# Proposal Day The coffee shop smelled of burnt caramel and old wood. Arjun had chosen it deliberately—not too modern, not too romantic. A place where, if things went wrong, he could still pretend he'd just dropped by for the ambiance. He arrived fifteen minutes early. This was a mistake. Fifteen minutes alone with his racing thoughts was roughly fourteen minutes and fifty seconds too long. The ring box sat in his pocket like a small, expensive bomb. He'd checked it seventeen times since morning. The diamond was still there. Good. At least that much was certain in a world of increasing uncertainty. Diya was always late. It was one of those things about her—inefficiencies that somehow made her more real, more human. He'd considered this when choosing the time. If she was late, he'd have more time to compose himself. If she was very late, he might compose himself into dust. He ordered coffee. Then changed his mind and ordered tea. Then asked for water instead. The barista, a young man with kind eyes, didn't comment. Arjun had rehearsed the words a hundred times. They came out differently each time—sometimes poetic, sometimes practical, once accidentally in the style of a government official announcing a policy. *In accordance with the terms of my heart, I hereby propose...* But what he'd learned about love was that rehearsal never matched reality. Reality was messier. Reality had Diya's specific way of laughing with her head tilted back, or how she'd bite her lower lip when she was thinking hard about something. Reality had the way she'd looked at him last Tuesday, briefly, unguarded, when she thought he wasn't watching. That's when he'd known. Not in some thunderbolt moment of cinema and strings, but quietly, like a door opening into a room he'd been standing outside for three years. She walked in at 4:47 PM, thirteen minutes late, wearing the blue dress she'd bought last month. She'd done her hair differently. She'd done something different with her eyes—makeup, probably, though he wasn't good at noticing these things. But he noticed today. He noticed everything. "Sorry I'm late," she said, sliding into the chair across from him. "Traffic was insane. And I stopped to pick up those gulab jamuns you like—they're in my bag. We can eat them after. Or now, if you want?" This was so perfectly Diya—the thoughtfulness wrapped around in casual speech, as if bringing his favorite sweets was just what one did on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon. "After," he said. "You okay?" She was studying his face now. "You look weird. Is everything fine? Oh God, is someone sick? Is it your mother?" "No. Everyone's fine." But he could feel it happening—the moment fracturing, his careful setup dissolving into panic. She was worried now. Her hand had come across the table, almost touching his. The coffee shop suddenly felt too small, too full of people pretending not to listen. He'd planned this so carefully. There were supposed to be strings of lights. There was supposed to be... something. The perfect moment, the perfect words. Instead, he took her hand. "Diya, I'm not good at this." "Good at what?" Her eyes were getting rounder. "You're scaring me." "At big moments. At the right words. I've been trying to prepare something for months, and I was going to do it at this restaurant we went to on our third date, remember? And I had it all planned out, but then I realized..." He reached into his pocket, and her hand tightened on his. "I realized that nothing I'd planned was actually what I felt." The couple at the next table had definitely stopped pretending to talk to each other. "What I felt was just... this. Now. You, in that blue dress, worried that my mother might be sick because that's the kind of person you are. So I'm going to ask you now, in this terrible coffee shop where I can't even get the order right, in front of these people who are definitely listening." He pulled out the box. Diya made a small sound—not quite a gasp, not quite a laugh. Her eyes had gone shiny. "Marry me. Please. I'll do better with words later. But right now, this is what I need to say: marry me." She was crying now. Not the graceful tears of cinema, but real tears, messy and uncontrolled. "You're supposed to ask a question," she said. "Will you marry me?" "Yes," she said. "Yes, you absolute idiot." He was crying too, he realized. The kind man behind the counter brought them napkins without being asked. Later, when they were sharing the gulab jamuns from her bag and she was showing the ring to every person who walked past, Arjun thought about all the moments he'd rehearsed. All the perfect words he'd prepared. All the setups and scenes. None of them would have been as true as this—the two of them in an ordinary coffee shop, with burnt caramel in the air and her hand warm in his, saying yes to a future neither of them could see clearly. Outside, the city moved on. Cars honked. People rushed to their next appointment. But here, in this small corner of the world, a man and a woman had decided to build something. Not because the moment was perfect, but because they had finally realized that perfection was always going to be beside the point. The perfection, it turned out, was each other.

