A little lovely plant
In a tiny balcony
Blooming little reds
In a color symphony
A dying golden Sun
In the red Western sky
Beaming dreamy glows
In the bidding Goodbye
It's the only single turn
The plant meets the Sun
As its only company
In the lonely balcony
In the dreamy dune of rays
The Sun greets the plant
With the petals of colors
The plant lures the fays.
How I love with passion!
To begin a dawn
With a cheerful jolt
In a Saturday morn
Morning chill must bring in the night
Night in turn will usher in the morrow
Time to tune the tiring soul right
And a glass of Moon to borrow.
In a cherished Saturday night
With a flow of dreamy light
I pick up some drops of Moon
To wake up Moon drunk
In a new lovely dawn.
In a poetic flight
My wings of clouds
Will glide me right
To the land I dreamt
In a moon blanched night.
It was the beautiful chamber of the parapsychology specialist, Sophie June. A soothingly calm and quiet atmosphere all around with an aura of peace and
tranquility in the downtown of the small and thinly populated county at the
foothills of a densely forested mountain. An indoor plant with beautiful
and colorful leaves was placed at the top of a shelf of a corner window. Ray hadn’t seen
the kind of plant before. But, the wall painting hanging in the wall facing him
was something really special. Purely magical note in a very common imagery. A
green seashore and a calm blue ocean with gentle waves painted beautifully with
an irresistible invitation of the nature. A gentle warm light was peeping in
inside the rectangular shaped chamber through a light colored curtain. A
bookshelf full of books featuring mainly the travelogues, thrillers, romances
and poetry collections- all together can easily trigger the wings of
imagination letting your soul fly along the waves of the winds into an another
world.
‘So,
Mr. Ray Burn, you always see the vision of an island with your twin babies
playing around you, and you are sure that those visual effects settling in deep
down your heart are not just the other dreams?’
‘No.
Not always. Twice in the last two weeks. And I feel them as real as I am
sitting inside this room; as real as I am taking breathes while giving a look
at the collections of your books one with an adventurous mind would love to be
locked in with. As real as the logical conclusion that I have construed from the photo
frames over the desk, from the coffee machine, from the KFC packet in the bin
and from the air in the room that you are single, living alone in the
back room with a door carefully concealed behind the book shelf. And you are a
little worried right now and I have nothing to do with it.’
Sophie
got startled with a quick look at the wall-height bookshelf. She was a little baffled
figuring out the problem of her new client who seems to be an absolutely okay
person with a sound mental health in a visibly muscular and well-shaped
physique. With the height of a couple of inches above six, blue eyes with a
calm and killer look, chiseled noose with a high cheekbone, he could be easily
taken as a handsome young man in his early thirties, if you can just keep aside
the noticeable scar in the neck, sign of a deep cut above the wrist of the left
hand and the bruises a little above the right eye. A little longer than the
crew-cut hair style and a face remained unshaved for one long day made him look
a little weird in his personality.
‘So,
you were in the army and probably in the military intelligence’, she asked to
his strange client while giving an anxious look through the front window
unconsciously.
The
strange client by far has talked about his name and the problem without any
details about his identity. A man in action always prefer to get things
straight and simple without wasting any time to talk about things seem
unnecessary.
Ray
could smell the freshly brewed coffee from the percolator machine, a
good-looking old one, visibly well maintained by its user. It appears to him
that the parapsychologist was a coffee person too like him. He never talks too
much and never tries to resist himself from giving a careful look over the
things happening around him. An age old habit.
‘Yes,
I was in the military police. Two years seem to be a long time ago for me.
After two terms in Afghanistan, one in Iraq, investigating lots of allegations,
crimes, murders in the army bases, I stepped out as a voluntary retirement.
Last rank was Major. Nothing much to tell about,’ Ray said.
‘Okay, nice to meet you Mr. Ray Burn. But to deal with the kind of problems like that of yours, I really need to dig it down. Could you please tell me about the details of the cat part from your vision? Why do you possibly think that the cat has got something to do with your vision?’ Sophie asked him while placing a mug of coffee before him.
Ray felt good with the look and the smell of the coffee. He always like to have it raw; thick and strong, without milk, sugar or cream.
‘You
didn’t follow me well, I think. It was never a vision. Well, I have never been
a pet loving guy. Never had one in my entire life. It is a big cat. Seems to be
a well-bred one. Mainly black and brown and a little yellowish. It never jumps
onto my lap or in my bed and always stays careful to maintain a respectable
distance. I share my meals with it and it seems to be okay with it as long as
it stays.’
‘So,
it doesn’t always stay with you. Where do you think it stays?’
‘No
idea. It suddenly disappears, mainly at night. I don’t see any trace of it in
the morning other than the bones left in its plate in the kitchen. But I was
wondering why you are looking scared of the guys on the street? You anxious
look keeps following them through the window blinder. It’s the fifth time your
attention derailed since I entered this chamber.’
