From morning until evening, Sneha sat in solitude; alone, with herself, after many days. After certain events, a person's life never quite returns to what it was or perhaps it never manages to touch that thing called normal again. Sneha thinks she'll probably have to spend whatever remains of her life exactly like this- locked inside a closed room, playing with needle and fire. Beyond this, she can't seem to do anything else anymore.
Rain is coming again. Suddenly a storm wind began to blow, like something out of Baishakh. She had come and sat on the balcony floor just before dusk to watch the sun go down and she is still sitting exactly the same way. Both knees folded up. Both arms running along either side of her legs, hands balled into fists just short of touching her chin, reaching forward instead. Once the rain starts, getting out of Bashundhara would turn into a struggle, but she doesn't feel any particular urge to leave this place or go anywhere either. After those heavenly 46 hours and 42 minutes spent with Abir, she had not been able to stay alone in any flat for long. Even in Amma's house at Niketan or her own flat in Aftabnagar, closing her eyes alone brought suffocation. Through that period, night after night, she had relied on Filfresh and Rivotril, waiting for sleep to arrive. Three months later, more out of compulsion than choice, she had to give up the Aftabnagar flat. Twenty-eight thousand a month in rent, three thousand on top of that for service charges. And yet she couldn't stay in her own flat, because of the intensity of one person's memory. Anyone hearing this would call her insane. Though she is, Sneha thinks.
So many people have called her 'paagli' in her life with love, with tenderness. Abba used to say it all the time, pulling her close- Areeeh… my paaaagli! How long it has been since she last heard him call her that, she wonders. She will never hear it again. No one calling her mad has ever bothered Sneha, but every time Abir called that, it pierced her and she would get violently triggered. Sneha closes her eyes for a moment, trying to bring back the sound of Abir saying it and suddenly, in Rajshahi, Abir's face surfaces before her, heavily drunk. In that moment he hadn't looked like Abir at all. He had looked like someone else entirely. Someone Sneha didn't know, as if she were seeing him for the very first time. That man's eyes didn't carry Abir's tenderness. They held a fierce, consuming rage. Was there hatred too? She couldn't bear that version of Abir then, even still can't. She tried to stop the vision, but it would not leave. Even with her eyes open, she could see clearly that Abir was sitting inside the car and screaming at her- "You're insane! You need medical help!" Whenever Abir called her mad, it was always out of anger. But it hurt Sneha terribly. It still does.
The first drops of rain fell with another gust of wind. Sneha had not turned on the light in her room, nor go in room from the balcony either. The window was open; the curtains flew wildly. A sudden flash of lightning, then the electricity went out. Her already darkened room didn't need to become dark anew; instead, she watched the flats in the nearby buildings go dark one by one. She wanted to stay in this darkness for a while. But she knows, within minutes, the generators in every building will roar to life and flood everything with light again. How desperately a person can crave darkness, the way they crave solitude sometimes. In this moment, that desperately darkness feels absolutely necessary to her. Any flicker of light might revel Abir's face, not Abir actually, but that stranger living inside him. And maybe he would scream at her again with rage- "You need medical help!"
Strange. Sneha looked around at the neighbouring buildings and noticed that not a single generator had come on yet. The already-quiet I-Block was growing even more silent in the darkness. The houses here don't stand pressed against one another; there is a comfortable distance between each building on this road. That's exactly why Sneha had rented this studio apartment. It isn't as large and open as her Chandrima Model Town flat, but the area is relatively quiet and tidy. That's the reason she paid the advance money instantly when she came to visit this place on the very first day. Her Chandrima's flat had been huge, nearly 1450 square feet. It might not sound like much for a family, but for Sneha alone, it was essentially a football field.
Sneha had lived there in blissful solitude in the year 2023–2024. it was there she first met Abir. From that flat came their first phone calls, their first video chats, their first date, Abir’s first night under her roof. By the time she left Chandrima, she and Abir had temporarily lost contact. She would never have left otherwise. So many memories had accumulated there. Though more have gathered since then at Enchanted. She had to vacate because the landlord sold that apartment and she was given barely fifteen days' notice. The landlord knew she had her family home in this city, so he felt that even if he asked her to leave in a day, she at least wouldn't end up on the street. Though he called and politely apologize repeatedly for that inconvenience.
The man had probably been pressed for money and sold the flat in a hurry. She had spent some of the best and some of the worst chapters of her life in that flat. Light and air flooded in from every direction on the seventh floor. From the balcony, see could see the Turag River. She used to walk along its bank in the evenings quite often. The day she moved out, after the laborers had carried everything down and left, she stood alone in the empty rooms and wept. It felt as though she was leaving behind the memories of her first days with Abir, abandoning them there.
The same happened when she left the Aftabnagar flat. Abir had come there only once. During the day for a few hours. He had simply slept and woke up after noon when Sneha forced to eat and fed him. Then she went to the pharmacy to buy Napa Extra for him. After came back, they talked for a bit and by evening had headed to the airport together. Yet those few hours bound the flat so tightly to his memory that she could never stay there alone again. The memory of Abir would return with such force, and day by day a crushing loneliness took hold of her there. In the end she had no choice but to force her to leave. When she left that one too, she cried like a little baby, uncontrollably, struggling to stop herself. Even though it was only a morning-to-evening handful of hours, those hours belonged to the same heaven of 46 hours and 42 minutes That's why it hurt as much as it did.
