the tune of the popular Bengali song, ‘Age Ki Shundor Din Kataitam,’ is not by Shah Abdul Karim? He initially gave it a tune, but it was another man’s version that became famous, which, eventually, Karim himself took up when singing. When asked why he sacrificed his original composition for a trendier one (when critics would argue Karim’s version had more musical depths than the latter), he would gently reply, “Because it’s the one everyone listens to.”

There is more to the name of this artist because we must remember that Karim was a Baul, and the traditional Baul songs have little variety in melody and harmony. For the Bauls, the words matter more than tunes. It carries and instils the words into the listener’s heart. So, Karim won’t mind as long as you don’t meddle with the words.

I understand and sympathise with Bengal’s rich Baul tradition, of which Karim is a part. They aim to spread the Baul philosophy of life, advocating simplicity, equality and spiritual well-being. This folk tradition of preaching compassion to ordinary people through songs is about a thousand years old. It has worked so well in Bengal villages for centuries that it has become an impeccable part. Sitting in this hyper era of media and compact urban life, living amid fraud, corruption, pollution and all sorts of degeneration, if somebody tells me of ‘spreading’ something, whether it be good or bad, with the motivation of influencing another, I can’t help but be sceptical about it.

Going back to Shah Abdul Karim’s preference of lyric over melody, I started thinking if I were to choose a career in the arts, how much shall I bother about ‘spreading’ my work? It’s a question valid for everyone, whether they be artists or not, but as genuine human beings, so to search for a reasonable answer would seem obvious enough. My pondering this question is motivated by another artist I admire: JS Bach, the supreme master of the world of Western classical music. In the West, Bach’s musical genius is held incomparable, though his music was little known during his lifetime, and he was more famous as an organ player than a composer.

It didn’t affect his rich musical outpouring, though. He had another source of motivation to keep his creative drive going without feedback and mass appreciation. His music was Soli Deo Gloria or ‘for the glory of God alone.’ All of his creative delivery, thus, works as a bridge between the sacred and the secular.

But if you look at composers' manuscripts like Beethoven, it’s full of phrases, markings and tempo indications. Beethoven had a strict idea of how the piece would sound best, i.e. in which tempo, rhythm, etc., and if you meddle with it, it wouldn’t take much to bring a catastrophe onto the stage.

On the other hand, Bach is flexible. You can do whatever you like with his music, play at any rhythm or on any instrument, interpret in all wild possible ways, and somehow, it still works.

Today, all of Bach’s keyboard works are played on the piano, which is not baroque. Bach’s primary instruments were the harpsichord and the organ. Some of the epitomes of Bach’s keyboard works, such as ‘The Well-Tempered Clavier’ or ‘The Goldberg Variations’, are widely interpreted per the pianist’s choice. Yet, he has nothing to fear. As Bach specialist renowned pianist Andras Schiff puts it,

“For him it was not important to listen to this… or (to bother) it should be played like that… it’s there. Sheer perfection.”

From here comes my observation and thinking on ‘publicity’ in life. Living in a consumerist world, surrounded by billboards, labels and price tags… where your daily activities are monitored by business enterprises, who would employ machines to analyse your every finger tap to make profits out of it, minds to start becoming manufactured in a consumerist manner. There remains little place for thinking and feeling. In the world of products, advertising is as vital as producing. Without proper advertisement, materials can lose their value. But is this case the same for humanity, too?

Last Saturday, we were in Kaptai, taking a boat ride on a late winter afternoon. It was foggy, and the distant hills by the lake were engulfed by misty haze. Well, the vital energy of the water felt through the waves, with the beauty of soft sunshine sprinkling on the water, takes you to another world altogether.

It is heavenly beauty, yet it doesn’t need an observer. It’s simply there. Thousands of years back, when no man had walked on earth, beauty was still there, and it goes beyond any shallow business of advertising, selling, and influencing others. All of these germinate from petty humane thinking and reflect its limits.

The true beauty, which is timeless and eternal, doesn’t care for all these. And there, solely, lies its greatness.

Bach’s Way into the Serene Creative Life

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Bach’s Way into the Serene Creative Life

The other day, while scrolling through Facebook, I stumbled upon a quote by Jonas Mekas, the celebrated filmmaker. It was Mekas’s photo, along with a title which reads, “For an artist, to be normal is a disaster.” I’m unfamiliar with Mekas and his work and don’t particularly know what he means to be expected here. Already having some observations into this matter, my ideas go directly opposite to what Mr. Mekas might have suggested.

The artist, indeed, has some reasoning behind his statement. Yet what seems evident at a glance is the meaning that most people relate to social media. Many famous artists, especially Picasso, advertised tumultuous lives, which helped popularise the idea that the life of an artist wouldn’t be ordinary. Dull, mundane without much disruption and unrest wouldn’t generally go well with the popular idea of a soul-searching artist. To go into the core of one’s being and the society in which he lives, one must tear apart everything, that, to take effect, all sorts of terrible events must happen to him.

What is it like to sit on your piano every night after dinner and compose short, joyful songs for your children? What is it like to be unaware that this music would later guide piano learners worldwide for the next 300 years? Well, that’s what supposedly happened with Bach. Along with having a soprano wife, Bach had quite a lot of “musical children”, and he had written several songs to teach them the art of playing keyboard instruments and instil in them a good sense of composition. This collection is called “Little Notebooks for Anna Magdalena Bach”, the name being entitled to his wife.

Evoked by the melody of this music, listening to this album always brings me a feeling of a relaxed life- a vitality for living in peace and quietness. Not that life goes in a straight line. It’s full of sorrow! But to live with sorrow and be affected by it are two different phenomena, are they not? The rhythm that comes from inner peacefulness is a sign of a life in another dimension. Without having a complete understanding, one can’t go beyond things; therefore, being ‘in peace with everything’ becomes challenging to achieve.

I have seen many Kolkata-based Bengali films where they enjoy showing the image of the artist as a total disaster. His family has left him, society has pushed him into a corner, and there is no apparent order in his daily life; drinking may have become an escape for him, yet in the middle of this chaos, what he is concerned with is his art and desperately strives to make something worthwhile out of this confusion. Federico Fellini is a perfect example. On one hand, he was a creative giant; on the other, he was a “demonic figure” in many aspects. Bergman also spoke about his demons and how he couldn’t possibly live without them.

Everything to be in its proper place is what makes something artistic. The most significant art is the art of living. When there’s order in daily life, all other factors seem to fit in their rightful position, much like nature. It moves at its speed and rhythm, trying all sorts of possible variations and accepting only what appears most befitting.

Many of you will disagree with me about all this. Man versus his art is an old debate, and most of us will undoubtedly prefer the latter as ‘A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.’ But I will go for the alive one rather than the dead one. To me, a well-lived life is far more appealing than any work of art. I’m not saying it’s the best option, but rather, it’s how I look at things. In an orderly world, chaos is uninvited. Therefore, we find a spatial presence to feel. To think is to feel. Only in that space can creativity be unleashed to the fullest.

Likhon Datta is a student from the English Department of Chittagong University.

Wasi Ahmed

The Dogs of Dolphine Lane

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The Dogs of Dolphin Lane

The day the dog catchers of the City Corporation finally came and quickly rounded up, killed and carted away the stray dogs, the people of Dolphin Lane heaved a sigh of great relief, despite the sudden action and the cruelty of the catchers’ technique.

Those living in Dolphin Lane had been through great misery for long, routinely being visited by what they had discovered to be a menace. Every night just as stillness was about to settle in the Lane – after the cars had stopped honking and the fog had wrapped the lampposts with blind shrouds – the timing would be just right. No sooner had the tired and sleepy souls crawled into beds to drop their heads on single or twin pillows than the menace would tear through the silence. And it would be the beginning of a nightlong torment.

First, one or two forlorn howls. Then a few more. And soon a torrent of riotous clamor. Once started, it would continue forever – a planned ritual, so it seemed, in return for what they endured during the day. The kicks, the hurled stones or what you will.

The canine numbers had been growing. No one in the Dolphin Lane actually noticed – not a sight to feast one’s eyes on. One bitch bred as many as seven to eight puppies at a time. Some of them starved to death, while some got lost under the running wheels. Still, a good number survived and kept on growing. And the people in the Lane through their regular nocturnal suffering finally realized that the survival rate was quite high despite recurrent deaths.

In the beginning the people had thought that since dogs were dogs – alert and sensitive – their barking was about something that they sensed. Maybe thieves, maybe something else which none but the dogs would know. And although no one had trained them, masterless that they were, it could perhaps be an over-alertness of their instincts that drove them rip apart the night’s silence.

But how could one do without sleep all night! Not even rest one’s tired head on the pillow!

No one had thought of a solution. Because as the nights passed by and daylight broke out, the nightly problem remained forgotten under the toilsome rat race that ran all day long. But as soon as night returned crashing down on them with the routine horror, all they could do was toss and turn in their sleepless beds.

It was when things were at such a state that one morning, the City Corporation’s dog-catching squad raided Dolphin Lane, and as if by sheer magic, caught, killed and hurriedly dumped the wandering packs in a truck and raced away. Had the Dolphinites not witnessed the spectacle with their own eyes, they wouldn’t have believed that a job as complex and elaborate could be accomplished with such competence.

Credit indeed went to the catching squad. They had done their job with great professional skill and discipline. First they had dispersed themselves in small groups of twos or threes to lure the dogs into catching range with pieces of bread or biscuits. They also made inviting sounds from their mouths to further trick the dogs into coming nearer. And as soon as a dog responded approaching close enough, one of the catchers would grab the victim with strong iron tongs, while his partner quickly thrust a foot-long syringe right through the upper neck like a drill penetrating into solid earth. It was quick work, delivered with the right timing. What followed was a faint whining until the victim choked and dropped still.

The rest of the job was simple enough – dragging the light, middle and heavyweight bodies onto an open truck and moving away.

Those in the Lane who had watched the proceedings up close – shopkeepers, laundrymen, venders, passers-by, ‘blind’ beggars – didn’t get to catch all the details. The dazzling competence of the dogcatchers bewildered them. Later, when they encountered each other with shock and surprise, words got lost in their mouths. The late November sky hung overhead as timeless and distant as ever.

Despite the havoc wrecked by the dogs night after night, nobody from the Dolphin Lane had initiated the action secretly. The fact remained that the dogcatchers were a specially trained squad of the City Corporation, and lest they forgot their hard acquired skills they rehearsed their catching practices in chosen localities a number of times every year. There was a time when their technique was crude. Instead of poison-filled syringes, they used huge wooden hammers. A single knock at the back of the head was perfect to make a dog sleep eternally. In comparison, the present-day device was smart and convenient. Over and above, since it was easy to identify the wandering herds, the catchers could successfully conduct their operation in chosen areas without having to seek help from the local residents.

II

The truck-ride of the dogs marked the day with a refreshing change for the people in their daily gossips. For the youngsters it was great fun. They passed a busy day endlessly recounting the event and narrating their reactions to it.

Reactions of the grown-ups, however, were mixed. Some of them credited the City Corporation for its timely move. They praised the City Mayor saying that dog catching (with such skill and swiftness) was indeed crucial to the Mayor’s scheme to make urban life peaceful. They wished in the coming days similar raids would target stray cats, beggars, footpath-occupying vendors, muggers, toll collectors, drug addicts, bribe takers etcetera etcetera, and that all would be dispensed with, though not necessarily through similar truck rides.

There were others who spoke differently. They expressed their utter disgust and termed the event stupid eyewash to hide the authority’s failure to attend to a hundred important things such as – traffic jam, flies, mosquitoes, garbage, water logging, robberies, murders and so on. They made predictions that in the coming election campaign the ruling party would flaunt dog-catching as a grand achievement of its rule and exhibit some desiccated dog tails as glaring proofs of its claim.

Whatever the reactions, there could be no disputing that the lives of the people in Dolphin Lane had been made miserable by dogs, and so after their epoch-making exit through the truck-ride, the people were fully convinced that the approaching nights would be full of peace, with sleep.

This made the men, women and children joyous. In fact, they were shocked to imagine for how long their eyes had not been visited by sleep – that they hadn’t dipped into that mysterious stillness where colorful fishes called dreams danced and swirled with their resplendent fins and tails! How they had passed night after night haunted by bad dreams! They felt distressed to think how the agony of their life lurked all day long only to hammer on their doors at the dead of night!

At long last, they were going to sleep. They felt exhilarated, and to some of them, it seemed like freedom. Nightlong freedom after the tiring captivity of the day.

A few nights passed by. Quiet, peaceful nights. As the nights progressed, dark and thick, the Dolphinites were amazed by what seemed to them an enchanting stillness that shielded their senses from the outside world – an unearthly quietness they thought only the dogless nights were able to deliver. And because of this overwhelming stillness, they were able to catch the feeblest of noises around them; at times it was their own breathing that took them by surprise. An altogether new experience, they mused. They couldn’t recall if they had ever been through such a wonderful interregnum of silence.

After long chaotic nights their hearts and minds were immersed in an all-captivating silence, but there were disarrayed thoughts too whirling about their minds. They thought of events – lost or frayed – from their childhood. They thought of nature, of the splendor and majesty of nature offered by silence. And more than anything else, they thought of freedom – this unseeing freedom they wished they could touch and smell, apply it all over their bodies like some sweet aromatic oil!

As the thoughts hovered about, they let themselves sink more and more into the depths of stillness. But trying to shut their eyes for sleep seemed neither smooth nor trouble-free. It was the continual throbbing of their lonely or yearning hearts that they came upon every time they thought of their long overdue sleep. They had missed this magic ripple, they thought, this beating of their hearts in such harmony and rhythm all these years. An extraordinary gift of silence, but they couldn’t make out what to do with it. They couldn’t sleep.

They discussed their new nightly experiences amongst themselves. They felt good talking about something so different and exceptional; but going about narrating their intimate, personal feelings to one another they discovered that these were neither uniquely personal nor exceptional but unvaryingly common to them all. They could feel through each other’s experiences, could see through each other’s hearts. However, because of the sleepless nights, their eyes were itchy and swollen, and with their swollen eyes they looked at each other and soon found themselves as though engulfed in the silhouettes of shadows and sunlight of the dogless Dolphin Lane.

III

After the successful raid, the City Corporation conducted similar raids in nearby localities with the same deftness and speed. Newspapers carried front-page stories commending the good work. Life in the neighboring areas too had been rendered as miserable due to the nightly turbulence; and with the exodus of dogs through similar truck rides, the people living in those localities heaved a sigh of similar relief like the Dolphinites – despite the sudden action and the cruelty of the catchers’ technique. And just as the Dolphinites had experienced, the stillness of the dogless nights stirred up strange emotions in their minds and their eyelids too remained open all night.

Neither sleep nor freedom seemed to be approaching. They just looked to be creeping in but cleverly slipped past, and in the wake of the fleeting images emerged, slowly, a restlessness that held onto their bloodshot, sleepless eyes.

They wondered what it was that they didn’t have now! What it was that the tranquil nights failed to offer! Their hearts had yearned for this silence for so long!

Was it something they missed but didn’t know of? They asked themselves but failed to find an answer.

Was it something that they didn’t see or feel but which had lived in their heads, within the closet of their minds or inside their hearts – like the protective charms of amulets! They didn’t have it now! Gone.

With their swollen eyes they looked shattered. Day after day, they thought and wondered, got weary, weak and at times totally distraught.

Some of them remembered the snouts and the eyes of the departed dogs – males, bitches, puppies in herds, some tailless, some lame and mauled, with festering sores oozing blood and puss. They were of varying shapes and colors.

They were everywhere. Weren’t they? In front of the houses, groceries, butcher shops, in drains, garbage bins, in all the spaces eyes could travel. Also deep down the hearts of the Dolphinites like some inseparable limbs and appendages.

