[Disclaimer: The figures of power and the corridors of influence depicted in this narrative are born entirely of the imagination. While the shadows of the human psyche are real, the characters who inhabit them and the state they command are purely fictional.]
It’s peak spring noon. Sneha sits with her legs spread on the floor of this small studio apartment, utterly frustrated with a stubborn needle that simply will not do what it is supposed to. Right behind her, on a folding laptop table, a JBL Flip 7 portable wireless speaker is playing Ustad Mehdi Hassan-
Aap Toh 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…
After all these years, at this exact moment, Sneha notices a problem in this ghazal. She is forty now and has been listening to this song for nearly thirty years, since she was nine or ten, back when Abba first played it on his Bilati gramophone. Why the hell hadn't the line “Pyaar jab had se badha, saare takalluf mit gaye” ever hit her before? This thought forces her to stop messing with the needle and lighter for a few more minutes. These mechanical bullshit struggles are annoying as hell, standing in the way of chasing the sweets! And on top of that, Ustad’s sweet lines are giving her a sharp bitterness. She can literally start a whole debate on it in her head: Me versus Me. Sneha rewinds a little and listens to the line again. This time it feels like- nah, it's actually fine. Songs, ghazals, stories, novels and movie screens can have these sweet love stories; none of that is real anyway. Besides that, poetry has always felt a little more real to her, more honest. Poems are just like their poets- eternally, hopelessly sad.
She utters ‘Takalluf’ out loud, a bunch of times, for no reason. Quite an interesting word! Something almost classy and elegant, the way it sounds. In this lonely flat, she's running a solo conversation, playing teacher and student to herself. Repeating that word over and over, it strikes her- what a sweet language Urdu is! But just because of political reasons, so many people in this country mock it without even understanding it. Yet Urdu has such a rich and incredible vocabulary! Just for one single emotion, 'love', Urdu has so many words to express it in so many ways, like- Ishq, Pyaar, Mohabbat, Ulfat, Chahat, Aashiqui, Junoon, Dilbari, Dillagi… and God knows what else!
There is a whole story here too, Sneha remembers. She had read it somewhere- all these words do mean love, yes, but they have different layers. The love that Pyaar holds is not the same love that Ishq or Junoon holds! Even love has its own damn variations! And there are specific words just to explain those! Can you believe that? Scratching her head again and again, she mutters. These past few days, loads of grey hairs have popped up like weeds all over her head, so suddenly this itching nuisance has started acting up anytime, anywhere. Truly irritating! Then again, thinking about what in her life is even tolerable at this moment, she tries to let out a long sigh disguised as a laugh, but it doesn't even come out right from inside. Damn the luck! Alone in the flat, Sneha screams out loud, E-S-N-E-E-H-A, look, even your sighs are betraying you! U-S-E-L-E-S-S! But the almost-empty walls of this almost-empty room just bounce it right back as an echo. Hearing that hollow ringing in her ears, Sneha notices- instead of Sneha, she called herself E-S-N-E-E-H-A.
Back when Sneha was a kid, there was a maid at their home- Swapaner Ma Bua. Her real name was Firoza. She wore a silver chain around her neck with a locket in the middle that had "Firoza" written on it, Sneha still remembers. Sneha was probably just learning to read back then. The moment she sat on Firoza Bua's lap, she would unhook the locket and spell it out- Pha ro-shhoi-Fi, Ra o-kar-Ro, Borgoiyo Ja aa-kar-Ja…Fi-ro-za! Firoza Bua’s only son was Swapan, and that's how she introduced herself to everyone- not Firoza, but Swapan's mother, ‘Swapaner Mao’ actually. People in the Mymensingh-Kaoraid region probably used to call mothers 'Mao' that time, or maybe they still do; she doesn't really know much about that.
What she does remember is that Firoza Bua used to call herself 'Swapaner Mao' with immense pride. There was a deep satisfaction in her when she called herself that. She had named her son herself, after all. Swapan's father walked out on Firoza Bua while she was pregnant. Later on, that man apparently married two more times, back to back. Even though he lived with those two wives and their kids in the same village where Firoza Bua lived, he never once checked up on or reached out to Swapan or Firoza Bua. Financial support was out of the question; that man wasn't even comfortable admitting Swapan was his son.
