[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 at this hour, watching the sun go down. She tries to remember: had every evening in her life been as heavy as this one? No, “depressive” isn’t quite the right word. This time of day had always been something else, something in between. A strange blend of calm and melancholy, sitting side by side; a beauty that carried a faint ache within it. There was a time she loved capturing sunsets, too, collecting them in photographs as if they could be preserved. Dawn and dusk- both had once been her favourite hours. Are they no longer? She pauses to think.
These days, everything she used to love feels distant, as if those things belong to someone else’s life. There was always something about dawn and dusk that pulled her into a trance. At dawn, the darkness slowly dissolved; at dusk, that same light withdrew, surrendering everything back to shadow. In the stillness of these two moments, she is lifted out of this suffocating reality and carried into another world. A world where no one else has access. A world no one even knows exists, except her. She loves the prayers of dawn and evening, too.
For a long stretch of time, her nights passed without sleep. She would pace restlessly inside her room until exhaustion drove her to the window to watch the sunrise. Night after night, she crossed into morning like that, holding silent, endless conversations with herself. That’s how the habit of Fajr took root. Whether she prays the others or not, she never misses that one. On the rare days she does, an overwhelming sadness settles inside her, as if that one prayer alone had been written for her by Allah, and missing the others wouldn't matter nearly as much.
In those early hours, she would stay in sujood for a long time. There was something in the dawn prayer she couldn't name- a stillness so deep it felt like a direct connection with the Divine. In that silence, words were barely needed; yet somehow, a conversation still happened. Even after finishing her prayer, standing by the window again, that trance wouldn't fully leave her. Every morning, she felt deep within her being the truth of Rumi’s words: “Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.” She pauses, trying to recall which year it was. Strange! She had spent six years of her life with a man, living in the same apartment, in the same room, on the same bed, day and night, and yet now she couldn't remember the timeline of their separation. Not only that, but she also couldn't clearly recall any memories from that time either.
People usually remember something, even by accident. But nothing from her years with Bipul comes back clearly anymore. Perhaps she doesn't want it to. It doesn't even feel like a conscious effort. Even the small effort it would take to deliberately avoid those memories; she no longer has that either. Strange! And yet, in the past two years with Abir, every detail remained vivid: when he trembled in his sleep, when she scolded him for biting his nails, when he parked the car crookedly. When he avoided eye contact while speaking. When he secretly glanced at her from the corner of his eyes.
Even now, if she closes her eyes, those moments rise before her, so vivid and alive. She knows, even at this moment, if she closed her eyes, she could see Abir’s beautiful smile exactly as it always was. But she chose not to. That refusal required effort, a conscious act of resistance. That was the difference between Bipul and Abir. But had Abir hurt her less than Bipul? The calculations were complicated. Bipul’s pain no longer reaches her. Its effect had long expired. To her now, Bipul is nothing more than someone she once knew. If he is well, she feels a quiet sense of relief. If he is not, she feels faint sadness, but only because no one deserves to suffer. Beyond that, nothing. No anger. No resentment. No grief. Not even pity.
She remembers it was 2016. Ten years. Though the process of feeling nothing for him probably began around 2018. One afternoon that year, she can't remember the month or the date anymore, feeling restless and low, she had gone to sit in Suhrawardy Udyan. And then she heard it: a voice from a distance, getting closer. Di… di… di… di…Shanto, a junior in her circle, spotted her from a distance and, calling out her name, came running, breathless.
Finally reaching her, Shanto started to complain about another guy in the same circle. Sneha had given permission to tune one of her poems as a lyric.
Why did you give the lyrics to Farhad instead of me? He is going around telling everyone you two wrote it together. Give it a few days and he will be saying he wrote the whole thing himself. He will quietly erase your name, I am telling you. You will just see. Sneha listened to his outrage with a smile.
After talking for a while, Shanto’s voice shifted, becoming hesitant, almost uneasy, like someone about to confess to a crime. Dada is here in the park, Didi. He wants to talk to you for a bit. Would you? You can scold me after that if you need, but just talk to him once. See what he has to say. I love you both, Didi.
