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.