Kill You, Sure (10)

           Kill You, Sure (10)

                                        Nidhu Bhusan Das

                    

                       

                 The morning’s wonderfully cool, and people’re out jogging -couples, friends, young and old. The leaves of trees have turned musical in the early morning summer breeze blowing all around amidst the chirping of birds in the boughs and humming birds on flight.Delhites’re really serious about morning walk for health and fitness.Divya’s also out in jogging outfit in the campus and comes face to face with Anik near the huge banyan tree under which he performs pranayam (a yogic exercise to control breath) every morning, if it doesn’t rain. She sits beside Anik and imitates him. Not that she’s enthusiastic about the exercise. She feels it important to let Anik know she delights in following him.Anik’s absorbed in the exercise, and isn’t aware if anyone’s around.Divya wouldn’t like to distract him anyway. She waits for the completion of the pranayam, listening to the chorus of birds to the accompaniment of the music of the leaves.

           At 7 a.m.Anik’s opened his eyes and his thumb and ring finger are removed from the nose. He looks around refreshed and relaxed to find Divya beside him on the left. He’s yet to perform the sun-salutation.” Well, let me salute the sun first,” he resolves.

“What, he ignores me! Is it? Let me see,” she decides, uncertain.

Completing the 12 postures of the salutation he looks at her says,” Good morning, Dear,” smiling like the morning sun. She smiles back and says,” You do it every morning?”

“Every morning, if it doesn’t rain.”

“I’d like to accompany you, if you never mind.”

“Most welcome, if you feel free.”

“From tomorrow. When do you come?”

“At 15 minutes to 6.”

“I’ll be here on time tomorrow.”

“Should I call you?”

“That’ll be nice.”

“I give you a call at 5 to get ready. Keep the phone in general mode.”

“Okay dear. I think it’s better than jogging.”

“Maybe, if you’re mindful and believe in its power, it’s fantastic.”

“I believe since you do it,” says Divya, squinting.

“Okay, let’s depart.”

“Why not after a round of tea in the canteen,”Divya demands.

“No, not now. I’ll have it after bath.”

“Is it? Then when shall we meet?”

“For lunch, possibly in the cafeteria, if you don’t cook your food,” Anik says smiling.

“I’ve told my mom I’ll cook for my husband, not before that,” Divya tells, meaningfully.

“Well, then at the cafeteria. When would you go there?”Anik asks eager.

“If it pleases you, at 12.30 p.m.”

“Make it 12.40.”

“No problem, I’ll be in the cafeteria.”

               Dreamy, they head to their hostels. Each of them’s a throbbing heart. Back to the room, Anik begins to introspect:” Am I out of track? Isn’t this against my nature and dream? I’m dominated by tenderness, beyond logic. But what can I do? A green eye’s stolen my heart, and possibly she’s elusive, devoid of tender feeling.Divya persuasive. How can I avoid her? She isn’t a bad idea. But I shouldn’t sacrifice my academic dream.” After bath and breakfast, Anik’s in the department to attend classes. He never bunks, the classroom teaching’s so helpful. “The classes will be over at 12.30.Then to cafeteria,” he recalls.” This far, no farther,” he decides.

               “Does this resolve means I’ll wait for the green eyes or just stop at that – no more time on coming closer to a girl? Let it be second option. But will it be easy to retreat from where I’ve reached? Divya’s inspired and is bent on coming closer; she seems to have a dream. She pursues it. She’s amiable and adorable. She understands my mind. May I not tell her over lunch we may wait for the sake of study? She may say study’s a never ending process and the natural process of life cannot wait for something which’s never ending,” Anik ponders.

               Divya doesn’t have any such predilection. She’s for the moment when Anik’ll sit with her for lunch. She imagines the situation and anticipates the emotions it’ll generate. She sees a kite Anik and she’ve flown on the day of gentle breeze and are watching its flight from under a huge neem tree in the far corner of the campus, an ideal retreat from lovers. “Perhaps we could go to that corner to talk the day away, smelling each other,” she thinks and plans such a joyful time together. They aren’t talking, nor are they in contact. They feel being together, think on it and feel the thought. They haven’t anticipated the situation, but it’s occurred. Not that it spells the end. It’s a new beginning. Eloquent silence when the inner eyes’re active. The lunch over, Divya goes out and ambles towards the neem. Anik follows her keeping a distance, as it were, in a trance. She sits under the neem, her back against the ancient stem of the tree, eyes closed.Anik sits next to her. Only the rustle’s audible. Their minds’re in a dialogue, inaudible even to themselves. The leaves don’t hear the rustle the breeze creates blowing through them. The duo is aware of the breeze within and feels their emotions being tempered by thought. They’re exploring the possibility, exploring each other. The cloud above is white, and is floating in joy.

