As soon as Abir started the video call, Sneha got up and switched on the light. On the screen, she saw Abir half‑lying on his bed, wearing a plain white vest. Inside her chest, a tornado was raging, but she forced herself to act normal. With a controlled smile she told- It has been 53 days since I last saw you! Oh my God!
Abir replied- That’s very weird! Embarrassing too. You shouldn’t count days like that. Sneha answered- I don’t do it deliberately, trust me. But I don’t forget a few things. That’s just who I'm. Last time we met was 15th December. I didn’t try to remember it, it just stayed in my memory. What’s today? After 6th February, it’s already 7th. That makes it 53 days. I was weak in math, but this kind of thing sticks to whether I want it or not. What can I do?
Abir smiled slightly. And that smile felt like Sneha had been recharged after seven days. Like a power source suddenly plugged back in. Sneha loved Abir’s smile so much. She had been saying it since the very first or second day they met. Even though he rarely smiled, when he did, it felt real. Innocent. Almost childlike. Maybe that was another reason she liked him so much.
She kept looking at him through the video call, thinking that. Meanwhile, Abir picked up another phone and played Chhaya by Blue Touch. He started humming along softly at first- “Songgoto karone tomay ar ami bhalobashte parini, tomar proshner proti uttore kichu likhte parini” (For good reason, I couldn't love you anymore...and I couldn't write anything to answer your questions...) Then as he reached the higher notes- “Chand kingba tomar alo amar boddo lage chokhe, mritur coffin amar mure diyechi tomar arale...” (The moon or your light hurts my eyes too much...I have wrapped my coffin of death behind the veil of you.…) Suddenly he covered his eyes with his hand and started crying.
Sneha was not prepared for this scene at all. Abir was crying uncontrollably. Her chest twisted in pain, but she didn’t try to stop him. Sometimes tears bring relief, she thought. Maybe he needed it. Maybe he was just letting it out. Let him cry, she thought. But the sight was tearing apart something inside her. She couldn’t keep watching. She turned her eyes away from the screen, trying very hard to keep her own tears from falling.
Abba used to say, “In any situation, two people shouldn’t lose control at the same time. If one breaks down, the other must hold steady, no matter how much it hurts.” Sneha tried to follow Abba's advice that time. Abir kept crying. Just as his smile was innocent like a child’s, his tears were too. Sneha sensed something but couldn’t be sure.
The song, the tears- everything could be connected in a thousand ways if she wanted to interpret it. But she didn’t want to. Still, she could feel it clearly, Abir had tried to say something. But for some reason, he delayed it…and let the crying take over instead. Unable to bear it anymore, Sneha spoke- Stop it. Please stop. What happened? Why are you crying like this? Tell me…is something wrong? Is something bothering you? I’m hurting too. Please stop. You’ve cried enough.
Abir paused, shook his head- Nothing happened. Then added- After seeing your face after so long, I couldn’t control myself. I’m sorry. And he broke down again. Sneha’s mind had already started opening files- calculations, possibilities, outcomes. Even if the math didn’t add up…she knew one thing clearly- One day, soon or later, she would leave Abir's life. And everything is happening now were just small tragedies before that final ending.
Whenever Abir acted strangely like this, Sneha tried to stay calm on the outside, but inside she shrank with fear of losing him. Watching his relentless tears, she pleaded- Abir, look at me. What’s wrong? What happened? Do you want to say something? Tell me. Please don’t cry like this. Abir tried to compose himself and said- I’m sorry. Sneha forced a smile- Sorry for what, baba?
Abir kept crying and he said- After my mom…probably you love me the most. But I can’t reciprocate that. Then he broke down completely again. Sneha didn’t know what to say. She was stunned. That was a huge statement. And she wasn’t even sure if Abir understood the weight of what he had just said. Is he drunk? But he didn’t look drunk. Then what? If he’s sobered…then he meant it. At least that’s what Sneha thought.
Even though Sneha used to believe people tell the truth most when they are drunk, but Abir had already broken many of her assumptions in the last two years. Still…she also knew something else. Not everything Abir was calling "truth" was actually the truth. Maybe it was just his confusion, his inner conflict, reality and everything around him trying to take shape as words. And failing.
Sneha felt a deep tenderness for him. A man was crying, telling her he was helpless to love her back. But not being able to love someone and simply not loving them, those weren’t the same things. She turned it over in her mind, half-distracted. And that Blue Touch song, it had the wrong idea entirely. It wasn't sending the right message. “Songgoto karone tomay ar ami bhalobashte parini”- the word 'ar' was the problem. What did it mean? That once he did love, but then stopped? Was he forced to stop or did the feeling simply die? The message wasn’t clear.