When Swapan passed his Dakhil from Sneha's Nanajan's madrasa, he started introducing himself as Shamim. If anyone called him Swapan, a look of intense irritation would wash over his face. He taught Sneha the Qaida for a while, so she had to call him Shamim Hujur. If she slipped up and said Swapan Hujur even once, every goddamn cloud in the sky seemed to crash onto his face. Sneha only figured this mystery out after growing up. The name Swapan comes from the Sanskrit 'Swapno', meaning dream. And dreams aren't guaranteed to be good. Bad dreams are plenty common in this world. Shamim, on the other hand, comes from Arabic, and it's widely used in Persian too. It means 'fragrance', and through this name, it probably means 'sacred fragrance'. During his Dakhil years, some senior Hujur at the madrasa must have explained the roots and meanings of both names and convinced him to abandon his mother-given name. Naturally, religious interpretation weighs heavier than a mother's name.
It was Firoza Bua, mother of Swapan or Shamim Hujur, depending on whom you asked, used to call her E-S-N-E-E-H-A. And specifically, after the "Es", she would drag the "ne" with a double-alif stretch right before the "ha". On such a deeply dark, hollow, moonless night, Firoza Bua comes suddenly flooding back into Sneha's memory. She never could pronounce the name properly, yet she had adored Sneha fiercely in her childhood. People are so desperate for affection; wherever they receive it, they carry the debt forever. Sneha closes her eyes and prays- O Allah, the way Firoza Bua wrapped me in her love and warmth when I was kid, please keep her wrapped in that same care and protection. Ameen. After the prayer, as she tries to bury herself again in fixing the needle and lighter, she feels some ugly, raw sadness wrap itself tight around her from all sides. Even if the whole world abandons her, this pain and sadness just won't fucking let her go.
In the twentieth century, the lifespan of human grief was supposedly one year at most- so wrote Nazim Hikmet. But poets of course write a lot of nonsense in the heat of emotion. Sneha doesn't really see any reason to take poets' feelings, or everything they write, so damn seriously. Then again, it's the twenty-first century now. Did the lifespan of grief go up? Logically, it should have dropped. After failing to fit a needle into a ten-taka lighter, right before starting her technical exam on a twenty-taka one, Vicky Kaushal's Masaan pops into her head. In that movie, after his girlfriend's accidental death, drinking on a boat with friends in immense sorrow and pain, Vicky says- “Saala, ye dukh kaahe khatam nahi hota be?” That dialogue became perfectly common in her syllabus. Obviously, not everything in the world will be common in there. Just like that heartbroken lover in Masaan who lost his girl too soon, Sneha's grief is endless too, and absolutely refusing to end!
So when Ustadji sings, "Pyaar jab had se badha, saare takalluf mit gaye"- meaning when love reaches its peak, the need for formality runs out; takalluf here probably refers to that hesitation, that awkwardness, which only really exists in the early stages when love is still just a feeling. Once that is confirmed from both sides, and becomes mutual, poof…takalluf is gone! What remains is a cycle of complaints and being complained about. But does every kind of love in this world follow that same rule, Ustadji? Not part of her syllabus. Just this one line of a ghazal is pulling out so many thoughts, like- in this world, the thing called Pyaar, how many actually experience it properly? Most affection or love is just one-sided, incomplete, like the Single Entry System in accounting book. In a way, that's actually good thing. The pain of losing after having is way more brutal than the ache of never having.
Stepping into the world of sweets brings this one goddamn problem! So many thoughts keep buzzing in her head! So many questions! And inside those questions, a few more embedded questions! After all this back and forth, all this ghazal and poetry and film and philosophy- Sneha's grief is still not ending at all, just like that character of Vicky Kaushal in Masaan. On a good day or a normal one, she would have started singing along with Ustad long before now. This ghazal has been one of her all-time favorites, but right now every single line is feeling like poison. Still, as if testing her own patience, she listens to the whole thing with deep attention! For the last thirty years or so, she had seemingly listened to this ghazal merely for the sake of listening; today, she will do a thorough syllable-by-syllable breakdown or die trying!
She wants to hit the repeat button a few times and keep listening until her insides are so thoroughly burned that she can't feel the burning anymore. But right in the middle of all this, Abrar's call comes. She is in no state to sit in a counseling session right now and listen to some of his heavy-wisdom lectures. The needle keeps jumping out of the lighter and landing somewhere different every time, who knows where, forcing her to turn on two lights to find it. Her right hand has started trembling too, right along with her face. Let everything burn to the ground! Let everything go to hell. What else is left to destroy, she thinks! There was a time Sneha hated seeing herself in such a weak state. But the reality is different now. From the inside, she is now entirely the rubble of the 9/11 Twin Towers! Though apparently they have built the tallest building in the USA there now- One World Trade Center or whatever. It even has a nickname- Freedom Tower!