Outside Kingfisher, there were so very few places where she and Abir had spent time together. Leaving those flats felt like she could never go back to those places to search for him in her memories. Whenever she missed Abir badly, she used to go to Kingfisher, imagine Abir beside mixing Red Bull-lemon into her whisky glass and about to chink his glass against hers and say cheers. She spent countless afternoons, evenings, nights, even midnights there, just to feel him beside her. That's her own kind of madness, she thinks. That's her fate and she had always known that she would have to survive on these collected memories of Abir. That thought made her tried hard in every way she could to keep storing them up. They were all she had. There was a time when even the thought of never seeing Abir again suffocated her. And now...
Sneha will probably never see Abir again. Not 'probably', there's no room for probably or maybe here anymore. It's certain now, in all the narrow lanes and forgotten corners of this tiny world, Sneha and Abir will never meet again. Not in this life. For a moment she accepted it calmly, but the calm did not last. The ache set in. And this particular ache is not the kind that can be explained to anyone through anything. It's something else- pain, sorrow, grief, a sense of desolation, and a terrifying emptiness. The thought of a separation as final as death makes something happen inside Sneha's chest. She feels dreadful weight. In her chest, in her head, all the way down the right side of her body. And even as she feels that weight, she thinks, at least Abir is better off because of this distance. He no longer has to live in fear of Sneha. He no longer has to endure her anguish, her rage, her stubbornness, her wounded pride. He is free now!
By that logic, shouldn't she feel even a little less pain? But the heart... does she have any power to bind her heart to the rules of what should and shouldn't be? That's the one part of herself she is helplessly captive to. Sneha thinks of where Mandakranta Sen wrote- "The heart is a disobedient girl; punish her if you will" and next to that, Sneha is nothing! Utterly small, utterly ordinary. This grief; this ache of knowing she will never see Abir again, never see his smile, never hear his voice, never hear him call her name, never have him exist in her world again and she will cease to exist in his. They will both be alive on this earth, but never again...These thoughts tormented her constantly. Each time they returned, a mountain pressed down on her chest. How many days from now, how many more sleepless nights, how many ways of keeping herself distracted with numbness, how many times of screaming when the pain becomes too much, how many times of breaking down in tears when she can no longer keep up the performance for herself- before this becomes normal? Sneha keeps wondering.
Pain endured long enough does eventually become bearable. Isn’t that what people call the “new normal”? She remembered the term from the pandemic, when abnormality becomes ordinary. When would her own “new normal” arrive? Years? Decades? Before death? It hurts so much, so unbearably much, she's tired of it. She feels tender towards herself. Lately, when she sees herself like this- so helpless; she wants to be gentle with herself, hold herself softly for a moment. Sneha finds herself wanting to go back to childhood these days. To become that small again that nothing in the world would require her to think anymore.
And then, in the middle of all this, she suddenly asks herself- does Abir hate her now? Does thinking of her fill him with rage? This thought makes her chest tremble. She wonders, is this how the rest of her life will be? Living as someone hated in Abir's eyes? But then she thought: hatred requires love first. Both are intense emotions; one cannot exist without the other. When love ends, what comes is indifference, not hatred. Abir had always been indifferent. Where there was never love, how could hatred exist? Sneha can't find the answer. A conflict stirs inside her. She feels that many things Abir said, even on the last day, weren't entirely true. She can't think clearly anymore. She only wonders- was Abir's hatred really all she had ever deserved? Perhaps…
Still no light in any of the flats in the distant buildings. Does everyone out there secretly want darkness right now like her? Tonight she doesn't want light anywhere. Light means Abir, not Abir himself, but that other man living inside him. The drizzle suddenly gives way to a full, pouring rain on the open balcony. Sneha stays sitting exactly as she was. Lightning began flashing rapidly across the sky again. Even that light frightened her. Soaked through in the downpour, she recited aloud, three times- "La ilaha illa anta, subhanaka inni kuntu minaz zalimin" The fear of seeing that other man inside Abir eases a little. Though the anxiety inside her hasn't entirely lifted. A restlessness, a kind of helpless fluttering- something in her won't settle.
She lay down on the balcony floor, legs folded, arms wrapped tightly around them. Trying to breathe slowly, she realized her whole body was trembling. The stranger’s face inside Abir blurred, faded and slipped away. But then she sees, Abir returned. Abir as himself, stepping out of the darkness to sit before her. And the moment that other man left him, what tenderness came over his face! What softness settled there! Sneha watched him for a while, and then it feels as though Abir is saying to her, in that gentle, affectionate voice of his- I'm placing my hand on your head. Sleep. Sleep like a baby. Don't think about anything else right now. Just sleep. A faint drowsiness comes over her, but she could still see Abir there before her. And looking at him, she thought- he will never actually place his hand on her head and say that again- I'm placing my hand on your head. Sleep!
Had music been playing on the Bluetooth speaker inside all this while? Sneha tries to remember. She can't. But it's playing now. Still lying there, soaking in the rain, she listened as Ustad Ghulam Ali sang to her with all the ache in the world-
Chori Chori ham se tum aa kar mile the jis Jagah
Muddatein Guzarin par ab tak wo Thikaanaa yaad hai
Ham ko ab tak aashiqii kaa woh zamaanaa yaad hai...