The world had contracted around Natasha. Two tutoring jobs—that's all she had, and they'd been enough. Until now. Finals were looming. On one side, family pressures. On another, the constant tug-and-pull of a relationship fraying at the seams. And somewhere else entirely, the village—her village—breeding gossip about her with a fervor that turned her stomach. Whispers everywhere, the kind that corrode a person from the inside out. It had all fractured her, mentally. Living in this state of constant division meant she couldn't even teach properly anymore. Her students were failing. One tutoring center had paid her off last month, told her not to come back. They were hiring someone new. She hadn't found replacement work. And now, slowly, inexorably, poverty was tightening its grip. Himu had never helped her with money before—never needed to. But now she needed it desperately, and she couldn't ask him. A strange paralysis held her back. How could she ask for money from someone she'd always been the one to give to? Besides, Himu had been so consumed with his own life lately that she hadn't even found the words to tell him what was happening. Sorrow should never be hoarded. Hoard it, and it multiplies like termites, breeding in the dark. Grief kept locked in the chest finds fertile ground there. It grows and grows until one day it swarms through you like locusts—devouring your heart, your bones, even your blood. And when the flesh is gone, when there's nothing left to consume, sorrow turns on the very life inside you, the thing no one can see from outside. One tutoring job wasn't enough anymore. She'd left the hostel in Chawk Bazaar three months ago and moved into a mess. Four girls to a room. Cramped, suffocating. Fifteen hundred taka per bed. Then there was food, other expenses. It was a three-room flat, four girls per room, twelve girls total squeezed into that cramped space. Twelve girls meant twelve opinions, twelve kinds of daily drama—petty feuds, grudges, misunderstandings that festered. Someone was always upset with someone else, always some grievance being aired. The whole year was one long, tangled mess of conflicts. Natasha had moved there to cut costs. Her physical health was deteriorating along with her mind. When your heart isn't in it, you stop caring for yourself. Her body was wasting away, bones showing more each day. A slow dissolution. She and Himu spoke once a day now, if that. Sometimes two or three days would pass without a word. When she called, they'd exchange pleasantries for a minute or two, then the conversation would die. Neither of them seemed to know what to say. Recently Himu had been trying to tell her something, something unspoken, but couldn't find the words. You don't need glasses to see a river running dry—you just need to feel it. And Natasha could feel it now. That evening, sitting by the window, she was writing in her diary. The room was empty. She was missing Himu terribly. She wrote two poems, then pressed her face into the diary and wept—great, heaving sobs. The world seemed to splinter into fragments, each piece smaller than an atom, smaller than heartbreak itself. Every line of those poems was drenched in sadness, soaked in pain. She typed a message to Himu: missing you, pakhi.
# Missing Pieces
Natasha keeps a separate diary for her poems. In another diary, she deposits all the exhaustion and shame that life accumulates. These days she writes more often. She posts a poem or two on Facebook. Everyone likes them well enough. Almost everyone in this world of seven and a half billion, even those who don’t wish to be sad, loves sadness—loves the stories and songs and poems of sorrow. Humans are peculiar creatures.
On the first anniversary of their love, Himu gave Natasha a pair of bangles. She keeps them carefully hidden in the corner of her diary, treasures that they are. Whenever she wants to see Himu, she opens the diary and gently kisses the bangles. As if those bangles are his cheeks, his neck—all of him.
Today too, as she leans down to kiss them, her chest splinters into pieces. It feels as though in the crush of seven and a half billion people, Natasha stands utterly alone. On all sides, only a barren wasteland stretches without end.
Suddenly her phone rings. An unknown number. The moment she answers with a hello, she hears a girl’s voice—eager, almost trembling.
“Are you Natasha?” the girl asks.
“Yes,” Natasha replies. “Who is this? What do you want?”
Even as she speaks, there’s a commotion on the other end—the sound of a scuffle. A boy’s voice, familiar somehow, keeps saying: “Stop it, okay? She’s my cousin. That’s all she is. Please, don’t make a big deal out of this.”
That voice. Natasha knows it. Yes—it’s Himu.
The girl has seized the phone. Her voice turns sharp, commanding. “I want to hear it from him. Who are you to him? You just messaged him ‘Missing you, bird.’ I want to know—what is your relationship?”