Sneha thinks- damn! Whether out of love and affection, or even in contempt, no one ever really called her by any special nickname! Yet apparently even an inanimate object has one! Right now, she feels like an even bigger piece of nothing than a lifeless object! People do so many things when they have money, she thinks while searching for the needle. You can't buy people with money alone; no, wait! You probably can, she feels. Doesn't Tommy Shelby say that dialogue to his girl in Peaky Blinders? “Everyone is a whore, Grace. We just sell different parts of ourselves.” The joy of finding something common in life's syllabus again makes her forget the pain of not finding the needle, at least for a few seconds. Right in the middle of that joy, Sneha suddenly screams- Yes, Muhtarama, you too are a kind of whore! She had absolutely sold something of herself at some point. Without even pressing her brain too hard, it surfaces immediately- SELF-RESPECT! FUCK! She’s the Queen of Whores, then!
When she's in a bad mood, she spends some alone time in this small Bashundhara apartment. She came very early this morning. The rest of the days, it stays locked. There was a time she preferred to live alone; in fact, she did live alone. For a huge period of time in her life, she has been living alone in a flat, just managing her own little world. Since everyone doesn't have everything written in their fate, she accepted long ago that a shared life with someone is not written in hers. Though it's not like she ever desperately wanted to live with someone either. But suddenly, she feels this terribly ugly loneliness; everything seems so hollow, a sharp, heavy emptiness. If she fails to enjoy her own company, this loneliness creeps into her mind like a leech and sits there hiding. That is exactly when the anxiety starts, or else she just keeps sinking into a deep, massive, and intensely dark void of sadness.
Even digging through the farthest corners of her memory, Sneha can't recall ever feeling this kind of loneliness before Abir came into her life. Work; after office, hanging out with colleagues, an hour-long evening walk, coming home and talking to her plants, listening to music, reading, writing, and somewhere in between, quickly throwing together something for dinner while chatting away with Rakin on the phone. Finishing dinner with the phone on loudspeaker, then early to bed- that was her routine on busy days. On weekends, sometimes a coffee session at Gloria Jean's with Rakin or Mita Apa, or just lying around at home watching some series or a movie. In between all of that, she would quietly knock out the household chores she had stacked up through the week. Then dinner would be some special weekend dish she made as a treat for herself. Life was absolutely carefree! There was not a single problem beyond all of that.
Sneha doesn't really stick her nose into things anyway, and on top of that, about two years before she started living alone, she had thankfully been able to stop stressing her head over family-related issues too, Alhamdulillah! Keeping herself at a respectful distance from everything, and everything at a respectful distance from her, had started feeling like the most peaceful way to exist. Whether she was actually at peace or not, she couldn't say for sure; but she was pretty confident about one thing- her life had a sense of completeness back then. Her heart and soul were probably in their right places back then. Now they have been brutally displaced. Meeting Abir has completely torn to pieces the tough shell she had built around herself, slowly and carefully, over so many years.
The same person who used to live alone in a flat day after day, year after year, in absolute joy, now feels suffocated staying in an empty flat for too long. Her self-confidence is so shattered that even an hour alone makes her feel like- she's going to hurt herself right this second! But if Abir hadn't spent those two and a half days continuously with her last year, she doesn't think this feeling of loneliness would have had the power to take her over like this. This doesn't mean Sneha considers Abir the root of all her life's problems! No matter whatever she says out of anger, she actually knows deep down- nobody has the power to destroy someone, nor can they do it, unless the person themselves allows. Lately, she thinks she probably liked Abir a little too much as a companion in her own destruction. So the issue is with her own selection then; what's the point of digging through someone else's garbage!
Last year, after dropping Abir off at the airport for Rajshahi, the moment she came back home, Sneha felt a profound, massive void for the first time in her life. The moment she unlocked the front door and walked in, everything around her started feeling hollow. Moving from room to room through that three-bedroom, 1200-square-foot house, she kept muttering the same four lines of her own poem, again and again-
This room of mine is totally hollow
Suddenly death kisses my forehead;
If you wish, wander away, come back
My world is still in restlessness...
