Posts

Dried fish

By
Image
I never visited Cox’s Bazar (formerly Falong Zee) until I was 22 years old. Could be that the patriarch never deemed it a priority to take his family there, or couldn’t realise the madness people inundate into for gazing into the ocean to carry their innermost blues, melding, turbulent, unending. This time previous week, I coaxed a fragment of my belongings in a bag, dreadfully enervated and entropic in what’s to come. As myself being the organiser and participant in the fringes of Bay of Bengal at a training my job insisted I would learn a world from, I could fathom and not the extent of my overwhelm, speaking to half a hundred people. I’m a social butterfly, but even butterflies need a nest and rest. Each day is 6 and a half hours long within the haphazard of stationaries and handouts, and the sun obscures itself fast in the precipice of winter days. After so, I had to be the errand girl, so you can assume sleep is for the weak. (To note, I planned two events at once, but my adviser...
Post a Comment
Read more

Youngest uncle (and aunt): 174 Series Part 6

By
Image
  There’s always an ace of spades in your mother’s family. And in Bangladeshi linguistic, it is defined as ‘the youngest uncle.’ I fail to contemplate any given circumstances where his innate extraordinary prowess hasn’t made a smooth sailing for me. A comfort show? A food my stomach bellows for? A software anomaly which needs his jurisdiction? All green 10s. Naruto you see me voicing my unending admiration over? It’s his doing. One day, I land in his room with an orange clad, whisker inked blond boy in his juvenility, and suddenly I am home. Forever indebted for the safe haven. All the do’s and don’t of a computer. Absorbing the woes which come with my special needs sibling and attempting his best way out. Handing me a glass of carbonated delicacy when there is. He is a bit of a jaunty wordsmith himself, and wrote small, horrific yet not so poems for his nephews and nieces. I’d throw a fit when I heard mine. Because it appeared horrific for my eight years old self. Similarly, how ...
2 comments
Read more

Third uncle: 174 Series Part 5

By
Image
He loved my mom to bits. He loved me and my sister to bits. He has two sons and no daughter, and he braved the world’s opinion of girl children and named us his own. As if we are his blood. Which we are, even in a patriarchal society, we’re claimed to be our father’s daughters. He had a significantly deep moustache since his young adult days, side parted hairs which always affected people in his perimeter. He may not have had intangible redeemable traits to translate into tangibles, yet he was earnest in his ways. It expressed on his face when I used to tiptoe into his home while he worked on his computer or played games. We’d spend hours voicing all things unhinged and wise and learn and unlearn. “If you apply boiled  rice  water on your face, the acne scars will go away.” I was a worrisome child with growing pain, searing through my skin, my insides, and my naivete would hinge on anything for the need of respite. No use. Out of mom’s siblings, he saw me suffer with dermatiti...
4 comments
Read more

Second uncle (and aunt) : 174 Series Part 4

By
Image
If being realistic was a human being, it would be him. His words unravel itself as an advice, or a lesson, even if unintended. The coarse cobweb of life sewed itself in his heart and mind. A thread which he can’t cut off. Sooted feet for miles to his work. Humble beginnings to a superman who gets looked up to by three people whose gilded presence light up his world. In all his sternness, imposing persona and razor sharp truths, he is a person capable of generosity, tepidity, and a lots of laughter. He can laugh. At times, my aunt can make it stop, which is another story. I won’t tell it another day. Aunt is an enigma. A very unfathomable one. She has a bit of Urdu on her, and her siblings have the same eloquence in their exchanges. But I decrypt the meaning quite easily. A balmy spring one, then a blistering summer. The two spectrum of her sentiments. A polarity from her better half. I am cognisant of such differences. And I very well know why when I see them. The tribulations of life ...
2 comments
Read more

First Uncle (and Aunt): 174 Series Part 3

By
Image
  1971 was something different for my uncle.   An adrenaline laden youth of 20s, his hands knew barren browns, machine guns and blood. Unkempt beard and moustache, bullet wounds and a yearning of his mother’s sunshine.   Lots of it. To the extent the rims of his eyes appeared the same.   He had seen his own blood too. But not enough to ink a red carpet and a grim reaper in tow. When the only ink he knew is the one between the pages, which paint a cassette tape and hilt of a cricket bat.   Grandfather didn’t know if to ponder over it.   My reminisce only sketches one picture: his tall silhouette warmed with blankets, uncomfortably bent limbs, and a lisp I never deciphered why. Until the gruesome experience that shadowed his existence unfurled in front of me.   My meagre aged self didn’t view it as extraordinary in the grand scheme of things. But it was, and still is.   I didn’t even inform myself of how my aunt, or his two children felt.   Chi...
6 comments
Read more

