On a warm spring afternoon, Sneha sits on the floor of her tiny studio apartment, legs stretched out, growing increasingly irritated with the stubborn movement of the needle. Just behind her, on a folding laptop table, a JBL Flip 7 speaker plays Ustad Mehdi Hassan-
Aap to nazdeek se nazdeek-tar aate gaye…
Pehle dil, phir dilruba, phir dil ke mehmaan ho gaye…
Rafta rafta woh meri hasti ka samaa ho gaye…
But for the first time ever, something about this ghazal feels off to her, right at this moment. She’s forty she had been listening to this song for almost thirty years, since she was nine or ten, when her father first played it on his old gramophone. The exact date and time are blurred now.
But then why had the line “Pyaar jab had se badha, saare takalluf mit gaye” never bothered her before? The thought makes her stop fiddling with the needle and lighter for a while. These little mechanical struggles felt unbearable when she was chasing something sweet. And yet, Ustad’s sweet line was giving her a sharp bitterness, enough to imagine a debate called “Me versus Me.”
She rewinds the song and listens to the line again. This time, she lets it pass. Of course it’s fine. These soft, sugary ideas of love belong in songs, in ghazals, in novels, on cinema screens. They were never meant to be real. Poetry feels a little more honest to her. More believable. Poems, like poets, always carry a trace of sadness. She says the word “takalluf” out loud a few times. It’s a beautiful word. There’s a kind of elegance in the way it sounds.
In this empty apartment, Sneha was her own teacher and her own student, carrying on a conversation entirely with herself. Repeating “takalluf,” she suddenly thinks- what a beautiful language Urdu is! And yet, because of politics, so many people here dismiss it without even trying to understand. But the treasure of words in Urdu is endless.
There’s a story here too, she remembers. She had once read somewhere that all these words do mean love, but not the same kind of love. Pyaar isn’t the same as ishq, and junoon isn’t the same as mohabbat. Love itself has layers and there are different words for each one of them. Can you imagine that? She mutters to herself, scratching her head. These past few days, strands of white hair have started showing up out of nowhere, like weeds and with them, an itch that keeps bothering her. Annoying
Then again, what in her life wasn't annoying at this point? The thought made her try to laugh it off with a sigh. Except the sigh wouldn't come out right either. For god's sake! She called out loud in the empty flat- "Esnehaa, even your sighs are betraying you! Useless!” But as her voice bounces off the empty walls and comes back to her, she notices something- she didn’t herself Sneha. She called herself Esnehaa!
Back when Sneha was a child, there was a maid in Sneha's home- Swapan's mother, they called her. Her real name was Firoza. Sneha still remembers the silver chain around her neck, a small locket in the middle with Firoza written on it. Back then, Sneha was just learning her letters. Sitting in Firoza Bua’s lap, she would open the locket and spell it out slowly: Fi-ro-za!
Firoza bua's only son was named Swapan and that's how she introduced herself to everyone, not as Firoza, but as Swapan's mother. "Swapaner maao". People from the Mymensingh-Kawraid region apparently used to say "maao" for mother or maybe still do. Sneha wasn't really sure. But Firoza Bua said it with such pride. There was quiet satisfaction in that introduction, a wholeness to it.
It was Firoza Bua who had named her son. During her pregnancy, Swapan’s father had left her, later marrying someone else. When Swapan passed Dakhil at Sneha’s Nanajaan’s madrasa, he started introducing himself as Shamim. The name Swapan irritated him deeply. Sneha too had to call him Shamim Huzur when he taught her qaida for a while. If she ever slipped and said “Swapan Huzur,” his face would turn dark. Only later did Sneha understand the mystery.
Swapan comes from the Sanskrit- meaning “dream.” Not all dreams are good; there are plenty that turn dark. But Shamim comes from Arabic, also widely used in Persian, it means fragrance, or more specifically, something like sacred scent. Sometime during his madrasa years, some senior huzur must have explained the origins and meanings of these names to him and just like that, he let go of the name his mother had given him. Naturally, what carries more weight- your mother’s naming, or religion’s interpretation of it?
It was this Firoza bua, mother of Swapan or Shamim Hujur, depending on who you asked, who used to call Sneha Esnehaaaa. With a long, drawn-out pull on the ne, two full beats before the ha, like the name needed extra room to hold all the affection inside it. On this dark, moonless night, Sneha suddenly remembers her. Firoza Bua never quite got her name right. But she loved her deeply as a child. People are like that- hungry for affection. Wherever they find it, they carry it as a quiet debt. Sneha closes her eyes and whispers under her breath- Oh Allah, the way Firoza Bua once held me with such care and tenderness…hold her with the same mercy. Keep her safe. Ameen.