 
Today is the eighth of February. The legendary Proposal Day. A date that carries singular significance in my life. Exactly eleven years ago, on this very day, I submitted my thesis proposal to my esteemed project supervisor, Jayan Ariz Sir—with a heart full of hope, mind you; I mean, I submitted my thesis proposal paper. I knew his was not a heart inclined toward mercy. It wasn't. Among the three most stone-hearted men I've ever known, Sir is one of them. Be that as it may, Sir did not disappoint me—he rejected me as expected. For the first time in my life, I proposed to someone and heard 'no.' And that someone was a man! That's how it began. I've been getting rejected ever since, over and over. I'm exhausted from being refused. I can't take it anymore, Sir... Just this once, let someone say 'yes,' even if it's a lie, even if they don't mean it—let them just say, 'I truly love you...'
I know it's all the consequence of sin. No one ever told me that saying 'no' is itself a sin. Some merely cursed me; I foolishly mistook those curses for feminine petulance. Those were times for saying 'no,' for displaying arrogant ego. Now is a terrible time, a time for hearing 'no'! Whoever says 'no' shall hear 'no.' To put it in the logic of computer programming language: rejecting ten plain-faced smart girls with a crooked mouth is equivalent (==) to hearing 'yes' from one famous beauty with a drooping one. It wasn't so long ago—just five years back—I couldn't even speak to girls. They were my own students, yet if I bumped into them on the street, I'd die of shame trying to make conversation! Girls seemed like girls to me; it never occurred to my mind that I could speak to them simply, as human beings. I sought counseling from so many people on how to interact with girls effortlessly! I searched "How to Talk to Girls" on the internet day after day. Walking on one side of the street, spotting a group of beauties approaching from a distance, I'd bolt across to the other side! Only those who've lived through it know how savagely girls can pounce on helpless, timid boys. It happened to me countless times! I didn't need to read any book to learn what Adam-chasing was—the reverse of Eve-teasing. Back then, no one ever saw me walking with a girl. Naturally, when any girl propositioned this fool, what could I do but say things like "if I fall in love, Mother will scold me," or "forgive me, sis," or "Ugh! Do good boys fall in love?" Yes, in those days I either feared girls or simply ignored them out of shame. It's possible I wasn't even paid attention to by the girls, or the few who did pay me attention, I didn't consider them worth paying attention to. What kind of substance exists in the head of a boy who searches another boy's head for substance merely because she's beautiful? Yes, I was terribly devoid of substance. A person who doesn't let life move at its own pace eventually tumbles into a life without rhythm themselves! That's what happened to me.
When you propose to a beauty, either her beauty increases further, or suddenly I myself become ugly. If neither of those things happens, then where on earth do beauties get this miraculous talent for saying 'no' so abruptly? It's simply wrong to propose to them. They'll smile sweetly and say, "Brother dear... let's have ice cream!" Every beauty has her famous boyfriend. I've never once found any beauty's beloved to be smart.

# Beautiful Women

Whenever I see someone with a beautiful woman, my mind immediately starts its refrain: she’s the ugliest creature on earth, my teeth are whiter than hers, I have more hair, my smile is lovelier, I’m cleverer in the head… and so on and so forth! These cute little kittens—why do they hang around with such hideously ugly toads! And then there are the beautiful ones without boyfriends, stuck with monstrous husband-demons instead. What torture!

Beautiful women—they never leave you empty-handed; they either give you pain or separation! They always wound you—lovingly or otherwise! My days pass in crushing on beautiful women’s profile pictures. I sneak glances at their profiles and take loveless wounds. Oh! She doesn’t even know I exist, and here I am, already wounded! Is this what love is? The pain of loving someone and being hurt by them is nothing compared to the pain of not loving them at all yet still being hurt! Who will explain this to beautiful women? Since the beginning of creation, they’ve been draping pearls around the necks of every chimpanzee in the world! Oh fate! Why am I not a chimpanzee? What good is being human if I must spend my life watching monkeys dance in happiness? Why must every other man’s wife be beautiful? The girl I plan to propose to—why does she call me her brother, like her mother’s son? Why was I sent into this world with a brother/uncle/older brother kind of face? Why, why, why? If everyone’s my sister, whom am I supposed to propose to? Why this farcical invention of ‘Propose Day’? I’m handsome, so shouldn’t my beloved be beautiful? Why only the ugly ones conspiring to make handsome men into husband-gods? Why do I love thinking only this—that I’m the most beautiful? Has anyone more beautiful than me ever been born into this world, or ever will be? Then isn’t it the sacred duty and responsibility of beautiful women to simply fall madly in love with me?

