[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.]
Sneha used to love sitting on the balcony around this time and watching the sun go down. Had every single evening in history been as depressing as tonight? She tries to remember. No, depressing is not the right word. There’s something nice about it, mixed with a little sadness. She used to love taking pictures of sunsets. Dawn and evening were her favorite times too. Are they still? She thinks about it for a moment. These days, even the things she loves feel strangely far away.
Dawn and evening have this weird effect on her. During one, darkness slowly starts to disappear and light spreads all over the world. During the other, the light slowly goes away, and darkness comes down over the sky and the earth. There’s something about the quiet of these two times that takes her away for a while from all the unbearable thoughts of everyday life. It takes her somewhere else. Somewhere only she can enter. Nobody else can go there. Nobody does. Nobody even knows that world exists.
She loves the prayers at dawn and in the evening too. There was a long period in her life when she didn’t sleep at all. She would spend the whole night walking around restlessly. Then, completely exhausted in both body and mind, she would stand beside the window and quietly watch the sunrise. That’s how night after night and dawn after dawn passed. She would talk to herself, argue with herself, and go over all kinds of things in her head. That was probably when Fajr became a regular part of her life. She might pray for the other waqts or she might not, but Fajr was different. She had to pray that one. Every day. If she missed it even once, she would feel really bad. Sometimes it felt like Allah had made that one prayer a rule just for her. The others? He wouldn’t really mind whether she prayed to them or not.
Sneha used to spend a long time in sajdah during those quiet morning hours. There was a strange, deep peace in that prayer. It felt like she was directly connecting with God in the silence. She used to whisper quiet words to Him. After a long sajdah and monajat, she would stand by the window. The trance would stay with her for a long time. Every morning after prayers, she used to feel Rumi’s words deep inside her soul: “Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.”
What year was that? She stops to count the years. It’s strange! She spent six whole years with a guy in the same flat, the same room, and the same bed, day and night. Yet now, her brain stalls trying to remember when they actually broke up. She cannot even remember a single memory from their time together. Usually, when people go about their day, they remember things by accident. But she cannot see any clear memory of her time with Bipul anymore. Honestly, maybe she just does not want to remember.
She doesn’t think she is doing this on purpose. Even trying to consciously block someone takes some attention, and she lost interest in giving poor Bipul even that tiny bit of focus a long time ago. It is strange. Yet, over the last two years, she can see everything about Abir crystal clear. If she closes her eyes, it all floats right in front of her. She remembers the exact night he twitched in his sleep, the time she scolded him for biting his nails, the way he parked the car crooked, the moments he hid his eyes while speaking, and the times he secretly looked at her from the corner of his eye. All of it. Even right now!
Even now, she can close her eyes and instantly see Abir's beautiful smile. But she refuses to look. She forces her mind to look away, actively fighting her own thoughts. This is exactly where the contrast between her memories of Bipul and Abir becomes clear. But did Abir give her less pain than Bipul did? These calculations are just too complicated. The pain Bipul caused cannot hurt her now. Its effect died a long time ago.
Bipul is nothing more than a face from her past now. If he is doing well, fine. If things are bad for him, she will feel a small pang of pity. It is the same pity a regular, decent person feels for any stranger on the street. Nothing more. Her feelings for him have been dead for years. No rage, no hurt, no complaints, no bitterness, not even a tiny bit of warmth. She recalls it now- it was back in 2016. A whole decade since they separated. But the real numbness toward Bipul started in 2018.
It was sometime that year. She can’t remember the month or date now. What she does remember is that one afternoon, feeling a little restless and lost, she went and sat at Suhrawardy Udyan. Shanto, one of the younger guys in their circle, spotted her from a distance and came running toward her, out of breath, calling, Di… di… di… di… The moment he reached her, he started complaining. Why did you give the song lyrics to Farhad instead of me? He’s going around telling everyone that you and he wrote it together. Give him a few more days and he’ll start saying he wrote the whole thing himself. He’ll quietly take your name off it. Just wait and see! Sneha listened to him and smiled quietly.
After sitting beside her for a while and talking about random things, Shanto suddenly said in that awkward, guilty way people talk when they’re about to confess something terrible, Dada is in the park. He wants to talk to you. Will you talk to him once? You can scold me if you need to, but please, just talk to him once. At least hear what he has to say. I love you both, Didi. The request annoyed Sneha a little, but she kept it off her face. She wanted to tell him that once a relationship is over; all this extra effort and emotional drama only make things more bitter. It doesn’t fix anything. But she didn’t feel like explaining that to Shanto.
She said nothing and stayed where she was. Shanto somehow took that silence as permission and went off to bring his Dada, Bipul. Where he even found him, who knows. As soon as Bipul sat down across from her, Sneha caught the horrible mix of Keru and weed on his breath. It took her less than a second to recognize the smell. Her headache started right away. She tried to think of anything in the world that smells worse than weed. After thinking about it for a while, the only thing she can come up with is the smell of the tanneries in Hazaribagh.