Natasha understands now. The girl has seen the message on Himu’s phone. They were together. And the way this girl speaks, with such possession, such fury—it can only mean one thing. They are in love. They are together. And Natasha knew nothing.
Tears spill down her face onto the floor. Drop by drop, the vast roof of her dreams, bigger than the world itself, crumbles.
Natasha cries silently, while on the other end of the line, the two of them argue, their voices sharp with accusation.
The girl asks again, firmly: “Tell me the truth. Who is Himu to you?”
Natasha turns the question around: “First you tell me—what is your relationship with him?”
The girl raises her voice, claiming her territory: “He’s my boyfriend. We’ve been together for a year and a half.”
Natasha, gathering what little strength remains, speaks softly and with great care: “Himu is my cousin. He’s like my brother.”
The girl’s anger deflates somewhat. It’s clear now—she loved Himu fiercely. Perhaps Himu too… No. No. Natasha cannot think further. Her head spins, as if the entire world has become a ball, hurtling around her. Her legs no longer hold her up. She sways and falls, hard, to the floor.
Jnan regained consciousness and found himself lying in bed. Some of his roommates were pouring water on his head. Others were fanning him. One had prepared saline and was waiting by his bedside for him to come to. The moment his eyes opened, the shadow of anxiety lifted from everyone’s face, replaced by the soft lines of relief on their lips.
Several days passed in this way, in profound gloom.
One day. Deep night. Half past three. Natasha was writing in her diary. Himu hadn’t called once in the past four days. Today, suddenly, she was thinking of him intensely. She yearned to hear his voice, just once, just a little. Her fingers hovered over his number, ready to dial, when her phone rang. It was Himu.
The moment Natasha answered, she broke into sobs. On the other end, silence. That silence spoke volumes—a torrent of unspoken words. Himu’s voice came through, trembling: “Nashu, please calm yourself. Look, I just can’t make this relationship work. Please forgive me. Marry someone else. I love Reshmi. We’re together now. Please, forgive me.”
He spoke in a rush, each word tumbling over the last, while Natasha listened in shock. As she listened, she somehow forgot even how to cry. She was that devastated.
After these few lines, without giving Natasha a chance to respond, Himu cut the line.
No one can truly describe what the agony of death feels like. But in this moment, Natasha felt something a hundred times worse—an inner burning that consumed her from within. This fire was reducing a living, breathing human being to ash, burning away everything inside her. Yet no one on the outside could see it. No one could understand.
Memory after memory flooded back. Their first meeting. Himu standing for hours in the scorching sun at that street corner just to catch a glimpse of her. That same Himu trailing behind her on the road, and now he had chosen another path entirely. The man who had said he would die without her now didn’t want her anywhere near his life. The man for whom Natasha was once the beginning and end of everything—that same man now kept her at arm’s length.
Oh, time! How it transforms everything when it turns! People. Hearts. Even the nature of love itself.
Natasha’s life, drowning in an ocean of helplessness, had become unbearable.
And then, in this darkest hour, came terrible news. Her younger sister called. She was wailing, crying so hard she could barely speak. What her sister told her was enough. Natasha lost consciousness and collapsed. Their father had had a stroke. He died on the way to the hospital.
After returning from the clinic, Natasha hurried to borrow five hundred taka from her roommate and set out toward the village, though there was an official order against her visiting home or the village. She paid no heed to any of it and boarded the bus. Her heart was screaming with an unbearable thirst to see her father’s face one last time. Life had brought Natasha to the edge of a terrible precipice. She got off the bus, hired a rickshaw, and made her way toward home. But by then it was too late. The corpse was already being carried on a stretcher toward the grave. Natasha hurried forward, sobbing aloud, grabbing the feet of the pallbearers, begging them to let her see her father one last time. Several people came and held her back. The pallbearers continued their prayers, moving past forty steps. Natasha thrashed like a living catfish gasping on dry land, again and again trying to reach for the pallbearers, but others held her fast, restraining her with their grip.
Not far away, Natasha’s mother sat leaning her head on another woman’s shoulder, her gaze fixed and stony upon the path her husband was taking away. Her eyes had swollen like tomatoes from endless weeping. She had cried away all her tears. Natasha’s two younger siblings clung to their mother, hiccupping sobs against her body. An uncertain life had begun. The stage of the world was announcing an age of darkness.