# #

As a matter of fact, some limbs and appendages of the Dolphinites were also carted away along with the dogs when no one was watching. Just about when they had thought of freedom and heaved a sigh of relief.

Translated by the author

The Hole

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The Hole

When a thief was finally caught in Dolphin Lane following nights of vigil to stop stealing of manhole covers, a notice was put up on the lamp post across the New Al Madina Super Dry Cleaners which said: Manhole thieves are thoroughly scrubbed here – adding a footnote 'free delivery' with chalk or a lime-stained finger. (It was quite unnatural for thieves to be tempted by an entire manhole, but then who knows about thieves, why only covers, they might even want to swipe an entire manhole!)

After a few days, while retuning home from his morning walk, Mahmud broke into a sudden smile as he saw a small crowd in front of the dry cleaners. His 45 year old fleshy body, heavy glasses sitting on puffed up cheeks did not suit the smile but his lips, cheek and teeth all banded together into an elaborate smile.

It was a holiday -- BBC, Star Sports, spicy chicken, afternoon nap or Nasrin, Nasrin or nap -- all these also added to make the smile worth it. At that moment the man whom Mahmud saw as he turned his head was smiling too. The man stood on the balcony of his house where his name was etched on a marble nameplate-- G M Hannan, Joint Registrar (Retired) beneath the face of an angry watch dog. The nameplate was a topic of conversation in Dolphin Lane because of its oddity but at that moment his smile reassured Mahmud. He was not the only one stirred by the scene.

But the smile had little to do with what had happened because no manhole cover had been stolen the night before and the person around whom the excited young people of the lane huddled together was not a thief but a milkman -- a dishonest milkman who in the early morning had stood knee deep in the waters of Dhanmondi Lake filling his milk filled plastic bucket with lake water. He had been unmoved by the dawn light or early risers as he had gone about his task of mixing dirty water with the milk.

Given the circumstances, those who watched the spectacle had no choice but to tie a rope around his middle and drag him across the road into Dolphin Lane. But he did not seem bothered by the prospect of a fearful outcome as the crowd slowly grew and crept upon him. “What's your name?” He looked visibly irritated at being asked. In return, he was poked from behind, and he howled back, “Why are you doing this to me? What’s in my name?”

His angry response was met with a sharp slap on the face. Next came fists and then a few novice kicks landed on him. A slim stream of blood dripped from the nose and slowly froze as it reached his lips.

2

Name ?

Abdul Karim.

Father’ name?

Abdur Rahim.

Residence?

Kamrangirchar.

Karim informed the crowd that he lived in a thatched hut of a home with his family where he and his family looked after two Sindhi cows, which in return for all the food and care gave them 15 litters of milk a day. Abdul Karim and his two brothers delivered it to the fresh milk loving clients. But on days when the cows were miserly, he would add water -- rain water, pipe water, lake water, any water -- and make up the shortage. That's what his father, his grandfather and all the ones before him had done.

After such a graphic description there was no need to ask for more details but the people encircling him couldn't believe in such a straightforward narrative. The man was a junkie, all these were ‘ganja tales’ to befool them -- they told themselves seething with rage.

They were totally perplexed by the fact that milk and water no matter what the water source could coexist -- that the two could become one was something they had never heard of. One could think that mixing rain water made sense but what about pipe water... WASA water… whose consumption meant high bilirubin, hepatitis… and Dhanmondi lake water? Nobody even knew what it could do to the human body. STD, AIDS -- nothing was impossible.

What stood out for a certain fact was that Abdul Karim was mixing water with the milk at early dawn standing knee deep in Dhanmondi Lake. The crowd fuming with anger wondered what they should do to him. Some youngsters were keen to skin him alive but the work was easier said than done. Dolphin Lane’s own butcher Hamdu, who skinned a dozen animals each day was not sure about the job as there was no way of knowing whether at the touch a knife, human skin would slice off quickly or get into knots. Some people felt he should be tied up and dropped into an open manhole.

It was difficult to make out Karim's reaction to what the people were saying. He touched the rope around his belly several times meaning it was hurting him. The dribble of blood had frozen near his swollen lips making his face look sad, gloomy and yet vaguely distracted.

The retired Joint Registrar thought that the crowed was worse than Abdul Karim’s Sindhi cows because they could not even decide what to do with him. Standing on his balcony, he clearly saw the crowd was talking nonsense and felt his hand shiver in anticipation of something brutal.

He brought out his shot gun from the cabinet, carefully loaded both barrels and took aim at Abdul Karim’s left chest. The angle was perfect and it was quite tempting to fire… boom… boom. He tore the left sky with the first shot; the next shot pierced the right sky.

The gun shots had first stunned the crowd but when they saw the target was the left and the right sky, their energies burst forth. Meanwhile, traffic jam in the lane grew huge. Rickshaws, taxis, sand carrying trucks kept blowing their horns in perfect unison. Pedestrians who had no idea about the gathering crowd stopped to ask what the matter was. The crowd responded-- waters of the lake, waters of the lake …

The gun shot had created a major ruckus. Abdul Karim was then taken to a further corner of the lane and tied to a lamp post next to the red tiled house of a left leaning opposition leader. The place was spacious but not a neutral one. Youth belonging to the government party protested but because it was the best venue possible, they had to accept the location. The opposition leader's supporters were thrilled by this development. It seemed politically potential to them.

After the change of location, Abdul Karim looked worried, but there was no sign of remorse on his face and the hurt feeling had moved on to become a visage of anger. At this point, mayhem on his body started afresh. Even those who had never hurt anyone began to rain blows on him. Some pulled up his hair to open the lid of his head and see what was there inside. And then suddenly Abdul Karim spat out at several faces as far as he could reach. The crowd went furious, but at the same time they made fun of those who were busy hiding their spittle covered faces.

Seeing the crowed, two policemen arrived on the scene; both looked around with knitted brows. Of the two, the thinner one swished his cane and hit Karim's left ear making him shriek in pain. Then they began interrogating him. “You bastard, you put water in the milk?” Nursing his ear Abdul Karim nodded yes.

The police looked at each other and then sought evidence from the crowd. “Where is the evidence?” But there was none around; even the plastic pail was missing. The police would not move without the evidence. What kind of water -- tap water, lake water? The milk had to be examined to confirm the accusation. At this point, Karim began to scream loudly for his lost bucket.

3

By the time Mahmud sat down for his breakfast it was late. He asked his wife Nasrin if she knew Dhaka had any milkman. She replied, “Of course. Even this neighborhood has one.” Mahmud said, “Not dairyman, milkman.” He looked at a bowl of thick rice pudding next to his plate. His hand was drawn to it tempted by the rich texture of thickened milk. His ten years old daughter asked, “What is a milkman?

“They mix water with the milk”

“Really? I want to see them.”

4

In the beginning the whole thing seemed like a joke to Karim. Even the four-five young men who had tied him with a rope and pulled him up from the lake did not seem serious to him. The boys were joking among themselves and he wanted to join them but could not figure out what they wanted.

He soon realized it was not a joke, though he remained baffled as to what they wanted. He wanted to finish them off but the rope tied around his belly bit deep into his flesh. After they had tied his hand behind his back and then fixed him with the lamp post, there was nothing else left for him to do but spit out at the crowd. His body trembled with rage as he tried to survive the madness around him.

He could not understand what was going on. The big, small, fat, thin, ugly kicks and blows that landed on him were so unlike each other. The blows were utterly different making their own sounds. The slaps were different from the pokes, fists from the kicks. Some were flat, some pierced like bullets.

Amidst all these craziness Abdul Karim wondered what did they actually want, what was their point? Are they doing all these just for the milk? Even if they tried, they would not be able to get even a drop each as a share from that milk in the bucket. If taking the milk was all they wanted, they should have let him go long ago. They were behaving as if there was a pick pocket caught in a fish market. They were treating him just like that.

But Abdul Karim had also fed them a few lies out of anger when they had tied him up. Firstly, he had no fancy Sindhi cows. They were thin, shriveled local varieties. He and his wife could barely get three liters out of them after much effort. His wife was the real milker, she would bloody the udders by pulling at them until the last drop trickled. The second bit was about his residence at Kamrangirchar. Were these guys idiots that they believed he would come all the way from there to supply milk to Dhanmondi? He was not sure why he lied. Maybe when these buffoons had grabbed him, tied him, he might have thought that he had done something wrong.

As the day grew and sun rose, the madness of the crowed became fiercer. Having beaten him up to their heart’s content, they got a barber to shave his head. They even spent money to buy some rotten watery yogurt and pour it over his shaven head. His dry lips soaked the few drops that reached them. The sight brought cheer to the crowd. The poured more and Adbul Karim licked even more making hissing sounds. Those who became curious and got close to him to hear what he was saying, heard -- mother fuckers… mother fuckers.

The crowd became heated again. At this point without anyone’s noticing, Karim’s green lungi wet from yogurt and water slipped down and reached his ankles exposing his genitals to the crowd.

The crowed was suddenly struck with a problem, a resistance from somewhere. How it came about and for what purpose nobody could say but it was real. They stood there stupefied. Abdul Karim droned on -- mother fuckers… mother fuckers…

5

In mid noon, the crowded Dolphin Lane is without much of a stir. This time is special for the old and new residents of the lane. The leaves of tall Neem trees play with the breeze. Even in the blazing sun, the cool breeze passing through the leaves touches the people, pleasures them. The breeze flows out from there on to Bashiruddin Road and other areas beyond that-- toward the fetid waters of Dhanmondi lake.

But these did not interest the Friday faithful returning from the mosque. But when these people wearing proper religious attire passed the space in front of the opposition leader’s house where a naked Abdul Karim was tied to a lamp post, they sensed an unease rising within them.

6

After devouring the mandatory spicy chicken of Friday and overcoming the dual temptations of an afternoon bed and Nasrin, Mahmud paced up and down his tiny balcony. It was impossible to ignore the naked Karim amidst all the visual gallery of the neighborhood. Since returning from his morning walk and going past the notice on the lamp post and breaking into a smile, a wicked thought had danced in his head like a crooked joke. He had not thought of such a joke in a long time. He could not figure out which direction it would take, but seeing the stripped Abdul Karim he saw it take a route.

In the bedroom his daughter Shoma slouched on the floor doing a crossword puzzle. He said, “There was a dishonest milkman who mixed water in his milk…

“What is dishonest?”

“Those who put water into milk.”

“And honest?”

“Who drink milk.”

7

In the fading afternoon, more clusters of people were growing all over the Dolphin Lane. Some of them looked eager to examine the matter all over again.

“Water in milk?”

“So what? It’s not poison.”

“Do they want honey instead of water in the milk?”

“These creeps want to drink pure milk.”

“Pure milk! There's only one source of pure milk, hah. Is that what they want? Sucking on one and pressing the other! ”

The reactions kept floating. Some thought of the entire incident as a conspiracy of the opposition party. They are trying to stir up trouble using people’s desire to drink pure milk. In the shadow creeping late afternoon, the situation began to change. People began to tire of all the time spent on Abdul Karim. And then as if for a change, someone untied the rope from the body releasing it from the lamp post. Karim immediately slumped forward on the ground with his eczema scarred ass exposed for all to see.

Those who had untied him shrank back at the sight. The frontal nudity seemed much better.

8

Slowly an anxiety began to creep upon the people. Since twilight didn't hold out for long, people began to worry about the dark rumors of a dead Abdul Karim. The impending death of an ordinary guy suddenly turned into sympathy for him occupying the soft spaces of their minds.

But the point is Abdul Karim was still alive. However, it was not smart to leave him like this. The way the situation was, his death seemed imminent. The people then thought of shifting his body to another lane and shove it down a manhole but his eczema scarred body was too big for that.

They kept moving from one lane to another, from one manhole to another. It just was not possible to shove him down. Instead of going down a manhole, he lay on their shoulders. Those who carried him felt his body weighing heavier and heavier. What could be done? There was nothing one could do about it. He had to be on their shoulders until their search would find a right enough hole …

Translated by Afsan Chowdhury

Rebecca Haque

Midnight Marathon

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Midnight Marathon

Fazr azaan, and dawn, will see Ritu rise to greet “Shadhinota Dibosh” on March 26. It being a Saturday this year, her son Anu (short for Anwar) has booked the swank restaurant at Baridhara to celebrate her grandson's tenth birthday, even though the actual birthday was three days ago. But a mid-week working day is so very inconvenient for a dinner party in Dhaka, with the traffic hazards fouling up everyone's mood and schedule. Anu was home again after a decade, but for only three weeks during Easter break, with an extra week finagled from his holiday hoard to mingle with friends and relatives, and introduce them to his lovely Hispanic wife Sienna, and his no less handsome son, Juan Ismail. “What a beautiful family! And oh, so very Bengali-looking, too!”, the women exclaim, as they drop by in groups and pairs for tea and impromptu meals and hugs and kisses. Ritu smiles with pleasure, quietly, gracefully accepting their praise. Her son had indeed chosen well, and he had done so well in graduate school, where he had met and fallen in love with Sienna. Ritu had been to their wedding in California twenty years ago, taking her own precious heirloom gold and silver pieces to gift to the bride of her only child. Always law-abiding, befitting her position as a University professor, she had meticulously taken permission from the Bangladesh Bank, and had declared every item to fulfill the United States Customs regulations.

Recently, strangely, somewhat quirkily, as her close friend and confidante Gulrukh would say, Ritu has started measuring life's timeline in swatches of decades. It is possible, Ritu thinks, that all 'baby-boomers', born in the fifties, are conditioned to evaluate each decade according to its degree of achievement in arts, culture, and politics. We were taught to critique in terms of historical movements, epochal events, schools and –isms and schisms. McLuhan and Kenneth Clark and Desmond Morris of 'The Naked Ape' fame were our gods. Ritu looks at the rows and rows of books in the bedroom and beyond in her large well-organised study, and raises a hand in salute. This year she herself has become a person who in social parlance is called a senior citizen, and is revered in the family group as an 'elder' having crossed the threshold of her sixtieth decade and stepping into the seventieth.

She now sits alone, softly braiding her long gray hair into a thin plait. She looks at the bedside table clock. It is nearly midnight, Friday night, and her home and heart are warm with joy. She turns to look at her face in the mirror, glowing in the reflected pool of light from the tall antique brass floor lamp. Yes, her lips mime the words, Anu has my eyes and high cheekbones, but he definitely has Ismail's strong jaw and broad forehead. Ritu's eyes sparkle in the half-light. Ismail was long gone, instant death at a midnight road crash forty years ago. Too young, too bright, too soon snatched from her arms. Anu was eight and confused and clingy. Ritu stares into the flashing eyes of the face in the mirror and remembers the silent grieving, the long sleepless nights of flowing secret tears. She remembers the suitors and the stalkers at work, at conferences at home and abroad. She remembers too with pride how the flame of each proposal was snuffed, the overt and covert courtships petering out by her tactful, firm refusals. She was strong, she was determined. How could she be otherwise when Ismail was with her always? Was he not alive in Anu's every feature, every gait and gesture?

Ritu looks away and her pupils dilate as she meditates on past decades. Her mind's synergy streams into free-flowing association of life's turning points with Grecian symbols of struggle and sacrifice and victory. Her heartbeat begins a classic song in choric sympathy with the three-hundred at Thermopylae, 'the Hot Gates', with Phidippides' palpitating heart at the 26-mile victory run to Athens after the Battle of Marathon. Integrity, Commitment, Faith, Freedom, Independence, National pride! Ritu's heart echoes the words in systolic, diastolic rhythm. Run, Ritu, run. The race is not swift…

Suddenly, with a gut-wrenching twist of sliding, rupturing screen memory, Ritu throws her head back and moans low and long. She clutches her womb with her left hand and cradles her cracking heart with the right. Oh, in delight, Ismail had named their first baby Purnima, his very own beautiful moon-princess, born one moonlit Monday midnight. Ritu shakes her body from side to side to rid the mind of the pictures from so long ago, the pictures she has buried decades deep in the dark tunnels of the hippocampus. Ritu drops softly to the floor and crouches on her knees, smothering the wretched moaning sounds on the rough fabric of the bright handloom bedcover. The warm tears and hot breath create a bower for her face, and Ritu slowly subsides into a serene reverie of the actual moment of loss.