                     Two children, flying kites giggle and challenge each other:” My kite going to cut the string of yours, soon,” says the boy.” Mine will send yours to death; just see,” challenges the girl. Both of them try, drenched in sweat. But the kites have their own desire. They’ve their tryst midair, at last. They get entangled.Anik and Divya grinned, blinking.” Things happen!” exclaim Anik.

“It seems so,” Divya tends to confirm.

“Let’s go, you and I,” Anik recites from Eliot.

“Yes, time to go.”( continued on 28 September 2015)

Kill You, Sure (9)

              Kill You, Sure (9)

                                        Nidhu Bhusan Das

                    

                       

                 George Kennedy and Salma Aga celebrate their 50^th Marriage Anniversary next December.Bithi and her parents will be there to arrange for a grand party. Salma’s brother Rafique with his family will fly from Pakistan to attend the party. George’s brother Paul and sister Sharon will come with their families. It’ll be a wonderful get together.Bithi looks forward to attending the great event. The Kennedys’re strong and stout. They’re affable and always keep contact with relatives. The Agas and other Kennedys often visit them whenever they’re across the Atlantic. Bithi knows it, and they love her so much. She’s so much attached to her grandparents. She rarely remains out of their touch. She feels lonely away from the grandparents. To her, they’re one of the best examples of family life, the other being her parents. It appears her parents’re the replication of the grandparents. They’re beautiful and lively even when they’re in their seventies.

                Rafique’s wife Priyanka’s the daughter of Paul and his Indian wife Rekha Dubey. Their only daughter Preeti Aga studies in Boston and lives with George and Salma.Preeti and Bithi have wonderful relation – they love each other so much. They talk everyday by phone, e-mail and on the Google Hangout. They’re planning to make the anniversary celebration a memorable event.

             Bithi leaves Dhaka tomorrow for Chittagong Hill Tracts for a week to begin the study of the tribes there.Anis’s arranged her tour. Reba accompanies her. She’s interested in the Mongoloid people living the pristine glory of Rangamati and Bandorbon areas as she likes the folk tradition of Ireland. Her grandma Sharon Kennedy’s a professor of Anthropology at Dublin University and she’s her inspiration. She heard about the tribes of Chittagong Hill Tracts from the grandma who’s told her she could study the people.”Mom, it’s going to be an exciting experience. I believe we’ll enjoy the beauty of the landscape and the people living there,” Bithi tells her mother at supper. The train’s at 7 a.m. from Kamalapur station. They’ll reach Chittagong by the evening and put up in Agrabad Hotel for the night.

                In Rangamati they’re in the forest bungalow. They’ve decided on the location of enquiry and accordingly visit khagrachhori the next day, go from door to door, relate with the people and win their confidence and goodwill, the necessary prerequisite for proper field study. On the way back to the bungalow, Bithi receives a call from Prof Zafar Iqbal to be informed that renowned scientist and humanist A P J Abdul Kalam’s passed away at the hill station Shillong.”A great man’s gone, gone for ever,” he said in a choked voice.

“It’s a great loss, a humanist worth the name’s gone,” she says as tears blur her sight.

 “Look at the sky. We are not alone. The whole universe is friendly to us and conspires only to give the best to those who dream and work,” Kalam’d say, he remembers.

“You have the dream before your dreams can come true,” the great man would tell, recalls Bithi calling up his message for the young generation to have courage to think differently, to invent, and to travel the unexplored path, to discover the impossible and to conquer the problems and succeed.

“When he says’ Man needs his difficulties because they are necessary to enjoy success’, he’s a great philosopher and wit,” says Zafar.

“May we not have a condolence meeting to pay homage and remember this great man?” Bithi suggests.

“We must. He’s beyond geography, beyond time,” says the professor.

“May it be day after tomorrow at TSC?” Bithi suggests.