‘Oh,
sorry. I am a little worried actually to deal with something personal. It’s just
nothing. I think you are here to discuss about your problem; not mine.’
‘I
have never been fond of mysteries. And I love to know whatever stories
happening around me. I will talk to you some other time. Thanks for the coffee.
It was good,’ Ray said in a friendly tone.
Ray
stood up to a surprised and a little puzzled Sophie and went straight out of
the door. It took him long thirty seconds to decide his next course of action.
He looked onto the one-way street from the main town to the forest line: a dead
end with a few sawmills and a couple of residential zones both for people on a
low budget and the people seeking tranquility along the greenish forests. And
he gave a short but carelessly careful look at two bikers opposite to the
street window of Sophie’s chamber. He didn’t like the look of them and remembered
the anxious look of a beautiful pair of blue eyes. Decision taken. He has got
some business to do. Once he settled his mind to trigger an action, his
instinct doesn’t allow him to waste a single second. His strenuous training on
and off the job and the lot of moments he stared into the eyes of death gets it
embedded to his blood that how terribly a fraction of a second can matter.
There
was a little coffee shop just about hundred yards away off Sophie’s office
building, and probably her current residential address too. A man in his late
fifties was the only one inside the shop. The owner-run street shop. Ray went
straight to him in his habitual mood of an investigator. With his long
practiced authoritative tone he asked the guy, “Tell me about the long-haired
junkies on the bikes over there.”
With the attitude that of a federal agent and the well-built physic with full of brawny muscles visible through the half sleeve shirt and the eyes cooler than death enforced an immediate response. And a long one in just one long breathe.
‘They
are from the main town of the county. As far as I know they are the members of
a bikers club in the mainstream business area of the county. The club allegedly
runs an illegal casino business and probably involved with drug dealings
too. And all these are under the nose of
the authority. And as things are turning around some five or six members from
the club want to set up one such club here in the downtown. And they want this single-storey building to run their illegal drug business and gambling as a new
cult staying out of the eyes from the sheriff and the city council. The owner
of the building lives alone in half of the building and gave the other
half to the psychiatrist girl on a lease. Apparently she doesn’t have enough
money to rent a chamber in the mainstream zone of the county and invested
enough to not give the place away to the pressure of the bikers.’
‘Okay.
Now I would like to place an order for an early lunch. A cheese burger and jug
full of coffee. No creamer, no sugar. Please, make my lunch ready and in the
meantime I need to have a talk with those two guys,' Ray said.
Ray
walked up to the back of the building, a place he found good enough to avoid
the attention of people from the street which was near to a secluded one with
not too many cars passing by. With his back against a long tree, he made a
quick but confident gesture with his fingers to beckon the bikers to come close
to him. He knew that such a challenge in their age and mood and the possibility
to prove their ability could be hardly ignored.
One
among the bikers was the one to take seriously with his 6.5 inches height
weighing over 280 pounds with lots of flesh and fat and energy. The other one
was little shorter and slimmer with long curl hairs and lots of tattoos inked
probably all over his body. Worn out jeans and long black tea-shirts, chains in
the neck and bracelets in wrists were the visible characteristics of their
rowdy appearance and Ray liked none of them.
They,
as expected, approached Ray with a damn care attitude, in raised and annoyed
eyebrows, and in slow but determined steps carelessly sizing up the guy they
are planning to make a prey to scare off the inhabitants of the house. Job
done.
Two
on one has never been a problem for Ray. Just a fraction of a second can make
all the difference. And there will be just one left. With an expressionless
look eying on the guys, Ray take no moment at all hitting the first guy. No
need of heroism; no warning, or preaching. No time to waste in getting a job
done; not as per the plan; as per the desired consequences. He kicked at the
knee with his heavy boot he always feels comfortable with. His mouth slung open
with the force of yelling and the blurring pain with the cracking sound of the
displaced bones. The second hit came from the elbow of Ray in another fraction
of the first second in the right ear of the first guy. And then it was all
about felling a large tree down in jaw drop silence; no more screaming; no more
gulping back the tears. Game over. He
will be out for two weeks with the well calculated hits.
‘I
am not going to warn you. Sparing you to take this body out anywhere you like,
but out of my sight, and I don’t like to see you or anyone accompanying you
ever in my life. I just don’t like the face of you and I don’t care about
whatever business you are up to within law or against the law. But, I don’t
like you here pissing off someone else’s business here. If, I ever see you guys
again or if I ever hear about you sneaking around, I will find you all and
crash your bones one after another in my bare hands,’ Ray said to the open
mouthed guy still standing and trembling in utter shock, fear, and surprise
with an exhibition of brutal power.
