Thought: Seven Hundred Fifty ............................................................... One. Most of us think this way: Whether you are good or bad in the eyes of the whole world is not for me to see. You are good to me, then you are good; you are bad to me, then you are bad. That's all! Two. All the pleasure and pain are wound tight around you, Where exactly do I flee to—can you tell me that much? Three. You want to know about my lover, do you? Listen then: even when he has the chance to touch me, he doesn't; and when he doesn't have the chance to touch me, he touches just anyone but me! Four. Our joys are written across the eyes and face, Let our joys lie beside the breath. Let some other ruin coil in the heart, Let life be packed with something else's country. Five. I always thought you were my life's greatest gain, that you poured life into me. But sometimes, I don't know why, it feels like you never set things right in this life. I was who I was before, in the circumstances I was in—those things I didn't have, those sorrows, I could have borne them well enough, even complained about them. But what is the point of life showing me something I will never have? Why was there any need to dangle before me something I can never possess? Everything feels tangled. Nothing works out. Nothing fits together; if anything, it only grows more shattered with each passing day. I wish I could become a terribly bad person. But I can't. I've seen bad people—they cheat others, they kill, they maim, but they get what they want. Though people call them demons, inhuman, still they live in happiness, they lose nothing they love. Those who give up everything to keep everything right, to live well—they alone are truly impoverished. Think about it: even now there's someone to torment you. Who will torment you if I'm not here? Even now you exist; if you go and I remain, then this thought will pain me—that when the person was here, I had plenty of time to tell him everything, yet I never told him anything. Then even if I want to lay it all bare, whether those words will ever reach you, how will I know that day? Better to be scolded, to scold, to take what I wish. We don't know when time will slip into its final moment. Rather, if I go first, treasure carefully whatever words I leave behind. When I no longer torment you, if one day you terribly miss my unrest, those words—unfold them then. All the time I've been with you, all of this—I've given you more restlessness than happiness! I will never have you close, never have the chance to lie beside you and tell you stories. Even if it happens once or twice, perhaps those words won't come that day. You can't always have everything you want, not unless it comes from within. Today I felt like speaking, so I spoke. Whether I'll ever speak like this again, whether it will happen—I don't know. Being able to tell you everything seems to me a great fortune; holding words inside the heart is such painful work!
# The Plaster of Thought-Walls
Words held back inside grow larger and larger, and when the weight of accumulated speech becomes heavier than the person carrying it, that person begins to gasp for breath and thinks, *Oh, if only I could give these words to someone!* Words that cannot be given away gradually kill the person from within.
What I know, what I have come to understand—these are my own. I have no desire to dazzle you or to be dazzled by you. You’ve already seen how foolish and overly sentimental a girl I am, and I know you know this. This is precisely why I hold nothing back. Since you already understand me as I am, what is the point of presenting myself otherwise? Even if I said nothing, even if I let you understand nothing, could you not see what I truly am? You are not so simple-minded as that—simplicity and foolishness are entirely different things. You are simple, but neither foolish nor ignorant.
People protest injustice to keep the human conscience awake. And I speak to you of my love, display it, try to prove it—all to keep my love alive and awake. If you were to forget, if by some error you were to forget, I remind you: *I still love you, in the same way, madly.*
Six. You speak in a way that leaves me unable to find direction. I cannot go elsewhere, yet there is no place for me with you either. I don’t know what to hold, what to release, or what to do. I don’t like being in such turmoil.
I know you will always be this way with me. But I cannot figure out what I should do, how I should do it. Then nothing else works in my mind. I think, *Let me go somewhere else, where I won’t have the chance to reach you either, nor any compulsion to go anywhere else.* If such a place existed, it would be wonderful.
When I am caught in such doubt, it finishes me. When I forget everything, forget even myself, then I am well. Doubt is the most lethal weapon for destroying a person.