After the prayer, Sneha tries to get back to her needle-and-lighter work. But something feels off. A strange, heavy, ugly sadness wrapped around her from all sides. The whole world could leave and somehow this grief, this weight, just wouldn't go with it. Nazim Hikmet once wrote that in the twentieth century, grief lasts no more than a year. Then again, poets say a lot of things in the heat of emotion. Sneha doesn’t think everything they write needs to be taken so seriously. Besides, this is the twenty-first century. If anything, shouldn’t the lifespan of grief have decreased by now?
Failing to set the needle into the ten-taka lighter, she thinks of trying with a twenty-taka one instead. As if it’s some kind of technical exam she has to pass. Right then, a scene from a Vicky Kaushal film comes to her mind- Masaan. In that movie, after his girlfriend dies in an accident, Vicky drinks with his friends on a boat and cries out- “Saala, yeh dukh kaahe khatam nahin hota, beh?"
That line feels painfully familiar to Sneha. Not everything in the world shows up in her life’s syllabus, but this one does. Like the grief of that young lover in Masaan, Sneha’s grief too is endless. It refuses to end. And so, when the ustad sings “Pyaar jab had se badha, saare takalluf mit gaye”, that love, once it reaches its peak, dissolves all formality…maybe takalluf here means that initial hesitation, that awkward distance that exists only in the early stages of love. Once love becomes mutual, all that fades away. What remains is a cycle of complaints and being complained about. But does every kind of love in this world follow that same rule, ustad ji? Not part of her syllabus.
So many thoughts crowd her mind from just this one line. For instance, how many people in this world truly experience pyaar? Most of it is one-sided, incomplete, like a half-finished exam. Then again, maybe that’s a blessing. Because the pain of losing something you once had…is often worse than never having it at all. Stepping into this “sweet” world, Sneha feels the flood of thoughts pressing in questions upon questions, some with smaller questions hidden inside. Ghazals, poems, songs, films, philosophy- none of it manages to end her sorrow, just like Vicky Kaushal’s character in Masaan.
On a good day, or even a normal one, she'd have joined in with the Ustad, singing along, she'd loved this ghazal for years. But right now it felt like poison. And yet she was listening to every word, carefully, deliberately, testing herself. Thirty years of hearing this ghazal, and today she was going to take it apart, line by line, syllable by syllable. She feels like pressing the “repeat” button once, twice, listening until her chest burns so much that she can’t feel the burn anymore. And just then, Abrar’s call comes in. She’s in no state to sit through a counseling session, listening to a therapist’s heavy advice.
The needle keeps slipping out of the lighter, dropping somewhere out of sight. She has to turn on extra lights just to find it again. Meanwhile, her hands and even her lips have started trembling. Let it all fall apart. What's even left to destroy? Once upon a time, she hated seeing herself this weak. But now the reality is different. Inside, she feels like the ruins of the Twin Towers after 9/11. hough, she’s heard, they’ve built something new there now, the One World Trade Center. Tallest building in the U.S. They even gave it a nickname: the Freedom Tower.
Sneha thinks bitterly, no one has ever called her by a special name, not in love, not in affection, not even in contempt. And yet even an object, a building, gets a nickname. She feels smaller than an object, more useless than useless. Money can do a lot of things, she thinks, still searching for the needle. Everything, except getting you people…Or maybe it can.
Doesn’t Tommy Shelby say something like that in Peaky Blinders? “Everyone is a whore, Grace. We just sell different parts of ourselves.” For a moment, Sneha feels the strange comfort of finding another “common syllabus” in her life. The pain of not finding the needle fades just a little. She shouts at herself: “Yes, muhtarama, you too are a kind of whore! She must have sold something of herself along the way, she tries to think. And then she remembers- self-respect. Ah, then I must be the queen of whores!
Whenever she feels low, Sneha comes over to this small flat in Bashundhara to spend some time on her own. Today, she came really early in the morning. Most of the time, the place just stays locked. There was a time when she actually liked being alone. I mean, she always has been. A big part of her life went by like this, living alone, doing everything by herself, building her own little routine. She had already accepted long ago that maybe a shared life with someone just wasn’t written for her. Not that she ever strongly wanted it either.
But sometimes, out of nowhere, this weird kind of loneliness hits. Everything starts to feel a bit empty. When she can’t enjoy her own company, that’s when it gets worse. The loneliness kind of sticks to her and then either she gets really restless or she slowly sinks into a heavy sadness. Before Abir came into her life, she honestly can’t remember ever feeling like this.
Back then, her days were pretty full. Work, then hanging out with colleagues after office, an evening walk, coming back home and spending time with her plants, listening to music, reading, writing…all of that. She’d also be on call with Rakin while making dinner, finish eating mid-conversation and just go to bed early. That was her everyday life.
