[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.]
After three hours in Sylhet, Sneha headed back to Kadamtali bus stand in Omar Faruk Chacha's rickshaw. She still had no clear idea where she was going next. But something inside her had quietly signaled that Sylhet was done, and that was enough to bring her to Kadamtali. She handed Omar Faruk Chacha two crisp thousand-taka notes and asked if the fare was alright. She had no real sense of what three hours of his time was worth, felt too awkward to ask directly, so she just put the money in his hand- Chacha, is this okay? He gave her the exact same smile he had when she first got on, nodded, and told her it was fine.
A few steps ahead at Kadamtali, three Dhaka-bound buses were lined up- Hanif Enterprise, Ena Transport, Bilas Paribahan. She walked past all of them and got onto a Sagarika Enterprise bus instead Sylhet-Moulvibazar-Kishoreganj-Mymensingh written across the front. Non-AC. Six hundred taka fare. Barely any passengers. Her seat was D-1, the one beside it empty. She said a quiet Alhamdulillah to herself and meant it.
The stillness of the Surma riverbank hadn't left her yet. She wanted to hang a Do Not Disturb sign somewhere inside her chest and carry it for the rest of the way. The loneliness that had felt unbearable in Dhaka- the very thing that had pushed her into this unplanned night hadn't loosened its grip entirely, but it had shifted by that river. Heading toward Mymensingh now, her mind felt considerably calmer. Like in that unfamiliar city, she had briefly found her way back to something she had lost from inside herself- a companion she had been missing, returned for just a little while.
Leaning back in the bus seat, Jean-Paul Sartre came to her mind. Sartre had said- "If you are lonely when you are alone, then you are in bad company." That made her smile. Perhaps she had been feeling lonely in Dhaka. The feeling hadn't started until the moment Abir left for Rajshahi. Sneha understood now- the solitude she had enjoyed for so many years, the solitude she had actually loved, those two days and two nights with Abir had taken her through a companionship and an experience that had changed the meaning of her life entirely. And that was going to cost her a great deal of suffering going forward. After boarding the Mymensingh bus, she asked herself once- why not Dhaka? But without waiting for an answer, she opened her phone's notes and started writing-
In the city where you are not,
Loneliness curls around me like smoke,
I retreat into the quiet,
Waiting, unseen, untouched by the world.
In the city where you are not,
Joy is a stranger, warmth like a ghost,
Even my footsteps forget their purpose.
I'm hollow!
After writing those lines, Sneha went back to Sartre. She remembered, Sartre had once written to Simone de Beauvoir- "It's strange…I felt less lonely when I didn't know you." A smile came to her face. Not a happy one. The helpless kind. She didn't need another philosopher to tell her she had already fallen into a massive black hole. Sartre had made it clear enough that she would have to keep carrying this black hole's loop for some distance more, and exactly how far that distance was, she had a feeling the power to decide that wasn't in her hands. A way out, a way through- she couldn't find one right now. Whether she ever would- that also remained uncertain. But she wasn't Simone de Beauvoir- that thought brought the same helpless smile back to her face. As if she were throwing a mocking laugh at herself for her own state. And somewhere inside that self-mockery, she discovered something- people come close mostly to make you lonelier than before. Sneha felt it; Binoy Majumdar's real heron was spreading its wings and getting ready. It would fly when the moment come.
After that strange utopian 46-hour-42-minute journey with Abir in Dhaka, seeing him off at the airport, boarding a local bus to Sylhet that same night, three hours of wandering through the city, and now setting off again toward another unknown destination- Sneha could feel it by then. Her body and mind were thoroughly exhausted, completely wrecked. But the Surma river, even the time spent at the dargah, had settled her restless, thrashing mind considerably. In that sense, she couldn't say exactly how much she had gained from this unplanned journey into the unknown, but it didn't feel like a loss either. The irritation, the loneliness, the pain she had carried when she left for Sylhet, by the time she was leaving, none of it felt quite as sharp or as heavy. She found herself somewhere in the middle- not bad, not good. A perfectly balanced diet. The feeling wasn't leaning too hard in any one direction, not letting any single emotion put on weight. For now, that felt like enough. That felt like relief. And then the song playing on the bus threw a stone right through all of it-
Hum bhool gaye re har baat
Magar tera pyaar nahi bhoole,
Kya kya hua dil ke saath
Magar tera pyaar nahi bhoole…
When she had boarded, Sneha had caught a quick glance at the driver. The helper was young, but the driver looked close to fifty, maybe past it. His beard, hennaed a deep red, he kept gathering in his right fist and pulling downward in slow, wave-like strokes, again and again. His complexion was bright, almost luminous, made more so by lips stained red from paan. There was something Sufi about his face. A kind of deep, settled contentment. The kind of face that makes you feel, just looking at it, that nothing in this world troubles him at all. After guessing the driver's age, the song playing on the bus made sense to her. A Hindi film song from the eighties. Though if it switched to a nineties number in a little while, she wouldn't be particularly surprised. Salons, buses, CD and cassette shops- a hundred years from now, some nineties song will probably still be playing in all of them, Sneha thought and instead of irritation, a smile came. Right then, the bus speaker blared-
Duniya se shikayat kya karta,
Jab tune hame samjha hi nahi,
Gairon ko bhala kya samjhate,
Jab apno ne samjha hi nahi,
Tune chhod diya re mera haath,
Magar tera pyaar nahi bhoole…
Lata Mangeshkar's voice. Though this song was first sung in the sixties by an Urdu singer named Naseem Begum, in a Pakistani film called Saheli. That version was playing in Sneha's ears too, at the same time. That one carried more grief, more weight. But Lata's wasn't bad either. The longing of a woman whose love had failed, it came through in her voice with real depth and intensity. But feeling that too deeply for too long wasn't a good idea, Sneha opened her eyes, sat up straight. She pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket and switched airplane mode off. Immediately- dhai dhai dhai…Abir's texts started flooding in. They hadn't started, exactly, they had already been sent. They had just been waiting, stacked up behind the airplane mode wall, and now they finally reached her all at once. From the notifications on her screen, Sneha could see the beginning of some of the messages- Sneha…please…talk to me…I'm not doing well…where are you? Sneha, I'm sorry…Sneha, please talk to me once. You okay? Please tell me you are alright. Don't punish me like that. Talk to me, please. I beg…
Sneha didn't feel like responding. She asked herself- who is she actually punishing? The answer came back- herself. She spent very little time in Mymensingh. Just long enough to get off one bus, buy a ticket, and board another. That morning, after reaching Sylhet, Sneha had sent resignation letters by email to her editor and the HR department of her office. Ignoring Abir's texts, she went to check the other notifications and saw a reply to the resignation letter email. "Not accepted." They had attached a scanned copy of her printed email. At the bottom, the words “NOT ACCEPTED” were written in huge letters, stamped with the editor's official seal and signature. She was about to let it ruin her mood, then just sighed instead. Sneha opened WhatsApp and found her boss had written- stop the nonsense! If something is wrong, take a few days off. Don't even think about quitting. Come back to the office when your head cools down.
She thought- her head was already cool. Why did everyone always assume her head was running hot? She was fundamentally like a quiet, lonely pond on a still afternoon.On the way back to Dhaka, one of Abir's texts broke through her solitude, or rather, ended nearly twenty-four hours of silence- You okay? I'm in pain. Deep pain. Call me. I need to talk to you. Chest pain. Please help me. Does making me suffer feel good to you? Sneha wrote back- I'm okay. Don't worry about me. Making you suffer has never felt good to me, Abir.The moment she sent it, her phone rang. Once…twice…three times… In the end, after reaching Dhaka, she answered the call.