Seven. The distance between reality and dream is vast as sky from earth. To dream, you need only close your eyes in sleep and feel—that suffices. But if you want something in reality, effort and time are not optional; they are mandatory. Everything else must be set aside. Set aside means *set aside entirely*. You cannot have joy in every direction. To gain one joy, you must relinquish another. Of all the failed people I have known in this life, most failed to achieve one kind of joy yet succeeded in another—a joy perhaps few others have found. Looked at this way, success and failure are both simply lifestyles, nothing more. You will often notice: the joy you pursue before success comes is the same joy successful people pursue only *after* they have arrived. Pursue the later joy first, and this is what happens. Accept this: you will not get all of life’s joys at once. For one, you must surrender another.
Thought: Seven Hundred Fifty-One
………………………………………………………
I spoke to you a little yesterday, and because of that, you haven’t even found time to call today. You know that no matter what happens, I would still wait for your call—and yet you haven’t called. You won’t call either, I know, because I’ve become a thorn in your throat now, completely. Nothing about me is tolerable to you anymore. All I do is complain, you see—whine and fret and nag. You know I’m ill, my headaches won’t stop, and yet you didn’t think it necessary to call and ask, to speak with me. You know that if you called, I wouldn’t be wholly well perhaps, but mentally I’d recover halfway—that mental strength would come to me—you know all this, but you don’t care about any of it.
Even after I had coronavirus, you spoke for only a few minutes one day and then left it at that. After that, forget about calling—you couldn’t even be bothered to check on me by message. For days I asked, at least five times: send me those two t-shirts from your place, the ones you wear, I’ll put them on. Do you think I asked because I have no nightshirts? I asked for the ones you’ve worn yourself, because I hardly ever get to be near you. If I wore your t-shirt, I thought, it would feel as though you were with me, I could feel you a little more—that’s why I asked. You even said you’d send them, but ten, fifteen days have passed since I asked, and not once in all that time have you sent them. You could have easily arranged for your office peon or your driver to deliver them, but the truth is, you don’t want to.
Before that, I asked you for a nose ring. I didn’t ask you for a diamond nose ring. I asked you for a little one—the kind you can wear all the time. If it were made of metal, it would get damaged after a few days of wearing it, so I asked you to get me a tiny gold one. I asked you to go yourself and buy it, because I wanted to wear something you’d chosen with your own hands. Besides, girls wear nose rings after marriage, and it’s always that one person who buys them for her. You’re everything to me, so that’s why I asked you. A tiny gold nose ring would cost maybe fifteen hundred rupees at most—you couldn’t even afford to give me that much, though you spend far more than that on your books.
You were the one who mentioned diamonds, not me. I didn’t say it, didn’t ask for it, don’t ask for it now. I only wanted a nose ring from you—something I could wear all the time, made of whatever material—just as long as it came from you, and I would have accepted it with joy and worn it happily. Yet you keep putting it off, saying today or tomorrow, avoiding it, I know. And after all this, even though I understand everything, I bear it all and reach out first, always telling myself the fault is mine, that I’m the one who quarrels with you, who makes trouble, and that’s why you care about nothing I ask for. And even then, when I come near, you pull away, try to keep your distance. I understand you want to withdraw, but I pretend not to understand and come again, again and again. And yet it’s still my fault!
# The Plaster of Thought-Walls
When a person buys something for themselves, the happiness is shallow—nothing compared to the thousand-fold joy of adorning someone you love, of being able to give them something. There’s a deep contentment that settles in: *she wears what I gave her*. It makes the person you love feel even more yours; you want to claim them, to say, *she is mine*.
The other day I told you: I’ll make you a Panjabi. Just tell me your size. I’ve wanted for so long to give you a Panjabi of my own choosing, stitched by my own hands. But corona came, and my own illness—two Eids passed, and still I couldn’t give you anything. You don’t know how much that hurt me. I never told you this before, but I thought when I finally do it, I’ll let you know then. Now things have settled a bit, and your birthday is coming again. If I do the stitching myself, even after bringing the cloth from the tailor, it’ll take another month. That’s why I wanted to start little by little beforehand. You know how much there is to do at home, how much studying. I can’t just rush through things. I have to move forward, bit by bit.
That day I asked you so many times—just tell me your size—and still you wouldn’t. Maybe you thought I’d chosen this path now to keep you bound to me, to please you. But I’d already thought this through long ago. Even if I’d told you, you wouldn’t have believed me. How much does a Panjabi cost anyway? I would have bought it with my own money. I wouldn’t have gone to Abbu with my hand out for something so small. I would never have given you anything you couldn’t wear, anything below standard. You could at least have let me try, to see what I’d do!
