Translated from Bangla by Sarwar Morshed
I went to enjoy the evening show of that much-talked about Bangla film. Movie-worms were speaking highly of it. They were also very enthusiastic about the heroine of the movie – the secrets of her private life made them extra curious. Those personal pearls were no less charming than the movie itself! I had enough money in the wallet and the evening was incredibly pleasant. The sky was clear and the weather was breezy enough to soothe the mind.
It was really a fantastic film. When I came out of the cinema hall, I felt like soaring in the cloud – virtually I was on cloud nine! It made me so ecstatic that I felt a kind of euphoria-generating storm brewing inside me – I was not here, nor there; I felt as if I were an ethereal being, a sort of humanoid omnipresent! The movie transported me to a personal fantasy land – I fancied I could do anything, I could become anyone if I merely wished – I could be a tycoon, an Adonis-like beau, or a carefree person who dwelt in a palatial house! My wishes got viewlessly winged and Pegasus-like I started to fly in the blue sky! This is the long lasting impact of watching a good film. Some scenes of the movie, particularly the ones perfumed with the pleasing presence of the pretty heroine, can even add pigments to the sleep of the cinephiles!
As I was literally floating in the air, I decided to walk my way home. It was such an electrifying movie! The seemingly unending spell of my obsession with the film was abruptly curtailed by a strong wind when I reached the square. The gusty wind erected a volatile wall of dust in front of me. I experienced a dust-induced burning sensation in my eyes and suffocation caused by wind-borne particles in my nostrils. As if chased by a gang of ghosts, I started to run. I could see nothing, still I kept running. All the people in the street had to run helter-skelter for a safe refuge. The sky seemed to be a furnace to me. The cloudy sky, all of a sudden, was transformed into a Fury with blood-red eyes.
As I was panic-consumed, my heart began to knock at my rib-cage. A deafening sound invaded my ear-drums – maybe the Norwester had flown away the tin-roof of a house which landed somewhere nearby. I feared I wouldn’t survive the orgies of this cyclone. Any flying domestic-object missile powered by the wind might end my life! How mercurial human life is! Isn’t life the sum total of binary opposites, stark contrasts! Even a couple of minutes back, I was submerged in romantic thoughts! The cyclone had thrown all my rainbow dreams into the Bay of Bengal! Extreme fear, dark fear enveloped me, engulfed me. Consumed by fear, impelled by the drive to self-protect, I just ran, ran and ran for dear life!
It had already started to rain. The wind behaved in an erratic manner – it was threatening now and then. The rain was now off, then on with more intensified force.
A truck raced past me – I had a very narrow escape from being run over by this demonic killer of the roads. What would happen if it had crushed me? Nothing, because everyone in the street was running to save their own life.
Trees were being uprooted, tins were still flying and landing on in all directions. Amid the howling of the wind, I heard the cracking sound of a branch just behind me. Panting, I came to the verandah of an establishment. And immediately the street light went off. Jet-black darkness engulfed the town. The wind and the torrential rain jointly started to whip me, the houses, the city and the whole world! It became very difficult for me to breathe properly.
“Am I a star-crossed man?”, I soliloquized. To my utter dismay, I have noticed, my moments of joy are always short-lived, truly ephemeral. When I am in a happy state of mind, something unusual, unsavoury happens and my happiness evaporates, as it happened that day. What enmity do I have with the mighty Providence?
The storm didn’t show any sign of ceasing before an hour or so. I surveyed the archaeological site of my past and excavated the memory of a previous cyclone – it was a cyclone of huge magnitude wreaking colossal havoc in our delta. It swept a gigantic ship to the land, it drove humans, animals and venomous snakes to common shelters where under the pressure of the rough weather even the fanged reptiles were shy of using their lethal arsenal! This storm didn’t seem to be of a lesser scale. Fortunately during that ‘tsunami’, I was inside my house and hence couldn’t gauge the intensity – but alas today I was exposed and made up for the loss of that time to my experience-profile.
My throat ran dry and I couldn’t stand straight. I was trembling, shivering. The rain was ceaselessly invading me with missiles of its aquatic droplets. The eerie atmosphere almost froze my frame! Suddenly, a man ran to the verandah where I was standing. In the safety of the shelter, he covered his face with the extended portion of his shirt. He was breathing so quickly that his chest looked like a blacksmith’s bellows. After regaining composure, he uncovered his face and threw a puzzled look at the street. Now he could sense the presence of a fellow-man and his curious eyes landed on me.
