To be around in this oppressive humidity is by itself quite an achievement. The sky it seems is sagging with its own weight and pressing down, making it harder to breathe (I wonder if the band Maroon 5 ever came to this part of the world when they coined the song ‘Harder to Breathe).
As we huff and puff in this stranglehold of heat, losing our frail tempers, our soft constitutions buckling under exhaustion, it is amazing to see the frail beggar kids, shirtless, on the streets of Dhaka tapping the windows of waiting cars hoping for a crumb of sympathy to come their way, and when they do come, to see the smiles tear their faces and their deep, not-so-innocent eyes return the blaze to the sun, as if saying, ha, see how I dance under your condescending rays. Defiance and pride wash their faces, as does the dripping rivulets of sweat.
And while I swear, even in the comfort of conditioned air in my Toyota Corolla, outside brave lovers meet and their fingers, eyes and breath consummate another little oath, another little promise of endless love under the swaying Deodars planted systematically on the Zia Udyan, named after erstwhile ruler of Bangladesh, General Zia, the one who proclaimed freedom. What an epithet, what a bloody legacy to be connected to the word, freedom. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, goes a song. But these legacies are in chains: they have lost this country a rightful ownership to history as warring legacies can’t say the words: Your truth is not my truth but your truth is as true as mine; is all we have to say. Is that so difficult?
But, Love is bliss, unlike Ignorance it doesn’t bury the reality. Love is bliss because it gives you the courage to pave a path of happiness even through the squalor of mistrust, disagreement and lies. Love is so blessed that it is wrong to quarantine it within the four walls of fidelity. Why shouldn’t love be cast far and wide? Why should we be misers when sharing love? Why shouldn’t my love, every kind of love, be sowed in any and every heart that we want to sow it in? It is self-defeating and an oxymoron to chain love to the bedposts of eternity. So, even if sometimes in our lives we have been able to honestly love for just a moment or few, we should be glad, because that feeling will always be eternal. Relationships may not be, but love is. So judging a love affair with just length of time of a relationship is cruel. I have fallen in love so many times, and more than most times the ones that I have fallen in love with didn’t even know that they have been subjects of a stranger’s love.
And those Loves live in me, they will eternally. In that sense I am a thief. I have robbed beauty of so many passing faces just to love them within the confines and in the luxury of my heart. I am a thief but these are not crimes because there was honesty in those thefts; I did fall in love in those miniscule moments. Those lovers in Zia Udyan and many like them anywhere in the world, when they whisper those eulogies to love they are eternal proclamations of love. And that is the freedom that love bears within its womb.
Just like the sun in the Dhaka sky succumbs and accepts the freedom of rain bearing clouds to lash the earth with their welcome spray, and a chorus of voices go up mingling with the descending droplets of rain: eshechay, kaal boishaki eshechay (it’s here, the kaal boishakhi is here). And suddenly the sky drowns, a whole river flows above; the water caresses those children’s faces at traffic intersections, and, maybe, drenches those lovers in the park as they rush to take cover under the nearest Deodar; the man’s chance of chivalry presents itself, he wraps an arm around the woman and ties his handkerchief like a bandana on her head: she rewards him by pressing her body and the softness of her breasts against his wet open chest. Droplets of love inundate his heart. They look up, I look up, many others look up and some curse.
At that moment so many things happen, one leading to another: my car swivels unexpectedly to avoid a pothole, the car following in the lane beside us adjusts to avoid hitting my car and bumps into a rickshaw in the outer lane, the rickshaw overturns, passengers fall in the muddy cesspool that will soon become a river, bystanders with any and all kinds of covering, from a bona fide umbrella to a makeshift plastic, gather around the car and remonstrate with the driver, the driver blames my car as he pulls down his window, the rain kisses his cheek first and slowly gushes in like a frivolous lover and totally wets him, people gathered around laugh at the spectacle, the driver laughs too, relieved, I smile, my driver avoids my eye.
My car windshield suddenly swells up with water. The wipers hum happily, more in mirth than out of duty. A pushcart comes and stands beside me at the last traffic signal before I hit my office. The coolies pushing the pushcart are dripping wet. I look at them brazenly and they look back at me. One of them smiles and his teeth light up like a thousand windows in the darkness of his face. Somewhere inside a voice says, turn around, we needn’t go to work today. My mind harks back to those schooldays when we expectantly waited outside the study hall, looking down at the courtyard, expecting a declaration that rarely came by because the day scholars like the pushcart wallahs didn’t let the rain tame them, and it all depended on their percentage attendance, the fate of our Rainy Day Holiday.
It gets darker by the minute and the streets all look confused not knowing anymore where they are headed. My car enters the garage of my office and I reluctantly get swallowed up by the building and resign myself to another day of routine retinue of campaigns, television commercials, strategies etc.
The rain, though, keeps pouring inside of me.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
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