But you wouldn’t even allow me that. I know you say *later*, *later*—but that later will never come. I’ve become a burden to you in every way. Otherwise, how could you have said what you said yesterday, that I should give up love and just keep dogs instead? When I ask your loved one something, it becomes an interrogation, a demand for justification. Yet the loved one—I hear—has every right to know everything! I am your beloved in name alone, but I’ve never truly reached you in any other way. You’ve always built a subtle wall between us, and I see it, but you won’t let me know you see it. You think I won’t understand. And I won’t ask you for anything anymore—no claim, no plea, no wish.
I’m trying to become what you want, but I keep failing. I was never truly yours, you see. If I were, you wouldn’t deprive me of everything like this. Say what you will, everyone else in your life—your family—they have their place with you. They get your full attention and support. You say you don’t account to them for anything, you say so many things, but I know the truth: if they asked you for an account, you’d give it. You never let them reach that point.
They have everything from you—your attention, your care, your company, your love—without ever having to ask for it. And I am merely something external to all that, perhaps even less of a priority to you than your friends. I am no different to you from any five strangers you might pass on the street. If you truly believe that in doing all this, you are right, that whatever you do is right, then do as you see fit. I have pushed hard for so long, but I will push no longer. Do what seems good to you, do what you believe is just.
I am trying desperately to fall silent, to disappear into myself, but I cannot break free from this habit of caring. You have become so woven into my blood that to separate myself from you now means wounding some essential part of myself. And I am afraid—afraid of what this might do to me, because I no longer know if I have the strength to bear it. I never imagined I would arrive at such a place, where I would become a stranger even to myself. I was never this unmoored before. I had always possessed complete command over myself.
So much has happened in my life, and yet never have I felt so utterly helpless, so alone, so adrift. I was always firm within myself; I held everything together with a strictness that bordered on certainty, managed everything without hesitation or doubt. But that I would one day become so defenseless, so numb—that never crossed my mind. And through it all, I had never collapsed, never broken down mentally, never surrendered to anything. Yet here I am, transformed into this. I look at myself in astonishment, and I feel such contempt for what I have become. This person whom no one has ever been able to shake, not in the slightest—that very person is now defeated by something as cheap as love. It is almost comic to imagine. Yes, love is terribly cheap. Otherwise why would anyone cast it aside so easily? Because it is so worthless, so devoid of value, and in the snare of this cheapness I have finally been caught. How strange it is! How a person can be so unshaken and suddenly fall to something as worthless as love—and for that surrender, I feel only endless contempt for myself.
Reflection: Seven Hundred and Fifty-Two
………………………………………………………
One. Everything runs smoothly for you all day long, but the moment you sit down to talk with me, suddenly the entire kingdom of your troubles springs into being. Day after day you arrive with a different crisis. One day it’s your own problem, the next your friend’s, then your friend’s mother’s. You have a complete record of every conversation we’ve had—go back and listen to them one by one. Listen to how I speak, and how you respond. If you truly heard how many times you’ve managed to have a real conversation with me, you’d find the answers to all your questions on your own.
But tell me this: why are you forcing this relationship to survive? You have so many problems with talking to me—this problem, that problem—did someone compel you to stay with me? Why are you clinging to it this way? Every time I can’t answer because something’s come up, you immediately get busy on another phone. What is all this? Just last night you told me you’d use the nebulizer, and an hour later when I called, there you were—busy on another phone! Yet when you’re talking with me, you act as though you’re suffocating, as if you can barely breathe. Who were you talking to? Only you and the Creator know.
I’ve noticed this for a long time now—you won’t talk to me, yet you stay awake all night. But the moment it’s time to talk with me, suddenly you’re overflowing with creative excuses. If you can’t give a relationship even a minimum of time, what’s the point in keeping it hanging? Why can’t you simply say that it’s become impossible for you? I’ll cause trouble a hundred times because you won’t give me your attention, because you’re always trying to evade everything. And now you’re telling me you don’t even know what behavior you’re showing me!
