We used to call him
Millin, the Silencer. Can’t exactly remember who had given him the name, but whenever
he is around in the middle of any of our group chats at the bus stoppage, an
unusual silence engulfs the entire aura. He always sits in one of the front
seats by the door, while putting on a mask of silence all the way back home.
And the sit beside him usually remains unoccupied as well; as usual. He is my
colleague in a different branch of the bank at the same area. We used to take
the same route and I didn’t know much about him, probably like a lot many other
colleagues who happen to see one another just in the office transport. But I
usually try to give him a smile and say hi and he gives me back a smile too
without making that much muscle movement in his face. But the look of his eyes
authenticates that they are something coming out of the heart.
Sometimes I wanted to
sit beside him and talk to him a little more. But, I too was an introvert type
of person without a lot of friends. And I hardly make the first approach to
make friends. I was in a sad mood today and wanted to avoid the clamoring down
the back seats with lots of easy-going, flamboyant and fun-loving guys. So, I
made an outwardly usual thing of taking the side seat of Millin, which in turn
looked like an unusual event; understandable by the look of a lot many nearby colleagues.
I tried to act normal
with him like we regularly commute together in the same bus to the same office.
And to my utter surprise, it appeared to be a normal thing from his part too;
with a welcome note in a familiar and friendly environment. And he kept
talking. In fact a lot beyond my expectations, as if thousands of untold words
were caved in an iron cage; suffocating.
He was literally lost
in a different world from the one he was still living in. The memories of his lost childhood days were flooding in with a spiritual glow spilling out of his eyes and heart. And he
kept going on like a stream with so many ideas, untold stories and fallen
dreams flowing together unstoppable.
He couldn't seem to accept
the reality of the social media overpowering the entire living style of each
and everybody around him, including his colleagues and family members. He seemed
to be utterly frustrated by the individual isolation and the absence of social
interaction in the real sense. He deeply missed playing in the open fields with
friends, living in joint families with lots of siblings and cousins, living a
life so close to the nature, and fishing all through the night in the nearly
dried river during winter in the full Moon nights.
He was talking about
those beautiful memories of the golden past while most of the colleagues were
busy with their mobile sets. They remain busy chatting with friends they hardly
know, but hardly do they make a conversation with the guys sitting next to them;
all seemingly look like the petals of apparitions like those in Ezra Pound's Station of Metro.
The chaos and the
deafening sirens were engulfing the present, while he was lost in the peaceful
tranquility of the village he left thirty years ago. Even the village, far from
the madding crowd, has changed a lot in the course of time; but not in his memories.
Back then there were no electricity facilities in the remotest villages and henceforth there were no presence of the powerful street lights or bulbs inside the rooms to rule over the looming darkness of the nature in the cycle of day and night. Yes, there were kerosene lamps, lanterns and sometimes paraffin lamps for the night-long folk festivals on the special occasions.
Studying together in a group with all the siblings in
the balcony, taking respective parts in the daily chores, working in the farm
lands, sailing boats, coming back home in the twilight, having early
dinners, keeping studies aside for the day lights, going to beds too early,
listening to the music of darkness, watching the dancing of the fireflies and
responding to the nature by treating it as a living entity were the things to
define those days. Full of life.
He used to live in a
joint family. A huge family it was back then, consisting of 20 members
including his two other siblings, and a lot of paternal cousins. It was just
unlike any other farming families of that time with acres of farming lands and
cows to plough and with every single person taking parts into the entire process
from preparing the lands, planting seeds, irrigation, weeding, reaping and
husking. During the times of reaping the crops, usually twice a year,
a festive aura took over the entire village with the arrangements of various
annual programs, folk festivals, fairs, family get together, marriage
ceremonies and many others with the active participations of people from all
walks of life.
With the memories of golden childhood days, the gloss of the liquid gold was literally streaming out of his
eyes.
‘You had had such great
times back in your village. Lovely memories,’ I said in a low and slow tone as
I myself was somehow lost in my untamed childhood days in a tiny town, just a
decade ago.
He went on in a natural
flow as if he was witnessing himself the days before his own eyes.
‘I had died when I was in grade five,’ he said in a voice from the past.
I got startled and came
back to the present myself with a widened look and a mouth flung half open in
search of words.
‘At least I thought
myself to be dead with a near death experience I had at the age of twelve; a
teenager back then with the boundless joys and tameless chasing all through the
day into the wilderness. And I still believe that I am living my second life as
a gift from the nature.’
He kept talking about
the village life and other things that seemed quite unnatural in the current
day context. The villagers would believe in the supernatural things coexisting
with the human beings and they used to put aside parts of the places entirely
for them and hardly did they make any attempt or endeavor to disturb them. Those
were usually the remotest part of the villages with the unwandered and the
darkest forest lines along the marshlands or streams cruising along the forest.