Adrenaline-release
before or after the execution of actions demands calories; a lot of calories
and which was what Ray was consuming at the coffee shop just in three and a
half minutes after he left the shop for the first time. And his order was
served as he was speculating. A real big double petty cheese burger with free
potato wedges. And a full jug of coffee; no sugar, no creamer, no milk. Raw,
freshly brewed streaming French roast coffee; thick and strong. At twelve at
noon, with the Sun rising high.
Ray
could have taken down the second guy too, making him out of any sort of
business for the next couple of weeks. But, that wouldn’t help. He knew that there
are four more members including the leader were moving free. They would
eventually come to hunt him down and create more troubles to the old owner and Sophie
June. He was going slow both with the burger and the coffee. Fifteen minutes to
the main town they were based on, five minutes to man someone take their
wounded fellow down to the hospital and fifteen more minutes to come back,
regrouped and probably armed with the handy weapons like baseball bat, knife
and chains and with a war plan. Fire arms might not be a possibility at a very
short notice to take down a person with five to one ratio. So, thirty five
minutes at hand excluding the five already gone with the burger.
Dealing with the art of waiting while staying calm and keeping patience has never been a problem
for Ray. And he kept waiting.
I can feel a tree waiving its hand
Before the large balcony of a cottage,
Facing the sea in a lonely island.
I can feel a chilling breeze
And the shrouding mist
From a mountain ridge.
A shoreline bathing in foaming waves
Keeps knocking my heart in rising raves.
I can feel the long cherished drizzling
In the reddish hue of a fiery evening.
I can feel the silvery drops of rain
Splashing and Dancing over my face
To dissolve the signs of all my pain.
I can feel the breaking dawn
With the chirping birds
In a summer morn;
As I look at the hospital lawn
In the dwindling light of the dying Sun.
I can see the island cottage
That I have never been.
I can feel the sandy shore
And the yellow wild flowers
That keep ushering me in…
In the twinkling tie
If I live or I die...
A dawning day
With a drizzling bliss
Hitting the coffee
With a morning kiss.
Got a job in hand
To find something.
In the Moon blanched night
I lost something.
I lost some lines
I dreamt last night
In the glimmering glow
Of the dangling light.
With a full glass of wine
With some Moon drops fine
I had a lovely vision
I lost last night..
Was driving alone
On an Inter-state,
Met a forest line
At the night so late.
The dwindling light
Was turning slate
And I stopped my car
To check on the fate.
And I got stuck by….
As the Moon sets high,
Over the large long trees;
With its magical charms
And the glimmering beams
Are no more on a leash…
And I woke up Moon-drunk
In the very next dawn
On a lovely autumn morn
To resume my journey
Alone on the Interstate
With all my pains gone sunk.
One
Indian Girl is Chetan Bhagat’s seventh novel, with
all the earlier ones being placed in the best-selling charts in their respective publication periods. However,
once again proving myself to be always late in the line, I had rather forced
myself to read this one as his very first novel, partly because of his mounting
popularity as a novelist with a majestic storytelling skill and especially because
of Three
Idiots, the true classic in the Indian Film Industry. The iconic film was
the adaptation of his novel Five Point Someone (with so many
changes in the film script though), which raises questions about the grading
system itself. However, as of One Indian Girl, it seems to be
apparent that, especially from the conversation between Radhika and her mother,
she wouldn’t be happy to consider a five pointer for her life partner. “Mom,
see the qualifications. BA from some random university. No. Next.”
Chetan
Bhagat, the paperback King of India, has dedicated the novel, One
Indian Girl to:
All
the Indian Girls
especially
the ones
who
dare to dream
and
live life on their own terms.
Living the life on one’s own terms is always a challenging job, particularly for the women in the Indian-subcontinent, with the deeply rooted ideology defining the norms of what it takes to be a girl. And the protagonist of the plot, Radhika, has been challenged by this at the very beginning of the novel. The prologue gives its readers about the chaotic uneasiness and turmoil storming the mind of the bride, who is clearly not ready yet for the grand destination wedding in Goa. And with all the odds against living her life on her own terms she was on the verge of being carried away by all those pressures of being married and settled down.
The
dedication part, the prologue and then the first person narrative style in the
voice of Radhika herself clearly point out that One Indian Girl is going
to be a feministic novel.
The
feministic tones can be identified at the very beginning of the plot:
You
are the girls’ side, so you have to adjust to the 30 rooms available at the
hotel while the boys’ side will be allotted with the promised 50 rooms with as
many guests as the girls’ side. Radhika couldn’t accept the ‘gender thing’ but
was stopped by her typical mother or other family members with the deeply
rooted ideology of compromising as the girls’ side in a marriage function.
