On some Valentine's Day I became: Sushanta Pal, B.Sc. in CSE (BUET), MBA in Finance (IBA, DU)............ That day was my final presentation for the MBA at IBA. After the presentation, I wandered through the book fair. They took love. I took books, I took a degree. They got one, I got two. They had love too, I had lav—profit! There could have been another: MDS (DU)........but it didn't happen. I let it go. Why? Just for the sake of pride and stubbornness. Sometimes I think, in this little life, this life of mine has been played with so much. Of course, life is meant for playing, if you can win in the end! That day I was thinking some more........ Tell me, wasn't it this crazy no-thought fellow who once decided not to complete honors? Wasn't he supposed to become a shopkeeper with just an intermediate pass? Mother, are you listening? Father, will you come and see? I've made you cry so much, haven't I? Pappu, who was it that always made you listen to their words? Your grandfather will remain illiterate his whole life, won't he? Where are they now? The night before Valentine's Day. Instead of preparing my final MBA presentation, I'm sitting around watching Kurosawa's Yojimbo. When you're stressed, even watching fan documentaries for hours becomes delightful, the worst movie in the world becomes a pleasure to watch on the night before an exam. And Yojimbo is a good film! Next morning at 11 a.m., the master's final presentation. Haven't even started preparing for it. My old habit—eleventh hour syndrome. Its grip on my life is so strong I could write page after page about it. I don't know if anyone else has ever used the term 'eleventh hour syndrome' before. If not, then I've coined it myself. My philosophy: there's still time left! If it exists, why ruin the moments before it? (When I have the chance and don't forget, I'll write about eleventh hour syndrome. Friends, will you remind me a bit, what do you say?) At noon I soaked a bucket of clothes in detergent. Don't feel like washing them. But they have to be washed before I sleep. I'm leaving at 8 tomorrow morning. They won't get washed tomorrow. I abandon everything in hope of some last-minute magic! Mosquitoes are biting. Don't feel like getting up to light a coil. What if they bite? Everyone in the world survives by biting someone or other. What fault is theirs? Never mind, let them bite.......... Damn mosquitoes! Tell me, what's the logic in swatting a mosquito? There's no logic, I have to invent one. I'm hungry. There's an apple right in front. Too lazy to eat it. Nobody loves me, nobody feeds me, so I won't pick it up myself, won't eat, won't eat, won't eat!! Don't eat the apple, eat a banana! Huh!............ I'm not the kind of decent fellow who eats fruit kept in the room. I've discovered something through this. Even if you leave an apple in the room for days, it doesn't rot! It's all his—(read: formaldehyde's)—play! Tomorrow there's so much to do. Have to give the presentation, wander through the book fair, do so many other things.......... Can't remember. Don't even want to remember. A man who doesn't bear the burden of remembering his girlfriend's birthday—what's the harm if he doesn't remember the world's affairs? Isn't tomorrow Valentine's Day? On this day, if you stand on the street like some lovesick fool, can't you find free peace for your eyes watching other people's beautiful girlfriends? Night deepens, work doesn't diminish. Now I have so much to do. Haven't done a thing all day. So what did I do all day?
I woke up in the morning and saw flowers, trees, some birds, a lake, came back to the room and fell asleep. Slept all day. My eyes swelled from sleeping so much. The best achievement of the day—touching the dewdrops collected on rose petals at dawn. Ah! As a result of this feat, some horse of mine has laid another egg, and my name as the world’s only ‘petal-touching human’ has made it into the Guinness Book! Applause, applause!!
And yet I haven’t started doing actual work. Sitting at my laptop with a heap of tasks weighing on my mind. Just sitting. What am I doing? All the girls in the world have posted pictures for the first day of spring. Looking at the pictures. Liking them sparingly. If I like too much, she might figure out I’ve been looking at her pictures! Why increase her part? So I’m holding back. Girls look gorgeous in saris! I feel like falling in love with some of them. Wait, that’s not love, is it? It’s mere affection. And some of them I want to……………say (read: ‘write’) but couldn’t!
A boy messaged me—
: Brother, why aren’t you liking the boys’ pictures?
: I don’t feel like liking the boys’ pictures.
: But you’re definitely liking the girls’ pictures. Isn’t that favoritism? We’ve posted spring pictures too.
: Alright, you put up a picture of yourself in a yellow sari with marigolds woven into your hair, and I promise you, I’ll like every single picture of yours.
(Suddenly I discovered that the sulky boy, offended, had blocked me with puckered lips! What can I do! It’s all his choice!)
Listening to old Bengali songs. These mischievous songs are such a pleasure to hear. My mind wants to love the songs even more. I feel like loving the people who wrote them, composed them, sang them. I want to forgive everyone in the world, even those who hurt me yet prosper in their happiness. I want to love even the gecko in the corner of the ceiling. Poor thing is as lonely as I am. Tell me, was its call always this beautiful? Tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick………..Oh oh!!! The gecko is such a cute creature!
When I sit with a heavy load of tasks on my mind, what do I do? My head goes completely blank. I stare with such a vacant expression that anyone would think I’m pondering deeply. In truth, I’m thinking of nothing. Instead of doing what needs to be done, I sit for hours doing something else. I find everything else in the world necessary—be it swatting cockroaches with bathroom sandals. Killing cockroaches is a crucial task in saving humanity from the brink of extinction. This way, night falls. Knowing in the morning I won’t be able to do the work, I chant ‘All is well’ and fall asleep. Who else has ever given such peaceful sleep while carrying such a weight of undone tasks? Only sleep is real!!
Ugh! I won’t write anymore. I have to light the mosquito coil. These damned mosquitoes don’t even understand love! They’re as clueless as an old lover!! Where a lover won’t even kiss, that bitch mosquito goes and bites! Shameless, sweet-toothed mosquito!
