Dream Comes True

Nidhu Bhusan Das: Madhu sees his dream comes true – Jharna is at last united with him. Whatever be the social attitude and sanction, they are going to find their desire fulfilled. It’s not a tinsel story, but a real life struggle of the two to come to terms with reality which is not consistent with the social mores and code. It is very difficult to follow the social norms when emotion runs high and seeks to become reality above the framed- reality of the society split from within by communal divide symbolized by temple and mosque. The guardians of such a society foreground religion and use it as a sharp-edged razor to spill social blood. Madhu and Jharna have bled for a couple of years and are going to be resurrected in a foreign country away from native land and parents. They failed to challenge the autocracy of unfeeling social guardians but have remained true to their emotions and good sense which emanates from these emotions. Madhu and Jharna were students of the same school in their home town Narsingdi, a ninety-minute drive from Dhaka. Madhu, a boy from an orthodox Brahmin family, and Jharna, a daughter of a conservative Muslim family of clerics, came to be interested about and attracted to each other. They would smile from a distance and eventually began correspondence. Understandably they exchanged love, had emotional union, and remained socially apart. Even they would not share with friends what went between them. During their school days they had a direct oral interaction only once on the day they were given the usual farewell before the Secondary School Examination, which marks the end of studentship in the school. ‘Then we shall no more be able to smile to each other,’ Jharna opened the conversation coming to Madhu who stood outside the hall room after the farewell ceremony was over. Madhu smiled, sadly, sharing the concern of Jharna. They had the desire to say good-bye with a parting kiss. They could not, suspecting spying eyes around. Madhu recited the famous three-word sentence ‘We shall overcome’. This sentence reflects confidence, conviction and hope, and reverberated in Jharna. It stirred her. They left the campus which remained the dumb witness to the bond signed between two adolescents in their first and brief face-to-face interaction which was rich with reticence and long eloquent silence. Clad in white salwar-kameez, Jharna walked away, head down, alone like a swan separated from her mate, caught in a web. Madhu looked on silent and went to the nearby market to take delivery of clothes from the laundry. He remembered Jharna looked back several times. She wore a sad smile which he reciprocated. Madhu hogged the newspaper headline the day after the results of the examination were out. He stood first in Dhaka Board with seven letters and 85 per cent marks. Jharna scored 79 per cent and secured the fourteenth position in the merit list of 20.. The school was proud of them and their achievements became the talk of the town. In the felicitation arranged at the school the teachers and students showered praises and flowers on them. They felicitated each other on the occasion and exchanged garlands they had been offered by students. Garlands around necks, they were photographed – Jharna to the left of Madhu.How they liked it! Was their any symbolic meaning in their pose for the photo session? None read anything other than the literal meaning. Only the two adolescents found emotional meaning in it. They understood they achieved symbolically what they desired to be. Yet they were not sure if they were destined to be in union one day for ever. The results brought for them an opportunity to be near. Both got admission in colleges in Dhaka – Madhu at Dhaka Govt. College and Jharna at Eden College. The two campuses are at a stone’s throw. They started living at college hostels. Away from home town and from the glare of parents they began to spend time after classes at the Public Library and British Council. The evenings they spent in Suharawardy Udyan under the shady krishnachuda. 8 April, 1972, 4 P.M. Madhu was at the gate of Eden College Hostel, opposite Azimpur Govt. Quarters. Message had been sent to room no.24 for Jharna. She took time to get ready. She put on a Jamdani with matching blouse, sprayed perfume, rubbed cream on the face, and rushed to the gate. Thus began their new journey into the idylls of life. They walked half-a-mile to the Suharawardy Udyan past the Dhaka university campus and across the busy Mymensingh Road. They walked the talk for some time and then sat under a Krishnachuda. ‘What a nice spot!’ exclaimed Jharna, beaming. Madhu agreed, and added ‘Shall we overcome?’ ‘Of course, if we love each other,’ Jharna asserted. By now they were hand in hand to be followed by contact of lips, with the mellowed sun setting, leaving this part of the world for lovers to share emotions. After dusk, they left the arbor, walked to Eden Hostel wherefrom Madhu came back to his hostel. That night none of them could sleep as the warmth of their shared emotion continued to haunt them. It was not a sleepless night of uneasiness, it was comfort infinite. The next day Jharna was in wait for Madhu to come at the gate at 4 P.M. They had the same destination, more intensity, and more knowledge about each other, more intimacy, determination and commitment. This was the routine for two years, punctuated by breaks during vacations they spent at home. The next four years they were in the Department of Law, Dhaka University. Their brilliance and love was envied. Both secured first class in honors and LLM. Now lecturers in the Department, they had planned marriage by registration. It did not materialize because threats began to emanate from the fundamentalists. A Commonwealth Scholarship helped Madhu to be in the UK with a PhD programme on Mughal Jurisprudence. Separated by space, the two remained in contact with everyday interaction over telephone. To-day, six months after the separation, the telephone from Dhaka brought the coveted information- Jharna too has been awarded the Commonwealth Scholarship for PhD research at Lincoln’s Inn where Madhu is in research under Prof. Nick Johnson. She leaves Dhaka next Sunday by a Thai Airways flight. The days and nights were longer for them in the intervening week. At midnight Sunday they find themselves hugging each other at the reception of Heathrow Airport. The chill of the night is replaced by the warmth of their tenderness. They are in the flat of Madhu, together.After late night dinner, they are in bed , away from communal inhibitions which they have, at last, been able to overcome.