“Beta,
these are norms. You don’t understand. We have to keep them comfortable. Girls’
side is expected to adjust…”
The
unraveling tone of feminism keeps kicking on with the development of the plot. In
making the profile for the matrimonial site, a girl shouldn’t give the true
picture of her success in the job. The notion that a girl with a most wanted
job can drive away a lot of prospective grooms who are not ‘man enough to
handle’ the huge salary of their wives.’
“If
they see a girl who is too independent-minded, too qualified, doing too well,
they get scared……I am hiding my daughters achievements. So we get more boys to
choose from. That’s all.”
And
Radhika’s mother was not wrong anyway. The first one from their ten
short-listed potential grooms was a doctor based in Boston, USA. With his third
consecutive inquiry about the salary she makes, Radhika had to disclose that
she made half a million USD last year, which was a damn jolt, enough to make
him nearly fell down from his chair.
“Nothing…
Okay, I will tell you. This is not going to work. Your salary is too high.”
Okay,
with the above-mentioned explanation made by Radhika’s mother, it’s quite clear
now how the protagonist of the novel is: too independent-minded, too qualified, doing
too well. Highly talented high achievers or under achievers always play
a big role either as protagonists or antagonists in the novels of Chetan
Bhagat. In One Indian Girl, Radhika is highly talented high achiever
and here we go with her one and a half love stories.
As
a pure mugger, Radhika hit about 98 percentile in CAT to make it to the IIMA
and then joined Goldman Sachs, New York as a fresh recruit and which is where
she wanted to leave behind her nerdy, unfashionable and virgin life behind and
which is how she met Debashish Sen. The first love story apparently begins with
the enthusiasm and determination for a new life style of the still virgin
Radhika. With the long-cherished consummation of her dates with Debu, they
started having a live-in relationship in her expensive apartment. She wanted to
take it the next stage with the mounting pressure from her family to get
settled with a married life, as an unmarried marriageable girl in the family - no
matter how successful she is- is still a burden to the family. While the
typical Aditi, her sister is a well-set example, to the pleasure of their
mother, for finding herself a good match with hardly any degrees comparable to
that of Radhika, with a fairer skin and an attitude.
Radhika
was really serious with her first love affair with Debu, who was never in the
intention of taking their relationship to the next level. He was apparently
unhappy and a little jealous with the achievements of Radhika. He couldn’t
imagine of her as a motherly figure to take care of his babies. Radhika was
even ready to quit her job and do anything to present herself as a caring and
motherly figure.
But
Debu, apparently being panicked with the idea of marrying a girl he was never
considering as his future wife, abandoned her, leaving her shell-shocked, enough
to leave the city, so adorable to her with so many beautiful moments they
shared together.
With
the suggestion of one Goldman Sachs partner, the devastated and heart-broken
Radhika decided to move into another country operation of Goldman Sachs instead
of quitting the job. She landed in Hong Kong throwing away her new iPhone set
into the East River in the desperate attempt to throw away her past with Debu
and met Neel Gupta, the dashing and iconic partner of Goldman Shacks. With Neel
it was never meant to be a love story any way and it was the last thing in her
mind to be involved in any kind of unofficial relationship with a partner.
However, with the attraction of his charming personality and dashing look she
was just carried away with a special and unpredicted moment in a business trip to
an island resort. In a dark night on the cool lonely beach with the escaping
glows of the Moon over their heads, she shared the moment of wild pleasure with
the damn handsome Goldman Sachs partner- older than her by twenty years, and also with
a wife and couple of kids.
But
they couldn’t resist the temptation of carrying on the relationship; at first
only on the business trips to make it feel less guilty in a remote city than
doing it in the same city he had been living in with his wife and kids. But, with
their explicit knowledge of no future, Neel, eventually started making regular
visits at her apartment, mostly because of the sexual attraction they feel for
each other.
However,
soon, enough she started being concerned about the possible future of their
relationship with a kind of guilty conscience for his wife and family, which
she never felt with Debu. And sooner than later she was apparently blown out by
a comment blurred out of the careless mouth of Neel:
‘It’s
just I never thought of you as the maternal type. I don’t know if you were even
meant to be a mother.’
Neel
never felt her as the girl with a family of her own. It just didn’t come to his
mind, just like the way Debu felt her to be.
In
fact, in the gendering world, a girl with the most wanted jobs and an enviable
career with so many successes and lots of money is deliberately, though
unconsciously, judged to be a girl solely focused on the career. She can’t possibly
hold the image of a family woman with motherly affection and care.
However, at
the climax of the novel, the author makes both the serious lover and the half
lover begging her hands, this time not only as a partner in bed, but as a wife
to start a family: one in a presidential suite in the five star Goa Marriott with
a chartered flight to take her away and another one directly from New York.
Until then, she was uncertain of herself regarding her ability to attract someone as a prospective wife to begin a family with her true self. She was losing confidence with her previous one and a half relationships; one in New York and the other one in Hong Kong. As her mother would say, ‘I can’t have anything better than this one…no prince on a horse will come.’
