Love is the courage that stifles our
muscles with rage, for one last fightback when all else had failed. It is an
emotional strength that we choose to derive from our heart, sucking at our
feelings, to get back onto our feet when reality had cracked up our bones and
left us limp. It is the sweet, ineffable hope of kissing the face of the women
we love that tightens our fingers to a hard, unforgivable fist, ready to blow
up everything that stands between us to destiny and attempts to conspire
against us. It is at once the alarming touch of sympathy that would make the
devil crawl out of the human shelter, and just for that, for love and its
completion, for desire and its sensuousness, that one wouldn’t feel shame
drowning human instincts in the bloodshed of redemption and hold up a gun
against the very world to win your lady in the wrapping safety of your arms.
Love, for everything else, at the edge of attainment, needs a human soul inside
a devil’s body.
Satyjayeet wonders, standing beneath
the black-baked sky of Peshawar that drizzles over him with pellets of snow as
he struggles to get over the images of last evening. The shatter of the saucer. The guilty Nawaz, pressed against the table.
The loading of the bullets. And the spark of fire that he had seen flicker in
Rukshar’s eyes, the moment his finger receded on the trigger. It
incessantly rolled before his eyes, like a sad Ghazal on repeat in a broken
lover’s music retreat. And today, no
sooner than the light of day rose up the morose sky to engulf the night, that
he had set out in his rubber boots, walking into the mist to the bus stop. A
part of him knows, like the truth that had stared from her eyes and stayed
unblinking the other evening in the backdrop of a loud fire of a bullet, that
Rukshar would come and together they would board a bus back to their destiny,
they wrote twenty eight years back.
He is standing beneath the shade of a
crumbling bus stop, listening to the hammering of ice crystals that rained on
the roof, as gusts of strong winds swept down from the far end of the terrain,
swirling in clouds of mist and rattled the dilapidated stand with a shudder.
Endless stretch of land rise and unwind on either side around him, immaculate
beneath heaps of snow, guarded at the distance by the mighty range of
Karakoram, as the chain looms high at the horizon, eating away the vision of
sky that towered beyond. Leafless tress stand across the terrain, bordering
small villages as thick smoke rise from above their huts and sail into the dim
sky; their bark cracked, their branches dripping snow.
He is wearing a striped, woolen
sweater draped over by a button down leather jacket and a woolen scarf that is
held by a lazy knot at his throat, the hem beating on his back in the wind. He
has his hands tucked into a pair of brown gloves, the material at the tip of
his fingers thinning from the hard washes as he leans ahead, looking into the
hazy drizzle of snow for Rukshar. His vapored breath splitting through his mouth
in dense fumes. He stood there for quiet sometime, biting onto the dazzling
flames of hope that he imagines enkindled in the snowy pastures of his reality
and feels warm, until soon he sees her approach him through the downpour and
felt the belief that he had stayed clung to, beat in his chest with the
ferocity of a drum in an orchestra. He watches her stiff, sturdy walk down the
uneven terrain, the heel of her boots ploughing through the snow and a
briefcase held in the firm grip of her slender hands. He had walked down her
way and have lend his arm in an unsaid possession of love, lifting her
briefcase that she had packed heavy with all the necessities of her life and
have come along his way to embark on a new journey, they had been longing and
dreaming for every single day of those cruel twenty eight years of their lives
and led her to the wait stop.
Suddenly he feels the warmth in his
heart die at the touch of hatred that seems to rise in his gut. His eyes narrowed
beneath a trifle shade of anger and his body contracting like a leopard behind
the bushes eyeing at his prey, when he saw Nawaz trailing behind Rukshar. He
has his shoulders flung over a crutch that digs into the snow laced earth,
leaving tiny potholes that is soon surfaced by the restless downpour. His left
leg plastered in white with visible stains of blood that seem to ooze from the
wound of bullet last evening, adding to his walk a strangely twisted gait, all
the while leaning over the crutches. Satyajeet lifts his face to Nawaz at once
and he looks away from him, averting his eyes towards the lurking chain of
mountains that rose quiet and jagging across the horizon, like a monster in his
siesta.