“Or at Bangla Academy as an alternative,” the professor says.

“Okay, am coming back tomorrow.”

“Could you visit some places and people there?”

“Yes, Rangamati and outskirts. The people’re so loving and lovable in their simplicity. They’re as innocent as Adam and Eve in paradise before their fall says mom and apprehends they may lose their pristine glory in the wake of the demographic change wrought against their interest,” Bithi informs.

“It could be a fertile research area for you,” assures the professor.

“Fertile not only for her research but also for politics of settling outsiders in the territory for compulsive mainstreaming of the indigenous people which has proved to be counterproductive elsewhere in the world,” thinks Bithi.

              The Chittagong Hill Tracts was an independent state free from outside control. The Mugals tried but couldn’t bring the CHT into its full suzerainty. They remained content with a kind of trade relation. The British annexed the Tracts in 1860, more than a century after the battle of Plasssey.During the early periods of its rule, the British refrained from interfering with the internal affairs of the Tracts and it wasn’t made a regular part of Bengal. Its administrative system, land rights, and closure to outside settlers all set it apart from the rest of Bengal. This status was reconfirmed in the 1930s when the region was declared an excluded area under the Government of India Act. Later the British enacted a legal instrument the Chittagong Hill Tracts Regulation of 1900, also known as CHT Manual, for the general administration of the area. Through this Regulation the British allowed the Jumma people to enjoy a limited measure of autonomy and banned permanent settlement of the outsiders.

                The Pakistani government viewed the Jumma people with suspicion and took measures to do away with the legal safeguards granted by the British. Outsiders were encouraged to settle in the CHT. The Kaptai dam, built over Karnaphuli River without consulting the indigenous people, submerged 54 thousand acres of first class arable land and displaced 100,000 Jumma people from their homestead.

             After the emergence of Bangladesh the Tracts has turned into a militarized zone since mid-1970s; protective provisions of the CHT Regulation have been done away with; settlement of outsiders has been encouraged and sponsored. The indigenous people haven’t been able to accept the policy of their marginalization, Bithi’s told by her grand aunt.

             On her first visit she’s come to like Ritesh Chakma, a second year student of Rangamati College who accompanied her to different houses, and called her didi. He’s genial, simple, updated and forward looking like Preeti, she thinks.( continued on 27 August 2015)

Kill You, Sure (8)

           Kill You, Sure (8)

                                        Nidhu Bhusan Das

                    

                       

                      The next day Anik’s found loitering around the English Department. What’s he looking for? Divya’s attending a class. As she emerges from the class, Anik greets her,” How’re you!” She blushes, surprised.” Am fine, you?” she enquires.”  Alright.May we go to the library canteen?” he suggests, and she obliges. As they settle on the grass-carpet of the adjacent garden, he remarks,” You’re a mystery, my girl.”

“You’re naughty to say so, my boy,” she says, smiling.

“Maybe, but mystery shrouds you. It’s true,” he asserts to bring home the message to her that what he’s said is his considered view, not an uncertain statement.

“Why do you think so?” she asks, visibly happy that he takes interest in her.

“Your black eyes suggest. They say back eyes’re associated with night, mystery and intuition.”

“May I know who’re they?”

“The psychologists, I mean.”

“My boy, you’ve started browsing psychology, at last to understand a girl! What more do they have to say about black eyes, Anik?”

“Well, they say black eyes’re secretive.”

“I am not secretive, am I?”

“Yes, very much, and don’t betray your emotion.”

“You’re attributing your trait on me, perhaps.”

“You’d a sly look at me more than three years back but never let me know…”

“That I love you, you mean to say. You see, my boy, I don’t love nobody.”

“Yet you address me as ‘My boy’. Don’t you mean you love nobody else?”

“You’re trying to outsmart me, aren’t you?” Divya complains, blushing.

“I’ve no such feeling of being outsmarted by my girl,” Anik’s outright.

“I see, you mean I’m your girl. Do you believe it, Anik?”

“I don’t say what I don’t believe.”

“Okay! What’s your reading of green eyes? Have you read that and any other eyes?”

Anik’s puzzled. He’s read green eyes. But does Divya know it? If she does, it means she follows him, perhaps, to the hilt. He’s unaware of it.