And
finally the great lesson for everyone: as long as you are not sure about
marrying someone for the rest of your life, not sure enough to enter a new life
with an individual you are sure about, there is always a choice left for you to
step back before the marriage is done, even if costs you a lot of money, an insult to
your family members by the boys’ side, and all the rebukes from the family
members and relatives as well. Just forget about all those pressures, stay
calm, ask your ‘mini-me’, what she really wants, go for your free will and be
the decision maker in taking the most important step in your life. And move on…
Moving on in one’s own wish was the thing happened to the novelist himself. He himself was in the Goldman Shacks too with one of the most wanted jobs in the world. And then he switched to Deutsche Bank, Hong Kong. He was a vice president in its Strategic Investment Group before quitting to pursue the career as a fulltime writer, which undoubtedly demands a huge courage to fight the pressures both from inside and outside. Being well-settled is the big thing in the sub-continent, one can hardly avoid.
And in his novel, One
Indian Girl, Radhika did the same thing. She had the dream of living
the life in her own terms and she couldn’t just go with the flow to be in the
mess of a grand wedding she wasn’t feeling okay with. She was able to calm down
her mind, pick up the pieces together and manage Brijesh Gulati, the bride from
San Francisco, even in the confusion with the return of her one and half lovers.
And finally she got herself out of the mess she was feeling terribly
uncomfortable about. She called off the marriage which eventually created a
scene that resembles more with a funeral one in the five star luxuries. But,
she was out of the mess!
By
rejecting the proposals from her past lovers, Radhika was finally able to move
aside her past with them. But she wasn’t in the present either. She was really
nowhere. In a big void around her, Radhika was in desperate need of finding
herself back. And the best way to pick up the pieces together is to set
yourself absolutely free with no pressure to go anywhere, with no pressure to
chase anything and with no pressure, either internal or external, to do
anything. A long journey without any specific destination, a vacation to find
yourself back, to calm down your soul, to feed your mind can be really a good
choice.
Radhika
was probably able to do all those things at the post-credit scene of the novel,
One
Indian Girl, and by the end of her long vacation from works she started
seriously thinking about Brijesh Golati, the software engineer working with
Facebook in San Francisco. Brijesh, the
tech guy with a vision to initiate his own start-up, didn’t blame her for the
foiled marriage program. He was the one who truly understands her situation and
saved both the parties from an awkward situation. But he regrets not being able
to marry a girl with whom he would be able to live a crazy life with full of
madness like the moments they spent together by riding on a bike without a
license and testing the puffs of marijuana available in the Goa beach. Radhika finally
finds the courage to meet him again in San Francisco in a settled mind.
“Love
her, love her, love her! If she favors you, love her. If she wounds you, love
her. If she tears your heart to pieces, and as it gets older and stronger it
tears deeper, love her, love her, love her!”- Allen poured down his thoughts over this
unusual text message for the fifth time, which made him nearly forget to
partake into his usual events in the morning.
While he was getting himself ready for his office, his mind kept busy elsewhere, partly wondering who could send him this text message and partly making a short visit to his university life spanned nearly seven long years, which came to an end five years ago.
“Hey Allen,” Omit blocked his way through while blocking his thoughtful mind and thoughtless eyes, as Allen was getting into to his department, late, as usually as he always was.
-Yah, but a little less than the last hour of my morning sleep, needing a little more time to touch the finishing line.
-Hmm, probably Sophie was there just outside the finishing line. She was asking me about you. You might find her in the tea stall behind the library.
- Let’s track her, then.
- I’ll join you before the next class. Have to go to the hostel, I forgot my texts again. I don’t understand how come it always happens to me. Mahib Sir never misses to get me standing whenever I miss to bring the text to his class.
- Very sad indeed. Probably Omit without text books is more easily noticeable than Omit with text books. And surprisingly enough, it happens with the teacher who is more interested with the girls. I just don’t understand how he can always manage to get away with so many rumors of sexual harassment. Okay, See you than.
It rained last night. Having had a shower with the drops of heaven, the campus was giving a refreshed look. Refreshed enough to synchronize all those young looks dangling around here, there and everywhere unreasonably yet making sense to the hypothesis that youth goes untamed, youth thinks sporadic, youth splatters colors.
Allen stepped forward, feeling the beams of sun, escaping the rejuvenated leaves of the long trees beside the narrow walking street. The shadow kept brushing away the rays twinkling on his face. And he kept giving his looks. And his looks went everywhere while he himself was missing his own heart, beating so hard. One more thing his eyes got missed; the pair of eyes which could get his heart stopped beating.
-Won’t you ever change?
Allen’s
world actually began melting, with the sweetest question in his world of beauty
and imagination.
