Afterwards

By Ankita Chatterjee
Singapore

Starry nights, fairy nights,

Trivial to rationale, to the maverick it is divine nights,
Beads of experience adorn eyes in a flush,
Often transform in smiles these flowery nights.

An oft-heard lullaby formed crevasses of delight and dreams in a room that opened to towering condominium buildings, half obstructing the calm, moonlit waves of the China Sea. Aaliya lay on her side, patting her two year old son to sleep. She could hear boisterous laughter across the three barbeque pits downstairs. In her apartment ten levels above that she struggled to see the entire galaxy of stars, bumping into sights of concrete and granite and withholding the narrow getaway between buildings that spanked the jewels of nature.

Infinite was your potential when you set foot on earth,

Infinite is the ocean from its birth,
Infinite the journey of the cargo ships whose start and finish is invisible in that narrow crevice,
Infinite your dreams, without demise.

 Aaliya’s eyes kept closing in a stupor, then barged open.

“Are you awake? May I sit with you? I know you are displeased. I know I am regretting. But my hand and chest pain badly. I think it’s still bleeding,” the man at the door spoke in whispers. Aaliya sprang up. “Is it? Arpan slept off a while back. Why don’t you sit here? I might try doing a first aid while we register at the hospital.”

With a wry smile, he glared at her. “Do you think it is needed? Do you think that will help?”

“Why will it not help, Shubhra da?  At least the bleeding will stop. Oh my God! Look at your shirt!”

Aaliya jolted up to fetch the medical box…and stopped. A stream transpired from her eyes in form of that divine gush that purifies the heinous sin… and she broke onto her knees. She embraced him, sobbing perennially as her grasp of him became tighter.

“I’m sorry, Shubhra da. I’m sorry that I let the distance between you and me, exist. I know it was you, my eldest and closest sibling, who built the wall. But I could have broken it. So, what if you pained your parents and married out of choice. So, what if you spilled me out of your circle of confidantes like a speck! So, what if I longed to talk to you on phone, a call that never came. So, what if the colour of our blood suddenly changed!

Aaliya’s nose snuggled in the crease of Shubhra’s shirt and fresh, greasy blood smudged onto it. Shubhra shrugged a part of his hand that looked dismantled and continued, “Pain is a small word, Aaliya, the one you are talking about. Weren’t you my closest always? How could I beseech you! The parents you debate for are my God. How did you believe I would desert them! Yes, the day I married my wife, I cornered myself. I left you, my pride. I shut the world to me.”

Aaliya stared at his eyes. They were small as ever; a notch not more expressive than they always were. The mole on his left cheek was blatantly black and scary.

Fear deceives prudence

Fear of loss and acceptance.
Fear drills a pit of pain,
Fear struggles to hide in vain.
If pain is what you thought I gave you,
Look deep in me how I hid you,
Touch my breath and feel how I heave you.

Vague expressions met Aaliya yet another time. She wouldn’t dismiss their meeting this time. She carefully lifted Shubhra’s hands and placed them on hers. Slowly as she wiped some blood stains from upon his trouser, Shubhra stiffened.

“Couldn’t you ever call me, Aaliya? Didn’t you ever want to know why and how I back stepped in my life? Weren’t you surprised this couldn’t be me? I waited for long. I waited for your phone call. I was scared you might never forgive me. I told my wife every night how precious you were; my tiny sibling, my compassionate compatriot of crime, my once only dream. Why didn’t you reach me? I didn’t betray your friend to marry my wife. She perhaps didn’t want me anymore. I held so much in me, secured and untold in my heart. But Aaliya, now I can’t. My ribs are broken. A couple of them split my heart open. I’m bleeding. I cried for help, but see it’s bleeding still. Everything is rolling out. My heart cannot hold anything. It is empty.”

Aaliya snatched his dismantled fist, pulled out a pillow case and pushed it against Shubhra’s chest. “The blood will stop. Does it hurt?” She lisped and fumbled, pushing in an entire pillow to his chest.

“Let it go, Aaliya. Let it go. It hurts me no more. My grudge I held for so long streamed out a while back. I love you. Always have. Like that every drop you shed from your eyes, these droplets of blood take me closer to infinity. I shall soon enter that narrow getaway between buildings. I shall soon be the immortal cascade in your mortal world.”

A concoction of moments

Question your integrity.
How complex your perceptions were.
I swept a corner in my heart,
It is all in simplification.

Aaliya opened her eyes slowly. She felt her eyelids heavy and her heart light. The narrow getaway shone under the light of a huge cargo shipment. The splitters of the sea made a reclining noise. Her son tossed on the bed and the alarm clock was yet to beep. Aaliya would begin another banker day of hers and her husband shall soon join them after his business trip. Aaliya watched the cargo ship pass, not knowing where it embarked from, sailing into infinity.

Two years after her eldest brother met with a road accident and all her dreams crashed, she was finally begotten of the haunt. Sudden answers transpired in an abrupt introspection that subconsciously began that fatal day when after a lapse of three years of miscommunication and distance, a cruel reality dawned on her.

Aaliya smiled in her pain. She knew now that time was lost; that introspection could fetch the clarity that was so oblivious earlier; how a part of her shall always remain indebted to this night and how she would never stop missing Shubhra.

Times when droplets of water roll into a steady rush,

Drenching into a synthesis,
How impregnate Earth is with a bounty of untouched thoughts,
Ones that etch divine experiences.
In this ethereal cascade I often immerse to be enlightened.