It was when Rukshar and Satyajeet
have boarded the bus that shrieked to halt on the thin asphalt road rolling
down the terrain, that the grimace across Satyajeet’s face have relaxed to a
calmer expression. They walked down the aisle of dozing passengers wrapped in
thick woolens and took their seat in the last row. Satyajeet pushed the window aside
and a stream of icy wind blew in, brushing past his face like the edge of a
blade being dragged across his skin. He squinted to the agony and looked at
Nawaz who stood beneath the ratting tin shade, hunched over his crutches, and
it was then for the first time he saw in his eyes, the burden of shame. His
steady, unwavering stare fanned by thin grey lashes, seem to plead before him a
mercy which he himself knows he is undeserving off and in that subtle moment of
deciding to let go a grievance or sticking to it for a lifetime, Satyajeet
remembers Rukshar’s tears on the mirror from behind the doors of the mosque and
he couldn’t gather himself to submit to his plea. The day comes back reeling
before his eyes, clawing his heart with an unbearable ache accompanied by
hatred as he withdraws his eyes from Nawaz’s face.
The bus starts with a gurgling noise,
stuttering awake the passengers and started to roll down the steep slope across
the face of Karakoram. Rukshar didn’t look back for once and as he pulled the
window shut against the pelting of snow, Nawaz started to recede from the
window. The grey sky and the mountains and the snow, drowning in the swamp of
shame in his eyes as they picked speed and everything outside started to blur
in their eyes, dissolving away into the mist that hung low. It was when they
rose up the steep roads cutting through the frozen neck of Karakoram and
Habotabad, floated beneath them, going deeper into the suffering and snow of
winter, that Satjayeet had given away in his heart the grievance for Nawaz and
still knew that he is not after all freed. For Rukshar’s mercy won’t find his
soul ever - be it in a slice of sunlight on his grave or a drop of rain.
*****
“Were you sure that you will
recognize me when you came to meet me after all these years?” she asked him.
“Love does strange things to our
recognition and somewhere behind our eyes, in our heart, we secretly know how
the other person looks after all these years.” He had said. “Despite the
distance that prevailed, there was always a part of us that stayed with the
other. A part of your soul stayed with me and a part of my soul stayed with you.
They looked after us and kept note of how we grew and changed at the turn of
every single day. It woke us up, fed us and combed our hair when we were too
broken to do anything. And likewise, we were aware about each other through the
length of time and lived as a whole despite being apart and alone. Love, you
know, Rukshar, is this simple act of living with the soul of your beloved when
you cannot touch, feel and kiss the body.”
She had squeezed his fingers on her
lap and smiled at him with her head tilted to the side. The incomplete world of
Satyajeet for the first time then felt the epiphany of completeness. She had
then shown him the very painting he had gifted her on his birthday, sitting
atop the windblown dune by the river Ganga beneath a fading evening sky. Rukshar lying on the grass. The poetry book
propped on her chest. And a butterfly hovering over her head. She had asked
him to promise her that he will draw another sketch of her and Satyajeet had
broken his stare, looking away beyond the window and the passing trees,
faltering to give her his word as that fateful night in New York comes rolling
back to him, fifteen years after he had been there and settled himself as a
sketch artist. Rukshar holds up his face in the hollow of her palm as he delves
into the agony of that cursed night.
His face pressed against the cracked windshield of the car. Blood gushing
from his skull. A savage pain rising from his back, wrecking his nerves, his
bones. A blinding light dimming in his unconscious eyes. And his mangled body
being carried away on a stretcher, soaked in blood.
Rukshar weeps quietly as tears fall
from her eyes and collects on the pink of her palm, like still white drops of
morning dew on rose petals.