That night, after dropping Abir off at the airport, Sneha waited in the parking lot for a while. Over the past two days, out of six flights and two buses, Abir had either missed some, agreed to cancel others, or canceled a few entirely by his own choice. That was his seventh flight, the last one to Rajshahi too. Right up to the eleventh hour, it had looked like they were going to miss that one too. One way or another, it was an emergency for him to return to Rajshahi that night, so he requested the airline to delay the flight by half an hour. He didn't really have any other choice. The next morning, the Chief was scheduled to come visit their workstation from the head office. If Abir hadn't made it to Rajshahi by then, it would have been a massive disaster.
Just in case that flight got missed too, Sneha had already worked out a backup plan while sitting in the traffic. Since Abir had been staying with her those few days in Dhaka, she felt it was her responsibility to get him to his destination safe and sound. No need to bring Ishq-Mohabbat into it. She would have done this for any guest; that was just her sense of duty. Not that there is any reason to think she is some grand scholar of etiquette; but she used to believe all these days that she at least had the bare minimum! Now, of course, her faith has been shaken for various reasons. As a backup to the flight, she had quietly planned a road trip to Rajshahi without letting Abir know.
Abir was restless about everything. Instead of looking for solutions, he kept repeating the problems, what could go wrong, how many ways it could go wrong, all of it on a loop. He worked himself up, and dragged everyone around him into it too. Sitting in the car, he once chugged whiskey from a bottle, and another time bit his nails, saying- Sneha! I have to go by tonight! They will kick my ass, no doubt! Panicking through his anxiety, Abir just kept repeating that same line on a loop. Sneha paid absolutely no attention to any of that and called a junior from the office, explaining everything and instructing him to arrange an emergency car.
She spent a good amount of time clearly briefing him on the urgency and importance of the matter so that if the flight got missed for some reason, they could leave for Rajshahi by road within an hour. Then she started checking for updates every few minutes to see if the car was found. Abir just stared blankly at Sneha's face for a while. She had no idea what he was seeing or thinking. Though, at that moment, she didn't feel like knowing about that at all. Her only concern right then was- Abir had to reach Rajshahi before dawn, no matter what.
Sneha had already decided in her mind that if they ultimately had to go by road, she would drop Abir off in Rajshahi and take the same car right back to Dhaka. But none of that was needed in the end; the flight was actually delayed by half an hour just for Abir. Hard to think of any airline doing that for a regular passenger; only a VIP or VVIP gets that kind of treatment. Sneha had never seen Abir use his identity anywhere before this. Then again, how many times had they ever met anywhere outside of a bar anyway? Just the thought of it pissed her off slightly. But she couldn't always show that anger. She didn't think showing it would help, so most of the time she had just tried to keep it buried.
Wasn't there a Tagore song? Sneha tries to remember… oh, yeah! "Amar ei poth chawa tei anondo..." A parody for Abir would be- "Amar ei mod khawa tei anondo"! Who the fuck was Sneha to get in the way of that joy? Abir thought for two whole years, he was probably living in fear, just surviving day to day. Sneha, on the other hand, thought of herself as the other bank of a river, the one that keeps sighing quietly, constantly trying to hide the fear of loss sitting inside her. But in all that endless hiding, what started as a tiny particle of ordinary fear slowly turned into a full-scale nuclear bomb. And the result- BOOOOOOOOM! Both banks are in total darkness now.
Before heading into the terminal, Abir told Sneha to wait for him in the airport parking lot until he actually boarded the flight. He was still paranoid that he might miss this flight too. In that case, Sneha was his only way out. Though even without being asked, Sneha would have waited outside until the flight took off anyway. "You are supposed to be the heroine of the story, why are you out here playing the hero"- Rakin throws this line at her pretty regularly to pull her leg about exactly this kind of thing. Sneha doesn't really take these things to heart much. But sometimes, she herself would teasingly tell Abir just to create a light, laughing atmosphere- You're someone else's amanat; keeping you safe and delivering you to your destination in one piece is my responsibility. Even as long as you're with me, protecting you is my duty too. One shouldn't do khayanat of an amanat! But every single time she said this, Abir's sigh would kill whatever light mood she was trying to build.
She felt relieved that Abir had caught the flight, yet a quiet ache sat beside that relief. And then, from nowhere, something rose in her that made her deeply uncomfortable- she felt greedy. Never in her life had she been greedy for anything, and yet here she was, her mind briefly caught in this ugly little web: if they had gone by road, she would have had a little more time with Abir. Her birthday was the next day. Going by road would have meant spending at least the first moments of her birthday with him, and the frustration of missing that possibility made her let out a long sigh. Moments of joy or anything truly special had come so rarely in Sneha's life. She claims she can count those days on one hand instantly. It also hits her, however few they might be, most of the happy or special days in her life are either centered around Abir or happened because of his grace. Now, she just sees them as his favors.