You can’t hold someone this way—neither keeping them close nor letting them go. What quicksand have I sunk into? Only God knows. I want freedom. I can’t bear this daily anguish anymore. I truly want to be free of this. I want my open sky back. This cramped room is suffocating me; I feel as though I’ll simply shatter into pieces. I don’t want anything else—I just want freedom from this. Just show me the path to my liberation. When the heart commits a wrong, it is the heart itself that must pay the price.
Show me a way out, truly. Otherwise, just keeping myself alive will become the challenge. I feel mad—absolutely mad—all the time, being myself!
Two. You keep lying to me, one falsehood after another, and you know very well—you know exactly what lies you’ve been feeding me all this time. What did you think? That I’d weep for you? That I’d suffer? That I’d try to forget you, to stay forgotten, torturing myself day after day?
Ha! Ha! Ha! I’d sooner beat myself black and blue than shed a tear for a deceiver. I’ve always known all of this. I know who deserves my tears and who doesn’t.
If there is not a single person in my world whose tears I deserve, I would still spend the rest of my life in profound joy, without a shred of regret. I hold no contempt for myself, no despair. My parents are still alive, and for these two people alone, I can spend what remains of my life in solitude, without complaint or bitterness. Rather, I thank you for showing me all this beforehand. Seeing the truth before it is too late saves one from immense harm, and I offer countless thanks to the Creator for opening my eyes.
Thank you for everything you have done with me. I feel blessed and strong now. It seems life has taught me something anew, shown me something anew. I am grateful to my Creator. Just know this: the pain, the longing, the yearning that lived in my heart all these years for you, because of you, in the absence of your love—the place reserved for reverence, for ultimate love and dignity—all of that has been washed clean and made clear. And for this I thank you, because despite yourself, your actions, your behavior have proven that for someone like you, suffering, emotion, love are merely toys to play with.
My own love, my own emotions—I will not squander them again on the wrong person, not even in my dying breath. For whatever you made sport of with my love, my feelings, I am deeply, profoundly grateful, because without that I would have kept you there all my life in a hollow place of affection, humiliating and diminishing myself. Thank you, thank you countless times for all that you have done to me.
Love! What hollow nonsense!
If I had known that love was such arduous, impossible work, I would have done penance a hundred times a day, clasping my ears in contrition, yet I would never have loved anyone. Love is not a task for human beings. It is the work of djinn and demons. May Allah forgive me. I beg forgiveness. I have erred. I erred in loving, and now I ask for mercy. Only Allah the Eternal knows by what mistake I came to love one day! There is no greater sin than love, no second one like it.
Thought: Seven Hundred Fifty-Three
………………………………………………………
One. How I wish there were a place, far away,
where I might have a small, simple life,
away from the crowds,
far from all clamor—
a place that would be mine alone,
where I could spend the remaining hours
with myself, in the company of myself!
A quiet life, untouched.
So little did I ask of life,
just this small, ordinary thing—nothing more!
Yet how I fell, alas, into this pyre of a Ravana’s making—who can say?
Two. I am no longer a child. You keep me always hungry, always thirsty, never quite full, and so I cry out to you like a child, perpetually begging for food. And my food is your love, your tenderness, your voice on the phone, your messages—all of it.
One day, give me my proper nourishment, and then see if I still cling to you like a child. A child understands tenderness and love—just as I understand everything. When something is missing from what is mine, it is then I torment you so. To deprive me of love is a crime, nothing less. When you rob me of your affection, remember this: you are committing a wrong against me. I have every right to receive complete love from the one I love. If you deny me that, then that is your affair.
Three. Tell me—does every person harbor a serpent within? When I look inward, it hardly seems so, yet when I look around me, why do I always feel it? Is this merely the mind’s deception? Or is it truly so? I often think that everyone around me lies in wait like this, ready to strike at any moment, waiting only for the right opportunity to raise their hood.
Four. Souvik, how I miss you, do you know? I wonder if your hair, your lips, your smile will change with time. Whether they do or not, I love you—you and only you, forever. I wish I could lay the whole world’s happiness at your feet. I wish I could cradle you in my breast, and then nestle into yours. How it thrills me to stand before the mirror dressed as a bride! Perhaps it feels so wonderful only because what I have is not yet mine—I am merely imagining it as such. Don’t people live by thinking of distant things as near? Tell me, isn’t that so?