Ritu is a dazed mermaid, swimming in the current of the river of life. She gulps a mouthful of air and sprouts legs and is back spontaneously, decades back, to March 1971. She is running, running with hundreds and hundreds of people, with soldiers running after them with guns and bayonets. Hundreds of legs running helter-skelter, some falling, some dying, some trampling over bodies to save their own. She is running, holding infant Anu tightly to her waist in the crook of her right arm. Running and pulling five year-old Purnima with her left hand tightly holding the little girl's right hand. Ismail is somewhere near or far in the crowd, running with his aged parents. Ritu cannot think, she cannot stop. She runs and spits out spittle and dust. The little girl cannot keep up with her mother's frenzied pace. Purnima yells. Purnima stumbles.

Ritu's left fist is forced out of its grip on her daughter's right hand. She stops for a millisecond and hoists Anu more securely with both hands, and looks sideways to see another runner, a woman, swoop down to clutch Purnima. They instantly disappear among the miles and miles of nameless, faceless runners.

The melody of the muezzin's call rouses Ritu from a blessed, restorative dream of Purnima's face. She lifts her stiff, aching neck from the bed, and walks to the window on the east. A glimmer of an orange-reddish glow is on the horizon. Ritu sees the faint outline of the crescent moon, and offers a prayer for Purnima. She looks at the disappearing moon, and asks her Maker, “how can one find closure, if not through blind faith in the belief that the other woman and my child are survivors too? Not victims of predators, but valiantly victorious.”

Rebecca Haque is Professor and former Chairperson (2009-12), Dept. of English, University of Dhaka. Also a poet, writer, translator, and literary critic, her published books are Commencement Poems And Occasional Essays (2003, 2nd Ed. 2009), Women, Gender, And Literature (2003), And Hemingway: A Centenary Tribute (co-edited, 2007).

Commemoration: Reading memorials as cultural texts

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Commemoration: Reading memorials as cultural texts

LITERATURE on commemoration has rapidly grown in the past twenty years. Scholars from a variety of disciplines, for example, from archeology, architecture, history, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, geography – and the more inclusive field under the rubric of Cultural Studies – are mapping the significance and role of “memory “. Commemoration is defined as a “call to remembrance“. Particularly in the remembrance of the war dead, commemoration has become deeply rooted in the cultural practices of a nation. War memorials are located in urban spaces, where material objects stand for and embody memory.

Memorials and monuments occupy both geographical and symbolic space, and are thus read as narrative/ cultural texts. Cultural critics interpret the diverse textual connotations of these objects and artefacts within the performative arena of the act of memorialization. The student of cultural studies needs a comprehensive compass to negotiate the interstices of such 'texts'. Memorialization is a complex social and emotional process involving 'historical or collective memory' and the more 'personal individual memory'. Memorials are concrete 'sites' of memory, imbued with ritual evocation of mourning and melancholia.

The Martyred Intellectuals Memorial, Rayerbajar, is a potent, dynamic monument recalling the violent history of the birth of Bangladesh. It is a shrine, a symbol of our eternal sorrow, and a tribute to a heroic sacrifice. Paradoxically, the memorial is also a living reminder of the hatred of the enemy, of the enemy's rabid rage to cripple our nation. For every Bangladeshi today, the Rayerbajar memorial is the symbol of everlasting pride in having had the Martyrs in our midst while they lived. We shall be forever inspired by their works and noble leadership. On 14 December, we remember them and cherish the gift of the legacy of extraordinary accomplishment they have left to the nation.

We ritually commemorate the illustrious dead with lamentation and libation and elegiac lyric. There is a glorious historical tradition of such ritual evocation and commemoration in all cultures since ancient times. Epic songs cycles honour the fallen heroes of warrior tribal societies, and ritual burial ceremonies created geographical sites of memorialization, such as burial mounds, or crypts, pyramids, and obelisks. When I look at the architecture of the Rayerbajar memorial, I am moved by the overwhelming semiotics of its structure. The open, bowl-shaped red-brick monument symbolically corresponds to the majestic Viking ship, sailing across leagues of mighty oceans, under the clear canopy of the blue sky. I see our honourable dead resting peacefully at night on the alluvial soil of their motherland, their eternal journey emblazoned by the trajectories of celestial stars and planets.

My mind equates the Martyrs' final voyage with the glowing, resplendent setting forth of the heroes in the fiery Viking ship-burial ceremony. Their souls are beckoned by the distant thunder of Valhalla. My heart beats to the rhythm of the gliding clouds and the breaking sea wave as I linger at the Rayerbajar site. My eyes shine with tears lit by the essence of the Martyrs' spirit radiating into my world through the large, square window on the wall of the Martyred Intellectuals Memorial.

Rebecca Haque is Professor and former Chairperson (2009-12), Dept. of English, University of Dhaka. Also a poet, writer, translator, and literary critic, her published books are Commencement Poems And Occasional Essays (2003, 2nd Ed. 2009), Women, Gender, And Literature (2003), And Hemingway: A Centenary Tribute (co-edited, 2007).

On the margins of ruin: War and displacement

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On the margins of ruin: War and displacement

Not history alone, not literature alone, but my own considerable life experience has convinced me that the world is Manichean, and tragically will forever remain so. Evil has many faces, and man's expulsion from the garden of Eden has tainted the earth with blood spilt in lust and vengeance and vicious hunger for conquest of acres and acres of rich, fertile ground. Cyclically, mighty civilisations have flourished on the banks of mighty rivers and have perished at the hands of marauding tribes and invading armies, and those same great rivers have overflowed with human blood and carcasses. Cain's act and bequest of brother against brother, his murder of Abel, is the original fable of the curse of evil lurking within each human soul. The mortal frame is a divided box, with opposing, warring desires of the flesh and the spirit, of the mind and the heart, and most unfortunately, yet most powerfully and crucially for the survival of entire civilisations, cultures, and tribes of peoples, the mortal self is itself a complex, convoluted, conflicted unit of light and shadow, of good and evil.

As a child, I have stood many a time on the steps and plinths of the majestic ruins of Mohenjodaro and Harappa, while my love of history books ignited my imagination to fill the emptiness of the rooms and the courtyards and the granaries and the bathhouses and the adjoining fields with living, breathing men, women, and children. Even my dreams were “peopled” by sunburnt folk wrapped in white homespun cotton garments. The Indian subcontinent is my geographical space, and I carry my Aryan-Dravidian colour and shape to the Occident and the Orient with pride. Bengal is my birthplace; with my roots firmly attached to the alluvial soil of the Gangetic Plains, I too am the inheritor of a rich culture layered with trajectories of centuries of settlements by Persian and Greek and Arab and Portuguese and Dutch and British voyagers, traders, conquerors. The bloodlines of the Bengali woman meet all cultures and languages, from the Greco-Roman to the Arabic, from the Hispanic to the Indic, from the Runic to the Hieroglyphic. The profile of the Bengali woman eludes the Cubist frame of Picasso: she is multiethnic, multidimensional. A racial chameleon, made from clay and terra cotta, Gandhara, Harappa, and Mohenjodaro.

The Rohingya are my sister as much as the Nubian and the Sumerian. Life and living on the margins of history has not erased the delicate beauty and resilience of the Rohingya woman. Displaced by colonial power two hundred years ago, by the same arm of the Empire which divided Bengal not once but twice for its own mercantile gain, the Rohingya flowered across the flowing river and the fluid border beyond the boundary of my native East Bengal.

Now, with evil intent and murder disguised in saffron robes and blood rites, the banks of the Naf are deluged sticky-red with desperate, displaced, ruined shards of humanity. Raped, battered, without her man, embracing the old and the sick and the infant, my sister grabs my shore and begs for help. How can I forsake her, my heart cries, even as it cries at my own inability to actively change her destiny.

In the city of the golden pagodas, the "pure Bamar" sits, complacent and contemptuous of our mixed race and wheatish/brown colour. Long months of placid denial of burning and butchering of Rohingya people by the ruling Burman. Long, arduous months of rescuing and sheltering and feeding the hundreds of thousands of refugees swarming into Cox's Bazaar. We Bangladeshi Bengalis are universally admired for our hospitality; even the poorest landless labourer is a gracious host and will happily share a meal with the starving. The inexorable forces of Nature and the peculiar contours of geography have often made my precious motherland prey to yearly denudation by flood or furious cyclone. Millions have migrated to other lands and are contributing to the economy of their adopted countries. Millions more, men and women, are struggling alone in distant lands to feed their own families back home in cities and towns and villages scattered across this tiny Bangladesh. The spirit of survival, of the continuity of family and lineage, is strong and unyielding in the heart of the Bangladeshi woman.

Education and equal opportunity for employment in all spheres of professional and vocational work have made us confident. Innately intelligent, inheritors of a centuries-old rich, diverse tradition of arts and culture, song and dance, many Bangladeshi women are leaders and role-models in these times of war and displacement. Succeeding generations of highly educated and dynamic Bangladeshis have won global recognition and accolades through individual achievements. Significantly, despite the conservative patriarchal attitude of some menfolk, there has been a fundamental reconfiguration of the ancient system of power and gender-relationship from those dark days when Bengali women were tithed in feudal bondage and deprived of the written word. While the struggle continues for those still on the margins of economic parity and social security, for those ruined by violence, for those subjugated by egregious dogma and perverted edict, I admire the efforts of enlightened fathers and brothers and spouses to fight for just rights of the Bangladeshi woman.

Today, as we house and clothe and feed and succour the ruined, forlorn Rohingya, I cannot but feel anxious for our own swiftly depleting resources. The supercilious Bamar has recently, grudgingly, bowed to international pressure for cessation of violence, but expedient political and economic affiliations of superpower nations have in turn forced us into a dubious "repatriation" treaty. Now, at the risk of undermining our own national security, the onus is upon us to bear the brunt of keeping the Rohingya in Bangladesh, in refugee camps, for years, perhaps decades, perhaps permanently. The real danger of Rohingya women disappearing inside the dark labyrinth of human trafficking and prostitution is already happening, as verbal and social media messages have indicated. Soon, verifiable statistics will also be available as women's rights activists begin to monitor the situation. Stateless, without a country or national identity or home or a patch of land to call their own, the Rohingya are mostly seen as expendable by the rest of the world. In contrast, tragically, the Rohingya woman and girl-child, neglected, illiterate, displaced, war-ravaged, but comely of appearance, is apparently seen as a profitable commercial commodity by the criminal underworld.

My mind grapples with the horrific proportions of this problem, which has insidiously stretched its tentacles into our public and private spaces. Secret encroachment into our urban and rural spaces and stealing our Bangladeshi identity bring commensurate backlash of anger and rejection directed at the Rohingya. The perplexing moral dimensions of this problem remind me of the desert fable of the nomad, the camel, and the tent. Apropos with regard to the Rohingya–Bangladeshi–Bengali situation, I look at the photogenic face of the bereft, weeping Rohingya woman, and I think to myself, will I one day become unhoused, naked and defenceless, by offering a bit of space in a gesture of goodwill?

Rebecca Haque is Professor and former Chairperson (2009-12), Dept. of English, University of Dhaka. Also a poet, writer, translator, and literary critic, her published books are Commencement Poems And Occasional Essays (2003, 2nd Ed. 2009), Women, Gender, And Literature (2003), And Hemingway: A Centenary Tribute (co-edited, 2007).

Samina Ahsan Shahrukh

VISITING VIETNAM

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VISITING VIETNAM

1. VISITING VIETNAM

A sudden opportunity presents itself, and I spontaneously agree to visit what for me, is an exotic country. Yes, Vietnam. Here are the snippets of my experiences.

1.1 87 MA MAY STREET

It is early in the morning on the last day in Hanoi. I look through the hotel room window and see the thin houses that fill the landscape of the Old Quarters. I look down from the 8th floor and see how clean the roofs and balconies of the buildings that stand shoulder to shoulder as if to hold up each other straight.

I have a good breakfast and wait until 9 to set off to walk to the ancient house. I almost miss it, but Google tells me that I am there. So I look around and spot two ladies sitting behind a table. I asked them if this was an ancient house and if they needed to buy a ticket. Yes, indeed, I have arrived at my destination, and after buying a ticket, I walked in. For the umpteenth time, I smiled at the thought of exchanging thousands of dong (Vietnamese currency) – and wondered if this was how a billionaire feels!

As I enter the house, I see a guide enthusiastically lecturing a group of foreign visitors. There is wonder, surprise and curiosity as one leans to learn a culture that again so long ago.

It is one of the 14 houses built during the 19th century. It has been restored, and the displays are from the past, giving visitors a glimpse of the homes of Hanoians from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This particular house was occupied by several families throughout the years until 1999. Now, it is for us to visit and discover.

On the right is a wooden staircase leading to the level above. I leave it for a later time and walk past the first room. I come across a small courtyard. It is neatly decorated with plants and a few old artefacts. In the middle was a splash of green from the layer of water moss floating on the water in a rectangular terracotta water pot. Passing this courtyard is a second room housing a wooden table, chairs and a cupboard.

A few steps forward, I am in another small open courtyard/kitchen. A part of it is roofed where the cooker is meant to be. Old dishes and pots are displayed for the visitors. Beyond, the house ends with a room and a washroom. The water source, they say, was harvested rainwater.

As I walk back to the wooden staircase in the first room, I am curious to find where the breeze is coming from. Ah, so these old iron pedestal fans work! The authorities have kept them on to give the visitors some relief from the humidity and heat in Hanoi.

I climb the wooden staircase and find myself in a large room, which is obviously the sleeping quarter. The foreign tourists and their guide have also moved upstairs to discover more about the way of life lived years ago in this house. Going past the room, I walk deeper into the house, passing the courtyards from one side of the second storey. The rooms display some furniture amidst the streaming sunlight of the day.

It is a small house. It takes a person but a minute or two to go across, yet I am left with my thoughts of all the people who once lived and frequented this house. They had their challenges and joys, fears and heartaches and left behind whiffs of their lives lived here. Luckily, I could visit.

Hanoi, 13 October 2024

1.2 OLD QUARTER AND EGG COFFEE

…. and so the legend goes that Mr Nguyen Von Giang, a Vietnamese bartender serving at the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hotel in Hanoi, innovated the egg coffee in 1946 during the Indochine War when milk was scarce. He used whisked egg yolk in the coffee. Yes, the thought is confusing, to say the least, unless you are Vietnamese and then you take pride in it.

So off I go with my travel mates to visit the Café Giangin in the Old Quarter of Hanoi to get my serving of egg coffee. A tiny, thin entrance one could easily miss takes one to a small room on the left with tiny chairs and tables and ends in an equally thin staircase. Up one goes to a small congested space, another room or two and a tiny balcony. The space is congested, and it would be lucky if you could get a space to sit. There are only small tools and tiny tables. (more suitable for children than adults) for the clientele of this special establishment.

One can choose from various coffee offerings, but egg coffee is the speciality. It is served hot or cold. I opt for the cold one. The Vietnamese like their coffee, which is strong, and if you stir and finish having the creamy top, a strong sip of coffee from the bottom may smack you. It was a great treat for me, though.

Weasel coffee is also readily available. A tale for another day, perhaps.

Hanoi, 13 October 2024.

A FISH SELLER'S GODDESS

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A FISH SELLER'S GODDESS

Fridays and Saturdays are the weekends. But like clockwork, every Friday morning the lady appeared in front of the fish seller’s stall. She would be the first to select the choicest catch of the day. She would halfheartedly haggle with the price more because it was expected of a good housewife than for saving.