- Why can’t you get up a little early, even for the sake of such a beautiful class? Oh! You can’t believe it. He is the best. How easily he can fly us all to some other world! How lively he can bring down the characters so close to our souls! You must know, Mahib sir is taking Great Expectations. Charles Dickens’.
As soon as the music started from the lips of Sophie, with the very first word she pronounced, the world around Allen started dissolving into a great void housing only two living souls. One is stunningly beautiful with the nicest pair of eyes which sparkled and glittered while she kept saturating Professor Mahib Hasan and commenting on his last lecture. And as she went on coloring her favorite teacher, the other one started relocating the color of the things which were being faded away and losing their existence before her enthralling beauty. The drum insight him stopped playing. The ever enchanting music, produced by her beautifully dancing lips, suddenly lost its melody and Allen’s wings of poesy to get to world of nightingale crash-landed. She would never understand actually why he always nurtured the deliberate reluctance to attend Mr. Mahib Hasan’s lecture.
Oh! Shit! I should have been a little faster. Going to be late again for this this damn traffic jam. Allen felt disgruntled so much as to feel like kicking his back with his own leg. In a hot summer morning on the eve of ushering in the New Year, Allen kept sitting idle and sweating, never minding calling the name of fourteen generations of Dhaka city, in a jam-packed bus, painted as it seems like, on a painted road. A little boy carrying newspapers in miniature form got on the bus. Not unlike many others, he took the chance to get himself updated, spending only five bucks, once again appreciating the cheapest luxury of the metropolitan. The text message, fluctuating between his subconscious and unconscious level of mind, once again peeped out, as he came across a well-dressed- imposing rather than attractive lady- on the front page showcasing a New Year Collection from a famous fashion house.
The trio Allen, Omit, and Sophie were brain storming new ideas to celebrate the first day of the New Year. For the last couple of days they kept painting their plans with more colors and shades to make sure how well and artistically they would observe the day. To Allen, the day was indeed going to be a very special one as he took the day to unearth the hidden layer of his heart before Sophie. His courage finally stopped turning against him and he conquered on making his mind to declare the words he cherished and nurtured ever since the drums insight him started beating at the sight of Sophie.
In the last morning of the dying year, Allen came to the department late enough as to make sure the first class was already done. It was scheduled to be conducted by Mr. Mahib Hasan. To escape any accidental encounter with the teacher, a little conscious Allen somehow managed to catch Omit who was holding a mixed gesture- more worried, little surprised and a bit confused.
- Is there anything wrong? How was the class? Where’s Sophie?
- The lecture was a shortened one. Sophie left for hostel. I just saw her stormed out of Mahib sir’s chamber. Seeing her rushing out in a devastating look I tried to talk to her. She said something, but I didn’t understand the words laden with tears.
Allen’s imagination found its way through spreading its branches towards every possible and impossible idea, which finally turned out to be the locker of his heart. There were no more moments of joy; no more New Year celebration. Just some untold words buried deep down his heart. Sophie flew to London to complete her M.A without bidding goodbye.
Having been back from his office, a little late than usual, at his lonely apartment, Allen threw himself onto the couch, switched on the TV, kept shuffling the TV channels with the blank pair of eyes, which was trying to focus on something at far far away. He finally managed to get back to his bed room and come close to his mind. Does the text message quoted from Great Expectation push forward a question whether he was really in love with Sophie? The quotation once he learned by heart to answer a question in his final year exam is back again to demand an answer from his own self. Contemplating a response he got to the message option of his cell phone and wrote:
A message tone sprang up to his ear. He had a new message from the same number which had his heart got one more electrifying leap.
A smile, hardly understandable, played on Allen’s face. Now he knew it was she.
Allen deleted his response, switched on the darkness, and lit the light of his own world where she walks in beauty.
The Beach Tour (Part 2)
Being continued from part 1.....
Neela was left shell
shocked in the unbearable loss. This time she didn’t cry for the missed
opportunity of fulfilling her intense desire to visit a sea. She cried her
heart out, mourning the death of her father. Not only Neela, but also the other
members of the family couldn’t help crying in the limitless waves of pain,
infinite helplessness against the fate, and the grueling uncertainty they were
going to face with the loss of only earning member in the family.
For the next few days,
they keep thinking how a person, so dear to them with all his appearance; a
person at a specific age and with a distinguishable physique and identity, with
all his love, passion, responsibilities, dreams, just gone away out of the
border line of all living things, to somewhere inexplicable to human mind. When
a dear one left for the after-world, leaving all the illusion of the world behind, to somewhere as blurred as the mental image of a sea in Neela’s mind, the
surviving members of the family can’t do anything other than shedding
tears.