Natasha walked slowly toward her mother and, grasping her feet, let out a piercing cry. Her mother lifted her head from the other woman’s shoulder and turned to address Natasha: “This wretched girl, this shameless creature—tell her to leave my house, to step beyond its threshold! It is her sin that has brought all of this upon us! My husband’s spirit will suffer torment if she stays—tell her to go!” She tried to pull her feet away from Natasha’s grasp, but Natasha kept begging forgiveness, clutching her feet tighter still, wailing and sobbing.
Two or three women came and separated Natasha from her mother’s feet, moving her away. “Your father had a stroke because he was worried about you,” they said. “Your mother does not wish to see you. You should leave now.” When Natasha heard these words, the sky seemed to collapse upon her head.
Seeing no other choice, Natasha pulled her two younger siblings to her breast, kissed their foreheads and their faces. She ran her hand over their heads, telling them to look after their mother. Then, wiping her eyes, she hurried back toward the city with quickening steps. Today her life had become trapped in the worst quicksand of all—in time itself.
On the bus, she sat with her vacant gaze turned toward the sky beyond the window. The bus rushed toward the station. On and on it went. Sometimes it stopped, passengers boarded, and then a few got off at their destinations, and the bus rushed on again.
Some boarding, some alighting. Ah, this life!
But where was Natasha’s final station? What path was her life taking? There was no knowing. Her life moved along a thorny, rugged road. With each step forward, she sank deeper into the quicksand. Her dreams, nurtured with such tenderness, were being torn to shreds by sorrow’s barbed wire, from beginning to end. Some terrible wildfire was consuming her innermost being. Ah! And there, in that void, the Creator merely sat watching the spectacle unfold. What string was He pulling? What was the meaning of all this cruel mockery?
# Natasha
Natasha has moved back to the city, to her apartment. She can’t seem to return to ordinary life. Mentally, she’s come completely undone. If only at this moment someone would run their hand gently over her head, speak to her with tenderness, or pull her close and love her a little, perhaps her chest would feel lighter. Now, precisely when she needs a touch of affection, care, maternal warmth, she has nothing solid beneath her feet. The sorrows pile up and up, churning everything inside her. No family. No beloved. No relations. No friends. No one beside her now. She exists like a solitary figure on some desolate island.
To lose someone’s presence in grief is a sorrow far greater than the grief itself. This is what has befallen Natasha. There is no one to tell her sorrows to. Not a soul with whom she might unburden her heart through conversation. She feels profoundly alone.
Even after learning of her father’s death, Himu didn’t call once to ask how Natasha was, what she was doing, what lay ahead. Yet it was because of him that this tempest swept through her life. It was his hand she held when she abandoned everything. And now he—he has taken another’s hand and cast her out of his life! Can people truly be so cruel?
There is no friendship left between Natasha and Himu now. One can perhaps accept that a relationship with an ex is over, but losing friendship too—that is far harder to bear.
In her heart, Natasha desperately wishes Himu would call just once and say, even if in lies, “How are you, little bird? Don’t grieve. I’m here with you.” But Himu has neither the time nor the will for such a thing. And so Natasha’s pain does not ease.
It has been four days since her father’s death. Natasha has written him a long letter. Every line of it is scattered with tender childhood memories and her father’s love. His smile, his eyes, his cheeks, his nose, his lips, his beard-covered chin—she can see them all so clearly still. Touch the diary’s page and she can feel him there. Today he is gone. Gone too, all happiness. Gone, the very meaning of life.
Natasha’s money is finished. The tutoring job she had—they’ve told her to stop. Meanwhile, her mess rent is unpaid. She’s borrowed money from her roommates once or twice. She has no idea how she’ll repay it. There is no food left in the room. All three girls who shared the room have gone home weeks ago. So she is alone in it. Because she is naturally serious and reserved, the others in the mess know little of her troubles.
In this way, she gradually sinks into acute depression. She doesn’t leave her room. All day she keeps the door shut, the light off, lying in bed. She pays no attention to whether it is day or night. She spends entire nights with her head pressed against the window grille, staring up at the sky with her mouth slightly open. She speaks to no one. She barely eats. Completely silent. The others in the mess occasionally come to check on her. She cunningly meets them with a smile, insists she’s fine, and says she’d prefer to be alone. They don’t press further. They’re satisfied. They think, perhaps, she’s managing.