One Tuesday, she had some special guests coming. She decided to buy the fish herself. So off she went and bought some fish. She was his first customer. That day he went home and was pleased to find that he had made more than expected profit for a weekday. He thanked the gods and went about his work with a pleased heart.

The next week, the same thing happened. She appeared unexpectedly to buy some fish on a Wednesday – a weekday! His profit was higher than expected that day. He smiled.

A week passed by, and although she had bought fish from him the Friday before, she appeared before him. Yes, she bought some fish once again. On tallying his accounts, a big smile spread across his face.

The next few Fridays, she was again his first customer. Those Fridays, he also found that he had made a generous profit. He started looking forward to Fridays when he could sell her some fish. On weekdays, when she did not come, he started to believe there was at least some dip in his takings because she had not come. It was obvious, though, that the weekdays brought in fewer customers and less profit. He knew that but liked to believe otherwise. And so, it was not long before he started believing that she brought him good luck.

He would greet her with subservience because she was his goddess of good luck!

.........well, was she?

Or was it a coincidence? The bad bargain hunter who came on an unlikely day and three occasions!

Dhaka, 7 Feb 2014

Afsan Chowdhury

The Book of Silence

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The Book of Silence

The Book of Silence - 1

The First Silence

The old monk couldn’t move well so he remained rooted to his space in the corner of the old temple as the other monks gathered around him as witnesses to his last moments and record his final thoughts and words. They had never watched an Abbot depart and wanted to know all that could be known from him on his day of ending. They wanted to know it all like hungry vultures circling above a body about to leave the dirt and the dust behind and become a corpse for feasting birds of prey.

The monk knew his time had not yet come for the wise never leave alone and must leave with a companion or many for the journey is a long and solitary one. He must grant every last wish and answer every last question till none are left and he is free of all needs and can be discarded like a dirty rag a woman throws away after many years of service in the kitchen tending to the soot blackened humble pots and pans.

“And I can’t speak to you for long for the leaves have gone home at the bottom of the tree from which they sprung. The mother’s womb is also the last lair of death, the tomb which encases the body before flying away into the sky of silence. For what birth seeks, so seeks death. And you give them different names just as you call dawn, dusk, morning, afternoon, night and other words for passages of the same reality and illusion called time. “

The Mahethera spoke first knowing he too would one day lie down and share the final words.

“ O learned and wise one about to depart , shall I look upon a harvest and see only the happy belly of a simple man who has tilled the soil and lived with the rain and planted the tiny seed to be part of the miracle of creation and destruction in a single cycle? “

He was a farmer before he became a monk and knew of the ways of the world and the world of rejection and denial and penance and prayers. Monks were afraid of his knowledge, his aggression to follow the true path and his devotion to Tatthagata and his sermons.

“ O Mahathera, what are harvests except reflections of your hunger and thirst, your willingness to feast and yearning to be satiated till the next meal. The insect and the human eat the same grain and yet one has the promise of enlightenment and the other perishes in the fire of the next morning when the corn husks are burned in the early morning oven. “

“ O Mahathero search without seeking and look without searching for the one who seeks is blessed but not free. The farmer always knows the green earth is ready for a bath in the rain, the plough that parts the earth and inserts the seed and the burst of green corn that turns into harvests. “

“Are you not aware that Thattagata once asked his disciple Anand to describe what he saw in a corn field in full bloom? And Anand said, “ I see the cycle of hunger and satiety. And I saw the fruits born in sweat and I see the householder’s joy and his offerings to the dhamma. “

Tahatta gata nodded in wisdom and asked, “And what of silence, O Anand . What of silence?”

And Anand looked at the wasted field of pestilence and hunger and saw unfed birds fly away with tired wings and turned to his master and bowed his head in search for forgiveness and understanding.

“ O Anand, seek not, search not , let the answers drape you like a monsoon rain embraces a traveler on the road like a mother’s arms. Nothingness is the door that opens the world to everything. Stillness is only motion at rest. Oh, let it rain without the earth seeking to quench its thirst, the mother to soothe the summer heat on the child’s body and the old to close their eyes. For the rain is its own truth, it needs none to become what it is. “

The old monk rested as the words weighed heavily on his heaving chest as a large bird caught in a hunter’s trap struggles to be free. His eyes rested on the lids of his unseeing vision, blind and serene in their emptiness and he then asked the Thera to come forward.

II

“ O wise one, what of those who have sinned before and shall sin again and promise not to sin but sins again ask if they are free or a prisoner of their senses.. lust .. greed, .. the Thera let his words falter as the old man rested his head on the cushions of the Thera’s words.. then he slowly uttered the words trying to slow them down.

“ O Thera, tell them of the right path for it is your duty to do so.. teach them of the right way for its your duty to do so , teach them how to be penitent and about the fetters of all flesh and its fetid dismay but offer neither anger nor forgiveness for we are neither here to judge nor forgive..pity them for their suffering and watch the insects crawl on their soft flesh as they eat into their blood and sinews and they can’t see the paradise of calm and serene indifference to the vacuous mouths of desire and pleasure..”

“Then what shall I tell them , O wise one if they ask me to tell? “

“Tell them to remember the days when they were children and the branch that fell from the tree landed on the leaves and never touched the ground and there was none to bless them for the loftiest tall tree also begins in the flesh of the damp earth and it returns to the grass and dirt and ashes of every season… before the rains return to resurrect them and revive their memories and they are ready to become the wood which becomes the meal for the hunter’s hungry axe.”

“And what of their karma?”

And the old man smiled for the first time that morning and said, “Tell them that let the leaves be nourished by the monsoon rains but under the tree’s canopy will grow the insects that devours the tree. For the silence of the deed is the silence of karma. “

III

The Mahajhima waited for the old man to rest for he knew when a man goes to his long home, he is in a stillness of preparation to move to silence and the crickets and insects that live at night come to touch the feet of silence with their noise don’t know the difference between the two.

“But what is piety, the sacred words of faith, the meaning of belief and truth O wise One”, he asked, his eyes clouded with fear for he was afraid of sin and wrestled with longings and desires..

The old monk also seemed to rest between the words as he knew he would have to say more but he felt the rich silence fill him with desire for more silence. He begged the rising silence within him to wait a while for he was not yet done with time as the waves lapped at the shores of his breath.

With effort he opened his eyes and then asked if he remembered his mother. The mahajimma nodded and the old monk asked, “Does it matter to the child if she is a sinner or not? For it is not sin that matters but penance, not the regret for the many pleasures of flesh but remorse, penitence and prayer. Truth lies between the moment when the mother picks up the child and showers love and the shadows that crumble on the baked earth of the potter.”

“ For we shall neither be here forever nor fade away eternally and the footsteps on the dry earth or water doesn’t appear in our eyes but when mixed with water, the earth becomes mud and on it the stamp of the feet becomes true. Neither the earth nor the water matters alone but the mud does.”

“ For my heart is in pain for the sinner but greater pain is for the one who can’t see the sin and yet longs for eternity. It is only for the one who waits for footsteps at the end of the day as the water boils on the mud stove and rice cooks and vegetables slowly mix with lentil and becomes food that the plates are readied and the child waits on an empty plate for the farmer to return home. “

He closed his eyes once more and the younger monk silently wept knowing that the words were meant for him and his clan and the family that he had left behind.

IV

The nissaya-muttaka approached him with folded hands for he was afraid that his questions would enrage the old and wise monk now departing from them. He was a monk only for a few brief years though he was much older than most but had come to the sangha to atone for his past life where he ate from wages of sin and crime.

One day he had seen a dead bird eaten by the lowly lizard and filled with remorse at the sight gave up all and spent a year in fasting and penance but never forgot his lowly status. Prayers were not enough to redeem his past he believed. He waited till the old monk looked at him and nodded slightly and he asked almost with choking voice about the forgiveness of killing another for he had killed many.

“You are asking about forgiveness but who decides to kill and who kills is not for you to see. For the death of another is your crime if you have killed him.. but his death is his own. Does the rain ask permission before falling on earth? “ “ Did you feel his death or did you feel his body as you plunged the knife inside him ? For surely the knife, you and the one you killed were one and the same at that moment when it occurred. Were you lucky to have sinned as you can now seek solace, penance and pain that shall wash the heart the way the rain washes the poor potter’s hut? “

“You are not here many days but you are not a novice. It’s the years of doubt and decay in you now and your heart is like the way the plough rips open the soil and sees the land bleed and cries in agony not knowing what splendid fruits the earth shall bring. “

“Don’t be afraid to doubt, don’t be afraid to hope, don’t be afraid to weep for the tears in your eyes are borrowed raindrops from the sky and the sky is open for all to see and is even clear through the smoke that rises from the ploughman’s kitchen in the evening as it bakes his dinner. “

“ O monk, seek yourself not the truth for you and the truth are one and look inside and watch how you grow as the child grows in a mother’s lap to became a young farmer who becomes a killer for hire and then a monk and then shall take a place among the gardens of the Mahathera if he keeps looking on and on even as the cricket goes to sleep and the worms on the field are swamped by unseasonal rains.. “

The others looked at the lesser monk quietly as he retreated back knowing every conversation about a past is an entry of the present and all sins step inside the door into the courtyard and ring bells of memories..And forgiveness must again be sought and vengeance is often forgotten. He sat down on the floor quietly, more quietly than the breathing of the dying man.. a skill learnt as a killer now spent in the service of the sangha..

V

Then the Navaka approached the dying form with fear as he was a novice and considered himself lucky to have been accepted as one. He was afraid that his questions would make him look like a fool in front of his elders and he stayed silent.

The old man understood and smiled. “For silence is not absence of words and sounds but of meaning. For no one seeks unless one is lost, no one walks unless there is a destination, no one is liberated unless there is penance and no one goes into penance unless one commits sin. “

“Everything begins with a sin and they fall upon you when you stand under a tree in the storm and leaves of sin fall on you even as you see nothing. Do not be afraid of sin; be afraid of desire that leads you to sin. Be in awe of the man washed by penance and who has stood in the mansion of the gods and only saw the rubble which he trampled with his bare feet. “

“ For Anand once asked his Lord about the sin of the insect and the ant and Tatthagata had smiled and asked who had spoken to the animals and other low life and who took the responsibility for the errors of teaching. For how will the cricket bring shame to its own kind if it was never taught and the insect lying deep in the mud knows no world of darkness or light? “

“Silence makes no pact with humans or with crickets for to speak is to suffer and to suffer is to understand. To understand is to feel the punishment and pain of knowledge and even the teacher who wakes in the morning cursing fate for wishing to understand knows that he can’t be silent if he wants to. For he is condemned to speak or what else is life if one is to follow one’s fate but not rise above desire and choose to deny what others take for granted. “

“Do not be seek, the monastery, temple or the farmer’s hearth or the baker’s oven for the truth but all are made of mud and all are true. “

The old man was breathing silently but had closed his eyes as if he wanted to please the senses before the final flight of the swallow that wings through the air in anticipation of the autumn rain. But the afternoon was fading and the time left was less than the life span of a cricket’s final gasps. In the end, the final moments differ not for man or birds and insects.

He felt the hurry in him that a mother feels as the child enters the world through her belly.

VI

Finally, the Samanera came forward, a young boy not yet a monk and waiting to don the robe of the illustrious order.

He sat down and watched the old body in front of him with unused eyes that had seen only a few endings and knew not what to say or feel as he saw the old wise man fade into the evening. The old monk turned his face towards the boy who was not yet a monk but a person who stood on the door of the sangha, neither inside nor outside.

And for one last time he raised his arms and said, “ O young man, who smells of a farmer’s home and ploughed field and sweet fruit juice stains on the clothes and the heart remembers the tender touch of a beloved mother, the raised eyebrows of a concerned father, the soft affections of a younger sister, remembers rolling on the dust with friends, O the one who sits full of life just opposite to one who has no more left, what is silence ? “

The boy shivered in the clutch of his memories and replied, “I once saw a beggar lying down in the dust and open his mouth as insects entered it and he waited for them to fly away. Then he raised himself and went to the well he was forbidden to drink from and with his last strength jumped in and disappeared never to be seen again. It was the silence of the dead.”

O Samanera, “ Is there no other silence that you have seen? “

The boy slowly answered, “I saw a man break the ground with his bare hands and bring water there in his palm and plant a single seed from which grains never grew in the silence of his hunger.”

“ I heard the silence of the mother whose child had died and whose silent lips still lay on the breast of its mother even though life was gone. “

Hearing him the old monk felt as if he had known the Samenara for long. But he asked knowing that they could be the last few words he would hear.

“And what of fire and earth and the storm surges that come when the heat rushes in waves, burning down grain fields? “

The samanera waited for the old monk to rest his eyelids. Then he said with a gentle lilt in his voice, “ I have heard the silence growing in the bellies of young children and old men as they huddled together in the grasp of drought as the sun howls down and lights fires of hunger and pain in their flesh. O monk, why speak of the silence of the boats as it glides through waters, carrying pilgrims to their destination and temples when they are neither water nor the boat? “..

The samanera continued knowing the final moment was there as the old and wise monk’s eyelids moved one last time.

“ But the silence of the charred wood, black and burnt and of no use to anyone after the funeral is over, is greater than the silence of the perished body for the rain pelting down washes all ashes away. But it lets bits of funeral woods float away in the puddles .. for let the rain seek out the traveler seeking shelter under the tree for the rain falls on one and all O, wise monk, I am the rain, I am the silence, I am the truth.. I am… ‘

VII

The monk’s dead body lay in state that night and they chanted prayers all night in homage. In the morning they found that insects of many kind had taken abode on his flesh and it could no longer be seen and the sight met only the brown pigments of the insects and the drone of the hurrying moth looking for another fire in the morning to drown in a rain of flames..

VIII

Explanatory Notes on the hierarchy of monks samanera samanen) — a novice monk who has yet to receive higher ordination ; The one who was present at the final moment of the virtuous monk was never seen again after the funeral was held. As there was no funeral of the body as none was found and only insect carcasses littered the pyre the novice led the process with the ashes of the insects and the monk’s flesh feasted on by the insects, all held in a goblet made of wood and stone. Scholars have debated on the actual identity of the novice. Some have said that it was the spirit of Anand who had come to visit the monk as he was so noble hearted and the words he spoke could only have come from him.

Others claim that in twilight moments and Brahma hour when everything is perfect the spirits of the natural forces visit the earth on which they come as visitors to return to the heavens. And that it was the spirit, the soul of the rain. Such debate had disturbed the monastery and they called in ancient astrologers and wise ones to tell them of the visitor who had come or was present at the final hour who bore the ashes with folded hands.

The wise men held counsel for many hours and as they read, charted and consulted they all concluded that the novice was the monk himself , whose soul had already been freed and who visited himself so that the last words he would hear before his final departure were the pure words of wisdom, he had learnt in an entire lifetime. He was to be his own companion in the long journey. The new Abbot was told of this conclusion arrived at by the wise men and agreed to by the monks and he praised them and then opened the windows and in the distance heard the footsteps of an impending rain. And he smiled and said, “ Where does the rain go after the shower is over ? Where does the rain return to? Where does the rain reside between the seasons? For the rain alone knows, it is complete, its total, its absolute. “

“Om mani padma home, Om mani padma home. Shantih, Shantih , Shanti.“

Navaka — a newly ordained monk

A few months after the famine struck the villages, he and his family ran out of food. There was no begging as there were no alms to be given and everyone began to make a line for the city where the rich princes were supposed to be feeding the poor. He hoped to save the family by begging and as poor people he was used to seeing beggars but the monks no longer got any food and were as desperate as framers.