*****
Stabbed with the knife of hatred at
the heart and left bleeding with loss for a lifetime, Satyajeet hardly talked
to his father after that day at the mosque. He finished his schooling and his
interested in art having reached its zenith by then, applied for his graduation
courses abroad and much to his admiration, he was picked by one of the best
colleges in New York. Each day in that house with his father was like accepting
the reality and moving ahead with it, as if nothing wrong had happened, as if his
life was still the same beneath the dreading quiet of the house. He couldn’t stand
that. He couldn’t keep numb and absorb the aftermath and the chance to get
admitted in a college abroad for his further studies, was the best that he
could have asked for to lessen the impact of the present that was slowly and
gradually hammering him to pieces. Who on earth would keep quiet to the loss of
his love and accept it like it was the just right thing to be done? He did, but
then silence is a tortured man’s revenge and as his flight took off from
Calcutta that day, he pledged to himself to never forgive his father.
He graduated as a scholar and started
establishing himself as a sketch artist in that enormous city throbbing with
life. He bought his own house in Manhattan and worked hard, studying and
exposing himself to the knowledge of various art forms so as to further develop
his skills. Everything was just at the right place, yet he couldn’t surface in
his life a deep void that seem to draw into its dark depths every bit of
prosperity that he worked to attain. He somehow couldn’t free himself from the
pain of a wound, only he knew existed. It bled forever, all the while swelling
to an infectious sore in its place, every time he lied alone in his bed and
cried through the night. He did receive calls from his father on Sunday morning
but then the moment, he heard his voice he quietly lowered the receiver into
the cradle and got back to work. Rings followed one after another but they all
died unresponsive, echoing between the walls of his foyer, like his love that
wore away into the silent acceptance of the wrong beneath the grudge and scowl
in his heart.
One day while he was driving back home
from work, a trailer speeding against a one way lane had ran into his car with
a shattering roar. The impact threw him off his seat onto the dashboard. He had
smashed his skull open. Blood ran in rivulets down his body, soaking into his
cloth as his legs twisted into a knot in the arch of the steering wheel. He lay
there smashed and bleeding till the ambulance had arrived and pulled out his
distorted body, lifting it to the stretcher. He remembers the agonizing pain
that tore through his back before he closed his eyes to the sedative and passed
away beneath the shimmering night sky of New York. It took him a couple of
surgery to resurrect his crushed spine and shattered bones as he regained
consciousness after a week in the confines of an Intensive Care Unit, breathing
though a life support. His limbs strapped in plasters and a multiple drips
connected through needles pushed at his wrist. Even though the doctors said
that he will back to work in mere two months, he strangely felt something odd
about himself. Something disturbing. Something unfulfilling. And somehow he did
not feel the same person as he was, before the trailer had ran into him.
Months later while he sat down by his
desk to work, he felt he couldn’t grip the pencil. Every time he lifted it up
and had pressed the nib against the paper, it had spilled out of his grip and
rolled down the page. With several attempts when he could finally grip the pencil
firmly, he had attempted to pull it across the page in long straight lines and
it was then he had discovered the strangeness in him. He had consoled himself
believing it to be an aftermath of a near death experience and that a meet with
his doctor will fix the issue. But then, day after day as he had sat down at
his desk and held onto his pencil, dragging it along the paper and it had only
given rise to squiggly, curly lines rippling across the page against a
straight, flat stroke that he intended to draw. He saw his doctor and he had
said, it was due to a heavy injury to his lower motor nerve and that often such
injuries take a lifetime to heal unless the person is lucky enough to be
blessed with some sort of miracle. Satyajeet had sat by his desk, sorrowed and
dejected, months after months only to succeed at the squiggly lines. Every time
he had tried to steady his hand, strengthening his grip over the pencil, he had
felt an invisible force dragging his arm to the left and a numbness creeping up
his muscles, forcing him to stray away from the path of his stroke and soon he
knew that his career as a sketch artist had come to its extremely fateful end.
