April 5
One. At the fisheries officer's office. Talking about fish. Craving rupchanda fry. Why must I eat sandwiches even in this office? . . . Wait, is it right to think this way? If someone came to my office wanting golden biscuits dipped in coffee, what would I do?
It's raining outside. A steady downpour. I want to eat jhalmuri while getting soaked in the rain. The headphones will play... if your heart weeps, come to me . . . I know, no one will come. Even on this rainy day, no one's heart is weeping. Everyone's heart is happy happy. What's the problem? Why should the heart be happy happy in this rain? . . . I'm writing and humming, rain falls in torrents . . . Why did the girl next to me snicker? Was I off-key? Or is she mentally saying 'I love you' to Bappa? . . . Sushanto, you go off, man!
I feel like reading Bhaskar Chakrabarty's poetry. This magician was born with the strange power to keep readers melancholy. On such days, I desperately want to get melancholy in coffee steam. I could read Srijato's poetry while sipping coffee. 'Silk Road' would play softly in the background.
Some flowing prose could be read once more. Joy Goswami's novels or Yellow Spring or In the Land of Pictures, Land of Poetry. Or I could read Mandakranta Sen's poem 'Home' and, overcome by the pointless desire to return home, tell my job 'to hell with it' again and again!
The talk continues. Ugh! Why must we discuss fish while eating samosas?
Two. I went to Sylhet International Cricket Stadium. Not to hit fours and sixes, but to wander around. So many poses, so much showing off, so much laughter! Today some new poses were born. Nature makes everyone quite childlike. Facebook has given birth to some novel forms of childishness. Inside the stadium: Green Gallery, outside: Green Tea Garden. There's no Green Gallery this large anywhere else. The Tea Garden's view is enchanting, makes you want to just keep taking pictures. All of Sylhet seems like a shooting spot. Rain-soaked Sylhet wouldn't send even the most aesthetically challenged fool home empty-handed—I'd bet on it. Nature's magic only increases longing. I like thinking this: to stay alive, one needs a green hill, a mystical river, a noble sky, and my eternally youthful beloved. They would grow little by little, yet never grow old. If they guaranteed livelihood, I'd be willing to stay here; I could arrange life's provisions myself. The people here are somewhat like those from Chittagong—both their wealth and spirit are quite expansive. They have tremendous self-respect, so one must tread carefully. Though actually, throughout Bangladesh, ordinary people are more or less the same. We are deeply warm-hearted. To come close, nothing much is needed beyond a smile.
When I used to recite, I loved delivering that poem—this generous invitation to you all . . . come out once to this picture-like country . . . I went to Korea for training once, where officers from many countries were present. In my conference presentation, I deliberately and quite irrelevantly introduced our natural beauty and extended that poem's noble invitation. Those who go abroad for training could do this work. Their overflowing dollars certainly wouldn't go to waste.
Three. Hills right behind, flower gardens beside, rows of trees, river a little distance away. Birds call through the gaps in leaves. Once you fall asleep here, that supremely peaceful sleep will never break—not even from intoxicating wild winds or rain's continuous endless falling. Rickshaws and cycles navigate the potholes and bumps of the side road with tinkling sounds. Lying there, you can hear the harmony of unearthly rhythms or the boatman's call from moored boats, shattering the silence of angry, weary afternoons—O brother . . . !!
What a beautiful crematorium! Makes you want to die just looking at it!
I came to the Family Planning office. Hearing all sorts of amusing things. Can't tell everything. Let me share one. A lady doctor is briefing us. She said, "Family planning doesn't always seem good. Take me, for instance—I have two children. My son is in fourth year at BUET. My daughter got into Dhaka Medical last time. I didn't realize earlier that they would do so well. If I'd known, I would have had a few more. The country would have benefited too. Now there's nothing to be done. If you have more children, you must raise them all properly. . . ." One of her remarks was epic: "If you honor people, you yourselves will be 'honored.'"
Four. Happiness is good food with good people.
Sylhet town stays on this rooftop!!