In the city they found the dirt and filth on the road so unlike the villages but they trudged on till they reached a big tent where many people had gathered to get food alms. The families clung to each other knowing that they could be stampeded to death by the other hungry fighting for a fist of cooked grain. Several men in braided uniforms went around looking at the children and examining their ribs to see the state of the health. Most were too frail to be considered worth taking away and were left with the family and some grain and dry food was distributed.

Those whose babies were still healthy got large packets of food and alms and were saved from starvation. In return the healthy babies were taken away by the prince’s guards to be raised as proper members of the household who would grow up to be servants of the best kind as they had no homes to return to and no one to love unless told to.

And the families of healthy children also survived but the frail ones got little food and with their family died of starvation. nissaya-muttaka — a monk who has spent five years in the monkhood The whore market was big in those days even though the number of invaders was more and famine would race and ravage the people. But even then the demand for women ready to be sold to a bidder was high and they would gather with their women for buyers who would come in the morning to buy the women they thought were good for bodily pleasure.

These were not the courtesans who wielded power in the city through their guilds or their lovers in the court or merchant taverns but ordinary peasant women who didn’t have enough to eat and families had come to give them up to those who had some money or wanted a female companion for their journeys. These peasant girls didn’t even know how to look seductive but were like common whores who stand silently, waiting to be haggled over the price and then led away. They knew what awaited them and the soldier’s whip was no less painful when the king’s men would come and take their grain if they failed to pay their dues. Grain was god but they lost it often and less the number of people to feed, the longer would the period the grain would stay in the larder. As they were chosen, the coins paid and they were led away, they never looked back for there is no greater maya than that of a parent’s eyes as they parted with a child in exchange for money or grain.

majjhima — a monk who has spent between five to ten years in the Order (middle rank)

The householder’s knew the price many had paid for angering the princes and kings for only the rich can rise against the rich and they were not of the Kshatriaya caste who were warriors and Brahmains who were pandits and they were sudras and of the lower caste who kept silent when debates were on and wars were for joining without question and death followed as liberation.

He was working deep into the forest foraging for mushrooms which were rare and sold for a good price when he heard the sound of horses on a trot. He quickly hid himself knowing what could happen if he was discovered. He saw a horseman, tired and bleeding and haggard leading another horse. From his clothes he knew it was a man of rank.

The rider could go no more and somehow alighted from the steed and lay down against a tree. He watched the man breath hard and utter words of pain and lamentation, he knew not of what sorrow.

But he knew what he wanted to do and he slowly crept up on the man on the ground and faced him with his axe.

The wounded rider of rank could not move much as he saw the peasant with the axe. His eyes were frozen on what he knew was inevitable. There was none to hear his call for help.

He lifted his head once as if to ask why the axe had been raised by the mushroom hunter but he saw no remorse or guilt but a rage he could not understand. He closed his eyes and the axe came down with the sound of thousand storms as old as ploughed fields.

The mushroom hunter touched nothing, took nothing and said nothing as he walked away.

thera — a monk who has spent ten years or more in the monkhood and is eligible to be a preceptor (upajjhaya, one who ordains other monks) The leprous beggar sat on the side of the road and held out his hand to receive the coins and alms from the people who walked past him. He was blind which made him special to many and wished to be blessed by his incoherent words of thanks but he never spoke. He faced the day and night with the stony silence of the afflicted slowly drifting into dust and oblivion.

Yet many people would keep their gold in his keeping which he never touched and they took away in their own time as they wished for he had no greed. One day a man intrigued by such a man who wished for nothing sat down next to him and asked, “is there nothing you want in this universe.” The beggar turned his sightless eyes towards the man and said, “I want to die “ maha-thera — often used to refer to a monk who has spent twenty years or more in the Order.

For you must be careful of the leafless tree for its bears strange fruits and the nakedness of the branches are like forked lightning of shame and fear for a tree without leaves on its body must die. The tree had asked the travelling mahathera who had sat down under its shade to rest for a gift to hide its pain, a blessing to bear leaves. The master could not grant that wish but he blessed the tree that it should never be empty of adornments like a widow’s wrist and every year as spring broke, a body would hang from a rope tied to its branches swinging slowly and silently in the breeze.

The Book of Silence - 2

The companions of the journey

He didn’t even know of her but one day when his grandmother was dying she told him that there was a woman she feared of meeting after her end. Her name was Chapala and she was a Baijee who was married to her elder and brilliant son. “How could I accept her, this Hindu whore who your uncle had married and tried to bring home? I didn’t open the door and they stood there knocking, knocking for such a long time but I didn’t allow them in.”

“Your Chacha died soon after but she came to the burial and cursed me. She said she would wait for me after my death. Now as my time has come I know I will meet her. I am not afraid of her but she is a baijee and your dada was a zamindar. How can I accept her? Will Allah make me apologize to her? I will reject Allah then. “

There was both anger and hurt in her voice because she knew when the time came and the carriages would arrive, there could be no return. The doctors had given up hope but she stayed alive for days. He was curious as he had never seen a person die from so close. Many had come to see her one final time and weeping, often not so silently, was common in the house.

Her daughters and nieces, many widowed, would move about, frantically trying to do their final duties as much as possible , keeping ancient traditions alive. But time was short and after a few days they would all leave, leaving behind her daughters and daughter-in-laws. She would only talk to the woman hired to help her pass on in comfort.

And then one day, she told her daughter-in-law to cover her head when she had entered the room to give her medicine. “Your father-in-law is here” she said staring at the wall opposite her bed”. “He has come to take me home. He has come with his brothers. My time has come.”

Her daughters heard the news from the anxious putrabadhu and began weeping loudly sitting on the floor but the old woman about to depart scolded them in a stern voice. “Have you no sense of purdah ? Making a scene in front of them, your elders ?. Call your brother. This is not for women.”

Her son came in as asked and stood silent, stone faced near her bed. She read some holy verses and asked him to bend down so she could softly blew on his face. “Don’t worry about me, everything is fine now. Your father has himself come. Women of our class don’t travel alone. Look after everyone and remember your bloodline. And look after your sons.”

Before the doctor could even hastily reach her room in his final visit, she was gone. Her face was peaceful as lamentations rose. It seemed the house itself was going to weep in mourning as her fetid body was left behind and she was gone with her men who kept promises they made.

The silsila of defeated forts

He waited for the attack. He knew that they didn’t have much chance against cannons and cavalry but it was not that he feared death. He feared not having done enough. He had lost his home, family and his own living to battle the foreigners and their zamindars. They stared at the earth through his hungry eyes.

The man who had trained them was a wrestler and a man who had returned from Mecca. Many respected him and he had gathered several hundred of them. He said an unjust king must be attacked to be overthrown. The man was a prisoner of his conscience and faith. His followers were prisoners of theirs.

But he who stood at the them waiting for the attack to come was a peasant; he was a prisoner of his belly and had never travelled beyond the village.

Slowly as dawn arrived so did the uniformed soldiers of the Company who attacked the bamboo fort. It was not a big battle and soon the fight was over and the leader and many others were killed. He, the peasant ran away with a few others and hid in the forest with animals and ants to live the life of a forager and survivor.

One day he met some sannyasins who were robbers too and had been hiding in the forest for long. Many had forgotten for how long they had been hiding and remembered only their hate of the gora. They would rob rich people on the highway and they taught him how to kill quickly. He learnt well and would wait for faces he could remember from the walls of his hate. Sometimes, they would raid funeral pyres and steal from the corpses and frighten the mourners away with their filth and screams and howls.

On one such raid, as he waited to strip a corpse, he saw another man sit down on the ghat of a still pond and in the blazing afternoon dream of a dead man who walked on the parapets of his fort made with mud and rushes singing loudly of another day. Death would continue, mud forts would rise again on the green plains.

He lay down in peace and let the insects eat him and his hunger alive.

The reincarnation of himself

He had recently died from hunger. It was nothing new and he himself had remembered his recent previous deaths, often in a single generation. Death was a continuous song carried from one generation to another. He understood that well and saw his neighbours die as well and his own family members. He found rebirth occasionally painful. He accepted dying as natural but it was his family or to be precise his families that caused pain.

Each birth meant forming new families, loving them and then watching them all die. Not that everyone remembered but some did and they would see their own wife and children blown away from them by the winds of hunger and death. And seeing them die and remembering their death into the next birth and seeing them being born and grow up and die in their later years from hunger.

Sometimes he would be the child of his own children and as he died, often as a child he would see the agony on his father’s helpless eyes who was his son in a previous birth, as he drifted away in that feeble embrace to be followed in the journey once more as the father, as the son.

The belly slicers

They had sat on the varendah of the mansion and watched the sun go down as they drank fine whiskey brought from Kolkata. It was next to the pond where women belonging to the servants would come to fetch water. A very pregnant young girl was one of them and they had a bet if she was carrying a boy or a girl. He was a visiting cousin so in his honour they had the girl sliced open to see who was right. The cousin won and when the howling servant came weeping with the first child they had him sliced too. But such killings drew attention and books and taxes and estate management was inspected by the Brtis, what hated such killings. It drew attention.

But it started a fight with other shariks who hired smiling killers from Kolkata who had his mistress’s belly split open though she was not carrying a child. In the end, they never forgave each other and till many years on, after each sudden death, every one of them were looked upon with suspicion .

5

Inflammable deaths

The corpse was already two days old, kept in a freezer since the night before and stiff from old wounds of mourning even before the dawn broke. But the crowds swelled and grew on the streets as the heat sent waves of rage across the city. It was the fires that bulged in ancient bellies that spoke of deaths past and of future harvests for mourners always seek blood just as dead trees seek new rain. The skin was burned by the heated pavement as thousands knelt in prayers and touched their head in unison as the man who led the prayers kept silent till the rakats were over. It was time for the elderly man in a flowing beard to deliver the khutba in the only language he knew. He only knew of rage and the blood of many angers of their previous fathers and ancestors and generations spread over grasslands and pliant hills.

He remembered the conversation he had in a birth before, standing on the parapet of a mud fort and saw a thousand death and the breasts cut open by a foreign sword. No one had control over himself or others. He didn’t seek victory; he sought as he had always sought, the wages of revenge.

“Have you not sought the blood of martyrdom before? Have you not chosen to die before? Have you not sought purification with the holy liquid of your own blood?”

The crowd, insane with the rage in their bodies that their feet could not carry cried out for the momentum of the arrow that seeks a target. But he would not let go for he knew the power of the coiled serpent held by the hand is great and should never be unleashed till it could be held back no more.

They looked at him to utter the call to shed blood but he didn’t pick up a single stone. He only held the rough wood of the pall as they heaved it up on their shoulders . With a loud sigh they held the body aloft and pushed forward. The janaza for the dead had become the azan or call of the faithful at birth. In his end, was their beginning.

The dead son’s mother

He returned home after the scanty burial to his hovel and saw his wife lying on the floor holding the damp clothes of her child to her breast, gone past weeping. She sat up and asked him, “is it over? What will you do now? “ He had nothing else to say except pick up the scythe, spit on it and start polishing. His wife came close to him and sat down. “You must never forgive. You can never forgive. You are not allowed to forgive. God forbids forgiving.”

He said nothing.

“You must make sure that the wound is right and goes deep into the chest so that it can’t be healed, deep like a plough into the earth after the first rain. Make sure that there is no recovery, no return. Make sure he has no chance of forgiveness. Make sure, he dies instantly so that he has no time to seek mercy from God. God is all merciful and hearing his prayers may listen to him. Make sure you kill him before God has a chance of forgiving him. Make sure he dies without uttering God’s name.”

He kept on polishing the scythe. If it was to be a one strike hit, it had to be sharp, as sharp as the voice of the mother of his dead son. My late father’s late brother’s late wife

My Chacha was a person of his time and class. As it sometimes happened in those days, the Devdas era, he crumbled and never recovered when the parents of the woman he loved, rejected him as a groom. What really happened I have never been able to find out whatever he was worth, it wasn’t enough to secure a match. So he swallowed a full glass of liquid opium one afternoon in my parent’s single bedroom apartment in Kolkata, after locking the door and telling my mother, his younger brother’s wife of a year or so only, not to disturb him as he wanted to sleep long.

There was another suicide in my extended family. The news of the lady’s death who had killed herself after being denied marriage to her cousin was conveyed to the uncle who had wanted to marry her after he had returned home from work. As he sat still in shocked silence for hours literally, the light bulb above him exploded into bits and the shards showered on him like crushed petals on a groom. A few more names can be added to the list of such deaths in the family including a few much less gallant narratives.

My Chachaa was like a signpost of transition as feudal Bengal crumbled and new combinations and classes were emerging. He was in many ways a typical member of the bygone era, standing with a feeble lantern of decadent aristocracy in his hands. In its light nobody could see the faces of tall impoverished lovers, helpless and writhing in agony as the liquid opium he swallowed to die ate into his entrails for two days before he drew his last breadth in a hospital bed surrounded by his bewildered and no doubt outraged family members.

The loyal elephant of the dead man

My grandfather died in 1931 in a town on the coastal grain bin of Bengal where the tax collection office was of the zamindary was. Family lore was that someone had angered some Pir and he cursed that no (Keroa) Chowdhury would ever cross 55 years. My grandfather was unwell that day and had lunch with magur fish and lay down tired after his meal. “He closed his eyes and his body shook once and he was gone”, my father who was with him had remembered. He was 52. With all respect to the legendary curse, most members of the next generation have lived past 80 and mine died at 88. Curses clearly have expiry dates.

Carrying the dead body for burial from Bhola to Raipur wasn’t a simple matter. Meghna turned wild and the boat almost sank. But they made it finally, my dadi said, who feared losing a son as well, my father. My grandfather’s elephant broke his chains and rushed to the river ghat wailing, unable to bear the pain of his master’s death, which he knew through by some instinct. He tried to touch the body with his trunk and then followed the corpse to the burial ground trumpeting in heart break.

After the burial, he lay down on his regular spot next to the gate and never got up again. A week later he was dead. Years later, his relatives dug up the ivory and sold it to a wealthy collector of new rich Bangladesh. They also sold two Ford T- 20s that had been with the family for long and lay dead in the garage. Elephants have a better sense of history than living close relatives of dead zamindars.

The phantoms of Kolkata

The waited in the night with bamboo sticks guarding the slum. Hostile crowds could gather and attack anytime. They couldn’t sleep knowing that controlling such churnings of moments and time was beyond them. Two men from rural districts far away had come to the city and become guardians of the slum that night as blood and hate flew around in the sky like multi coloured kites. One was a tall man, unusual for his people, who looked at the city with angry eyes, something he understood best having lived next to hungry peasants in flood plains. The other was shorter, less brown and came from wealthy families growing up in semi-hilly tea garden dotted lands. But both wanted freedom in the way they knew and knew that the slum dwellers slept in uneasy terrified beds. Blood was being spilled in a world where geography was the same but history was not.

He went over and sat on a discarded bench as several dogs awakened at night loitered near them. The dogs were too scared by the silence of the night to venture close. The tall man looked at the sky and wondered how long it would be before dawn. They were joined by a few more and someone tried to wake up a sleeping man to ask where a tea shop could be. The man woke up, dazed, confused and scared and then not waiting to verify, ran away. Another laughed seeing the sight but the two friends didn’t.

The slum hugged the shadows of a row of tall buildings bearing stamp of some colonial architect, far away from the muddier climes from where they had come. They saw nothing in the city so many called home in fine buildings and on the pavements. They felt no loyalty to the songs they didn’t sing. Rage was more important than music as the night hobbled on keeping them company. The less tall one from the hills looked at the leaflet he carried with him, stashed in his pocket, with calls from the secret rebellious army now defunct but unconquered. He dreamt of a horde of soldiers coming down the hills in a charge of change and victory. One loss births another gain, one defeat spawns another dream.