Oh, how beautifully our wedding should have been! A registry marriage, wasn’t it? First without telling the family, then two years later, revealing it all to them, a proper wedding. Our engagement—or blessing, as you might call it—it would have been so lovely. Just family and a few close friends, we had decided together to keep it simple.
Many would have said things, thought things. After all, we are of two faiths! But what of it? I would have won everyone over somehow. Though I knew well that neither of our families would ever have agreed. Yet somehow, the wedding would have happened. Even on that day, you would have scolded me about one thing or another. And yet I would have married you—that man, always lounging about! On our blessing, your finger would have worn the ring I placed there. Oh, how beautiful that would have been!
I would have been mischievous on that day, laughing, dancing. You would have said, “When will you ever grow up, Ray?” And I would have answered, “Never.”
# The Plaster of Thought-Walls
“Hehehe.” Even on our wedding day I would hint at you, gesture to you again and again, “I’ll be a mother.” Again and again I’d say it, whisper it in your ear. Everyone would ask, “What’s she saying?” and you’d blush crimson with shame. I would laugh—the happiest laugh I possessed. And you would fall in love with my laughter all over again that day.
When I left—at the time of departure—I didn’t cry. Not a single tear. I wasn’t walking into a prison with some stranger, after all, so why would I cry? I was going to my own person. Why would I cry? We didn’t go to your family’s house, because most of our people on both sides wouldn’t accept our marriage anyway. We moved into a small two-room flat. Somewhere with both our offices within reach. That’s where I would come home and cry—cry abundantly. Happy tears; my happiness, the happiness of a household. What I think is this: we must have been husband and wife in some past life, surely. No one would feel this way for merely a lover! And what kind of fool loves only his beloved like this?
I never slept without you. We fought constantly. You would often stop speaking to me, sulking. And yet I wouldn’t stay alone, never slept by myself at night. Neither did you. We became habit for each other. Even after fighting and sleeping, you would lay your right hand across my body so I wouldn’t fall from the bed in my sleep. Hehehe. We never spoke during our quarrels, not really. Still, I would wait—to sit with you at night, to eat with you. Both of us were caught up in work all day. Even when you were angry, I’d chatter on alone, making you angrier still!
The nights were bitterly cold. I would lie pressed against your back. I’d hint—I want that. You would respond. All my wounded pride and your ego we would wash away together, the two of us. There would be so much talk during those times. And I would say, “When will I become a mother?” You’d laugh again. “Riiiiight, is that the only thing you can think about?” I’d bite your lip immediately. My lips would vanish into yours. You’d hold me so tightly, and I’d grip your back even harder, my nails drawing crescents.
I would disappear completely into your chest. Like an oyster I’d sink into the ocean. Into my own ocean, mine alone, my only ocean—I would plunge into it entirely!
Thought: Seven Hundred Fifty-Four
………………………………………………………
One. Dear Mother,
You were wise not to come to this planet called Earth.
Here, when dusk slips away and night settles in, every person becomes like a solitary island unto themselves. The more glitter and color visible on the city walls, the more colorless in truth are those very walls, down to each brick and stone! In every speck of dust dwells suffering, suffering, and suffering again.
Here people drape their melancholy in laughter’s shield; they sketch the wings of dreams with the henna of lies. I tell you truly, here every single person suffers from a strange, incurable affliction.
You were right not to come. And yet, sometimes I think—had you come, I would have filled your little room with dolls upon dolls. I would have stocked every corner with all your favorite foods.
You know, when your mother was very small, our household knew terrible want. One day she would eat; the next day there would be nothing. How many nights, how many days she spent lying on a rush mat spread over bare earth, going without food—you cannot even imagine it. Your mother could sense it: your grandmother’s great torment at not being able to feed her children. That sorrowful woman wept behind her shawl, sobbed through countless sleepless nights, and no one ever knew her suffering.
Mother, I would never have let such deprivation touch your home!
I would have watched you grow, bit by bit, right before my eyes. Your mischief would have filled every corner of my house, every inch of it. Every morning I would have braided your long hair, and you—sweet and small—would have danced and swayed your way to school while I gazed after you, lost in wonder.