God sent three races into the world. The race of humans, the race of jinn, and the race of beautiful women. Those belonging to the third race crack jackfruit on the heads of the first two races, crumble it into puffed rice, and feast. It’s a delicious dish. So when a beautiful woman happens to say ‘I love you,’ I start thinking: ‘Is her stomach upset?’ Or ‘Do beautiful women’s love grow on trees?’ Or ‘What wrong did I commit that I too must say I love you?’ Or ‘Does I love you mean she’s fallen for me? Or is she trying to make me fall for her?’ … Alas! In this lifetime, I never did learn to accept love properly.

Perhaps someone once wanted me to propose to her. Like in films and stories. Down on one knee, offering a rose from my hand. But she left long before this day could come. No one else came asking to be proposed to. Oh! The aftermath of that supervisor’s rejection! Nine years later and still! AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH…! Tell me, project and thesis supervisors—are they another race too? Like, the Supervisor race? I still remember rejecting rejections from my supervisor until the bat-apex sweat wore grooves into the ground, and finally I completed the project wearing iron shoes. Alas! I’ve lost those iron shoes now. Will one pair of shoes become shoes? I’ll give them back the moment I fall in love. Truly! Will one pair of shoes become shoes? Iron ones? … Perhaps not even iron shoes will work anymore. The time is coming to search for steel shoes gradually! People say they write poetry when they fall in love; I started writing poetry just to fall in love. Alas! Now all my poems lie face-down, stripped of rhythm, melody, meter, and measure!

Those beautiful women who are not mine—I want so badly to ask them… are you happy, or not? But why are you?

# What harm would it have done, if only I had known—that I was born into this world for no other reason than to not have you?

It was a long time ago. I was in my third year then. I used one of the most popular phone models of that era—the Nokia 1100. I was an extraordinarily shy boy, simple-minded, a bit of a fool, if I’m being honest. There was a girl, and only through her persistent pushing did I manage, with great difficulty, to talk to her on the phone four or five times a month. Even then, only for seven or eight minutes at most. And we never, ever spoke after midnight. The very idea of calling a girl at that hour was unthinkable to me. I would read books almost all night, sit at the computer making lecture sheets for students, but I never called anyone. With that girl, those conversations stretched on for six months. We never met, yet we felt a strange pull toward each other. I performed recitations regularly at various events back then. At some Pahela Boishakh celebration, she came to hear me recite. That’s when she fell in love with me. But I never saw her. It was 2004 or 2005, before Facebook existed, but life existed. She knew so much about me, though she would never say how, and I never asked. I only knew she studied at DMC, that she was in her first year, that she sang beautifully. She was a quiet, well-mannered girl. Beyond that, I knew almost nothing about her. Because I was pathologically shy, she did ninety percent of the talking during our calls. I mostly just said “yes” and “hmm” and “uh-huh.” She had infinite patience. My dull, ghost-like conversation never bothered her—she kept trying, in every possible way, to draw me out. And she always failed.

One day I had to go to Dhaka for some work. My friend Mufid lived in Shahidullah Hall. He was my friend from Chittagong College, studying soil science at Dhaka University. I stayed with him when I got there. The girl kept calling me, repeatedly asking to meet, and I kept putting her off. Finally, I had to tell Mufid about her. He couldn’t believe it—that *I*, of all people, could talk to a girl on the phone. In Chittagong College, because of my abnormally shy behavior around girls, I’d earned the nickname “Robot.” And now that Robot was talking to a girl on the phone? How was that even possible? Well, under Mufid’s relentless pressure, I reluctantly agreed to meet her. But I laid down two conditions for Zilm. One: we had to meet by the pond at Shahidullah Hall. I’d rather die than meet a girl alone in some secluded place. Two: Mufid had to come with me. If she wanted, Zilm could bring a friend too. Poor thing, seeing no other way out, agreed.

For the first time in my life, I was about to meet a girl. I still remember that evening vividly. The girl came to the pond. And she immediately started calling me, because I wasn’t picking up. I was forced to answer, trembling with fear. “Zilm,” I stammered out, “just… just wait a bit. We’re c-c-coming.” Just those few words and I was drenched in sweat, my voice shaking terribly, I was stuttering and gasping for breath. My heart was pounding relentlessly. Mufid, seeing the state I was in, punched me hard in the left arm and said, “You bastard! You idiot! Come on!” We went downstairs a few minutes later. Mufid practically had to drag me down.