The man felt visibly unsettled after discovering my presence under the same roof – he wore a look as if he had treaded the tail of a venomous serpent! I also experienced an identical inner tempest. This was the culprit who one day, not long ago, inflicted the deadliest harm on me. My formidable foe now standing with me under the same roof! I saw him for the first time after two years. In fact, I couldn’t see him well in the dark – rather, I felt the weight of his unwelcome presence.
He stared at me in an asinine way – as if he were trying to understand whether my presence was an optical illusion triggered by the unusual, phantasmagoric atmosphere.
Trying to make things easier for him, I turned the other way. The dreadful past chain of events flashed across my memory. That day this scoundrel engineered my ruin. He had some business in our office. I told him, jokingly albeit, that I would do his work if he would give me money to eat sweets.
Believe me, I only demanded a meager ten taka amount. I knew very well that officers were taking bribes in four digits. Only ten taka was what I asked him for! Like a seasoned politician, he told me that he would come the next day to fulfill my demand. Happily, I promised to do his work the next day. He was a man of words, a true gentleman! He turned up the next day as promised but not alone – he came with the police and got me arrested! The police caught me red-handed with a fresh ten taka note. Corruption cost me my job. Subsequent litigation drained away my slim savings. The series of cataclysmic events did not end there. I was tried and the court of justice duly awarded me a two-year term and I ended up in jail. All this happened two years back.
Lying in the prison cell, several times I promised to myself, after release, I would certainly find out his whereabouts, set his dear house on fire and would murder him. But after my release, I could realize what a great healer time was! All the fires racing through my veins and blood have extinguished! The struggle for mere survival had far outweighed fancy revengeful thought.
After so many days when I got the man, so close to me, all those dampened fires got enkindled. If that speeding truck had crushed me a few moments back, nobody would have known who the culprit was. Now, at that extremely isolated moment, if I strangled that satanic biped to death no one would know anything. People were existentially engrossed in themselves in the catastrophic moment. “Should I be true to my jail-vows”, I quizzed myself, “What harm was there if I tried to implement my murderous project’’?
Sensing my presence and possibly my inner turmoil, the man distanced himself and cautiously dragged himself to the other end of the verandah. He was repeatedly looking at the sky with the devotion of a meteorologist or astronomer and casting furtive looks at me, on and off.
I took pity on him. What this man did a couple of years back was right from an ethical viewpoint. It was my fault to demand money from him. But that day the man behaved in such a way that it looked he was to blame for the incident! My coincidental presence seemed to hang heavy on the poor man. It was as if he could save his skin if he could flee from his rival. It was as if I were an executioner waiting with a piece of Manila rope to hang him!
“NO”, I decided, “I wouldn’t tell him anything”.
But the man further cocooned himself. Each moment with the impact of eternity was rendering him paler and paler, I could perceive. Then I came one step forward to talk to him.
Even in that tempestuous condition, both microcosmically and macrocosmically, the man preferred to brave the elements with a huge jump. While fleeing, he groaned and emitted a strange, bloodcurdling scream.
I shouted, “Listen, Mister, listen, please.” He kept running and in a moment he vanished! I tried my best with the highest decibel of sounds my vocal chords could afford to produce to assure him that I wouldn’t cause him any harm, but all my attempts proved futile. The howling wind gave me back my loud appeals to the man.
A flying tin or an uprooted tree might kill the man. My blood ran cold out of fear for the potential threat to the man’s safety. Gathering all my strength, I entreated my foe to come back but my philanthropic appeals miserably failed to yield results.
My voice got almost soaked with emotion. My fellow man could trust the unpredictable elements even in those doomsday-like circumstances. He couldn’t place his trust on one of his fellow species-member! How could he believe me? I am a human being, after all!
[Translation of Syed Shamsul Haq’s short story, “Manush”.]Syed Shamsul Huq : Fictionist in Bangla Literature
Sarwar Morshed is a professor of English at the University of Chittagong
Illustration : Najib Tareque