I would have taught you that love is the world itself, that humanity is life, and that death is art. I would have taught you further that freedom from greed is glory, that selflessness is strength, and that compassion means drowning in wealth.
But none of it came to be.
And yet, even now, my days revolve around you. Thinking of you, I anoint my eyes and face with a certain kind of happiness and go on living. All my imagining, all my peace, all my years orbit around you—held fast in my mind, my mind’s depths, my heart, my very soul.
When I think of you, I understand: death does not mean non-existence, loss does not mean forgetting, failure does not mean the final word. You will be well. I will keep you well.
Two. You still haunt this sorrowful soul like a specter. In our house, in springtime… do not call me close, me, this person you have forgotten! I have filled myself with you in my most joyful space. Yet what troubles me most is this: I did that work without love!
How do you remain with them, unmoved by their endless envy? About you, it can only be said: you are a floating island. That island drifts across the sky, does not ride the surface of water. You are a soul, certainly, but no lover!
How do you dwell with such a simple woman, without the company of gods or devils? When you grew excited as the emperor of thrones, did descending from it not pain you, truly? Even now, bearing the weight of immortal indecency, how do you manage the poor man impoverished in mental wealth?
Trust and obstacle—these suffice for living! I will rent a house for myself. How do you live with love? I wonder often. How well do you know love? How do you dwell with a stranger?
Three. Yesterday, lying beneath a soft blanket, a dream took birth in my eyes. In every dream, someone wins, someone loses.
# Who Won in My Dream? Who Lost?
Who won in my dream? And who, pray tell, was defeated?
I have changed my mind again. Tired of chasing victory for myself, I have set the word “victory” aside. These days, the dreams I nurture contain mostly love.
In that dream, who was the hunter? And who the hunted? When love arrives, everything turns grey! I have never kept account of who fell into whose hands in the struggle between desire and strength.
What anyone wants, or what anyone grieves for—it depends largely on whether they have fallen in love or not. Those who weep without loving at all—whatever they have gained is nothing like love, nothing remotely akin to it.
Evening came, and ever since, this image alone has clung to my eyes—only us—you and I, together we have brought forth a poem of sorrow. The intoxication of worship has bound us more firmly than it binds others.
Once someone passes through such inspiration, they reach out with tenderness. Some can no longer pray, yet when they choose to love, they do not drift into the current of censure despite everything; they accustom themselves to the awakening of the soul.
Listen. You do as you please, and I should at least be able to forget you for ten days. But I cannot manage even one hour properly. It feels like a hundred years. And you take advantage of this. You are excessively cunning and dissolute and wretched and devilish as a man, and shameless as well. I should file a case against you.
I truly want to change myself. This being trapped in just you—it is destroying everything about me. My wellbeing, my studies, my career, my joy… all of it.
To me, you are merely a busy person. To you, I am merely a source of irritation. Hearing your constant distaste for my habits, I am forgetting my own preferences, my own ways. What is my custom is your discomfort.
Listen to me: everyone is busy. Some show it, some do not. Because busyness is not something meant to be explained to everyone. This is my psychology. Even if I am drowning in problems, if you call me over and over, a thousand times, I am not annoyed—not in the slightest. Rather, I am overjoyed. I cannot even imagine living without talking to you.
When I cannot answer your call, I feel terrible that I failed to pick up. You think in terms of how many hours in a day one can talk, how many times one can call. I think—why can’t I hear your voice all day long? Why can’t I have you with me always?
I miss you so much. A single minute without you feels like an hour. It is only because of this difference—my concern for you and your concern for me, my priority and your priority, my affection and yours—that all this trouble arises. To you, I matter nothing. But without you, I cannot think of anything else.
Thought: Seven Hundred Fifty-Five
………………………………………………………
One. All day and all night I am consumed by a single person. Yet he doesn’t even remember me by mistake! What kind of life is this?
Well, I’m sorry!
Alas, what a man’s lot! Men say sorry before or after, yet never come to know what their fault actually was. This is what they call fate!!