Shedding tears was
nothing new to Neela. She used to cry a lot after being rebuked or bashed by
her parents, after quarreling with her friends, after being upset with her
father for his frequent failure in keeping promises of the dream trip to the
sea. She used to cry in the stomach pains. She knew how it feels when she gets
hurt in an accidental fall or cuts her fingers by a knife. She even knows the
salty taste of bloods dipping out of the fresh cuts. At this earlier age, she had
already learned to distinguish the physical pains from the mental pains with
her obscure and self-made definitions. But, the pains she feels after the death
of her father was entirely different and inexplicable to her innocent
mind.
After the death of
Neela’s father, the whole family migrated to her maternal uncle’s home in a
small town far away from Calcutta. Her mother didn’t want to take her
marriageable daughter to such a place. She wanted to rent a small house and
stay until her marriage. But her brothers didn’t want to bear the expenses involved.
It takes a day long
train journey to get to her uncle’s home. The small town remains the same. The home
in the south of an age-old pond beside a mango orchard was looking unchanged
too. But, this time, the behavior of her uncles, aunts and the cousins as well
got apparently changed a lot. No more welcome notes, or the festive moods from
her suddenly changed relatives. They cried for her father too, but even after
that no one offers her foods or other things with the love and affection she
used to get in her earlier visits. She wasn’t sure, if she should cry or not
for the changes she was feeling.
However, it didn’t take
long to understand she no longer needed to decide all by herself whether to cry
or not. Tears naturally started to stream down her face with the physical
pains she was required to undertake in the household chores she had never
imagined of doing at her father’s home. And with the mental sufferings she was going
through as a neglected, unwelcomed and marriageable girl stamped as a burden to
her uncle’s family.
With the radical
changes of the surroundings, Neela got to learn to keep calm with her dirty and
torn-out dresses comparing to those of her cousins; with the quality and amount
of food she and her little brothers were given; with the discrimination of
treatment she and her family members would receive; with the dresses and foods
her brothers were sent to school and with the Big void of love and affections
she would hardly care about as long as her father was alive.
Soon enough, one of her
younger brothers succumbed to malaria fever and her mother got stuck into a bed
with partial paralysis, probably followed by a stroke no one was ever aware of.
But, luckily enough she was married off to Hospital Assistant in a nearby town,
with all the promises of a new life, a renewed beginning and a rekindled
identity.
Neela was no longer
living on the mercy of someone else merely as a helpless refugee. Now, she had
a family of her own with the right over everything with her lost sense of
belongingness. Her husband seemed to be happy with her and as her in-laws. But,
her tears never left her. In the lingering silence at night, tears kept rolling
down from her eyes. In the past, she knew the reasons of her crying. She used
to cry either for an emotional outburst or the pains from being physically
hurt. But, now, she could no longer realize the reasons of her uncontrolled pathos. She couldn’t figure out how the images of her long-lost past life tried
to reconnect. She had a life with lots of promises; she had a life in a big
city with a sea of homes foaming around her; she had a vision of the vastness
of a sea in her tender mind; she had a dream to walk along a sea shore and
connect her mental image of a sea with the real one. It was beyond her understanding that the life
her soul was really belonged to was going away miles deep down her heart. And without an answer known to her, she
had to remain silent whenever she was asked to tell the reasons behind her
crying.
One fine morning, a woman
from the next door visited her home. She had lately made a pilgrimage in Puri. And
as soon as she started talking about how exciting it was to take the sea
bathing, Neela burst into tears with a salty taste of blood in her heart.
In Riders to the Sea, the
widely acclaimed masterpiece of Irish playwright John Millington Synge, Maurya
was living in Aran Island off the west coast of Ireland. The ultimate fate of
the islanders is to brave and
stare into the eyes of the Death every single day to snatch their livelihood
out of the claws of the Wild Nature. This brutal reality has been portrayed in the
play as a very usual and common event of their lives, just like the way “evening must
usher night, night urges the morrow”. And with the waves of pain in the ocean
of her life, Maurya gets torn apart with the death of her last two living sons
after the death of three more sons and her husband: all five being drowned to
death in the Sea. With no more male left to dread, Maurya spills out a
challenge to the Sea for taking another life.
However, this very
aspect of the oceans is limited to the particular clans like the Islanders of Aran.
In general, the sea
shores are the most sought-after tourist destinations for most of the people planning
a trip to Nature. But, there still remain a huge percentage of people, who don’t
live anywhere near a sea; can’t afford to make a trip to the sea; and in many
cases can’t even dare to dream of crossing hundreds of miles for making such a Summer
Plan.
It’s the story of a girl
belonging to the later kind of people with the undiscovered images of the seas
in their dreams. The story takes place in the first half on the last century in
the setting of Calcutta, the capital of the Indian State, West Bengal. I am
rather retelling (in a thematic translation) Manik Bandopadhyay’s Bengali
short story, entitling Somudro Dekhar Shwad (The Desire to Visit a Sea).