He knew he was going to walk the dangerous and clandestine paths. He knew he had no choice. Or perhaps he had chosen. Through the half lit metropolis night which he couldn’t call his own, he watched the tall one pace up and down. He knew that history had perhaps happened that night than in any other night as they had chosen to walk the city and the guard the slum. There could be no turning back now.

Blood always seeks out history, and history always seeks out people. There is no mercy, no forgiveness.

“ O Anand, listen to the farmer speak in hushed tones as he talks to the grass.

When the farmer becomes a warrior, a Kshatriya shall tremble in fear. “

The Collector of souls

The collector of souls and bodies would walk down from the sky to the mosque as the fresh smell of incense would flow out with the breeze as mourners gathered. The perfumed agarbattis were enough to make death a pleasant task to attend to. For the crumpled bodies of the old, shivered and shrunk into silence would be less difficult to bear when the incense was so heavy and malodorous. Sometimes the souls would be restless and wait for him with eager eyes and excitedly motion themselves to him. “It is I , it is I who died. It is I who is free. “

He would say little as he would ask the same question he had asked so many before. And they would answer in rehearsed words what they had learned since their childhood without understanding why.

“ O traveler, what is the name of the rose ? “

“ O collector, the flower drips with blood and I have no memory of shame. “

“Have you no hate?”

“I have hated long.”

“Whom did you hate so long? “

“The insect that ate the grass, the merchant that drank the wine, the farmer that tilled the field, the women that bore the child.. “

“And did you not hate the assassin who came down from the sky with his fist full of shiny coins?”

“O Collector, I looked up and only saw the rain drift down from the sky shining in the afternoon sun. “

“Behold, it is the truth, it’s the rain, it is you.. O traveler, the time is ripe for horses to climb the sky?”

The ornament polisher’s skull

He lay there in the drain, unable to move, unable to distinguish between the blood on his face and the sewage water that swam around him. He felt pain like his flesh were contorted in child birth delivering children of agony on his skull where the knife had punctured and tried to enter inside. But his hand was missing he felt and he couldn’t touch the spot where his universe at that moment had gone to live. Slowly as sensations returned, the pain howled even more loudly and he screamed too but all that came out of his crushed throat were mangled groans.

The gold polisher lived rent free in the garage of a wealthy relative sharing the space with the car which he guarded as well at night. The owner worried about his fancy car as the city spewed blood from its tubercular lungs and the city tried to put it out with incendiary baskets littered around like careless dung of plough animals furrowing the city streets.

He came from the villages surrounding the city. It was not too far away but he couldn’t return every night by train as many did and slept under the skies that were hospitable to stars. He was still an apprentice learning his trade. A jewelry worker from his village had put him there who had a favour to repay to his mother who had nursed the jewelers young child when the floods had swarmed the area like locusts and there were no dry grounds for animals to graze. They had taken the few farmers’ cattle to higher ground with others in the village as they always did leaving behind young children in the care of the grandmothers. But the child had none and the apprentice’s mother looked after him till the floods faded away leaving fertile soils behind.

He did the tea, swept the floors and when he got the chance polished the jewels till they shone like the fading stars on the city sky. The owners were good to him and said, they would take him in if he learnt how to use fire to melt the gold and turn them into ornaments by crafting delicate designs that were like memories of marks made by smiths of the past who too had left mothers and pastures behind.

The craftsmen shaped the metal into intricate patterns that were not ornaments but holy chants that had become solid and visible on the gold anointing and blessing the woman who would be made up as a bride and become the wife. He loved gold, he loved work, he loved becoming a man who was earning wages. He was warned to stay away for a week as the city was like a bitch in heat which was tense and the pavements and houses, some tall, some big and fat would walk on the roads so angry and ready to kill, waiting when it could explode into blood and corpses. He was scared and wanted to runaway to his village and hide among the leaves far away from the killing fields. It was said that the naked tree without leaves was evil and men and women at night would be called by the lonely tree in search of company and many would climb it as if in a spell and some would never return.

He didn’t want to return to his village without a job and he was still just an apprentice and he agreed to stay overnight at the shop to guard as the city caught fire. In the early morning, when he came out to pee near the drain on the opposite side of the shop, a mob turned up suddenly and asked for his name. He was too scared to lie. Hearing it, they attacked him.

When he woke up from the stupor many years later he had left the land and gone away to live in another with the family they had served for many years and he raised their children who would often rub their hands on the scar on his head and run their fingers up and down the wedge that never fully healed or went away.

And he would remember.

The mother of boy children

“ And O woman who are you? “

“I am a mother, I have become a mother twice, I am a wife and I became a bride at 17 and left my father’s home to my husband’s rented home in this city to watch people live and die swathed in blood.”

“And have you watched?”

“ Yes, I have seen it all, I saw the blades thrust into a milkman’s innocent belly as he measured milk on our doorstep and we cried out begging for his life as he did his task.”

“And who were you? “

“ We were mothers and housewives who have raised children and will raise them till we die and we are of those who need milk for babies and children and sun to dry our wet hair after bathing as we sit on balconies and wait for the rain to wash the blood of slaughtered animals and people from the pavements.”

“ And did you watch the milkman die? “

“ We saw him dragged into the middle of the street by men who threw him into a manhole on the street. They recovered his corpse days later from the drain. It had taken the colour of the milk he would give to us. “

“And did you mourn? “

“ No, I hated. I hated the killers, I hated the killing, I hated the city. So what will happen to me now? “

“Now, you shall depart from this city to another city, another city that is younger than this, less splendid than this, less familiar than this.”

“And shall I raise my two children there?”

“ No, you shall raise your four children there and they will all be boys and you shall be a strong mother of the brood.”

“Will that city bleed too? “

“ That will be your city, that city will be your home, that city will be yours, you shall call it your own..and so shall your children and that city will bleed too but will roar too and your sons will roar too, they will walk too and roar and run.. “

“And will my children live long and be happy ?” There was no answer .. there was only silence  

The Book of Silence - 3

The escape from fire

Nobody was sure how many had died that night as the army cracked down. But he knew more death was coming particularly in his part of the town. After the end of afternoon prayers people came out chanting patriotic slogans and looked for houses to torch. Most knew which house would be the target and they found it, a three storied building which showed some signs of wear and tear.

The crowd felt safe as the army was on their side and the enemy had been cowed down. But it didn’t matter really as they sought revenge. It was revenge not for deeds done but anxiety caused by defiance. Soon they were on the bottom floor of the building and found the door to the upstairs locked.

They pounded on the door but it didn’t yield although pounding fists were many. It enraged them further and soon rags wet with kerosene were lit and thrown inside which soon caught the flame. Slowly the smoke, the flames and the heat rose hoping to fry the people inside still left. They were mostly women or maybe all of them were he didn’t know. As the crowd roared and cheered, they stepped back a few yards as they eyes stung from the smoke and their face felt the heat . He climbed up the balcony unseen in the haze of the blazing heat.

Two women, one young and one older, her mother were waiting with their head in sezda facing the West as the heat grew like a summer flower in full bloom all around them. They saw him with terror in their eyes but said nothing as he too remained silent watching them in that strange room bereft of people except those who were about to die.

He showed the younger woman the roof next door and she obeyed him without a word and jumped. The fingers of the flames were not long enough and she landed like a bird on the safety of the house next to theirs from where anxious people watched the building burn. Then he picked up the mother of the young girl who had only one good leg and jumped holding her the way a young child in play is held by a father.

It was after landing there that she saw the knifed body of her husband lying on the pavement, blood mixing with dirt of the road and she screamed and lost her desire to live. But he hit her and she collapsed due to pain and grief and he continued to carry her through the dazed and confused crowd, people not seeing anything except a young man carrying an older woman, both ready to flee as they escaped the blaze along with others. He went on till he had reached the end of the road and fell down far away from the sound of the baying crowd.

A few months later many hid in their homes for weeks as the war slowly collapsed and fear and joy rose the way winter settles on homes immune to change. Another crowd had gathered in front of the area where most were in hiding and wailing as another death stared at their faces silently drawing haphazard patterns on the sky and dust.

He would wait and he would would wait till the silence of of his own death rang in his ears rocking him to sleep once more with its own music that none can hear. Goodbye, sweet warriors She had known what she was doing when she moved deep into the swamp and far away from the last hut in the village. But from where she lived, the village could not be seen and she could not anything to make her remember the night when her son was killed. He had been ferrying eggs to a bigger market from the swamp where rare swans and birds came to nest and he would collect the eggs once a week and sell them in the market where he went by boat.

A man in the big market had asked him for a hundred swan eggs and he had collected them from others in the villages as well, the best he could find, and taken them to sell there. The man had come and bought them all but ten and then gave him more than he had asked for and left as he swayed in happiness. But he missed the boat and when he came to the river ghat, a storm had risen and he had to wait till the rains subsided and boats could sail. It was almost evening when he could take a boat home. When he arrived back to his village after a walk from the ghat that served his and few other villages, it was dark. The razakaras , knowing he had money with him that day jumped on him and killed him taking his money leaving the body and the ten eggs behind.

People knew the killing was taking place but they were afraid that night to come out as they were not sure how many of them were killing the egg vendor. By the time the mother came out with his wife, first screaming for him and then lamenting as they sat next to his corpse, the killers were gone. So were the money but not the eggs.

The mother and the daughter-in-law left the village the week after and set up home in the swamp so that nobody would meet them unless they wished to. They never spoke about the murdered son nor listened to condolences. And in their silence they became part of the dead who never spoke. But they kept chickens and a few swans where the lived next to the swamp and the birds fed on the swamp insects and fishes and would return every other day to lay their eggs and go back to the waters to feed again.

It was in late autumn as they sat in their makeshift kitchen cooking rice and green spinach that they heard soft but careful footsteps of several men who stood near the rickety door. They men were armed and looked tired and like them were silent as they watched the rice being cooked.

They were six of them who had walked for many miles across the border and were very hungry. She could not risk going to others to borrow food for they never did and they were only two of them who mostly ate from the swamp. Once a week they would collect the eggs the chicken and swans laid and then sold them in the local market to buy rice and lentil and salt and spices.

The daughter in law called out to the chicken and slaughtered two the first day to feed the young men. Then the mother and the daughter offered the widow to them but they refused to touch her and went to sleep under the sky. They stayed there for a week and the two women slaughtered most of their flock to feed the warriors who one day after the week was over faded away in the night after saying good-bye. That night they attacked the camp of the razakars who had killed the egg vendor and killed them all and disappeared across the border. Months after the war was over, one of the partisan returned with a few others to the swamp to look for the mother and the wife. The found the hut collapsed and two corpses, long shrunk and partly eaten by animals lying on the mud floor of the hut. There was no food anywhere and none in the earthen jar where they stored rice. They had not been seen for long at the market. There was no reason to anyway, for the chicken and swans had all been killed and served to the warriors.

No son, no wife, no mother, no chickens, no eggs, no food, no hut, no sound of rushes swaying in the swamp washed by the winter sun. Only silence reigned around the warrior as he wept for unknown reasons a little away from the cave in the hut where the corpses lay unburied and the birds on the swamp swam unhurriedly for no one had them taught the difference between thunder and silence.

And then an unseasonal gust of rain hit the swamp and the waters churned like the hole in the river into which boats and corpses disappear never to return from a silent world.

Goodbye, sweet warriors, goodbye. Good bye mother, goodbye wife, goodbye son, goodbye... goodbye.. goodbye..

The man in the dark night

Sometimes when autumn was approaching he would walk down to the Gate which had been named after a martyr and watch the evening traffic go by. The city had slowed down since the crackdown and people would rush home, scared and fearful of the dark and the soldiers, not venturing out unless they had to. The soldiers were also uneasy as the partisans fighting them were becoming bolder and their people were cheering them, though not openly, perhaps only among themselves. But he knew the city had many veils and a few had already come down. It was all a matter of waiting though everyone waited for different salvations.

The women and her family whom he had saved were gone and the house had been taken over by a man from his own community. He felt a bit strange as if he was in the vacating business, cleaning one householder so that another could come in. He had stood in front of the house and stared at it looking for signs of children. He wanted to see children, not adults because children were silly and asked strange questions which he could not answer.

The new residents didn’t have a house before so they were very happy with the new home. The rest were happy that the old enemy family was gone and it didn’t matter who lived there, who owned it as long as the war could be won. They were sure of victory.

But houses were strangers too, no different from people whom some one knew and some, one had never met. At night he would walk in the alleys of the neighbourhood watching lights flicker open, dim , douse in every signal of pain, fear and merriment. He would hear the silence inside the houses and silence of the roads where mongrel dogs roamed freely, and would go close to and forget to bark as if they could already read the night and didn’t need to talk anymore. He felt comfortable in the company of dogs at night who like him knew when to run away, hide, be silent, bark. But he had forgotten how to bark.

He would often come to a house inside a compound where an army jeep would arrive late and leave early. In it a lady and her child lived, living alone with a missing husband. Not many visited the house during the day and she would sometimes come out and shop for vegetables and groceries unable to face the faces of the shop keepers as if they also knew of the nocturnal visits. He knew only that much and no more and he would worry about her for some strange reason. What were the number of times one turned the key to unlock the door, what were the words that unfolded the dress, what was the switch that triggered lust and then satiety?

He would ask the dogs but they didn’t care much about him when the crumbs he carried would run out. His sleepless eyes burned as he waited for the jeep to depart and a sense of peace would descend on him when it left driven away by the visitor. He wished the dogs knew the answers. Even better if the dogs knew the questions he wanted to ask.

He had known no other than this city and this neighborhood where he was born, raised and then left alone after his parents died. His aunt had raised him, whose own children had departed and in that tiny house given to refugees from India he had grown up and knew the lone guava tree in the frontyard which still blossomed and gave fruits once in a while.

But many had left and many more were leaving and he, without friends, without enemies had no sense of either wanting to escape or stay. He just wanted to go on as long as he could and be with the neighborhood, waiting for the noise of feet on asphalt to awaken him in the evening and put him to sleep at dawn. In between lay a bed made of silent dreams and nightmares and he would choose them like cinemas in theatre halls watching the red garish posters on the wall unable to distinguish between blood and beetle nut juice.

He waited tilll he would heard only silence pure and fierce, unforgiving and endless as they lay like the dupatta of a young girl that blew in the wind dried by a benign sun on the rooftops of houses and homes.

Sadness of poets

By the time they came out of the house the screams of the woman who had just learnt her husband had been killed was loud and the shrieks followed them to the street. They hated being bearer of such bad news and yet couldn’t shirk off responsibility because they were hid in the house when the war was on. The dead man would shuttle to and fro, from his job outside Dhaka and his home in Dhaka where his wife and two kids lived. One day the man had waked him late at night with a finger on his lips. He was terrified that the army had surrounded the house but the man motioned him to follow and led him to a small space near the stair case and softly read out his love poems in the dark. He didn’t want to wake his family. It’s for the first time that he understood the sadness of poets and their poetry.

The soldier with birds in the sky

They had followed the soldier throughout the day as the retreating band lost members one after another. They were at the beginning about a dozen but as they walked towards an imagined safety, they were slowly depleted by snipers. He didn’t fire a shot but just watched as they finally separated into ones and split up hoping to survive. He followed the decrepit looking tall one who stumbled on, his military trousers reddened here and there with blood from old and new wounds. He finally cornered the man near a narrow patch of land next to a small ravine. A creek followed past, unpolluted, unused water from the low red hills nearby. He walked slowly and stood behind the soldier who went down on his knees and then threw his rifle away as a cluster of wild pigeons took to the sky. The man held his arms up almost in supplication and wept out his words, “ birds, birds, birds…” He slowly went to the man on bended knees and met his eyes. They were tired and hungry bereft of hope, shame, fear…

The firing line up

He had not expected to die so soon even though they had waited to be picked up, taken out and shot any day. But the men did come to the makeshift jail and took them out one by one. He had wondered what he would think when the time would come but even as they lined them up against the wall, in the beautiful morning, no thoughts came to his mind. A man, who had once been a member of a singing band had told him that he wanted to go singing the national anthem when his time came. But he could say nothing when it did, looking at the soldiers with their silent eyes, let alone sing. He began to pee in fear and it kept coming and wetting his pants. Then he began to weep and it hit his nose, the smell of urine. The soldiers irritated by all this began to fire. The last thing on his mind before he went was the smell of the singer’s urine.