The coil is burning. My hand is moving; again. I mean, actually a pen in hand, I mean, keyboard!
Look here, boy—your girlfriend wears blue saris too, doesn’t she? Or does she, like so many others, just study for her BA and MA?
I used to think I’d be alone on the 14th this time. I’d meet the century. In a black or ash-colored, or whatever color she likes, punjabi, I’d hold her hand and walk, take pictures. Do you know the century? Don’t know? Why don’t you know?
Well, I don’t know either.
This thought came to mind………..
# If You Can’t Win, Then Don’t Lose, But Don’t Lose Either
If you can’t win, then don’t lose, but don’t lose either. Whose words these are, I can’t recall. Only this: there was a day when I didn’t lose, didn’t make anyone lose. . . . . . . But why this thought again?? Why does sorrow keep circling back, while joy refuses to return?
Every Valentine’s Day, even now, something whispers that I should become someone else, then slips away. I cannot wear a mask. Not wearing one is, in truth, just another mask. The wall between a face without a mask and a maskless face—I know it isn’t so thick. When a girl loses her piece in Ludo, the pain runs deep; but the ache of boys who cannot wear masks—girls feel perhaps not even a quarter of it.
Boys lose themselves searching for girls in their own way. Why are boys like this? They don’t search for a girl as she is; instead, they search for her as *they* imagine and desire her. Boys don’t want a person—they want a woman. . . . . . . What do girls want? How should I know! Do they even know themselves? They only know they want *something*. What exactly they want! A boy will come into her life. He’ll try to explain that this ‘something’ is like this, like that, like so-and-so. . . . and she’ll believe it all! Both the capacity to believe and the capacity to disbelieve are infinite in girls. All girls are creatures of confusion. The funny part is, they *like* being confused. The boy will manufacture a confusion to suit himself and explain it away so cleverly—*this* confusion is truth, *this* confusion is life, *this* confusion is that ‘something.’ Done! The more beautiful a girl, the more confused. A girl’s beauty and her desire to be confused are directly proportional.
I don’t enjoy these thoughts anymore. Better by far to look at my mother coming home just before spring festival, dressed in that marigold-yellow sari, and smile the smile of contentment. I have seen it: in this love alone can one quarrel with death itself and find joy.
And so, like every year, Valentine’s Day has come again. He hasn’t. The festival arrives, but its rituals don’t follow. The empty plate waits for an offering, and I count the hours, keep counting. . . . . . .
Listen, you boys! Tomorrow, when evening refuses to end any further, dress in a yellow Punjabi and a blue sari and go with her to the book fair or wherever she asks. It’s just one day! Tomorrow, live a little for her; from the day after, back to work. Will you remember?
Spring passes. . . . . . . alone! Phalgoon fades, and yet—alas!—winter does not.
The world’s most irresistible drug: books.
At the book fair, your back bends under the weight of the backpack, the bags stuffed with books steal the last strength from your hands as if—on pale palms, a rosy flush emerges, grows steadier. Yet this craving for books yields only to books. The pain of bearing books dies only while bearing books. With such terrible weight—nearly forty pounds of books pressing into your whole body—you can still say ‘hello’ with a smile to familiar faces glimpsed while wandering through the stalls. You can carry the stone-heavy burden of books for hours and hours, swimming happily through oceans of books from stall to stall. I buy books like a madwoman, arrange them like a goat arranging hay. I know that’s where it ends—the buying and the arranging! Yet I’ve learned to believe so firmly that the heartache of not being able to buy a single book you desire, despite having the means, equals several deaths. This touch of books carries such an addict’s intoxication.
# In This World
There are three scents in this world that smell alike: the fragrance of a lover’s hair, the scent of flower petals, the aroma of book pages. All three summon an unabashed, shameless, irresistible intoxication. And then there’s a fourth scent—one that occasionally makes you drunk. What is it? I won’t tell!
The book fair that day was sparse. But why? On Valentine’s Day, it shouldn’t have been. Had love suddenly dwindled? Had breakups multiplied? Both? Or had the couples abandoned the fair for some deserted island?
Alas! On Valentine’s Day, love didn’t grow—only dust. Those who loved me that day, who forgot their beloved to give me time—I could offer them nothing but dust. Most of them were women! I understood then: there still exist women in this world who possess the boundless capacity to endure the torment of books! A woman who can bear books can surely learn to bear me too!
That Valentine’s Day, selling my lungs instead of my heart, I rode home in a car where Shubhra Dev was playing… *This heart of mine is not stone…* Just before that came Khalid’s voice… *No reason to turn back…*—and the driver’s accidental sense of humor delighted me no end!
Another Valentine’s evening. Coming home after work. I see women pouring out from IIPED in waves. Some have roses, gladiolus, tuberose in their hands and hair. Light seems to spill from their weary eyes. Beautiful, cheerful faces. Exquisite! Does love make people beautiful? Many of the boys held lovely Valentine’s cards. Love erases fatigue, wipes away poverty, brings the search for wealth to nothing. Physical beauty pales before the twin banks of a heart flooded with moonlight. They were lost in some quiet jest of joy. Seeing such happiness brought real peace. There’s no joy like seeing a poor person’s joy. I found myself smiling to myself without knowing when!
Well, my hands weren’t empty either that day. My paper was—*Prothom Alo*.
Come then—let’s still give the finger to every deep silence of loneliness and forget all sorrow on Valentine’s Day, singing together…
Dream like a dreamer,
Forget old pain, every ember.
If someone’s hand reaches for yours on the way,
Love them as you know how, come what may!
Let love be well! Let love live on!
*Off-topic: When you go to the dentist’s chamber and he holds your mouth wide open while working, there’s definitely a moment when you want to bite him hard because of the jaw pain—hands up, anyone?*