Sneha used to love sitting on the balcony at this hour, watching the sun go down. She tried to remember, had every evening in her life been as heavy and depressive as this one? She tried to think. No! 'Depressive' wasn'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 kind of 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 favorite hours. Are they no longer? She pauses to think. These days, everything she used to love once feels distant, as if those things now belong to someone else’s life.
There was always something about dawn and dusk that pulled her into a strange trance. At dawn, darkness slowly dissolved and light spread across the world; at dusk, that same light withdrew, surrendering everything back to shadow. In the stillness of these two moments, there was something, something that, for a while, lifted her out of this unbearable, suffocating reality and carried her into another world. A world where no one else had access. A world no one could enter, no one even knew existed, except her.
She loved the prayers of dawn and evening too. For a long stretch of time, her nights had passed without sleep. She would pace restlessly inside her room all night until exhaustion drove her to the window at dawn to watch the sunrise. She would stand by the window and silently watch the sun rise. Night after night, she crossed into morning like that, holding countless conversations with herself silently and from then on, the habit of Fajr prayer took root. Whether she prayed the other daily prayers or not, she never missed that one. And in the rare days she did miss it, an overwhelming sadness would settle 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'd 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 could not 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 that 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 has 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 accusation. No grief. No tenderness. 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. One afternoon, feeling restless and low, she'd gone to sit in Suhrawardy Udyan. And then she heard it a voice from a distance, getting closer, Di… di… di… di…- Shanto, a younger 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 lyric- why did you give the lyrics to Farhad instead of me? He's going around telling everyone, you two wrote it together. Give it a few days and he'll be saying he wrote the whole thing himself. He'll quietly erase your name, I'm telling you. You'll just see. Sneha listened to his outrage with 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. Sneha felt a flicker of irritation at his request but tried not to show that. 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'd spent a year as a ten-year-old in boarding school, at 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 decided against it. She actually liked sitting quietly. 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 by sitting there, she cursed her own sense of politeness several times in her head. The suffering this sense of decency had put her through over the years, she was thinking about that. All that suffering had once given her skin the thickness of a rhinoceros’ hides. 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 with 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- more uncomfortable. The irritation she'd 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're crying and it bothers me. It bothers me because I can't bear to watch anyone cry. Beyond that, nothing. You're 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're just making me uncomfortable with all of this. There are people around watching. It's becoming very awkward. We once thought we'd 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's 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 full of 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 wasn't that poor actually, but it's 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.