In the Dim Light of Faces

The fading evening seems like the only solace—the sole escape from today's melancholy spell; stepping past the decay of withered leaves, my eyes caught a green dot, a single green leaf—as if this incorporeal shadow trembled with the pulse of life.

Once evening falls, their tea shop gets terribly crowded...what awful commotion!

Binu left four years ago today; yet even now someone seems to whisper her name in my ear! Creating an unbearable melody in my brain—why I never sought deliverance from this, I cannot say for certain.

Binu's eyes would often grow dim...simply from my hurled rejections. When she began to cry, an unimaginable tenderness would gather in her eyes, yet I remained a person devoid of such tenderness.

I come here sometimes and sit, trying to touch what remains of Binu's final memory.

Though there is another particular reason, of course.

My scent was what Binu loved most; without it, she would become terribly restless! Of course, now she has no restlessness left—having forgotten all resentment, she has given me peace.

Sometimes I wonder—wasn't this peace exactly what I had wanted...or was it?

The commotion has grown louder; it's only natural that such fountains of talk should burst forth at the tea shop. Tuberose was Binu's favorite flower—tuberose has such an intense fragrance.

Her restlessness around me was impossibly excessive—precisely why I had distanced myself from her; but I never understood that she would leave me in such profound silence.

Once Binu told me she wanted to write me a letter—she did send the letter, but with no salutation; what grievance she held against me, I don't know! Though I never wanted to know, either.

Well, even if I had wanted to know—would she have given me an answer?

Binu never wanted to understand life's realities; if she were alive today...she might have spent her whole life just that way.

Dim darkness touched my body—evening has come, and with the call to prayer echoing around us, the birds' final flutter seems to herald the beginning of a new hour of worship.

Today I'm remembering Binu so vividly, her habit of staying close to me—I was terribly fond of that. How is she now?

Apart from wanting to embrace me—Binu never really wanted anything else. The last day we spoke, did my words cause Binu terrible pain? Why was there no time left for me to know?

Binu had a strange gift, bestowed by the Creator;
she could write about her feelings for me. That Binu had never written anything before—you could never tell from reading her work; she could give such perfect verbal form to our moments together.

I've had the writing habit for a long time, and it was my deep love for writing that made Binu's gift powerfully attract me. Throughout all her writing—she had placed me; because Binu loved me impossibly much.

There was another strange thing—she could never write without my presence, my touch, the tenderness of my voice; she herself had made this clear to me once.

I didn't believe it at first—but as time passed...even that statement of Binu's seemed to become an absolute truth.

Binu once told me—if our contact were severed, she would start writing false stories. Still, I know that only my echo resonates in the words of her feelings.

Even after our contact was broken, she wrote hundreds of pages about me...none of which she can touch and see today.

Everything that existed between us—it's all somehow silent, like a corpse crushed under a train. Now it strikes me forcefully that I had strangled Binu's feelings with my own hands—the sole reason being: the intoxication of freedom. I had wanted freedom.

Often Binu's excessive love would make me feel guilty, I would feel suffocated, and the peace she gave me began to seem like sorrow after a while—though it wasn't her fault at all.

My such...stubborn thinking also changed—starting just a few days after Binu left...I began searching for her again; but where could I find her?

At this moment I'm having terrible difficulty breathing, terrible thirst with a clear line of suppressed pain on one side of my chest; suddenly someone silently placed a hand on my back, and my heartbeat seemed to stop!

Who?

I gathered courage and turned around...
In the darkness, the face appears dim...

Who are you?