Weekends were easy too. Sometimes she’d go to Gloria Jean’s with Rakin or Mita Apa, other times she’d just stay home watching a series or a movie. In between, she’d slowly get all her chores done. Then she’d cook something special for dinner and treat herself. Life was honestly pretty chill. About two years ago, she stopped caring about family-related stuff altogether. Staying away from everything felt peaceful. Whether it really was peace or not, she’s not sure. But it did feel…complete, in a way. Like everything inside her was in the right place. Now it doesn’t feel like that anymore.
Meeting Abir kind of broke that whole balance she had built over the years. The same person who used to live alone so easily now feels suffocated if she stays in this flat for too long. She’s lost so much trust in herself that even being alone for an hour makes her uneasy, like she might do something harmful without even realizing it.
Still, she knows, if Abir hadn’t spent those two and a half days with her last year, maybe this feeling wouldn’t have gotten this intense. That doesn’t mean she thinks he’s the reason behind everything. No matter what she says out of anger, she knows this much, no one can really destroy someone unless they let them. Now it feels like maybe she chose him herself…like she somehow picked him to be part of her own downfall. So the problem was always in her choice. No point digging into someone else’s mess anymore.
After dropping Abir off for his Rajshahi flight last year, the moment Sneha returned home, she felt this huge emptiness hit her. As soon as she unlocked the main door and stepped inside, everything started to feel…hollow. In that 1200-square-foot, three-bedroom apartment, she kept walking from one room to another, quietly mumbling to herself-
This whole room of mine feels empty,
as if death suddenly kisses the forehead
come back if you feel like it,
my world stands still in its restlessness…
At the airport, she had waited in the parking area until his flight actually took off. The previous two days had been chaotic, six flights and two bus options in total. Abir had missed some, agreed to cancel some and canceled a few himself. This one was his seventh attempt. And honestly, that one was almost about to slip away too. In the end, stuck in traffic near Regency, Abir had to call the airline himself, give his details and explain that he urgently needed to get back to Rajshahi. He even requested them to delay the flight by half an hour. There wasn’t really any other option. His chief was supposed to visit their workstation from the headquarters the next morning. If Abir hadn’t made it back in time, things could’ve gotten seriously messy.
Still, Sneha had already thought of backup plans while sitting in that traffic jam, just in case he missed this flight too. Since he had been staying with her in Dhaka those few days, she felt responsible for making sure he reached safely. It didn’t have to be about love or anything like that. She had always believed this was just basic decency, what you do for a guest. Sneha never thought of herself as a great scholar of etiquette, but she had always believed she had at least the minimum sense of it. Now, though, her faith in herself feels shaky, unsettled for many reasons.
If the seventh flight got missed too, Sneha had already made a backup plan in her head, going by road. She didn’t even bother telling Abir about it. He gets restless about everything. Instead of looking for solutions, he keeps circling around the problem itself, repeating the same worries over and over. It makes him anxious and eventually, everyone around him too.
There he was, stuck in traffic, taking small sips of whiskey from a bottle one moment, biting his nails the next, going, “Sneha, I have to go by tonight! They’ll kick my ass, no doubt!” Sneha, on the other hand, wasn’t reacting to his panic. She was already thinking ahead, how to make the backup plan work. While he kept repeating himself, chewing on his nails, she quietly called one of her juniors from the office and asked him to arrange a car within an hour. She repeated it a few times, if the flight got missed for any reason, they needed to leave for Rajshahi by road immediately.
At some point, Abir just stared at her blankly, for quite a while. What he was thinking or trying to see in her face, she couldn’t tell. And honestly, she didn’t feel the need to figure it out either. At that moment, she had only one concern, somehow, Abir had to reach Rajshahi before morning. She called her junior again, just to make sure the urgency was clear, they should be ready to leave within an hour if needed. She had even decided that after dropping him off, she’d return to Dhaka in the same car. But none of that was needed in the end. The flight got delayed by half an hour, for Abir. Honestly, no airline would usually do that for a regular passenger unless they were some kind of VIP.
Sneha had never really seen him use his identity like that before. Then again…how often had they even met outside bars? That thought alone annoyed her a little. Not that she could always show that irritation. And even if she did, it probably wouldn’t change much. So, most of the time, she just kept it to herself. There’s that song… Rabindranath’s, she tries to remember. Oh right, “Amar ei poth chawa-tei anondo…” If there were a parody for Abir, it’d probably be- “My joy lies in drinking.” Did she even have the power to interrupt his kind of joy?
Abir believes he spent two years living in fear. Sneha sees it differently, like he was standing on the other side of a river, constantly trying to hide that fear behind long sighs. But in trying to hide it again and again, that tiny piece of fear slowly turned into something massive, like a nuclear bomb waiting to go off. And in the end- Boooooom! Darkness on both sides.