The poet and the unknown

All night he wrote poetry knowing victory was near. In the early dawn several men came to their home and asked for him. He didn’t know them but they knew him. Perhaps they knew he wrote poetry or that he had converted to Islam to marry his wife. He didn’t know which was more treacherous.

He was surprised that he was not afraid and kept calm. He didn’t want his family to be scared either. They stood close to him as if it was going to prevent what they didn’t know.

But the men had no time for so much talk. He was holding his son when they asked him to hand him over to his wife and follow them. He caressed his hand over his head and then left. His wife saw him taken into the jeep. His eyes were already tied up and his lips were moving in silent prayers. What did his silent prayer sound like ? That was her last memory of her husband.

A week later when the city was free the young warriors came and asked her who she suspected.

The family, already trying to leave was caught and all were killed including young adults and children. Nobody could say if they were guilty or innocent as their bodies lay in silence.

My late cousin’s jilted warrior friend

My cousin Khokon Bhaiya loved doing portraits and many would come to him for that. He never refused anyone and we would see the faces emerge with pencil, brushes and paint with avid fascination. He often drew from photographs. One day he showed us a picture of a pretty young girl and smiled. “My friend’s darling”. The friend would come every evening and watched the portrait grow hoping to give it to her as a birthday gift. She lived in Green Road and was a neighbor of sorts of his. The crackdown followed soon. But news of resistance was all around.

One day, we heard his friend sobbing. Later, we learnt that his girl friend was about to be married off which was common in the war year. Parents were too scared to keep a young girl at home and thought that the husband would be a better protector. Or perhaps they feared that a raped girl could never be given in marriage so better marry girls off before rape happened. It was as bad as a forced marriage. A war was on and nobody was free.

One day, we saw the friend again who was quietly sitting and talking. He had come to take the photograph and painting and go away. “So what is left for me? I loved her but I have lost her. She is now somebody else’s wife. I am going away to the camps to join the war. It’s the only way left for me. “ He became a ferocious warrior and after the war a famous movie star specializing in roles of villains.

Case studies from a diary

“ the army came and encircled my home and then came in. They saw the plates and pots and kicked them fled away and said, “ So you feed them, do you ? Let us teach you a listen. “She lost her senses and collapsed and was raped. Her husband fled away and returned after the army left.

After the war, many curious people would come to see the village and the rape victims feared exposure. So the villagers gave this landless woman some land, built a home and set her up for life. She discusses her rape with all visitors. The rest were safe from prying souls she lived a well fed life with her husband. She had become the wall behind which women shamed by soldiers lived in complicity with the silence that secrets bring.

Two sisters, one mother and a tree

The soldiers wanted women so they asked the village for a few. If they got a few they wouldn’t disturb the others, they said. The village elders selected a potter community to hand over two girls. The community had no power to resist and very poor. To save other girls they handed over two girls, both sisters. The girls were returned a few days later.

But the community refused to accept the two girls as their own. They were taunted till it could be borne no more. The two sisters chose a tall tree. Later , their mother chose the pond. The tree of silence. That night as the mother led them to the tall tree, they looked at it as the faithful stare at a tall deity.

“ Sleeping with the enemy”

A young mother was informed by her husband’s Pak army friend that he had been caught helping the enemy and was kept a prisoner. Unless she agreed to have sex with him, he would be killed. She slept with the army officer which continued till another officer came and told her that the rapist had been killed and he had actually killed her husband in order to sleep with her. He would come at night in his jeep and leave dearly. She would stare at her child and a photo of her missing husband knowing she could tell none of her fate. The day her brother beat her up for sleeping with the enemy, she wept after her child had gone to sleep. She walked into her verandah in the night, watching the dogs , the dark and the lampposts under one of which a man sat and fed bread crumbs to the mongrels every night.

The person who brought her the news of her husband’s slayer offered her marriage and even was ready to adopt her child. She handed her daughter to a family friend to be raised and disappeared from everyone’s life forever into the silence of forgetting and remembering.

the flight of the dead

He faced them first with the sons of the men who had torched the three storied building that day which he had climbed amidst the flame and haze. A gun fired and a short burst of bullets entered his body decorating it with red spots as he would decorate the face of his young sister with mehendi on celebrations and festivals.

The tiny metals that had perforated his flimsy body seemed to lift him from the ground. He felt he was flying away, flying away on the wings of blood and pain. The last memory he had before none were left was that of floating in the air and dancing in the stillness of the winter dawn, holding an elderly woman in his arms the way a father holds and hugs a young child , lovingly, in sounds and silence when all laughter inside the child is exhausted and she sleeps hugging the love of her father in silence.

“I am sorry”

She would sometimes come out at night her belly full of hunger to forage for food. But she would find herself walking towards the weed covered fields where they had buried the men. In one lay her husband and two sons who had been killed in front of her as she tried to rescue them. She believed that she could have saved them and would come to the graves to beg forgiveness every night. Her hunger pushed her every night to the company of her dead family.

I am sorry that I could not save you all from being killed.

I am sorry that I could not dig a proper grave because I am a woman and don’t know how.

I am sorry I could not wash you ritually as a woman doesn’t know how to bathe a man properly after death to be received by Allah and a woman is not allowed to touch the corpse of a man.

I am sorry that I am hungry.

I am sorry for the night. I am sorry for the day.

I am sorry for being a widow.

I am sorry for being a mother without my children

Forgive, forgive, forgive.

Forgiveness is forbidden

“ I never let them beg forgiveness from God. I killed sixteen of them. They had killed my cousin, my sister’s husband and my best friend. I would never let them beg for mercy. I was afraid that if they uttered tauba Allah may forgive them. Not one escaped me. I killed sixteen by slitting their throat. No.. no.. one is a mistake..

I killed one when this huge man grabbed my friend from behind. So I went near and put my bayonet against a belly in the dark..

Is that you Kamru ?

No.

Shall I shove it in ?

Yes.

But he didn’t utter any prayer.. he just screamed, gurgled and died.. no prayer no mercy from Allah. Only the silence reigns over the graves of the innocent and the guilty ones.

No longer your own kind..

As they walked into a newly free city, they saw a long row of enemy soldiers who were being escorted into waiting trucks to be taken to jail. They had held on for long but in the end, they surrendered with their arms raised.

He watched with curiosity the long procession behind which walked several women who were desperately trying to hide their faces with whatever clothes they were wearing. He stopped and wondered what would happen to these women who had been provided as comfort givers to the enemy locked up in the bunk in the final days of the war.

They had no home to return to, no family to return to, to land to return to, no safety to return to, nothing to return to.. they were no longer his own kind, they were no longer enemies.. They had no names , no identities, no future except the silence that wrapped around their tear stained faces.
The body and the head
Shall I return home?
No
Shall I drift away?
No
Shall I wait?
No
Shall I bury the head of my son?
No
Shall I bury his body?
No
Shall I put the head and the body together?
No
Shall I wash his blood stained hands once more as I had before he died ?
No
Shall I travel everyday between his body and his heads like a pilgrim goes running from one site top another in Mecca?
Yes.
Shall I be free?

There was no answer, there was silence as the insects of winter filled the sky and fireflies crashed into the trees calling names of those who had been killed, who had died and who were left unborn and who would never return as the widow stood under the canopy of the sky and called out to them as they cast a shadow of never ending circles on the earth and grass remembering the ones who would not be remembered again. Only silence returns, only silence has memories of itself.

Of death and silence

She stood on the road and watched the river flow by carrying debris of the dead on its body. Blood had dried on her hands after she had killed the man who had killed her son and his last scream was so faint that she had to bend down near his mouth to hear his final pain. Others stood in a circle to watch her perform the ritual of purification of the soil for nothing would grow in the field stained by the forgiveness for the killer.

They had pleaded to her to kill the man who had killed son and she had complied. She had no sorrow, no pain, no love, no hate but only bore the duty that called her to commit acts to fertilize the soil as best as farmers could. For farmers were prisoners of the soil and could neither let it go nor get rid of their hunger. And then brazen wind would blow and carry the tumescent seeds across the soil so that it would bear the rice.

And the rains would come and it would mingle with the blood lying on the soil and recognize it as the stain of purification and the rains would pelt down its mercy and the earth would drink deep the holy water as it rose into the bowels of the mud as the earth would grow large with its belly full of food and give birth to meals anointed by the sinless fingers of the mother who had taken revenge of the death of her son.

Mothers, children, dogs and dinner

As winter slowly drew near he looked for that fatal moment between dusk and night when the lights are faint but alive and one can see everything a little less. He would buy a packet of kabab and chewing them watch the leafless trees stand uncomplaining. The bald trees scared him for there was nothing to hide. The children which played under them had no memories as they were not yet born, not beyond the cord that still tied them to homes that had mothers who at evening time, cooked dinner for all and the children would rush home, hungry and ready to be hushed up as the nights would come and the sudden and occasional sound of firearms would break the silence like cracking peanuts under the thumb.

His aunt would give food to be taken to the fakir who would come begging, telling them about the horrors of life and death and the thick chapattis would collect on his stretched out plate like insects that collect in winter around light bulbs and fires.

The sound of songs would tell people that he was coming and mothers would ask the children to carry a morsel each from their plate for him as he was a pir, a holy man and sacred who knew the present and the past. And he would walk on and on till he could carry no more and he would throw them carelessly away at the dogs who howled hearing him call knowing food was near.

And shall there be many evenings full of food when mothers and dogs would share the same meal with you?  

The Book of Silence - 4

Insects of death

She was a fresher but was already pregnant and it was a matter of luck that she had been allowed to study by her husband. She was grateful that she got the assignment to document the insects of death and life by category. One day as she gently prodded the belly of a death insect she saw it was pregnant and she began to press the tumescent flesh. Soon, tiny baby insects began to come out from the womb through the vagina and the table was filled with tiny particles of death. She took out her empty tiffin box and put them inside to take them home and raise them as her own.

Reborn

He waited every evening for the couple to walk past. She was heavily pregnant and walked with some effort as her husband walked next to her, slightly flustered. He would try to protect her and it was obvious that she was showing off her pregnancy and enjoying her motherhood to be. Having watched the evening crowd, he would return to his room and open a jar in which he kept his wishes as his mother had taught him to. And he would say, “ I want to be reborn as your child, I want to be reborn as your child.” By then the couple would be long gone.

The assassin

He had looked at the man as he raised his arm to bring it down holding the sword. He felt rivers looked like swords. Perhaps women too resembled swords, the sword ballooned at the end, allowing it to grow larger and bigger, easier to kill. He didn’t know how to kill but it seemed that one never had to learn how to die or kill. It came down and separated the head from the body in a neat single chop. The man who killed had no idea that one needed so much strength to kill. Maybe next time, it will be easier. He wondered if the next target would be a stranger too.

The work

The man who had told him of the work available also came from the same village once but he no longer lived there. He had no memory of his birth except trying to land on his feet. After that there were blanks in his mind, spots where there was no memory except when he would become thirsty for them and would drink from the clear liquid water and they would rush him like animals closing in on a prey. He would remember, much including those which he did not want to. Many weren’t his memories but the man who sold him the water said that it didn’t matter, everything and everyone was one.

He was fond of his killing memories but impatient ones would insist on being remembered and he would have to sit down panting as the moments of death, his and others were played out in his mind, no matter what time of the day or night, no reason why.

But not knowing what his memories were an advantage as he had no past to remember and all of them were his. Sometimes the memories were silent and only scenes and visions played out silently. He would dip his hand into the small puddle of memories and pick out the things he wanted if he was hungry and feast on them if there was no food. But mostly they came when he was asleep and helpless as they rode over him, driving away herds of dreams their own way, dressing them up as jesters if they chose, corpses if they wanted.

Sometimes he would accompany them in their raids, looting people from jaanpads and forcing them into custody, insisting they pay ransom to be released. And he would awaken with silver coins of ancient origins in his hand. With those, he bought food.

He had learnt to do woodwork and with that he would be called to make coffin boxes in which kings and merchants would be buried who wished no less for their kin killed after a plundering raid. Sometimes he would wake up tired, his muscles aching but his fists full of coins which he would sell to rich and White foreigners who lived in his city untroubled by dreams, buying food from their self run shops. He met the man from his village who told him of his ancestors and praised his skills. He showed him a scar lanced across his chests and badly healed, a narrow mounds of flesh like a speed--breaker on roads. “ Touch it, “ the man said. He let his fingers run lightly over it tasting the pain with every contact of the skin, vociferous and unforgiving. He looked at the man ‘s eyes knowing even before he said it. He stood there an unwilling witness to another man’s bleeding past.

“Does it still bleed” ?.

“Yes, when I remember I bleed.”

“Have you forgotten it now ?” Slowly the blood rose to the surface of the long scar and made it fresh. He watched it for awhile, his hands reddened by another’s weeping wound.

“ Was it my ancestors who did it ?”

The man nodded his head and stood there looking at the sky as he let the other man’s hands be washed with his blood.

The collector’s trade

The work was in a collection agency where corpses would arrive at night to be packaged in boxes, sealed and sent away. The work was not hard as the corpses would lend hands if they were a cheerful sort as they would sit and smoke as the box was prepared and they would climb in.

A cup of tea was provided as the work went on and soon after getting a serial number they would be all set to go. Most of the corpses came from wealthy homes where children could also afford such fancy tickets often with returns paid. He could not understand so many of them were so kind, understanding and humane with the people who came to see them as children waved them good bye. They even forgave their killers. Often the killers would also follow them, unable to control their rage, still wanting to plunge the knife again and again. They would let themselves be knifed as nothing could be lost and nothing gained. And the killers would be less angry , less raging and though seldom,would even embrace each other as the coffins would be nailed and they could no longer see the face of the person they had killed.

Shortage of land meant many bodies in one graves and often fights would break out and people would see trampled flesh in cemeteries as the scuffles would spill over from their underground homes as they would have to wait their turn. Some of the dead would continue to visit their homes and miss their families and many would not want to climb the sky, sticking around and doing menial work, worried only that they had low hunger and thirst, watching families partake in feast or simpler meals where they sat and ate little unless it was their favourite food.

Nothing was ever the same. Nobody was ever sure.

the fetus market

The collectors were suppliers to the small dealers who would buy fetuses from the retail market or ordinary people who would trade in them for some decent extra money. But it was not a market of rare goods. There were plenty of supply for unwanted and undesired pregnancies would regularly occur and fetuses could easily be found. But one had to get them before rot set in and preserved for forwarding them up the supply chain.

Many of these retail level collectors worked for hospitals and would gather them from the women who didn’t want them for various reasons. The sweepers and cleaners would go around offering discounts to the would be mother clients who would sell them for moderate prices as they were poor and the fetus would die anyway and the child would starve anyway if born. This was good for all and a fetus if aborted and delivered on time for shipment always had a second chance to return to a better off mother.

The hospital women would take the unborn ones and keep all of them in plastic bottles floating in alkaline to be collected by the local agents who then sold it to the collectors who came once a month to take the speckled bottles full of swimming fetus.

Not many knew that it was a well paying trade as the supply was as endless as the demand. Tiny pre-life giving beings once taken to the workshops were ready to be back in one womb or another and return with some minor repairs. But not all returned as babies as some thought. Many did come back as insects, small animals, a few returned as full grown adults skipping their childhood. Some wanted to cry.