Where will Abir be on this exact day next year, and where the hell will she be? Where will their relationship drag them, or will it just hit a dead end? The second these thoughts crowd her brain, Sneha’s eyes instantly blur with tears. She was midway through wiping them with the back of her right hand when Abir called. Her Uber was in line at the Elevated Expressway toll. She picked up and said- Got the news you made it onto the flight. From the other end, Abir's voice came through unsteady- Sneha... Sne...ha... Sneha... Sneha said calmly- I'm listening, Abir. Go ahead. Do you really need to prove to the other passengers that you're drunk? Abir kept going the same way- Sne...ha, ei meye... I love you. Sne...ha... I love you... I love you. Hello! Are you listening? By then Sneha's eyes had turned into two small mountain springs. A gentle waterfall had started drowning her body, heart, soul- every fucking bit of her.
Abir called out again- Sneha... Sneha... She answered quietly- It's okay. I've heard. I love you too. But right after that, like a howitzer shell hitting exactly where it would do the most damage, Abir's words came through- Sneha... Sneha… we are never going to see each other again. A wildfire spread through the inside of Sneha’s chest in an instant. She had been fearing something like this all along. Rather than this, if Abir had just pressed that Norinco QSZ-92, Glock 19, SIG Sauer P229, or whatever service pistol was issued in his name straight against Sneha’s chest, and just spent one bullet to set her completely free- she would have carried the memory of that greatest mercy with the deepest gratitude all the way to the Day of Judgment. Instead, he sets the entire ground of her chest on fire!
That was February 26, 8:40 PM. From 9:45 PM on February 24 to 8:27 PM on the 26th- forty-six hours and forty-two minutes without interruption, Abir had been with her. This is the first time in nine years since her separation from Bipul that she had spent such time with someone in such terrifyingly intense, insane moments, and loved him this fiercely-intensely. It's only him she loves this savagely. She has probably never loved anyone like Abir; that's what she still believes. But she feels this too- this same goddamn feeling is the cause of her joy, her pain, her fear, and the crushing depression that haunts her life.
Abir's voice was booming right next to her ear, but fuck! It felt like he was sinking into some bottomless void, way too far, Abir was pulling away from her, gradually, relentlessly. Sneha cleared her throat and said in that same flat, calm voice, Have a safe journey, Abir. Text me when you land. She felt like throwing her phone and smashing it to pieces right then, but she wanted to stay patient until Abir arrived safely. She couldn't hold that shit back anymore, not by any means. The Uber driver kept stealing glances at her through the rearview every few seconds. An elderly gentleman. There had been compassion showing in his eyes and the lines of his face too. Perhaps because he was merely driving an Uber, he had been keeping that compassion from rising to his throat.
Sneha tried to compose herself a few times… but in the end, she just couldn't. Though, almost every goodbye with Abir was turning out like this during that period. It wasn't the first time he was acting like a clueless fucking idiot. Every single time, Sneha would hide her tears while dealing with the pain like that, or sometimes she would just let herself wail out loud. That day at that moment, when she couldn't control it anymore despite trying so hard; she just gave up on herself for God’s sake- Go on, cry in the name of your Lord! She let the pain in her chest pour out as it wished. But did the pain lessen even a bit?
Sitting in traffic at the edge of Hatirjheel, Sneha got another text from Abir- Ei meye... Sneha... Ma... you are my Amma... He just kept texting one after another. Most of them were totally messy. Sneha knew he was still drunk. She asked if he had reached; he replied- Just landed. Wiping the tears falling tap-tap on the screen, she typed slowly- Okay, Abir. Take care of yourself. May Allah fulfill your heart's desire from today.
The instant sent the text, she switched the phone off and broke down crying again. The Uber driver couldn't stop himself from showing that pity anymore. Slowing the car, he pushed the tissue box to the back and said, Aunty, crying doesn't change a thing, but it makes you feel lighter. Let yourself be light, don't let yourself be weak. He had heard every conversation between Abir and Sneha from her house to the airport, he wasn't stupid; No reason he wouldn't get their relationship. Sneha grabs two or three tissues, tries to stop crying, and fails again. Right then, she can only keep thinking of Abba.