The Unwanted Child (6/2)

— How can I bring myself to eat it! Don't cook this in front of me!
Before, whenever I cooked, your father would hover around me. He had this bad habit of dipping his hand straight into the pot to taste. And he'd say, "The aroma of your pilaf takes me to paradise, you don't understand, Savera's mother!"
This would make me so shy. He wouldn't spare me even in front of your grandmother. My mother would say, "Our son-in-law is very good, he loves you deeply, you should take care of him. Give him whatever he wants to eat."
If your grandmother were alive today, if she heard that I couldn't cook pilaf for him, she'd be so angry. These two people left me all alone, child. My heart breaks, why don't they understand?

As she speaks these words, tears and grief make mother's voice catch. Sound refuses to emerge. Big sister, little sister—they wouldn't eat pilaf either. When guests came, pilaf would be forcibly cooked at home. But none of us would touch it. Whether I love father or not, I don't know. Whether I have any feelings for him—I don't know that either. But pilaf wouldn't go down my throat. Whether this is strange or not, I don't know that either. But on the night father dies, the love I receive from him that day—I'll never be able to forget it. Sometimes I become strangely greedy to reclaim each of those moments! It hurts, and I feel disgusted with myself. That day was the first, and that very day was also the last!

Love has so many forms. Sometimes I think I simply don't understand love, that I have no feelings at all. Like whether I love father or not, whether I love this family—I can't figure any of it out at all. Everything seems like a tangled maze. And Komlika! Do I love her? Someday I'll marry, maybe not Komlika but someone else. I'll love her, but Komlika! I won't be able to forget her—every care she took of me will remind me of her. Going to see her in the colony behind Motijheel Ideal, remembering her during all my happy times, her unbridled laughter when she threw nutshells at my head, walking together on that mountain path in Gazipur, then leaving her behind—every memory will remind me of her. So do I love her? And if I don't love her, then what is this inability to forget? Why do I become greedy for father's affection? Why can't I bear to be away from this family? What are all these things then? I seem unable to understand anything!

But the very next moment I think, I'm the one who understands love—Nahar Chowdhury's love. There's such a famine of love in my life! All my struggles for a little love, to be desired. So how can I say I don't understand love! Some people say this is just affection, fondness, or mere liking. Love isn't simple. Is love really not simple? This affection, fondness, or liking—if these feelings get a little more time to develop together, they transform into love. The final destination is one—love. Affection, fondness, liking—these feelings are as helpless as me. They desperately lack time. No one gives them time, so fondness sometimes can only reach liking, and sometimes liking only reaches affection, never making it to the final destination. But those who don't rush and give time—their feelings ripen properly, reach their destination.

You know what I think? The main chapters of human life are essentially four—one, birth. Two, death. Three, love. Four, hatred. Human destiny is also bound within these four cycles. Just as death is inevitable after birth, so too is love after birth—that's also inevitable. Let it have different forms, different stages. One who can love can also hate; rather, one who knows how to love intensely can hate twice as much. One who knows how to be tender also knows how to discipline. Every emotion has its opposite extension. Perhaps no one is born completely different on this earth, nothing is created in such a way. Sowing seeds of hatred within love isn't easy, but it's not impossible either.

Time is such a power that nothing else can govern it. Time, at certain stages of its movement, creates situations where love turns to hatred, and hatred also turns to love, because there are vast differences between human thoughts, reality, and circumstances. A person isn't controlled only by their brain or heart—joy, sorrow, anger, rage, incompleteness, disappointment, stored wounds or stored happiness... many such things become influencing factors. This is where human thoughts and plans clash with circumstances and time. Patience plays a huge role here. One who can maintain patience can control their brain and heart along with all their associated influences. For instance, I thought for a long time that I hated my father, just as he hated me. Only one power was responsible for this thinking—'time.' Time had created such circumstances then that we had to hate each other.

The discord between my thoughts and external perspective with reality and circumstances had disconnected me from simple naturalness. But now I don't hate father anymore; rather, I feel compassion for him. I also know he doesn't hate me either. But whether he loves me or not, I don't know—I never got the chance to find out. Time has changed, and with it circumstances and feelings too. Love, hatred—these feelings are actually puppets of time's game. Time knows very well that we're always running late. So he plays the game quite entertainingly. I don't think there's anything more powerful and intelligent than time. Thank God the Creator didn't give time a physical form!

One question is bothering you terribly, isn't it? You're thinking, then why are humans called ashraful makhluqat or the best of creation? Listen, why are you thinking that time has no weaknesses? I already said nothing on earth is unchangeable. Time isn't above that either. What's time's weakness, do you know? Time stops at death, but human journey continues even then—time cannot stop the soul's departure. This is where humans defeat powerful time, which is why humans are the best of creation.

But whether I, as a human, am the best of creation—I'm still quite doubtful about that. I haven't even learned to love! Yet I make such arrangements to receive love! Actually, just seeing mother makes the ghost of love rear its head in me. Then I try to understand what love is.
 
A sheet, a pair of glasses, two books, and an old mosquito net—this is love. This is care. Yes, this is love.