           ” I’m caught in the whirlwind of love. The green eyes generated the whirlwind. True. But I cannot wait for the green eyes to respond. I’m impassioned. I don’t know why I’ve turned so. I like Divya, should confess I love her. My male pride’s prompted me to keep it a secret. But what about her being secretive about her tenderness towards me? Should I not say it’s the emerging female pride in Indian society? Yes, it is. I like it, the emergence of female personality, breaking the shackles of traditional society. It’s the new India of gender equality being established by girls like Divya.I appreciate the courage of such girls as help the change to occur.”

“Anik, are you offended?” Divya enquires, sadly.

“Why, dear? Nothing to be offended,”Anik’s candid and polite as usual.

“You’ve stopped talking after I’ve mentioned green eyes. It’s a joke, dear.”

“What’s wrong if I’ve pondered over other eye colours? I don’t think there’s any.So, it isn’t a cause to be offended for. I’ve been thinking about my change.”

“Change! What change? Is there any? I don’t understand,” Divya pretends innocence.

“How do you feel about our being together?” Anik would like to know.

“Tell me about your feeling,” Divya’s curious.

“I feel good. I think I need your company.”

“Is it? To be true, I cannot believe it.”

“But I believe you love me, as I do.”

“Who says I love you? No, it isn’t true. I love only green eyes and await her return after vacation.”

“You aren’t a lesbian, are you?”

“Do you know her?” Divya asks with a naughty smile hovering over her face.

“I’ve seen her, and you’ve come to love her,”Anik’s serious.

“Do you really believe I’m a lesbian?”

“Who knows? But I don’t. No harm if you choose to be. Love doesn’t go by reason.”

“But I’m a reasonable girl. Only you don’t understand it.”

“And I love you.”

“Though you know black eyes are reluctant to fall in love?”

“Once they fall, they’re passionate, as you’re,” Anik’s now straightforward.

Divya can no longer hold on. She’s broken down. She understands she shouldn’t go beyond the limit. She’s jealous of the green eyes, and wouldn’t yield ground to her, anyway. It’s time to bind Anik in love. She knows she isn’t a feminist; she loves being in love with a boy like Anik, and bind her life with his. He’s honest, sincere and serious. But she isn’t sure how much infatuated he’s with the green eyes. Is he refused? Are his advances, if any, rebuffed? Is it the reason why he’s veered round to her? One thing’s certain – his heart overflows with tenderness, right now. He needs her support. She should respond, even if he leaves her eventually.

“Anik, think we shouldn’t hide our love for each other.”

“Better late than never.”

“You’re late, not I.”

“That’s what I mean. I know you’ve been tender to me since long.”

“Should I believe you’ve been innocent all these years?”

“I haven’t been aware of it, I confess. But I’ve had a feeling.”

“Well dear, let’s go. We’re late for lunch. Would you like to have lunch with me, and I being the host?”

“Have you cooked?” he asked foolishly.

“No, I haven’t the culinary skill. We’ll have it in the cafeteria.”

They rise and head for the cafeteria. The tender feeling brightens their faces. Both of them feel like hugging each other but resist the desire. After lunch they would be in the remote nook where fauns leap and bound, squirrels play hide and seek.(to be continued on 20 August 2015)

Kill You, Sure (7)

              Kill You, Sure (7)

                                        Nidhu Bhusan Das

                    

                       

                The day after the birthday bash, Bithi’s in the arts faculty of Dhaka University to meet the teachers in the Department of sociology she often talks to when in the city. On the way, in front of Madhur Canteen, she comes face to face with a young man she thinks she knows but cannot exactly relate and recognize. The young man also looks at her in a way that suggests he knows her but isn’t sure. Both smile, and in a moment almost simultaneously, utter each other’s name.” Aren’t you Bithi?”he says.” You’re Nizam, if I ain’t wrong,” she recalls. They go to the university library complex, sit on the soft green under the shade of a krishnachuda.Nostalgic, they remember the time when Nizam taught about a fortnight at the school at the village where she’s with her grandparents in a vacation. He’s then a first year student of Dhaka Dental College. He once visited her grandparents’ house.Bithi remembers how his classroom teaching was talked about. He taught biology. In rural Bengal words have the fleeting foot. He went there to his uncle who’s the Headmaster of the school.

