Was sitting by the window-pane on one of the innumerable wet days of the season. My lazy vision tried to devour the inebriety drenching the earth till the horizon. Rain reminds me of an insanity that is inscrutable in all possible addictions. Every drop of it brings to us something inexpressible in words…. May be an unadulterated love, or the touch of an unblemished relation, a relation that all share with it. We lose our tears in it, even the recurrent breaths fall in the bait it sets only to lose in the effort of keeping up to its pace….. Only the lyric stays, lyric that is composed by every mind while weaving a collage of many vibrant memories that often descend in after hour downpours…
It seldom showers in my mind like it did that day. Yet, while glancing to the farthest juncture my eyes witness, I suddenly found dida sitting beside me with a smile that had all the years’ love which we had to live without after bidding her good-bye. She did not talk much, but asked a lot through her eyes. I brought back the primitive habit of nestling my head on her lap to let her gentle caress brush my hair. I spoke to her, like I have never spoken before. I spoke through my heart, I spoke through my eyes and then I spoke through my words. I spoke about life as it has appeared all this while. I spoke about the hot rice puddings she used to serve during the customary pujas and I spoke about the palatable pithe-s over which I and dada used to have vociferous combats debating on who will be served the first one. Invariably she never let us know which was the first one to be fried out and served both her culinary gifts that, to our much disappointment, ha d uncanny similarity. I talked animatedly of growing up over the years since she has left the abode and at this grinned with a queer silence which voiced that the very thought of my aging was imbecility to her. Since the days of tiny-tots my age has been a senile entity to her, I’ll always be that little. I told her about how the trees of dahlia and chrysanthemum withered the very next day of her departure and added how I missed watering the flowers that embellished our patio. Dida nodded with a tacit smile as if she knew this all and there was nothing to be prodigal with words to describe it.
I drove the topics from esoteric to those which elucidated our lives more vividly. I fetched each and every relation encircling me and the silence prevailing amidst them. I told her about friendships that were lucidly penned and about bonds that entangle every passing day. I told her about life being an act of mime and she laughed to this. Yet I could distinguish a vague astonishment which was then acknowledging my transition from nursery rhymes and triplets to classic romance. I told her about my pursuit of love and how impaired it has left me at the end. To this she cradled my face close to her bosom. I also explained how my friendships have fumbled throwing people miles apart in ocean of solitude. Tranquillity was much like a quest for pleasant cacophonies these days and she could not miss to appreciate my oxymoron. I recollected those birthdays sweetened by her payassam which now pose as eighteen stand-alone events of life. I continued talking with a sudden vibrancy quite unmatched to the grey that gloomed the world beyond the window. Then came a time when the downpour ceased to descend and a crescent rainbow gleamed elegantly. I pulled my head up and we both stayed speechless for a while, letting serenity to levitate the void which the years have left till this day.
The rain ended and so did the day…. Now an impervious darkness opened up kissing all over my face which was drenched by now, but not by the rain. The stillness was finally interrupted and I found myself lone again. Didahad to leave I knew. But before going she made the honeysuckles blossom. I watered them……
Satadisha Saha Bhowmick
Jadavpur University
'Campus Writing' 