# The Weight of Solitude
Who in this world can truly know what lies in another’s heart, except oneself? Everyone is busy. Everyone has their own work to occupy them. In this endless rush, how many can spare a thought for another? How many can see the grey smoke rising from a heart consumed by endless flames?
Day by day, her mental instability deepened. Inwardly, she was burning away to ash. Meanwhile, her money had run out. Food was gone. With whatever coins remained, she would buy chips now and then, eating them sparingly. She hardly left her room anymore.
It was during this time that she made a terrible decision.
Natasha had written several poems in these past few days. Some she’d posted on Facebook; others remained locked in her diary. Since her relationship with Himu began, she had documented everything between them—all their conversations, dreams, desires, every thought about the future—filling page after page with words and images. Writing was the one thing Natasha truly loved in life. Every page of that diary was like a child to her, precious and tender beyond measure.
She continued like this, eating little or not at all. Today marked the seventh day since her father’s death. For the past two days, Natasha had survived on nothing but chips and water. Ten-rupee packets of chips. Hunger twisted her insides in knots. Yet she had no money. She couldn’t bring herself to borrow from anyone. Since childhood, she had no capacity for asking. Her pride was unyielding—so solid that she would sooner surrender her life than bend it.
For the first time in many days, she stepped out this afternoon and walked aimlessly in front of her house as evening fell. On the street, she spotted a dog, terribly hungry. All she had was a ten-rupee note. She bought a packet of biscuits with it, ate two herself, and gave the rest to the dog. The creature gulped them down with such joy, such gratitude—clearly it had been starving for a long time. Natasha watched it intently. Something strange and peaceful stirred in her at the sight of the dog’s satisfaction. What a beautiful thing it was! When it finished eating, the dog looked at her with grateful, tender eyes for a moment, then rushed off into the distance.
If the dog could speak, it would have thanked her profusely. Failing that, if it could, it would have held her close to its chest. Perhaps it had hungry pups waiting at home. Was it running back to nurse them? Oh, gratitude isn’t something only humans possess—these street animals, raised without care, carry it too. What logic is there, she wondered, in calling humans the crown of creation? Yet all the fine things said about humanity come from human mouths. We crown ourselves. We say such things about ourselves! Truly absurd!
Lost in thought, Natasha watched the trees lining the street, the birds, the hurried masses of the city. A gentle, cool breeze brushed against her skin. It felt good. How long had it been since she felt wind like this? How long since she’d walked down an open street? Today, everything seemed strangely beautiful to her. If only Himu were here with her now.
Natasha walked for a while, then climbed onto her roof. The afternoon melted slowly into evening across the floor of that rooftop. Darkness came creeping from all directions. Birds were returning to their nests. She had never paid attention to the flight of birds before. Today she was watching. How beautifully they flew! Why had she never noticed this? What had kept her so busy? Was that busyness worth more than this beauty? Really?
People say the sky is blue, yet the sky holds so many colors. White, black, blue, grey—all of them. Yet they insist the sky is blue. That the sky is so vast—why had she never seen it before? Today she had discovered so many things she had never paid attention to. Everything felt new today, packed full of such abundance of beauty. Nature was so beautiful. Why hadn’t she seen it before?
Something like melancholy had settled into Natasha’s heart. Life felt like a dense evening darkness, thick with gloom. A silence fell. Forgotten words came rushing back. Memories flickered like sparks before her eyes. It seemed as if only yesterday she had laid her head on her father’s lap and fallen asleep. Her mother’s hand stroking her hair, putting her to sleep. It all felt like it happened just the other day. As if she could reach out and touch those days, as if her hand had only to stretch and the memories would be caught. Invisible memories circled in front of her eyes. Today Natasha felt so tired. Everything felt tinged with longing. Yet why did she feel no desire to live? Couldn’t one live simply for the love of seeing this beautiful world a little longer? Why did she feel this urgent pull to leave?
She climbed down from the roof and went into her room. It was ten at night. A single chip lay beside the bed. She ate it. Drank a glass of water. She took out the mirror from her bag and looked at herself. For the first time, looking at herself filled her with wonder. There was a black mole on the left side of her forehead. Her eyebrows curved like a serpent, sinuous. Had she ever noticed these things before?