Either you love or you don’t, or you never did. But what's the “could not anymore”? Did it mean he loved but didn’t want to or wanted to but couldn’t? It felt like a school notice board- “Due to unavoidable circumstances, all classes are suspended.” Fine! But shouldn’t the reason be specified? Doesn’t everyone have the right to know the exact reason? And more importantly, if you did love, even for a moment, why express it like some secret code? Not everyone understands sign language.
Everything feels cloudy. Blurred. Wrapped in unnecessary mystery. Sneha could read certain things from Abir's eyes; she had figured that out long ago. Yet every time they spent beautiful moments together, when it was time for him to leave, why did he always try to prove those moments wrong, using strange words, transferring guilt onto her? Why did he need to burden her with his sense of moral duty or guilt? Even knowing it hurt her, he kept doing it, day after day.
Sneha thought; if even a fraction of that effort had gone into simply accepting their relationship as normal, into living it normally, many problems might never have grown so big. Not that she was innocent, she knew, admitted even that she had caused Abir more pain than anyone else in her life. And she had loved him more than anyone else too. Those two lines of the Blue Touch song tormented her. She kept thinking- Either I never loved you or I consciously chose not to. But ‘could not anymore’? What does that mean? Loved but didn’t want to? Wanted but couldn’t? Such confusing thoughts, such complicated human relationships.
That night, during their 45 minute, 27 second video call, Abir cried for nearly 31 minutes. Yet the exact thing he wanted to say, he didn’t or couldn’t. At the right time, in clear words, Abir never managed to say what needed to be said. Perhaps he never would. And when it wasn’t the right time, when it wasn’t the right thing to say, he blurted it out drunkenly, at the worst possible moment. Sneha was thinking all of this while getting down at Fakirapool bus stand, paying the Uber fare.
As soon as she got off, she put her phone on airplane mode and went straight to the Ena Transport counter and asked which bus was next in line to leave. The counter told her a Sylhet bus was departing in five minutes. She bought a non-AC ticket for five hundred and fifty taka and got on. Right at the entrance, the helper’s cheap cigarette smoke hit her face, making her stomach churn. It wasn’t that she couldn’t afford an AC bus. Her only purpose was to leave Dhaka as quickly as possible. That’s why she didn’t think twice before buying the first available ticket.
She had been born in Dhaka, had grown up here, it was the only address she had, the only address her parents had too. Both sides of the family had their roots here. Which was why she'd always believed- to take her anywhere in the world, any paradise outside this city and within three days homesickness would drag her back. This city, with all its pollution, its noise, its hours swallowed by traffic jams, it was still hers. The most familiar thing she had. And yet that night, this very own city of her had become unbearable.
She wanted badly to reply to Abir's texts. He must be worried, she kept thinking. But her pride rose up again and pressed that impulse down. Then, almost immediately, something deeper than pride took over- It’s a silent hurt born of love. She noticed, that feeling went so much further than ego. And then, a beat later, the question came- what right did she even have to carry this hurt born of love into an unfamiliar city in the middle of the night? For what and for whom? It felt like she was dissolving into nothingness, getting lost inside an even bigger nothingness!
Shortly after getting on the bus, Sneha crossed out of her 38 year and into 39. When midnight passed, she murmured to herself- HAPPY BIRTHDAY, THE SADDEST LADY ON THE EARTH! The middle-aged woman sitting next to her had already fallen asleep, her head slowly leaning onto Sneha’s shoulder. Sneha realized, she wouldn’t be able to handle this journey for long. And somehow, that thought triggered something inside her. A strange kind of stubbornness. Maybe a desire to punish herself. Immediately, Sneha decided, she would sit through the entire journey, carrying the weight of that woman’s head on her shoulder and stay on the bus until the very last stop. She would only get down after everyone else had left.
She had no idea where the last stop in Sylhet even was. Not the slightest clue. She twisted her lips slightly and thought- Wherever it goes…let it go. She had set out to disappear anyway. Why overthink where or when to stop? Who was waiting for her anywhere? She had nowhere to go. Nothing to do. No one came to her either. At that moment, it felt like, if a singer like Kabir Suman were in front of her, she might have sung- “Ei fatkabajir deshe shopner pakhigulo benche nei…o gaanwala arekta gaan gao…amar ar kothao jabar nei…kichchhu korar nei…” (In this land of hollow gambles, the birds of dreams are no longer alive… O singer, sing me another song…I have nowhere left to go…nothing left to do…).