An ayah at the hospital who was childless wanted one for herself to raise so she hid one fetus in her water bottle and didn’t hand over as promised. When she opened her bottle, a tiny fish slipped out and disappeared into the kitchen sink. These were first kept in water bottles and pots, then in plastic and earthen jars and finally readied for handing over for flying off to the final destination. There was never any delay but the weather did interfere once in a while. Once when a bad winter was on, the people who came down from the sky in rickety bikes couldn’t easily return due to fog and had to go and stand on rooftops waiting for the smog to lift and they would be able to find their way back in the sky holding lanterns and long lasting candles in one hand and a fat jar in another.

Collecting in the rain It was the rains they worried most about as that would make biking through the air difficult and there was always the concern that clear and sometimes pristine rain water would somehow leak into the jars and contaminate the supply. So they would wait out till the rains would lessen and then get on their bikes. “There was a time when I was stranded for days when I came down to collect. It was the rainy season but the pelting monsoon went on and on and I couldn’t go up to return. I would stand near the swamp and watch the sky and was very drenched but people took mercy on me and took me home to feed me and lend dry clothes. “

“ I saw the lake waters rise like a heaving beast and I looked at them wondering what the waters thought of the rains, replenishing and feeding the lakes with water so that they go on living, being lakes, being water bodies. Was rain their mother, touching them with nursing hands ? “ “And we also held water in our jars inside which were lives to be , lives once were. And as I stood there a young girl who was very wet playing in the rain came and asked me my name and I couldn’t say anything for I was so confused and she smiled, too young to be afraid of strangers standing alone near heaving lakes and said, “In the middle of the lake there is a green plant which grows and grows and they cover all our names. Nobody remembers who to call, how to call one another.” But usually they did business briskly, never wasting time except when the sounds of a song would pass one by and someone would be struck by it and one would wait till the song was over. And then they would be gone.

Corpses coming, corpses coming ...

The man would sit down exhausted after packing so many bodies in boxes, with more hurry than care. It was difficult physical work making them ready for forwarding and men worked with routine efficiency knowing that work kept them going and fed. But sometimes, sleep would come and they would drink hot tea and smoke cigarettes sitting on the floor, their pants wet with sweat and body smelling of work and exhaustion.

Sometimes people would visit to see their work and have a few final words with the dead who would be looking forward to the journey and excitedly talked about their expected travel. They had only three days of transition and the rate for having last words were high so only the rich could afford to come and talk to the dead. The poor would wait for their departure or burial when it became free. The workshop caretaker did his work very seriously but was lashed by memories of his ancestor’s past. Each part of his body had many layers of memories. If they met during breaks at work, he would come forward and ask him to touch his body parts. The worker did and the man would smile or weep or cry out in pain depending on which memory would visit him and cause which emotions. Sometimes he would touch his belly and experience his own birth. He would writhe in pain but later sit still and then smile and say, “I am alive, she is happy, My father is looking at us. “

But sometimes the memories were angry and painful as one day having lunch he screamed out in pain and blood sprang from a gash in his back. He was bent over and his body spasmed in pain and fury of the force of the whips landing on him. He lay on the floor for long and didn’t move. The lunch break was over but he still lay there too exhausted by the memories of his painful flesh. It was as if he carried the entire history of his ancestors on him and had no control over them, when they would overwhelm him with their memories, when they would let him be.

He sat close to him and wanted to hold his hands and comfort him but he saw his eyes and knew he would not know who he would see, hear or even talk. He waited and fetched the man a glass of water which he drank and then casually got up and returned to work.

That night the big trucks came and they filled the cavity inside with the coffins and other goods. The workload was high and they had extra workers, many veterans of many deaths willing to lend an extra hand. As the trucks slowly moved forward, a few men sat on the top and moved away the wires strung from electric and telephone pole which would come in the way of the high ceilinged trucks. A man ran his hand over the boxes and collected the water and dew and sweat from the coffins and preserved them in bottles and sold as talismans in local market places. The trucks made huge sounds as they slowly, slowly lurched forward through the post-midnight streets .

A man ran ahead of the trucks warning people of the goods screaming, “ Corpses, corpses. Dead bodies dead bodies, clear the road, clear the road.” It was dark, it was night and there were no one on the road to listen to his warning calls but he still called out.

The final journey was on with the heaving lurching trucks like lake water in spate in high monsoon.

“ I have come as promised “

One day as it rained hard, and people were cut off from each in their homes and houses, some were filled with desperate longing for trees which had no leaves. It was a longing which dogs would understand and converge around the few shattered branches of timber sticking out from the damp earth. He had been filled with memories of funeral pyres where the bodies were on fire and people would still not scream. The toxic words of the mendicant would grow faint as the rain drove down and the beggars bowl held no grain but water which quenched thirst but not hunger. It was between the cracks of the weather that collectors would come and mothers would be terrified of their children dying and husbands leaving them as widows.

They knew that in the arms held by them, hands had sold jasmine and saffron to be mixed with bodies of dead children that floated down the rivers to find other bodies and become a cluster of rafts to reach the big sea where they would be lifted by the arms of the clouds as mothers stood near the town gate and furiously screamed as the ancient bullets of the gora sliced them down.

They would ask in fear as the man lay dead. “have you forgiven the enemy, have you forgotten ?. “ And the dying man would open his yes and raise his arms as felt the stillness of silence creep upon him and asked, “ Forgive only when the sun forgets to arrive. “

And years later when he went to visit the spot, for many years a fugitive, he saw no corpse, no skeleton but brown insects covering a piece of brown soil on which at night crickets would come to sing. “For I have come as promised to stand under the shadows of the falling rain. “

A vague sentence of death The news of the stunningly beautiful woman’s morning arrival in the neighbourhood spread swiftly to other parts of the city too. Soon, hundreds of people had come from all over the town to watch her stand and stare at the crowd standing on the main street, watching her. It was like, they came, they saw and they were conquered. If there was any problem the, it had to do with the lighting on the veranda because the house in which the lady lived was rather poorly lit and that made it difficult for the people on the street to stare when evening arrived.

But that may have even inspired more the citizens of the city to gather and hover in front of her house. As long as they felt or even believed that she was there, even if the notion wasn’t correct, they didn’t mind.

Many didn’t sleep that night. Who would?

So even if many were not sleeping, can they be really be blamed if they never heard how on that very night, a group of men came to the house that old Patwary stayed and standing near the gate, sort of screamed out at him his death sentence in a few very simple lines.

“Hey, Patwary, Friday next or after that or one or two later, we are going to come and kill you. “Just like that. Very straight forward stuff. Just a bit vague about the date, that’s all.

Patwary was sitting on the veranda unable to go inside to bed and sleep because the ceiling fan which made the night heat in his stuffy bedroom barely benign enough for dozing off had recently died due to old age complications. His wife had brought the old fan with her as a dowry close to thirty not so happy years ago.

Yet hearing his death sentence he didn’t get up and scream or anything. He just sat there, his cigarette between his tired fingers and watched the darkness from where the voices came but of course he could see nothing. Then he walked inside very slowly and if one cupped their ears one could hear his wife breaking into violent sobs. Apparently she had heard it all. But he said nothing. To her or himself. Of course, all this is guessing.

You do get the drift of things don’t you? Who could get bothered about

Patwary and his death threats at the hands of invisible assassins when most of the people were simply going mad thinking about this incredible angel which had come to visit or stay at Mughal Road? And of course, nobody talked about the other thing that happened the night before. About Patwary and the strange group of men who stood near the compound of his almost artistically crumbled house and said, “We will come to kill you next Friday”.

People later remarked that many had heard them giggle softly and talk amongst themselves as it the whole thing was a bit of a lark, a load of fun but all this was said long after everything was over and to tell you the truth, what with that woman around that night and grabbing all headlines, the only conclusion that anyone can draw from all the talk about what people really heard is that they were obviously lying.

You see, everyone was staking out in front of her house and not Patwary’s which is at the end of the road anyway and to many who don’t know right, it isn’t even proper Mughal Road. So what would they really be doing there on a night like that?

Normally people would have noticed such a group of men gathered in front of a house, any house, but this was hardly an ordinary night. So nobody could possibly have seen them standing there talking among themselves in the dark, standing there and smoking, not really caring to hide the flicker of matches because Patwary really couldn’t see them from where he sat or it could be that they just didn’t care whether Patwary saw them or not?

It is dark near the gates of his house. It always is, because he doesn’t like to have a lot of light during the night and not because he can’t afford too many light bulbs. Actually both are true. Depends which one you wish, want, and choose to believe. You get the drift of things, don’t you?

Suleman the king

I have sores everywhere and they smell bad.

The nurse, a whitey woman,

Puts talcum powder on them regularly,

So that you can come and smell something nice.

Even sitting on my chair

I have been wounded so many times,

In endless wars with shadows and smoke,

That won’t let go the arms of my reluctant life...

And you dare ask Suleman the king

About wars and scars?

Show me, you bhain----- bastard,

What you did with your arms that still move?

Are they good for caressing my ass

Now crawling with bedsores

And Suleman lies spent on his bed of memories,

where the war never ends and bullets still fly

and he whimpers in jagged pain as he rages on,

watching his life on the telly pass by,

wanting his guns and grenades,

so that he can roll on the ground

and fire again and again..."

The tired angel of death

His family had always been tied to the Patwary and once their death was finalized and announced they would be sent down from the lairs to keep them company till the end. He was the last of his line and so was the collector who wanted to retire from serving the line of work and lie down for long under the sky.

He had met Patwary like many of his ancestors before. Seeing him the man was confirmed that his time had come. The collector had the gift of granting any last wish and he knew that from childhood, the Patwary new of the final days and moments before it was over and the rituals surrounding them, the celebration of the inevitable.

The collector was fond of graveyards and would visit them to look at tombstones often intricately carved bearing family dates, names and addresses which had no meaning.

He would be asked which his favourite graves were and he would say, “the ones that bear no name, no sign, no cross, no letterings, no mound, no mourners and no insects that have grown fat feasting on the corpses.” And are there many like that ?

I have seen villages where there were more graves than huts, more bodies than pebbles and have seen children carry the bodies of their old ones like dead branches of trees to the river to be cast into the waves as no earth was left to bury and no soil left for the plough to dig into. And after that there would be silence for he who must die is condemned to be brave.

Will you not wake again, cry again, in the autumn’s tired shadow load your gun one more time and fire, plunge the knife into the naked belly and worship the moment when the janaza of the brave turns into the funeral of cowards ? For you have not been permitted to forgive, repeat after me , you have not been permitted to forgive , for I have arrived and I have sinned for I looked at the nocturnal shadows and didn’t see the hungry skin wrapped around bones that bulge out in anger and in shame.

For the end shall always be yours alone and the bodies shall become the happy resting place of fireflies and maggots from the sky. Thus it is, thus its foretold, thus it’s final.

The tea shop of dead people

One day the man who could remember his past and that of others didn’t come to work. Later when having snacks and tea with others during a break he heard that the man had quit his job and moved on. Nobody was sure to what but he knew his work well and maybe would look elsewhere. He wanted to offer special services, they said but they were not sure. He felt he had lost a friend and a connection to his own past.

That evening after the work shift was over he went to a tea shop where other workers would gather and listen to gossip that came down from the sky. There he met a man who was in mid-forties who had recently died and who would come and wait with a tea glass in his hand for his friend to arrive and have a chat. But that day, he met his son who had come down shyly with his friend to meet his dead father. They embraced and the boy smiled happily knowing that his visit had come so soon after his death.

The dead man carried a bag of talismans for selling during his visit and some paid decent price for them as were useful for both the living and the dead. There, people would come to tell them of their stories of this and many births and the listeners would pay attention as they were so easy to understand and help them remember their own life and past.

Some would return to visit their last place of life but they would never find them and the city had changed so much and the rooms, beds , homes, people were all gone and they stood in front of strange buildings and weep like a child. Many had never wept before.

This man asked him if the tree from which he hung himself was there or not but it was gone. He missed his tree, his last home, the lonely and single leave less tree from which the only ornament that could hang was a corpse of one who wanted to die.

The next day a new man came to work in the factory and he saw in his vacuous eyes his own past, his own children and ancestors and finally swimming in the liquid of this eyes, the rage that never leaves the living and the dead which look like floating corpses. It was a matter of moments; days time that he would claim another history, another story and ask questions that had no answers.

Till the next one came.

The ornamental tree in rain

The woman who took money for selling sexual comfort would conceive a child and give birth every three months instead of the usual nine. She would suffer at every birth and every death for the children of paid pleasure often bore no strength and would be still born and those that were alive often didn’t want to live on. She would wrap them in jasmine leaves and cinnamon bark and paraffin oil rags and the perfumed bodies would be picked up by the Collector in small hand crafted boxes for ferrying to the sky.

She would experience the pain of birth, deep and piercing as her whole body would be misshapen by the agony of birthing as the reluctant babies would arrive, born of seeds of worthless men who had no songs to offer or sing. A client of a lowly rank who regularly visited her and was the breeder of several dead babies once asked if she became a regular mother of birth or births. She had no answer and held the words to her heart and later held conversations with the ceiling plank from which would hang various ornamental ropes to rest the babies in swaddle clothes till their pickup time would arrive.

But she would often die screaming as the lust of agony scythed through the body as she saw the dead children she had borne staring at her face with anxiety wanting to know when the pain would end on the other end of her bed, her living life.

“I don’t bear new children but ancestors of mine and yours who have trekked the streets as beggars looking for food in the dry soil that farmers fear as they bear no rice and the floods washing down from the distant mountains steal the earth away from the land to leave the peasants and the families starving and soiled and often dead as the prayers of corpse feasting insects come true. “

“Where is the monk who had no answers to give, where is the Thera who lay down tired and exhausted with life like a river swollen by rain’s exhaustion in the monsoon and thirst wishes for release but I wish for none for I am the river , I am the rain, I am the winter of seasons , I am the summer of parched suns and caked field, for I am the truth , I am what envelops us all, I am the silence . “ “It is I who I am, I am the death which comes with birth, hugging the shores of bellies ripe for a meal and I am powerless to stop breeding, birthing, fasting, ending, remembering ..

O strangers who embrace me and then leave, throwing a few coins behind, who have never heard of the naked tree or never remember the market where children are sold by parents and women become whores to seek servitude and food as insects cover the sky when soldiers steal into the head and disappear taking sons and daughters and swans away.

Have you not feasted on the liberation of darkness, the death of light, the silence of the body as it awaits, the caravan bearing pitchers and jars of blood and water for hungry soils…have you not ? Have you not.. O silence Her body was convulsed into a knot as the baby waiting knocked on the door of release and she could bear the pain no more..

None but you...

There was none around her as she lay on the midnight Street when people have gone home and rain bearing clouds shriek impatiently to descend and then it begins to rain , furiously, incessantly, with cruelty and love, without hope and with the fatalism of the dawn and dusk for he who departs must return to depart again and insects crawl all over the flesh in rituals of dust making for everything to become one but it is not tomorrow for it builds no hope, it’s not the day after for it builds no hope and it’s not the day after that for it builds no hope but the bitter seed is clutched in shrunken death infested hands as it with its final gasp look for the earth, the plough and the scythe on which the rain falls without choosing, without asking, without restraint…

I am the blood that flows, I am the rain that drowns.. I am the sunset and I am the dawn.. I am I and I am the truth.. on every grain my hand rests and on every drop of water my fingers touch..I lie I await.. without forgetting... without forgiving .. you are the perfect, you are the consciousness, you are the arm that has swung high with the hand holding the killer axe waiting to descend on the neck.. behold the truth.. behold freedom, behold yourself for you are the truth and only you can understand.. There is no victory, no defeat.. no one or many there is nothing, there is only silence.. you are the words . There is only you.. your raised hand with axe shining.. you are the truth, you are the rain....you are .