Two. I thought, if I kept the phone on, I’d want to call you constantly, text you endlessly. Ask if you’ve eaten, if you’ve bathed, keep questioning. In the evening and night, I’d call at least seven or eight times just to check on you. And after that, there’s only more pain waiting.
Why? This person who bears so much from me, who accepts everything I do—for him, I can change myself this much. And I’ll keep the phone off, because if you’re not there, you’ll think of me and call, you’ll ask about me. Then we’ll have to talk! If a text comes, you’ll have to reply, it’ll cause you trouble. You don’t like this, it disrupts your work. You’re not used to taking such pains. So why would I burden you with all this nonsense?
I never want to force you to do anything. I only want you to be at peace.
Leave it, leave it! My love is unbearable to you, so there’s no point saying all this. Better this way. Stay busy with your work. If you feel like it, write me a few words, yes?
You are an updated version of a heartless one. You commit the cruelest thoughtlessness toward a girl named Orni—sweet, absolutely good-hearted. The girl cries for you pointlessly because of your callousness. Yet you go on doing the same things.
Nothing you do touches her in any way. Yet still the girl loves you deeply. You once loved her deeply too; now you don’t anymore. A broken heart, a sad life!
Three. Perhaps I’ll go mad without you! How will I live? What will I do? Everything is finished! Didn’t I say it once—I’m not fated for happiness! I have so much to think about. Have to think, because reality is hard, so very hard.
Don’t hold me back. If you talk like that, I can never leave you. I’m too madly in love with you. Tell me something terrible and send me away.
I’ve become so attached to you that I can’t even imagine speaking to anyone else ever! I’m leaving. You won’t have to think about me anymore.
You must stay well. Take care of yourself. Please, look after yourself. That I can’t watch over you, can’t hear from you—there’s nothing more painful than this! You can’t keep me with you; you don’t have that power! Whether you want it or I do, nothing can be done here.
You can’t keep me. Some day I’ll have to tell you to let me go. The pain will only grow. It will hurt us both. Pain will be our only ending. If we can’t part now, we’ll have to die trying later! Day after day the pull will tighten, more attachment will bloom.
You can neither keep me with you nor tell me to go. Life will only become harder. It will be terrible suffering. Listen, my dear, understand this! Drive me away with cruelty, mistreat me, cast me out completely.
Please, consider me dead. If I were to die and go, wouldn’t you have cared for yourself?
Even if I’m not there, you’ll look after yourself. You’ll work, think of me as you fall asleep, take your medicines. You’ll eat properly. Keep everything in order. Go to the office, come home, read your books.
And when you’re doing so much better with everyone around you, you won’t need to tell me—just be well, be truly well. Don’t make me feel so helpless. She’s *my* Lakshmi! How can I bear it if you honor a worthless girl like me in this way? Drive me away, please! Drive me away, Lakshmi!
I can’t hurt you. I can’t live without you either. And I know you can’t keep me forever—I know that. There will be so much suffering ahead. There will be! I don’t even know if I can endure it.
But I’ll stay awake, I will. You sleep peacefully like Lakshmi’s boy, unburdened. I’ll worry. Maybe I won’t call, but I’ll keep watch. And please, Lakshmi, take care of yourself. Take your medicines regularly, don’t fret over anything. Stay well. Reading helps you—so read.
I’ve never once let you go. I’ll miss you terribly. Even staying alive will hurt! Promise me you’ll take care of yourself?
Thought: Seven Hundred Fifty-Six
………………………………………………………
One. You’re leaving me, and my mind is truly not right! I’ve even forgotten the password to my mobile. I had to flash the phone. The password and all the contents are gone. After this, everything will go.
I won’t be able to do it anymore. I’ll have to start everything from the beginning, rebuilding from rubble. It’s all finished, shattered. You never knew, not once, what you meant to me.
What I’ve lost—it’s beyond even your imagination. I can neither return to you nor live without you. What should I do? Tell me, what should I do?
Only death would have freed me. But I cannot even do that. If I died, my parents would go mad weeping, no doubt about it.
Even if I weren’t here, everything would go on fine for you. I don’t even want you to suffer because of me. Hurting the person you hold closest and then leaving—that’s the hardest thing. So whether I exist or not, everything should be well for you.
