# The Return The train pulled in at five past seven, and Biren stood on the platform watching the khaki-uniformed porters swarm around the descending passengers like flies drawn to ripened fruit. His suitcase was small—cloth-covered, dented at one corner—and he could have carried it himself, but old habit made him call one over. "Sahebjee's house?" the porter asked, shouldering the case with practiced ease. Biren didn't correct him. The old man was already moving, and there was something oddly comforting in being assumed to belong here, in the natural way the porter's feet had turned toward the residential quarter without waiting for directions. The streets had changed, though not in ways he could have named. The tamarind tree at the corner of Chowdhury Lane was gone, replaced by a small electricity substation. The tea shop where he and Sashank used to sit on sticky afternoons, arguing about everything from Tagore to the price of jaggery, had become a small grocery store selling cigarettes and lottery tickets. He found he didn't feel much about these losses—they registered on him the way weather does when you're inside a closed room. The house stood as it always had, three stories of faded yellow brick with the long veranda running along the front like a protective arm. The afternoon light slanted across the tiles in familiar patterns. For a moment—just a moment—he couldn't quite remember why he had come. His mother emerged from the doorway before the porter had even set down the case. She was smaller than he remembered. Not thinner, exactly, but diminished somehow, as if life had pressed down on her shoulders long enough to leave a permanent indent. "You've come," she said. Not a question. Not quite a greeting either. He touched her feet, and she placed her palm briefly on his head. They stood like that for a few seconds, close but not touching, and he realized they had no words prepared for this moment. All those letters, all those careful sentences, had apparently used up whatever they needed to say. "I was given a month's leave," he told her, straightening. "The work can wait." She nodded. "Your room is ready. I had Mira clean it last week." She turned toward the house. "Your father's not here—he's at the club. He'll be back by eight." Inside, the house smelled of sandalwood and the faint mustiness of things long undisturbed. The furniture seemed to have settled more deeply into the floor. Dust motes hung in the shafts of light like small, drifting memories. His room was exactly as he'd left it three years ago. The books on the shelf, the framed photograph of his college cricket team, the small scratches on the wooden desk where he'd carved his initials as a boy—all waiting, patient as faithful dogs. Only the calendar on the wall had changed, and not by his mother's hand. That thoughtless updating was somehow the saddest thing of all. He sat on the edge of the bed and felt the peculiar weight of return—not the lightness of homecoming, but something heavier, more complicated. He had wanted to come back. He had missed this. Yet now that he was here, he couldn't remember quite what it was he had been missing. Downstairs, his mother was calling for tea.

At the beginning of The Black Magician, his personal favorite among all his books, Humayun Ahmed wrote something of his own.

I write only what I believe in.

I cannot write from disbelief. My world of belief is rather peculiar. So I wrote a story from that peculiar faith of mine. It would be best not to take the story too seriously.

…………I started this piece with that book of his for a reason, which I’ll come to later. But following his advice has cost me dearly.

One day.

Hello, hello!

………………..

Hello! Who’s calling? Can you hear me? Hello! Who is this, please?

………………..

Blast it! Some fool! I cut the call right there. I do this often. I have to.

Another day. Same number.

Hello!

………………….

Can you hear me? Hello!

……………………..

Hello, hello! I can hear some kind of sound on your end. Why are you deliberately staying quiet? Hello, hello!

………………………..

Out of frustration and habit, I didn’t cut the call this time—I just set the phone down away from me. Let them rack up the bill, I thought! Let’s see how long they last! What struck me as odd was that about forty minutes later, someone on the other end finally hung up.

Within two minutes came a text. It said: You don’t know me. Why did you put the phone down without speaking? I was waiting. You could have at least said hello. Anyway, take care.

Reading that text, I became absolutely exasperated. I happen to respect courageous people. To have the nerve to call but not the courage to speak—what kind of nonsense is that? In my view, it borders on outright rudeness. These tiresome, bothersome types create such disruptions. Missed calls from unknown numbers irritate me; when they call and don’t speak, it irritates me even more; and when they text without identifying themselves, I start thinking that if I ever came face to face with them, I would surely treat them abominably. Not that I would limit myself to the level of abuse I can manage—I would think it through and do far worse.

I couldn’t suppress my curiosity for long. A young man, then! (Thinking, what if it turned out to be some beautiful woman knocking!)

I replied: Could you please introduce yourself?

The reply came: Brother, I already told you—you won’t know me anyway. What’s the use of telling you who I am?

I wrote back: Then please stop bothering me this way. You may have nothing else to do, but I do.

That day, no more texts came.

Another day, another call. This time I had already made up my mind—I would say some hard things.

Hello!

…………………..

Why are you harassing me like this? Don’t you feel ashamed, wasting someone else’s time? Tell me who you are. Hello!

…………………..

I could block your number. But I won’t, because even spending that time on you bothers my conscience. If you have any self-respect, any sense of shame left, you won’t call me again. Take care of yourself. I’m hanging up.

I cut the call.

That day, no more calls or messages. The next day came. Not a call this time—a text.