Soon the bus lights went out. Most passengers were asleep or half‑asleep. The helper lit another cheap cigarette near the door and that same awful smell spread through the bus again. Sneha’s stomach twisted once more from the stench. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, the driver blasted Kumar Sanu through the harsh speakers. Mashallah! Kumar Sanu started singing- “Tu pyaar hai kisi aur ka, tujhe chahta koi aur hai…Tu pasand hai kisi aur ki, tujhe maangta koi aur hai…”
Pa-the-tic! After a while enduring that painfully melodramatic 90's song by Kumar Sanu and Anuradha Paudwal, Sneha let out her irritation a bit louder than she intended. It didn’t disturb the peaceful, almost unconscious sleep of the woman resting her head on Sneha’s shoulder. Had she been drugged or something? How does a person sleep like that? Sneha glanced at her face, such complete, undisturbed peace, as if sleep were the greatest joy in the world. Maybe it was. Sneha couldn't even remember the last time she'd slept properly. That, too, felt…Pa-the-tic!
Repeating “pa-the-tic” twice in the style of her old professor Saifuzzaman made her smile. In her first semester at IUB, she heard that word in that exact tone countless times. Saifuz Sir would raise one eyebrow over his glasses and pronounce that word in his cartoonish way whenever students came late. Then again, it wasn't only lateness. To Saifuzzaman Sir, apparently everything in the world was actually Pa-the-tic! Just as everything felt to Sneha right now. Even the memory of Saifuzzaman Sir couldn’t distract her for long from the torture of the bus speakers. The song had changed by then, but only the song. Kumar Sanu and Anuradha didn’t. If anything, this next one was worse.
What on earth were those 90's Indian lyricists on when they wrote these songs and ruined an entire generation? Sneha wondered! The male voice screamed- “Bin tere kuch bhi nahi main…” Practically he was screaming! Then he went on making absurd promises- “Main har gham utha loonga, teri chahat mein…” And the foolish female lover of course believed him, responding with equal intensity- “Tera saath jo chhuta, yeh waada jo toota, main khud ko mita doongi…” God! Some one just rescue her- she thought deep down!
At that moment, She felt like if she had the lyricist’s number, she’d call and say- kitni zindagi tune barbaad kiya aise jhooti lyric sunake, mere bhai! Tujhe koi jahannum mein bhi ghusne nahi degi! Then she paused and almost laughed- her Hindi was actually pretty good! But these pathetically fake-promise songs from the 90's, blasted from every street corner, every salon, every VCR and cassette shop, they’d infected an entire generation with fantasies about love. Thinking about it, she felt like calling those lyricists something that rhymed with the wrong spelling of Nobel laureate Machado's name, the one you'd make at first glance!
The victim of all such lyrics- Muhtarama Esnehaaaa herself was now carrying a stranger's head on her shoulder, heading toward an unknown city with no destination, nursing a hurt she had no right to feel toward someone whose life she had no official place in. At 40, none of this felt adventurous! Not even a little. And yet, by some twist of fate, those songs had shaped her childhood. She was still somehow representing a generation that committed suicide over failed love, as if she were still 21. In fact, she had just turned twenty-one or so it felt. And she'd rung it in by calling herself the saddest woman on the earth!
After much deliberation, Sneha arrived at a conclusion- in the whole world, there was no soul more miserable than one who was both a poet and a lover. If poets ever succeeded in love, who would write poems of longing? For the first time, Sneha grew angry at her own poet‑self. What nonsense! Pointless! Completely pointless! What the hell does anyone achieve by being a poet? She muttered to herself. She wasn’t angry at all poets, only at herself. But on that lonely birthday night, it felt easier to spread that frustration across an entire community, just to lighten the weight inside her chest, even a little.
Then Sneha thought, being at once a poet, a lover, and a journalist means living life as a symbol of sorrow and poverty. Financial poverty didn’t really bother her. Money to her was like dirt on the hands, no…she paused. That wasn’t quite the right comparison. Some stains don’t come off that easily. She thought for a moment, then corrected herself. Yes! Money comes at the speed of a turtle and disappears at the speed of light. Today it was there, tomorrow it was gone. If not tomorrow, maybe the day after it would return. Compared to this kind of material instability, living without love felt like a far deeper form of deprivation to her. And she had no desire to be ‘noble’ in that kind of poverty. Not at all!
Her thoughts couldn’t soften the harsh noise of the bus for long. She decided it was almost a religious duty to put in her earbuds and play something on Spotify. She opened her playlist called Amon- a carefully built archive of 386 songs at that point. The moment she hit shuffle, Linkin Park’s In the End started playing. As the song went on, her thoughts drifted again- last year, around this time, she had lost her father. This year…she was losing herself. Next year…Abi...She couldn’t even finish the thought. Just imagining it made her chest tighten. Her breathing turned uneven again. It had already started. But she ignored it and kept listening-
Tried so hard and got so far,
But in the end, it doesn’t even matter.
I had to fall to lose it all,
But in the end, it doesn’t even matter…