April 6
One. Hills upon hills . . . oh my, oh my!!
In the hills beside the Tourism Motel . . .
I'll give you all the money from your Swiss bank, in return I'll take this hill.
Two. Happiness is . . . slow driving past tea gardens in the rain-bathed declining afternoon
Three. I visited Hazrat Chasni Pir's shrine. This shrine has many monkeys. Running here and there, staring at us, making faces at will, greeting us in their language, taking food quite like gentlemen when offered and eating it nicely. The babies are even more advanced—they're monkeys from birth! I didn't know monkeys could pose so beautifully. Not one objection. They made me completely their own! Absolutely sticking out tongues and grimacing for photos! I couldn't understand the situation. Do they find me familiar when they see me?
Now wandering in Lakkatura Tea Garden. . . . Last light of evening, stay a little longer . . .
April 8
On the road to South Dhaka . . . going to Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's temple.
His stand against Brahmanism and rigid caste system is astonishing and admirable. All the extra advantages a person gets due to their birth identity gradually cripple them. Let people survive in society based on their work identity. Why should a king's son become king? Gopal, the greatest king of the Pala dynasty, was no prince. Good qualities can never be inherited. If that were possible, Rabindranath's son could have become someone notable in Bengali literature. Sri Chaitanya explained these things to people. He spent his life teaching love for humanity, forgiveness, nobility, love for every living being. At least two and a half lakh verses have been composed about him or his philosophy in Bengali literature. That's no small matter! He was learned in philosophy and various scriptures. Many Eastern and Western scholars have written about his erudition. I personally like him for his liberal mindset, not hating people, and working throughout his life against violent class aristocracy.
April 9
One. When you see bookstalls cum fast food corners at railway stations, understand that there aren't many books there—at best you might find books like "Learn Hebrew in 30 Days." Here, while waiting for trains, people don't read books, they munch nuts—alone, mostly. People change their behavior according to countries. The same me who, while in Korea, would wrap chewing gum in tissue and carry it in my pocket for hours searching for a dustbin when I couldn't find a place to throw it, casually throws coffee cups here without thinking—not because public kissing is a crime here while littering publicly isn't, but because we've turned the entire country into a dustbin, so anything can be thrown anywhere. Here, garbage stays outside dustbins; the inside is occupied by people and dogs. They sleep in them under the unwritten agreement that no one will bite anyone. None of them has a place to sleep—friendship needs no greater similarity than this.
Don't have time to tour the whole country, yet want to know what kind of people they are, what they do, how they think, what they eat? Visit their railway station once. Spend two hours, you'll know everything. I'd bet that no other type of human exists in that country. You'll find everyone from saints to devils. Human diversity will enchant you. The work that seems utterly meaningless to you, someone is doing with great importance. Here people wander around in strange schemes. Those awake at midnight are surely not ordinary people. Ordinary people's work is eating by 10 PM and sleeping. Night transforms people. Measuring night people by day people's standards is sheer foolishness. As night deepens at the station, diversity increases. Night is deeply mysterious. This mystery's power is infinite.
A little doll-like girl came forward holding her toy high. I was pinching her soft cheeks when I saw police asking someone something, and he threw something aside and ran off. I saw it was a packet of ganja. Two extremely beautiful young women were engaged in some playful banter. I was watching them, feeling good, desperately wishing the train would come even later. I felt like reading Humayun Ahmed's "Gouripur Junction" right then!
Returning from the station on bike. Let me tell you about a road. Deserted road, no one ahead or behind, no lights either. There are some glowing eyes. Those are cats'. Some semi-ghostly shadows. Those are night-awake trees'. A few pieces of sharp, spine-chilling screams. Those are jackals'. Much more like this. Police stopped us. We were talking and they were interrogating. For some reason they didn't say much more. We were answering their questions very naturally. That's probably why. Ordinary people would be afraid when police interrogate, wouldn't stay this relaxed. That's the rule. Rule-breaking people aren't very convenient. They didn't find us convenient.