When Sneha was ten and studying at Bharateshwari Homes, she had to spend an entire year in a room right beside a cremation ground. Even the smell of burning dead bodies feels better to her than weed! She doesn’t remember that smell very well anymore, but at the time, she was pretty sure it had to be easier to tolerate than this. After sitting across from each other for a while, Bipul comes over and sits beside her. Shanto is tuning his guitar and singing very slowly-
Ami megher dole achhi (I am with the clouds)
Ami ghasher dole achhi (I am with the grass)
Tumio thako bondhu he (You stay too, my friend)
Bosiya thako… ektu bosiya thako… (Just sit here… sit here for a while…)
That smell of weed is going straight into Sneha’s head. She doesn’t want to suddenly get up and leave, using the smell is coming from your mouth as an excuse, so she stays where she is and keeps sitting quietly. She actually likes sitting somewhere in silence. Put her in any quiet place and she can sit there for a long time, just watching what’s going on around her. But right now, that same silence is making her feel terribly uncomfortable. Something just doesn’t feel right. And while she sits there, quietly tolerating the smell of weed, she mentally calls herself an abalchodha once or twice for being such an idiot about manners. She starts thinking about how much she has suffered in life just because of this stupid sense of politeness. All that suffering had made her tough for a while, though. Thick-skinned, almost like a rhino. And now? Now even the smallest touch is enough to break her. How strange.
When Sneha thinks about how far she has fallen in those eight years, she doesn’t feel bad for herself. She feels a strange kind of pity instead. A quiet pity she can’t even explain. But that day, she feels nothing like that for Bipul. Not even a little. That was when she first understood that she had already forgiven him. And with that forgiveness, whatever connection was left between them had also finally died. There was no way to bring it back now. No matter what kind of magic anyone tried, that connection would never return. Watching the last bit of sunlight disappear, Sneha suddenly thinks- maybe Abir feels exactly the same way about her now. The thought scares her.
Eight years ago, losing that connection had actually brought her some peace. But today, just thinking about losing another connection makes her feel a sharp little pain inside her chest. Like when a kite string cuts your finger and, within seconds, leaves a deep cut that starts burning badly. You can’t really explain to anyone how deep that sharp string has cut into your flesh or exactly how much it hurts at that moment. That was exactly how it felt inside her. The pain kept burning through her.
That afternoon, Bipul had come to talk to her after two whole years. But in the end, he couldn’t say anything. He just held her feet with both hands and kept crying, asking her to forgive him. Sneha was already uncomfortable, and now she felt even worse. What surprised her was that she couldn’t even properly feel annoyed anymore. Even more strangely, Bipul’s crying did absolutely nothing to her. Not even a little emotion. She just sat there, uncomfortable, thinking, When is he going to let go of my feet? When can I finally get up and go home? But Bipul wouldn’t let go. And he just kept crying and crying. Even Shanto seemed awkward watching him behave like that. He looked at Sneha once, then quietly started walking off in another direction.
After listening to him cry like that for so long, Sneha finally looked at Bipul. You crying like this is making me feel bad. Not because of anything between us. I just can’t stand seeing people cry. That’s all. Other than that, I’m not feeling anything. Why are you asking me to forgive you? It’s okay. I forgave you a long time ago. There’s no pity, no sadness, no anger, no pain left in me. Nothing. I genuinely don’t feel anything anymore. You’re just making me uncomfortable by crying like this. There are people all around us. They’re looking at us. This is getting really awkward. Once, we thought we’d spend our whole lives together. That didn’t happen. And it’s never going to happen.
She stopped for a moment and wiped the tears that had fallen onto her feet away into the grass. Then she said, Your world and my world are completely different. Maybe that’s just how it is. It took me some time to understand that. When two people from completely different worlds try to understand each other, there will always be this thing called ‘mistake’ standing between them in one way or another. We’ve had enough. I want to keep my life free from all this pressure now. I might have made mistakes too. And if I did, I’m sincerely sorry. Take care. I’ll always be happy to see someone doing well.
She finished the whole thing slowly, then went back to sitting quietly, staring into the distance. Bipul’s sobbing got a little louder. But thankfully, he finally let go of her feet. Sneha let out a quiet breath of relief and called out to Shanto, who was standing some distance away. When he came over, she had this strangely calm, peaceful smile on her face. Then, almost cheerfully, she started singing along with the sad song Shanto was playing on the guitar-
Megher moddhe megh hoye jai,
(I become a cloud among the clouds,)
Ghasher moddhe ghash
(grass among the grass,)
Buker moddhe holud ekta patar dirghoshshash…
(a yellow leaf’s long sigh inside the heart…)
That evening, Sneha almost forces herself to go back to that memory from eight years ago. Her memory isn’t really bad. It’s just as selective as she is. It keeps what it needs and what it loves and lets everything else go without feeling guilty about it. But now one question is stuck in her head, huge as a bubble, tangled up like hair caught in chewing gum: how long will it take her mind and brain to forget Abir? The moment the evening darkness settles over the whole world, that sharp pain in her chest flares up again.