It was then that he had applied for the job of professor in the Hastings
College of Art and helped himself on its way.
*****
Calcutta.
Satyajeet is standing at the
courtyard of his house, gently leaning against the barren compound wall. A
dribble of moonlight is caught in the sliding curls of his hair as he raises
his head to the sky and blows into the dark, a thick puff of cigarette smoke.
It rises above and catching the glide of the wind, drifts apart like an opening
ripple, lending to the night air a pungent smell of tobacco and tar. The sky
above his head is bisected by the branches of trees that rise in the courtyard.
The dome of night heaven shimmering with the adorning starts, visible through
the roll of the leaves, as if a celebration have erupted up there and everyone,
each of the stars danced in their shoes, waving the torch of frolic. As he
stands there gazing at the festivity of the celestial bodies, his eyes dragged
into their sockets, sore with the wounds of truth and trauma, he feels an
indifferent completion within himself. He closes his eyes, the twirl of smoke
rising above him and imagines himself at the heart of one such celebration and
drifts along the tide of happiness. He remembers Rukshar in this very
courtyard, lying beneath the overlapping canopies of leaning tress, the brown
of her eyes majestically gleaming and awash in the blue of inspiration while
she reads from the book on her chest. And the next moment, he watches her
innocent frame, sleeping quiet in his first floor bedroom and the wave of her
hair spilled back on the shore of pillow. He watches the contours of her body,
rise and dip in filling breaths beneath a cotton sheet. Her face, straight and
aglow, even in the sleep, like the crystal waters of a handsome river with
moonbeams splashed over it. Satyajeet remembers of the years that had kept them
apart, of the time that had crawled out of its bosom, minute by minute, day by
day, and had split his heart and soul with the pain of longing. He recounts
fate as the untimely downpour that eroded the earth of his love at once and
left it gathering its shape for three decades, before finally saplings of
contentment have pushed up the soil, watered by hardships and the stretch of
the field dazzles, for the first time in many years, in a shade of lively
green. He ambles up the stairs in the dark and standing at the door of her room,
admires her in her peaceful sleep. Calm as a forest at night, aired by her long
deep breaths. He at once wishes to lie down beside her. Wrap her in the width of
his embrace, like winter mist pressing two mountains together in the sky. Hide
his face in the folds of her neck and taste the night sweat on her chin. Breathe
in the sweet smell of her breath and drink the succulent juice of her lips.
Look into her eyes through the night and watch the sun take the sky through the
valley of her brows. Set sail in the tumultuous wave of her charcoal hair and
lose his way in her - his dreams, his destination, his everything and be each
other’s on the lap of a distant shore, where the ocean breaks on the sand into froth
and the city rises in glamorous monuments through lanes and alleys.
There was a power failure across the
city and men, awoke from sleep, hurdled on the narrow lanes beneath. Their shadows
overlapped on the pavement, as they walked in the dark, talking in loud voices
with cigarette smoke spiraling above their pressed heads. Their chatter nudged
by the howl of dogs from down the lanes, as they scampered down, chasing
distant voices and lights that came floating along with the calm of the night.
Satyajeet soon finds himself in his father’s room, staggering along like a somnambulist,
knocking against a shelf in the dark and thick books, toppled onto the floor
with a thud. He lights a candle and pulls out from the drawer, the plastic bag
containing the chopped pieces of his father’s last portrait. He then stretches
out a blank sheet across the table and plasters it with liquid glue, smearing
the borders with the press of his fingers as the flame of the candle gleam in
his eyes against the sticky wetness. He then fondles through the pieces in the
bag and starts aligning them, one after another on the blank sheet. Each stuck
piece, picked and pressed against the sheet, was like a shard of his shattered
dreams, once again claiming completeness of the otherwise blank horizon of his
life. He goes on with it, slowly, piece after piece with his translucent night
shirt clung to his back in sweat. It was tedious work and why wouldn’t it be? Acclaiming
your dream and building wishes on the heart of ruin takes a whole lifetime to
be done and here he was trying to put the shambles of three decades together
between the passage of one dark, humid night. He is bent over the table, the
portrait walking towards a tattered completion, the night wind whistling
through the window and the candle slowly wearing away, blobs of wax hardening at
its foot as the flame reflect in a muffled shin across his sweaty face.