Watching the vastness of
a sea in her own eyes was a childhood dream of Neela. She went to school for a
few years and in her geography book there was the description of the land and
water bodies of the earth. But long before studying the geography lessons, she
knew that water occupies the three fourth of the entire world. She was utterly
surprised to learn that from her father at the age of seven! How it’s even
possible! She crosses miles after miles for a whole day in her train journeys
to her maternal uncle’s home. But never did she come across anything like the all-encompassing
water-bodies other than rivers, canals, lakes or marshes she see in their way
through. There were just grasslands in miles after miles with some forests in
between. There were just trees and soils till the far end of the horizon.
And since then the
image of the majestic vastness of the sea keeps coming back to her mind in the
form of dreams; in the printed words of books; or in the stories of the seas told
by the neighbors. She keeps listening to the stories of the seas. Every members
of the Balai family made a trip to the Puri Beach just a few days back. Not
only did they enjoy the view, they bathed themselves in the waves of the sea. She
also heard about the son of her father’s boss, who had gone to Britain in ship.
He had to stay so many days over the sea in his way to England. The vaporized
water from the sea forms the clouds over the sky and comes down on earth again
as rain drops! The salt her mother uses in cooking curries or gives them in
their plates of rice is from the dried-out sea water! The chilling breeze they
enjoy on the rooftop at the evening after the hot summer days is directly flying
in from the sea!
-Daddy, the sea is in the south, right?
-No. The seas are all
over the earth. The Bay of Bengal is in the south; very close to us.
Yes, it’s right. This
is exactly how the map shows. But, seas are everywhere! The Himalayas is in the
north. And then the Tibet, followed by China! I’ve got to study the map a
little more attentively.
-Daddy, will you take
me to the sea, please?
Father had made the same promise to Neela so many times. He did the same again.
-Yes, of course. There
won’t be that much trouble in making a visit to the sea. You can walk along the
sea shore, once we make a pilgrimage to the holy Puri. I have to make a plan
sooner than later. It’s a long-cherished dream of your mother.
But it was really a
hard job for a poorly-paid clerk to fulfill the dreams of his wife! A person
from a poor income range can hardly afford, even for once in a life time, a
fancy trip like that. Even, if he ever happens to make one on a very special
occasion and with a lot of hardships, he has to compromise a lot other
necessary things including, obviously, the dreams of the children.
During the Rath
(chariot) festival, Puri becomes unbelievably crowded with millions of people
from all over India. It’s not a wise thing to take children along to such a big
gathering. Besides, you have to consider the extra costs involved. And if you
take Neela, what are the faults of the other siblings? And who will look after
the young kids, if Neela too comes along with her parents?
Neela’s mother has got other
excuses too to tear through Neela’s desire to walk along a sea beach.
-No, no. I won’t feel
secured to take a marriageable girl out there in the massive crowd.
But the marriageable
girl cried her eyes out like a stupid and innocent kid. Her tongue remains
forgetful of other tastes other than the salty taste of tears rolling down from her eyes
for the next few days. When she was supposed to receive them in tears of joy,
when she was expected to wait in intense curiosity to listen to the stories of
their excursion on her parents’ return from the pilgrimage, she sniffled out a
single question with tears streaming out of her face.
-Did you bathe in the
sea, daddy?
Neela’s father was
terribly tired with all the hassles of the tour and the traveling. After
entering the home, he just threw himself onto a chair.
-Yes, yes. I did take
the sea bathing. Let me take some rest for a while. I am going to tell you all
those stories.
-What else will you
tell me? Is there really any need to tell me anything about the sea? Neela has
already learned everything about the sea bathing things in Puri.
From the rooftop of the
neighboring three-storied building, Neela can see the sea of houses all around
her: lifeless and immobile structures reaching up to the sky at the far end of
the horizon. Neela can imagine the vastness of the sea with the stagnated homes
piled one after another. She can feel how the waves of the oceans, as high as
the buildings around her, crash down on the beaches as white foams. The only
regret is that she couldn’t see it in her own eyes. She was very dear to her
father; at least the people around her think so. And instead of fulfilling the
dream of her adorable daughter, he himself made the tour, visited the beach and
bathed in the foamy waves. With these thoughts streaming into her mind, Neela,
the marriageable girl in her early teens, fails to check her emotions and
bursts into tears.
Without wasting any
time, Neela’s father made an instant promise for one more time.
-Please, don’t cry
Neela. I will take you to the sea at any cost in the coming Puja festival. Even
if it requires me to take a loan, I will not think otherwise. But now, for
God’s sake, don’t cry anymore, please. I couldn’t sleep all night in the tiresome
train journey.
Her father fails to keep his promise again. During
the Puja festival, he passed away.
To be finished in part 2...