Sneha felt a flicker of irritation at the request but tried not to show it. When something between two people has already broken, any kind of fuss only adds bitterness; it doesn't help anything. Shanto took her silence as consent and brought Bipul over from somewhere nearby. Bipul sat in front of her. The smell of alcohol and weed hit her immediately, sharp enough to trigger a headache. She sat there quietly, enduring it. Silence had always been something she was comfortable with, something she even preferred. But this silence felt different. Uncomfortable.
She tried to think of what else in the world smelled as bad as weed. After much deliberation, she could only come up with the tanneries of Hazaribagh. She had spent a year as a ten-year-old in boarding school, in a room directly above a cremation ground. Even burning bodies, she thought, were more tolerable than this. Though that particular memory had faded enough that she couldn't be certain. Still, she was fairly sure. After sitting across from her for a while, Bipul moved to sit beside her. Shanto was strumming a guitar nearby, singing in a very low voice:
Ami megher dole achhi,
Ami ghaser dole achhi,
Tumio thako bondhu he,
Boshiya thako… ektu boshiya thako…
The smell of weed was drilling directly into Sneha’s skull. She thought about getting up and leaving; the smell coming off him was reason enough, but she decided against it. She actually liked sitting quietly. She preferred it, usually. But right now, this particular silence was creating something horrible inside her, a deeply uncomfortable feeling. For tolerating that smell and enduring the discomfort, she cursed her own sense of politeness several times in her head. She was thinking about the suffering this sense of decency had put her through over the years. All that suffering had once given her skin the thickness of a rhinoceros’ hide. And now, the smallest thing breaks her. Strange.
Thinking of her own decline over eight years, she felt pity for herself, but none for Bipul. That was the day Sneha first understood: she had already forgiven him. And at the same moment, every last thread connecting her to him had been severed, permanently. She could feel it. No spell in the world would ever reconnect them. Watching the last light of the sun fade, she thought perhaps Abir now felt the same way about her. The thought was terrifying. Eight years ago, that feeling of disconnection had brought a kind of relief to Sneha’s life. Today, thinking about another disconnection pierced her chest with a sharp, thin pain. Like a finger cut by manjha- the glass string of a kite, the wound was invisible yet burned deep inside, impossible to explain. Sneha’s insides were shredded by that same burning.
That afternoon, Bipul had come to speak to Sneha for the first time in two years. But in the end, he couldn't manage any words at all. He just placed both hands on her feet and wept for a long time, asking only for forgiveness. This made Sneha’s already uncomfortable feeling even more unbearable. The irritation she had felt earlier had blurred into something she could no longer clearly identify. She noticed, strangely, that his crying was creating no feeling in her whatsoever. She sat there in her discomfort and thought only about when he would remove his hands from her feet so she could stand up and go home. But he didn't remove his hands. He didn't stop crying, either. Shanto, visibly embarrassed by the scene, glanced at Sneha once and then wandered off in another direction.
After watching this silently for a long while, Sneha looked at Bipul and said, You are crying and it bothers me. It bothers me because I can't bear to watch anyone cry. Beyond that, nothing. You are asking for forgiveness, which I did a long time ago. Tenderness, sadness, pain, anger- none of it is working for you right now. I feel nothing. You are just making me uncomfortable with all of this. There are people around watching. It is becoming very awkward. We once thought we would build a life together. It didn't happen. It won't happen now.
Sneha paused. Then, as his tears fell onto her feet and disappeared into the grass, she said, Your world and mine are completely different. That is just how it is. Take care of yourself. When I hear that someone is doing well, it actually makes me feel good. She finished speaking slowly and went quiet again. Bipul’s crying intensified. But mercifully, he lifted his hands from her feet. Sneha exhaled and called out to Shanto, who was standing at a distance. When Shanto came over with his guitar, she looked at him once, smiled, and sang with a sense of full relief and lightness-
Megher modhye megh hoye jai,
Ghaser modhye ghash,
Buker modhye holud ekta patar dirghoshwash…
Sneha recalled that memory from eight years ago with some deliberate effort on this particular evening. Her memory was not that poor, actually, but it was always selective. Like her, it held onto exactly as much as it needed to, exactly as much as it loved, and let everything else go. Her heart and her brain had never felt obligated to retain more than that. She then wonders: how long will it take her heart and brain to forget Abir? The thin pain in her chest flickered again as the evening’s darkness finished settling over the world.