He murmurs beneath his breath, “I
knew it then. I know it now and I wish to tell you someday that it was but the
anthem of our relationship.” He slips up the last piece in its place, remembering
the day Rukshar had asked him to repeat the poetry after her and rambles in a
dreamy voice, the last three lines of the poem that took him all this while to
understand and read with the lips of his heart. “And then, we don’t know why
they cried, And then, we don’t know where the laughter dissolved, Only the earth
below was flooded with their pain.”
He succeeds now and in the demure
light of the candle that warms the room in a soft, dying glow, he watches on
the table for the first time, the very portrait of his own life. A young couple leaning into each other,
their hands locked, her one leg raised behind her in the air and his eyes on
her face, in the backdrop of crisscrossing lanes and a mosque at the far end. That
was all his life was, like the very portrait, complete yet broken, a beautiful
mosaic, the pieces un-united from each other by thin lines of crack, supposedly
of fate and destiny, of shame and agony, of longing and love, of what happened
eventually and still feels like it didn’t.
*****
6 months later.
New York.
It is a bright summer day and the university
is closed for its scheduled vacation. The skyline glitters like a mold of gold
with the light emerging and disappearing between the splendorous rise of
buildings across the belt of the city. They,
Rukshar and Satyajeet, are by the shores of the Hudson River for a day out
together. Sail boats cruise along the water, swaying with the wave, like
butterflies fleeting across a fragrant garden. A dozen more is moored by the
side, their deck ablaze under the sun. Kids run around chasing each other on
the golden-white strip of sand that slips away beneath your feet like velvet
moss in rain. Their parents stretched out on beach chairs, sipping cold beer
from Styrofoam cups, tanning under the sun, ocassionally, lazily, flipping
through a book which they slept open with on their face, shielding away from
the sun’s glare.
Rukshar is right by the water,
sitting with her legs stretched out in the front. Her hands flat by her side,
gripping onto the wet sand that rise through her fingers. A wave seem to approach
her from the distance, triggering an innocent uproar amid the kids, as they
laugh and run towards it. She is quiet and unmoved there. A slice of the sun on
her nape. The wave crashes at her feet with a gurgle and rushes in, pooling
around her hips in a puddle, before receding back, carrying from beneath a palm
a sheet of loose sand as she trembles and balances herself, letting out a
gentle laughter with the Hudson ringing in her voice and the brooding heaven,
accomplished in her drenched eyes.
Satyajeet is at the back, hunched on
a boulder, all the while watching her heave back and forth with every tiny bits
of emotion. He lowers his head once and captures the sand her jovial frame in
the backdrop of a gold sky and the blue water that seem to kiss her toes and
recede in its journey. He draws with his finger, turning the sand beneath his
nails in long, flowy lines. He draws for the first time in fifteen years. First,
her hair that drops down her back, the silky sand caught between the strands. Then
her eyes that possess all the seasons of the planet. Then her nose that rise on
her face like a soft, straight hill. And lastly her lips, whose thin stretch of
smile can light up windblown towns in a moment. He smiles at the drawing for a
while before drifting off to calming sleep beside it. He smiles at how the
waves won’t reach up here to wash it away. He smiles at how his love will
remain as a shining emblem upon the sands of time. He smiles at the eternity
that he now sees waving at him, summoning him from behind the clouds. He smiles
and he smiles at the wonders of all.
--THE END--
Author - Sobhan Pramanik
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