              Shamsudduha Mozumder Nizam’s from Kochua,Chandpur. Nizam’s dreamy eyes met the green eyes,and a dream generated.That much.They didn’t think they’d meet again.Bithi loves Nature and humans in the midst of Nature.Her area of interest’s social and cultural anthropology with specific reference to Bangladesh.She visited several times the Sociology Department while studying at Harvard in the USA to discuss the anthropological aspects of Bangladeshis.She hasn’t any tender feeling to anyone in particular.”But,is it Nizam’s stolen her heart?” she’s curious face-to-face with the dentist.”The grass’s soft,green like your eyes,”says Nizam.

“Green’s always soft,everywhere.Think of Greenland,how after ice-sheet subsides,it turns green,” Bithi smiles.

“What’re you doing now?”

“Doing M.A. in Social Anthropology at JNU,Delhi.”

“Why Delhi,not in the USA?”

“My interest’s in the sub-continent,you know.”

“I see! Then you could be at this university,I suppose.”

“It’s the natural idea.Bangladesh’s my second home.I like to explore India as well.”

“That’s a country of explorable diversity.They’ve a vibrant democracy,a working secularism with minor irritants.”

“Such irritants’re there in the USA also. But today, you see, Barak Obama’s in the White House.”

“But they in India’re yet to shake off the colonial hangover totally. The police, for example, are still not the friend of people.”

“It’s same here.”

“I agree. But they’ve the democracy since birth. The police act like rulers.”

“I’ve found them helpful in Delhi.”

“Delhi isn’t India. I’ve my own experience of the highhandedness of the police. It’s in Siliguri.We three friends were walking down the road. We saw how a senior citizen’s harassed and insulted by a police constable because he’d parked his bike on the edge of the road which wasn’t marked as no-parking zone. We came to know the citizen’s a reputed teacher. It’s just opposite the local police station.”

“Is it? Can it be in Bengal, the cradle of the nineteenth century renaissance?”Bithi wonders.

“You’re on vacation, I suppose,”Nizam tries to divert.

“Yes, leaving for Delhi on 2^nd August. What’re you doing now?”

“Have a dental clinic at Elephant Road, near here.”

“Wonderful! But why here now? Must be a busy doctor.”

“I cannot forget my student life, my days as a chhatra (Student) league leader.”

“But one should be a professional, hundred per cent.”

“True, Bangladesh’s not the USA. Here the conflict between the pro-liberation and the anti-liberation forces are quite strong. I cannot help adding to the strength of the pro-liberation forces.So, I’m here with them from time to time.”

“What about the people of Chittagong Hill Tracts? Are they happy?”

“There had been an attempt to change the demography of the area with the mass settlement of the people from the plains. But the present government tries to make for the wrong. We believe the tribal people shouldn’t be wronged.”

“I’ve the mind to visit the area before I leave this time.”

“You should if you want to explore the psyche of the people and their way of life, its evolution.”

“I believe they’re quite simple and friendly.”

“They’re, really. We must know them if we’re to bring them to the national mainstream. They participated in the liberation war, though their king sided with the Pakistan Government.”

“They’re Mongoloid as the Manipuris are in India.”

“Let’s have a cup of tea at Madhur Canteen”

“Let’s. I know Madhuda’s killed by the Pakistan occupation army for the role of the canteen in the process of the evolution of the Bangali Nationalism.”

“Having tea at the canteen would be an event in your life.”

“I believe so.”

So, they proceed to the canteen. There she finds student leaders discussing the danger of fundamentalism that undermines the spirit of the Liberation War. She thinks how the values achieved through a long struggle and great event like the martyrdom of 21^st February 1952 is sought to be negated by the anti-liberation forces regenerated and active after the tragedy of 15^th August 1975.This didn’t happen in the USA; Washington wasn’t assassinated. President Abraham Lincoln’s assassinated but the people of the USA didn’t allow slavery to get reinstated. Abolition of slavery by Lincoln laid the foundation of the strong democracy in that country. Fundamentalism doesn’t respect democracy and freedom of opinion and faith. The Nazis under Hitler demonstrated the cruelty against the Jews which didn’t win, she recapitulates.”Well, I’m to go now, my parents await me back home,” says Bithi and rises.” See you again,” wishes Nizam.( continued on 13 August 2015)