# The Tiger’s Cage

It felt like being dragged before a tiger’s open cage for the first time in my life—I was so terrified, so nervous that I thought I’d die right there. Those two friends had been waiting for nearly half an hour and, exhausted, had settled onto the grass. From a distance, they caught my eye. Zhilom was holding a bunch of red roses, a blue envelope, and she had a friend with her. In that sky-blue dress, she looked absolutely beautiful. “Friend, why did she bring flowers? I’m scared. Let’s skip this, come on, let’s go.” That’s when Mufid grabbed me and practically screamed Zhilom’s name. The moment Zhilom stood up and started moving closer, I blurted out, “Hey, hey, listen—stay right there. Stay there and talk. Otherwise I’m leaving.” She didn’t push it; she just stood there with the envelope and roses in her hands. I was standing and trembling, Mufid gripping me tightly so I wouldn’t run away. It was quite a sight. Now when I remember it, I laugh to myself. What a creature I was then! No sound would come from my throat. All the words in the world seemed tangled up somewhere deep in my throat, and only a few hoarse syllables escaped with great effort. That face-to-face conversation of ours was like an interview. I answered all of Zhilom’s questions with my head bowed, staring at the ground as if there was buried treasure beneath it that I had to keep my eyes on at all costs. I didn’t even notice when Mufid slipped away somewhere, and I realized that Zhilom’s friend wasn’t beside her anymore either. From sheer nervousness, I was sweating profusely, thinking I’d pass out any second. Here was a boy who shakes the stage with his recitations, standing there trembling and stuttering! I kept swallowing, and swallowed all the saliva in my mouth in the process. The moment I left the grounds, my hands went into my pants pocket and never came back out. Anyone seeing me would have thought I’d gotten an itch in a very specific place!

We had been standing at least seven or eight feet apart. Then suddenly I saw Zhilom moving toward me, little by little. I didn’t hesitate—I started backing away. She took two steps forward, I took four back. “Why are you doing this? Won’t you just stand there? I’ve brought these flowers for you. Won’t you take them?” “Please, please, please just stay there. Don’t come closer. Otherwise I’m leaving.” “Okay, okay, fine. But don’t walk backward anymore. You’ll fall! I won’t come close. Just stay there and talk!” “Where are they? Where did they go and leave us alone?” “They’re around here somewhere. Come on, why don’t we sit over there a bit, talk……” And with that, she suddenly moved toward me. Fear seized me. I ran! What a run it was! As I was bolting away, I noticed her collapse on the grass and cry her heart out, the roses scattering all around her. Later, Mufid and her friend managed to calm her down with great difficulty. After Mufid came to the room, I learned from her that Zhilom had torn the letter and envelope to shreds and thrown them into the pond. And despite all this, she never said a single bad word about me. When her friend called me a “coward,” she screamed, “Watch it—don’t say nasty things!” Mufid had told her, “My friend is a bit shy, please don’t take it the wrong way.”

“Actually, as a person he……” Before she could finish, Zhilam had cut her short. “You don’t need to introduce him to me. I know what kind of friend you have.”

I went back to my room with trembling hands and texted her—Forgive me, sister! (It took me several tries, backspacing and rewriting, just to get those few words right.) Her reply came back: Be well. At the end, a smiley emoji. Nothing else! After that, we never exchanged another word or message. A relationship that never truly took root, killed by grievance with reason and hesitation without it.

Yesterday was Rose Day. On that account, the day before, a beautiful woman removed me from her friends list. Perhaps she’d figured me out—that even if I tend to roses and tuberose, I’m fundamentally a gardener, not a lover. Ah! On Rose Day, I wish I could just be a flower merchant; if not the heart, at least I’d get a few rupees. How many Rose Days pass, and no one gives me even a paper rose! Will someone give me a rose? Let it be cheap, faded—withered even. Still? I’d pay the price myself!

Today I wonder: why did I spend my whole life quietly, in secret, weaving love in the depths of my silent heart and leave it at that? Some people can say “I love you” in a moment, with great emotion, without even truly loving. Some people can truly love and yet chew puffed rice day after day, drenched in bitter, pure mustard oil without complaint. Love comes in so many colors, so many forms! The love of those who eat nuts, the love of those who eat puffed rice! “Love kept to oneself” has no value at all. I say, if you’ve truly loved someone, then even if shame makes you want to bite your tongue bloody before saying “I love you,” don’t let your heart bleed. The blood one cannot see—that’s the reddest of all!

O God! If you had to send me to this world, why didn’t you make me a little smarter at loving and a bit more handsome at being loved? If you gave beautiful women so much intellect, why didn’t you give me a little wisdom about love? Why? Why? Why???

Listen, girl! Why won’t you love me, just tell me? If you loved me, I suppose you’d get terribly infested with lice, hm? All this fuss and drama……!!!