They used to keep those places undisturbed and untrodden for the wild
creatures; natural or supernatural. There were mysterious sounds and howls. Tearing
apart the silence of the deep dark nights, those sounds would come through the
place known as the Dark Forest. Sometimes
the dancing of shimmering lights were seen from the faraway localities, especially
during the New Moons. There had been a border line; unmarked but believed to be
maintained since the time immemorial as a treaty to not cross by the human
beings with the shadowed and mystified knowledge of the other supernatural entities.
‘I had a group of
friends back in those days. We used to play together in the open fields, swim
in the small river flowing across the village, collect seasonal fruits from the
naturally grown orchards, and climb the tall coconut trees for quenching our
thirsts with fresh coconuts. However, I was the weakest teenager among the
rowdy group of friends in climbing trees. The most amazing part was catching
fishes in the river and mainly in the stream that was flowing straight into the
Dark Forest. I must say, I used to be an expert angler outsmarting each and
everyone in this particular event of those golden days. But we had never dared
to cross the line; a swamp forest with an alluring source of larger school of fishes,’
Millin said with his pair of eyes, once again, being filled in with the
sparkling glows of tears.
There was a magical
effect in each and every words being spoken by him. I didn’t need to ask him
any question. Amidst the maddening crowd and chaos, I was lost too in the
world, an entirely separate one. I could visualize things with each and every
details, as if I was right there with him along with his other friends.
It was full Moon that
night. Millin and his five other friends decided to make a midnight voyage at
the swamp forest. They had heard that during a full Moon the shoals of largest fishes
come out of their hiding and swim freely along the maddening flow of the Moon.
Six friends in two
small boats with fishing nets started sailing on the stream along the Dark
Forest, in the chilling breeze at the end of autumn. The Moon set high, beaming
its magical flow of glimmering light over the large long trees. They kept
rowing their boats with a deep shrouding silence engulfing the entire locality
and they steered past the last sign of human inhabitants, splitting and
splashing the reflection of Moon on water, gliding along ahead of their boats.
The Moon delusion, the rhythmic
and soft murmur of the water caused by the oars, the soothing breeze and the excitement of the
midnight voyage cast the spell of a gripping silence. And in silence they were
reaching close to the swamp forest. The line of Dark Forest was silhouetted against
the dimming sky, with part of the Moon now half eaten by the long forest line. The
silence soon started to fade away with the sounds of the night in the deep
jungle. They didn’t want to come this close, actually. But the familiar place
in the daylight turned out so mysterious in the shadow of the Moon, they
unintentionally crossed the unmarked border line specified by the shamans in
the older days.
Millin was in the front
boat with two other friends who wanted to move back with the sudden changes taking
place in the shadows and the sounds of the silhouetted Dark Forest, looking
like so close to them now. They suddenly started to feel the chilling breeze flowing
through their souls now, with droplets of sweats started to stream down their
cheeks. The boat behind them had already started to row back without making any
attempt to throw the fishing net into the water.
But Millin was known to
be the real badass among them, pushing aside his partial climacophobia. He was
still with the plan to catch the biggest fish in the swamp. He threw the
fishing net into the water in his usual perfection, while his two companions
started to take a sudden turn into the way back to the moonlit part of the
stream. But the net seemed to have struck an accurate location in the water
with a real big catch.
All on a sudden, Millin
felt a strong downward pull from the net deep inside the stream. Overpowered by
the fierce force, he was pulled out of the turning boat and fell into the cold,
dark and deep water. He felt out of breath. Even in a half conscious mind he
knew that he was going to die. The last thing he could remember was that a
powerful current in a whirl was taking him far far away into the deeper and
darker part of the stream where no one had ever attempted to move in even in
the broad day light.
‘I was presumed to be
dead. My friends came back later with a few more friends and tried to search my
body close to the swamp forest by torch lights. All the villagers together made
the bravest attempt to cross the line by about a hundred yards into the swamp
forest in search of my body in the next morning. But all their efforts went in vain.
And then in the next morning I was found sleeping on the highest branch of a 500 years
old banyan tree in the midst of the local market,’ he said in a low voice and
in a tone which sounded like coming from another person inside him.
I myself started
feeling the chilling breeze flowing across all through my veins with droplets
of sweats over my forehead.
‘I had the blurred
memories of my near death experience. And except that I couldn’t remember
anything. But since then I started seeing things what others around me couldn’t.
Sometimes I can see the partial view of a parallel world with a lot many
shadowed figures. Getting over with the initial problems, I learned to live
with that and took it to be a gift of nature which goes beyond the explanations
within the boundary of physics,’ he added releasing a sigh of either depression
or relief. But, now in the voice familiar to me.
The stoppage close to
my home came and I got down from the bus, like walking out of an unremembered
dream, looking around to see the unseeable things.
© Atique R.