But what am I to do now? I cannot survive without you. Not at all. I know this is only my burden. I pray—I pray that this never becomes *our* sorrow instead of *my* sorrow in your eyes. Because you couldn’t bear that pain the way I am bearing it.
Two. You actually want me to go mad, to wander the streets forgetting everything. I send so many messages, and you sit silent, refusing to reply, while over there you post grand statements in your status. When anger takes over, you say it’s all my fault! I should have deleted Facebook forever. I keep coming back to you just to see all this.
A reply to a message takes two seconds, maybe three at most. Don’t you have even that much time to show me I matter? You’ve become so busy! I’m nothing to you, so when I asked, what difficulty was there in telling me? You have no answers to any of my questions. That’s why you don’t want to talk. Stay as happy as you wish, stay completely at peace. I won’t come here again.
I know I’ve been acting like a silly girl for quite some time, but hasn’t it ever occurred to you that you’ve become completely different, a stranger? That means you can do whatever you please whenever you want, but if I say anything, it’s my fault? If you won’t give me time, if you don’t love me, or if I’m just something to pass the time with, then what’s wrong with telling me straight to my face? Just say there was never any love here, you simply passed some days with me—then everything becomes clear, and I won’t go on like a madwoman chasing after you with false hopes.
Why do you say nothing and keep swallowing everything in silence? Why? I only do this because I still believe you’re alright. But if I made one decision and stuck to it—that I won’t come back to you, come what may—then nothing you could do would bring me back. Nothing.
# The Plaster of Thought-Walls
You keep a person under such pressure, inflicting such pain, and it probably never even crosses your mind how much it devastates me when you do this. If anyone else were in your place, I would never look back in that direction again in my life. You’re reducing my feelings to something so small! No problem—do it more.
I’ll remain alone my entire life, but I won’t step into any other home. Won’t. Won’t. Won’t. Let whatever happens happen. Even if you kick me out, I won’t return to this house, but I won’t go anywhere else. I don’t live by anyone else’s philosophy of love. My philosophy of love has only one principle: whomever I love, I will love no one else, and I won’t let anyone else near me. If necessary, I’ll hurt myself every moment, I’ll torture myself as much as I can, but I still won’t go.
What does it cost you to speak kindly to me for once? You know I wait all day, every single day, for a message, for a call—you know this—so why do you keep intentionally causing me this pain? I don’t want to be constantly bickering with you, and yet you always pretend not to understand, always cut conversations short with excuses about work and drift away to other things.
The moment I say anything, you leave. Why do I keep pestering you all the time—you understand this but pretend not to. Do I ever have you? Then why shouldn’t I pester? And when I say something, when I ask you to give me a little more time, instead of doing that, you stop talking to me altogether.
I can’t accept this now. It’s not because of jealousy that I can’t accept it. It’s because I’m suffering. I can’t breathe when you don’t speak to me with tenderness. This—that I keep messaging and messaging, you don’t come, you don’t reply, not even once all day. And when you do, you send back some cursory message and disappear. Doesn’t this hurt me?
I keep needling you all the time, we fight and quarrel, and yet I message you, I talk to you. But you—entire days pass where you don’t message, don’t call. If I treated you like this, if I didn’t bother you, if I didn’t keep messaging you all the time, then you’d understand what this pain feels like. You’re always right in front of my eyes, so nothing registers with you. You escape by scribbling two lines and leaving.
You don’t write anything special for me anymore! You’re telling everything through your status! Brilliant! Now I’m just another face in your audience! Truly, what extraordinary thing did I do that you’d single me out? Now when you come online and go offline, maybe you have time for so many others on messenger too, while my messages just get buried deeper and deeper under the weight of hundreds of others! I’m nothing to you but a mere incident.
I’m ready to translate the Bengali philosophical text “The Plaster of Thought-Walls” (ভাবনাদেয়ালের পলেস্তারা) from Bengali to English.
However, I notice that the text itself hasn’t been provided in your message — only HTML comment markup appears at the end.
Could you please share the Bengali text you’d like me to translate? Once you provide it, I’ll render it into English prose that honors both the philosophical depth and the distinctive voice of the original, while preserving all formatting and structure.