After all that, I came under Keane Bridge. Sitting by the Surma. Some people around are awake—they just stay awake; not for any scheme, just like that. They watch the night river. The night river also changes some people. They come here to be changed. Some people love to be changed at special moments. On the other side of the bridge: some debauched youth's revelry around a debauched body. Why did I say debauched? Do bodies get debauched? In this debauched society, only publicly debauched bodies are debauched bodies. Right beside this, dogs are rummaging through filth. Homeless people are lying on the footpath. In the river water's reflection, the night lights are consorting with the moon.
Thus another old night passes away.
I came for tea at the nearby shop. Blackish, utterly disgusting tea. A dog would eat the filthiest garbage but wouldn't drink this tea. We're drinking that tea with great relish. "Ittyadi's" tu-tu-tu tu-tu-tara is playing in my head, Marjina's father got beaten up . .
Why is this song playing at such an odd hour? Pointless!
The bike moves again. Some certified madmen are dancing in the middle of the road. The bike stops. Now I’m walking on the Queen Bridge. The way it feels to grip the bridge railing and stare fixedly at the night river flowing below — I never knew it before. I begin to feel I am the river itself. Cars rush past, the bridge trembles.
If I don’t return home tonight, what would happen? No one waits for me anymore!!!
Two. On a night like this, riding the bike 25 kilometers down the wrong road feels like the most right thing to do at this moment. We kept racing along, making mistakes with great joy. There are certain mistakes that haunt you with regret if you don’t make them — your whole life passes in that regret. Cutting through the cold wind that shoots toward us like arrows, floating forward feels like the greatest happiness. Life is right here! A little later, regretting that we’ll have to find the right road and leave this wrong one behind, singing off-key at the top of my lungs, it strikes me that this wrong tune is also a tune, just as the wrong road is also a road.
Just now I set “Tonight in the moonlight, everyone has gone to the forest” to the tune of “The Final Countdown.” It didn’t sound too bad. I’m singing one Bangladeshi film song to the tune of another, in an utterly awful voice and melody. Singing “My eyelids won’t fall” to the tune of “May no eclipse touch that moon-face,” adding some lines to turn it into a rap song. Why does it feel so good to sing terribly sometimes?
We came to visit Nazimgarh Resorts. How beautiful everything is all around! Rows and rows of trees, a road in the middle. Hills arranged with various carefully organized things. I struck up a conversation with the guard. It costs at least eleven thousand six taka to stay here one night. Just looking makes you want to stay! But…
I returned to where I live. No one to talk to, except that moon… Come, soak your limbs in this wax-moonlight and let’s talk…
Clarification. Those who saw the word “one night” and thought something fishy was in this piece, I suggest they watch Uttam-Suchitra’s “One Night” and prepare to be disappointed.
Three. Happiness is… sitting on the lowest steps by the pond ghat on a moonlit night, feet soaked in silvery water.
Dense rows of trees line the pond’s edge. The pond’s clear body like an enormous plate. The continuous silk-textured call of crickets. Some night birds’ chatter. Insects moving stealthily through gaps in tender grass. Fish bubbles darting here and there. The joy of touching small leaves of little trees. White building plaster flaking off, inviting frescoes. Each thrown stone cutting through waves above. The splash and patter of water.
This is such a confusing time. A time when you want to love the wrong person at the wrong moment. A time when you want to indulge someone even knowing you can’t offer them shelter.
Four. Happiness is… turning the microphone to full volume and all the colleagues dancing together, shouting!
A little while ago I saw a fire-blazing beauty going by rickshaw. Absolutely mind-blowing type of stunning beauty! My head is still spinning! Why should a girl be so beautiful? Just absurd! I was stuck in traffic, the girl was looking. (She really was. Absolutely true! I swear on Sunny Leone!) I’m returning from seeing Nazimgarh Resorts and Shuktara Nature Retreat. My eyes are already intoxicated, and on top of that this Katrina was pure lethality! I don’t need to see heavenly apsaras anymore, this Sylheti girl has driven me mad. Now there’s no barrier to going to hell.