Brother, my regards. I won’t tell you who I am. Please, I’m asking you not to want to know. I was at one of your career talks a few weeks ago. When you started speaking, I was startled. Your voice, the way you speak, the way you stand—it’s exactly like his. The entire time I listened to you, I couldn’t stop wiping tears from my eyes with my handkerchief. Brother, the way you talk, the way you look, the way you move your head, the way your voice trembles—it’s all like him. If I heard you on the phone without seeing you, I would swear it was him, not you. I call you just to hear your voice. Nothing else, nothing at all. It makes me feel like I’m hearing his voice, exactly as it was. I start to believe he’s come back. And after I hang up, I cry the whole day. I can’t sleep all night. Yesterday, when I heard your final words, it hurt me so much, I cried so hard that I couldn’t even write properly today. You were right—my love, my dreams, both are shameless. You said much less than what he would have said. If something like this had happened to him, he would have said much more. I won’t bother you anymore. If you can, please forgive me.

I began to wonder—who is she? Who is she? And who is “he”? What do you mean I’m like him? As I thought, I texted back: I don’t understand anything you’ve said. I don’t need to know who you are. But who is this “he” you keep talking about?

After a long time, the reply came. To everyone else, he’s no one now. But I know he exists, he will exist; at least as long as I’m alive. He’s been with me for the last nine years, he’s with me, he’s mixed into my being. They say he’s gone. But I know he’s here. They tell me he died in a road accident two years ago. But how is that possible? He promised me that even if we fought, he would never leave me. How can someone who loves just abandon you? He never lied to me. So why would he leave? I know I’m raving. Everyone thinks so. I won’t write to you anymore. Take care.

It felt as though someone had taken an enormous hammer and beaten my entire body into numbness. I wanted to punish myself—truly punish myself. In that moment, I kept seeing myself as the cruelest, most heartless person on earth. I couldn’t figure out what to reply, or whether to reply at all. Drowning in these thoughts, I wrote something—I’m not even sure what. I wrote that I didn’t understand. That they should forgive me. I wrote it but didn’t send it. God, how painful it is to ask for forgiveness! After nearly two hours of telling myself “don’t apologize, don’t apologize,” I found myself sending the message without even realizing it.

The reply came: Why are you apologizing? My love, my pain—none of it is your responsibility. How did you become so confident in your own power over me? I have no pain. Only love. And that love is my only pain. A precious pain. A pain too heavy for me to bear alone. My pain is worth more than I am. That is the pain. Nothing else. You know, they treated me so badly. So badly! We’d fight constantly. They’d say harsh things to me. I’d bear it all in silence, terrified that if I lost them, if they disappeared from me. And they would disappear. Often. I’d search and search but never find them. I would search, only search. They wouldn’t come back. I loved someone who kept vanishing—I love them still, I always will. Even now, so long after they’re gone, I cannot believe they’re not here. They say they’re lying in a grave. They don’t know them like I do. I know how they disappear like this, how they always come back. I can feel it in my chest—they will return. I’ll wait. I’ll search. I know they’re playing hide-and-seek with me. I’ve been searching all this time. I’ll search more. More still. Where can I find them, tell me? I love them so. Who else will I turn to? Who else will love even my mistakes and come back to me again and again, never letting go, never leaving me for good? I cannot leave. I won’t. I was with them, I am with them, and I’ll stay with them until death takes me. One day I’ll be old, but they’ll never grow old. That angry, proud, simple young person will stay forever in my eyes, in my heart. I’ll hide them inside my chest and live on. I have no dreams, only them. I will never trouble you again. This is the last thing I’m sending you. Take care of yourself. Take care of everyone. Goodbye.

As far as I can remember, the last time I wept like that was reading Satinath Bhaduri’s “Jagari.” Before that, Mahasweta Devi’s “The Mother of 1084” had nearly convinced me that nothing would ever pierce me so deeply again. The brutal blow of “Jagari” shattered that conviction, proving that while there may be a final laugh, there is no such thing as a final tears. After many years, some unknown, unremarkable ordinary woman made me weep in that same way again. I do not know what color sorrow wears. All this time I have been painting pain in the most hideous of hues. Today I cannot anymore. Why? Because sorrow here is not alone—love walks beside it! How can I paint love in hideous colors? If sorrow could just weep itself away and be done, one might survive it. But alas! The tears fall away. The sorrow remains. To live, you must swallow the sorrow and go on living.

Let me return to what Humayun said about the Black Magician. Following his reasoning, I had not taken that story seriously. I thought it was merely a tale. Who could offer me the comfort of that supreme carefree trust to treat a story as merely a story, even while dwelling in that twilight between belief and disbelief? I could not. I had thought that even if Tunu’s sudden return from the land of no-return after six years, after spinning his mother’s head so that she nearly fell, it would be nothing more than the black magician’s sorcery from that tale. Tunu could not return. Tunu does not return. So Tunu did not return. Whoever came was the tale’s magician, or some enchanted stranger wearing a borrowed face. Nothing more. Today I understand: those who depart also return; they come back again and again, like travelers circling the world. No one is ever truly lost in this world. Everyone returns. As themselves, or as someone else.

A final note. Except for “the Black Magician,” “Jagari,” and “The Mother of 1084” mentioned in the story, every detail herein is factual. Any resemblance to real events or persons is entirely unintentional and purely coincidental.