Until Abir boarded the flight, he asked Sneha to wait outside while he went into the terminal. He feared he might miss this one too and in that case, Sneha would be his only savior. Of course, even without being asked, she would have waited until the plane took off. Rakin often teased her for this kind of habit: “You’re supposed to be the heroine, so why are you always playing the hero’s part?” Sneha never really takes those comments seriously.
But with Abir, she sometimes jokes about it herself- You’re someone else’s responsibility, you know. If you’re with me, then keeping you safe and making sure you reach your destination properly, that’s on me. As long as you’re with me, you’re my responsibility. You shouldn’t betray something entrusted to you. She tries to make it sound light, playful even. But it never really lands. Abir’s long sighs always ruin the mood.
A few minutes after Abir went inside, Sneha called the airline’s airport branch herself to confirm, he had boarded, and the flight would leave soon. Relieved, she told the waiting Uber driver to start the car. Yet alongside the relief, she felt a pang of regret. Suddenly she felt greedy, and it disgusted her. She had never really been a greedy person.
She had never been greedy for anything in life. Never felt like she wanted more than what she had. But this, this small, ugly kind of wanting. If they had gone by road, she could’ve had a little more time with him. The thought alone made her uneasy. The next day was her birthday. If they had taken the road, she could’ve at least spent the first few hours of it with him. The thought made her sigh.
There haven’t been many “special” days in Sneha’s life. She believes she could count them on her fingers. And most of those moments, if she’s being honest, somehow revolve around Abir. Or came because of him. Now, it almost feels like she calls those things his generosity. Who knows where he’ll be next year on this day…or where she’ll be. What will happen to them. Whether this relationship will even exist or just quietly stop somewhere along the way. Thinking about all that, her eyes slowly start to fill up. Just as she lifts her right hand to wipe them, her phone rings. It’s Abir!
Her Uber is still waiting in line at the Elevated Expressway toll. She picks up and says calmly, “I heard you boarded.” On the other end, Abir’s voice is shaky, restless...“Sneha… Sne…ha… Sneha…” She stays steady. “I’m listening, Abir. Go on. Or are you trying to prove to the people on the flight that you’re drunk?” He tries again, “Sne…ha… Ei meye… I love you… Sneha… I love you… I love you… Hello? Are you listening?” By then, tears are already running down her face. He keeps calling her name. She replies in the same calm voice, “Yeah...I heard you. I love you too.”
And then, right after Abir says- “Sneha… Sneha… we will never meet again.” Something twists sharply inside her chest. She had a feeling…something like this might be coming. That day was February 26. 8:40 p.m. From 9:45 p.m. on February 24 until 8:27 p.m. on the 26th, Abir had been with Sneha, 46 hours and 42 minutes straight.
Since her separation from Bipul nine years earlier, this was the first time she had spent so many continuous hours with someone she actually loved. And maybe…she had never loved anyone the way she loved Abir. At least, that’s how it felt to her. But at the same time, this feeling was everything all at once. Joy, pain, fear and of the particular sadness that never quite left her.
Sneha... I'm about to fly, the network will cut out. Sne.....ha. His voice was so close to her ear, and yet it felt like he was already somewhere far away. She cleared her throat and kept her voice steady- Have a safe journey, Abir. Text me when you land. She wanted to smash the phone right then, but held herself back until she knew he was safe. Her tears, though, she couldn’t control.
The Uber driver kept glancing at her through the rearview mirror. An older man. There was a kind of quiet sympathy in his eyes. Maybe he held himself back from saying anything because he was just…a driver in that moment. Sneha tried a few times to pull herself together. Didn’t work.
Then again, almost all her goodbyes with Abir end up like this. This wasn’t even the first time he’d said something this reckless before leaving. Every time, it hurts the same way. Sometimes she hides it, sometimes she lets herself break down completely. That night, after trying long enough, she simply gave up- Fine. Go ahead. Cry, for God's sake. She let herself cry, right there in the back of the Uber. Let the ache in her chest come down. And still it didn't get lighter.
Near Hatirjheel, Abir’s texts began arriving: Hey... Sneha... Ma...you're my Amma...One after another, scattered, half-formed. He was still drunk, Sneha could tell. When she asked if he had landed, he replied- “Just landed.” Sneha typed slowly- Okay, Abir. Take care of yourself. May Allah fulfill your wishes starting today. She sent the text, switched off her phone, and broke down again.
This time, the driver couldn’t stay silent anymore. He slowed the car a little, reached back with a tissue box and said softly, “Aunty, crying doesn’t change anything…but it does make you feel lighter. Let yourself be lighter. Just don't let yourself be weak." He had heard everything from home to the airport. It wasn’t hard for him to understand what kind of bond they shared. Sneha took the tissues, tried to steady herself. But all she could think of…was her father.