Today Natasha would dress as she wished. She brought out all her cosmetics. She had never cared much for makeup—she only bothered on occasions, weddings, big events. She was comfortable with light makeup. She had always disliked over-doing it.
She applied a deep red lipstick. A black bindi on her forehead. The bangles Himu had bought her on her wrists, and the blue sari her mother had given her on her body. When she was small, her father had once brought her anklets out of affection. They wouldn’t fit her small feet then. They fit now, though a little snug. She fastened the anklets. She lined her eyes heavily with kohl. Her deer-like eyes stretched long became even longer.
What! This dark-complexioned body held such beauty, and no one had ever noticed. She herself had not known. Looking at herself, she sat transfixed before the mirror for a long time, gazing. Her eyes drank in every part of herself!
Natasha noticed tears streaming down her cheeks, drop by drop. The droplets pooled in the hollow of her palm. Yet she couldn’t tear her eyes from the mirror. Could a person look so beautiful while crying? But she wasn’t trying to cry. Her heart wasn’t breaking—not willingly. Then why was this stream of water breaching the dam of her eyes, darkening the edge of her sari? Could there be another being inside her, one who weeps at her sorrow? Yes, that must be it. She wasn’t alone. There was another presence within her, perhaps loving her. Of course there was. Who else would be crying at this moment?
She opened her diary and wrote for a while. Silent tears softened the pages beneath her pen. Then she posted a status on Facebook.
It was three-thirty in the morning. She pulled out her phone and called Himu’s number. Himu was waiting. Ten minutes later she called again. This time Himu answered in a voice so tender it nearly broke her. “How are you, Natasha?”
After so long, Himu was asking after her with such gentleness. It touched her deeply. Natasha smiled faintly and replied, “I’ll be fine from tomorrow. I promise.”
Himu didn’t quite grasp the weight of her words. Then again, how could someone understand what Natasha meant when Himu didn’t even understand Natasha herself?
Natasha asked, “Your girlfriend is taking good care of you? You’re doing well?”
Himu hesitated, uncomfortable. He was trying to change the subject. Clearly, he didn’t want to discuss his relationship. Natasha didn’t push further. Finding nothing else to say, Himu offered some perfunctory condolences about Natasha’s father’s death, mentioning he’d been too busy to pay his respects.
Natasha said nothing. Just silence. She let out a long sigh and hung up on her own.
Himu didn’t call back. Perhaps he thought, *Thank God, I’m free.* He had no idea that he was truly escaping—that Natasha was letting him go. The thought never crossed his mind.
Now Natasha called the house. Her mother’s drowsy voice answered with a faint hello. Instantly, Natasha’s chest erupted. Like a parched bird finding a single drop of rain, her whole body flooded with a cool peace. For the first time since leaving home, her mother had picked up her call. Though surely in her sleep. Had she been awake, she would never have answered.
Her mother kept saying hello, hello into the void. On her end, Natasha said nothing—just listened to her mother’s voice with all the hunger of her being. If she spoke, if her mother recognized her voice, the line would snap shut instantly. So she made no sound. But tears rolled freely down her face. *Let her speak once more. Just one more hello, Mother.* Such peace flooded through her. Years—so many years—had never brought her this peace. Then came the click of the line cutting off.
As the night deepened and the world grew silent, the depths of the human heart grew louder. It was now four-thirty in the morning. That threshold moment between the death of deep night and the birth of dawn. From her two diaries, Natasha set aside the poetry one on the nightstand. Then, page by page, she tore the other diary to shreds and burned every piece in the flame of a matchstick. The old diary of so many years flared and crumbled to ash before her eyes, and Natasha stared at it unblinking as it burned. When the burning was done, she gathered some of the ash in her palm and kissed it several times.
She lifted the chair from the room onto the bed, stood on it, and wound her scarf tightly around the fan. She tied the upper end of the rope to the wound scarf, then with a single kick sent the chair crashing down from the bed. Natasha thrashed in agony for a few moments, then gradually grew still. Her body hung from the fan like a dead fish suspended on a hook.
Natasha’s lifeless body swayed in the noose of her scarf, knotted to the fan.