redstory

By
Image
  This isn’t something I could stomach writing about until now. Yet the genocide(s) is/are making several nations lose theirs. First it was one. Then two. Three. Now they sit at millions. Millions being starved, millions becoming living remains, a shell of their previous life before the unlit chasm succumbs them entirely. It ricochets a merry tune of heaven, where the sun isn’t unyielding, the fruits tug the branches in its fullness, and the daffodils  mischievously  dare them to come play. I think this is what heaven looks like. Flowers, fruits and a shining star. I think this is what people in Palestine, Sudan, Congo and many other unspoken of, shrouded, unheard of think so. They beseech, their knees greet the ground in an intensity which outcries thunderbolts from hell. All they need is to eat. They don’t want to get eaten. By the demons which crawl their conscience. Dig their tepid, tainted fingers and relishes the crimson which treads down their arms before they grow...
2 comments
Read more

Mom

By
Image
  I’m not sure if idyllic is the right word to say when I was enough to be between two arms.   Or mom was when her own flesh materialised in front of her.   The glacial weather was bearable because her tiny reflection warmed her insides, she said. A winter’s tale started that day.   It still persists. A perennial winter.   The youngest daughter has birthed a girl, in a man’s world. Hence, a gilded cage is a must.   The exception is, mom was in the cage too. And now even more than I am.   I made a gigantic dent, but mom couldn’t fly through it.   The horrors persist, but so does her flailing wings.   
3 comments
Read more

Fourth Uncle (and Aunt): 174 Series Part 2

By
Image
Usually a stoic and intellectually wise figure, many opine my uncle as a rather reclusive wallflower. To anyone’s astonishment, he is conversant when you allow him the space and equal the serene energy. His dialect remains unmatched, and worthy of being heard. It needs a flowery font and sallow hued papers to be inked. A mahogany fireplace, a bordeaux lounger and a velvety pen. Splendid. Temperament is an heirloom among my larger family, yet his has a tenacity to which elephants might swirl their trunks and flutter their ears. The least eligible candidate to sound a bellowing, sky bound thunder. Even my aunt, his only companion. Only calibrated, clarified. No off trailing. Even with the contraries, they are alike. I discovered once that grounded people are reliable. He is too. We have a wide chasm of singularities and ideologies, but the bridge of empathy and goodwill is iron clad. Even more potent when it comes to his elder daughter and my sister.  They are two sides of one coin, ...
2 comments
Read more

Third Aunt: 174 Series Part 1

By
Image
Single women in Bangladesh are thought to be miserable without a husband. And through injudicious doctrines and naysayers to catalyse the idea, women do internalise so. But for an abridged time. Or not. Aunt used to too.  Embraced by a hoard of nephews and nieces to build two hockey teams, she used to ponder the absence of her own family. A little angel to protect. Someone who is hers. In being cacophonic, gleeful and prompt, aunt always comes first. Be it home, or an event, her larger-than-life presence is revered and appreciated. She basked in the attention, but more so when it was us, her beloved merry family whom she swore to adore and inspire. It was artless, something very uncomplicated. The reign on our hearts didn’t ink dominance. It was evenhanded. More of a companion than a guardian. Her affection is a spring shower. A renewal for the weary. In irony, her birthday is in April, when the spring showers happen. You’re more important to me than your mom. Enough to permit a be...
5 comments
Read more

174

By
Image
All I know for a long time is that my grandpa built it all by himself. The cement, rods, foundation prep, the entire tumultuous, tiresome process. He led a gypsy life, but not in the sense one would opine. It was more of packing up and packing down, trekking, stowing, levering. Everlasting. Until the smell of the soil made him rethink. Wondered if his teaching would need entailing his other eleven members being lugged around? Give a taste of the gravel his footfalls greeted? Thus 174. Previously embraced by a banana grove, a meagre perimeter holding a four storied estate. The ground became a home for twelve, the rest left for strangers to pay in every two moon cycles. It wasn’t ideal, but it was enough. For mom. Her six brothers, and three sisters. The lord of the house, not towering, yet with towering intellect tread in pursuit of knowledge. London accepted him, and a medal of honour trailed him on his way home. The grandeur to the simplicity, yet again. The children weren’t diffident...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Last

By
The heart machine perpetually beeps, a monotone sound tangled with the heavy breaths from the person it’s tethered to . The white walls are cavernous, which make the inhabitants in the room rather small in comparison. The hospital bed in question holds a young woman in her twenties, several white bandages lining her across her body and most part of her head, the shroud that grapples with her death. Except she is at death’s door. She knows it with every sharp spasm in her head, her weary bones, and her life force dimming every minute. She digests every wince that threatens to escape her lips, lest she might worry her family, lest she might give away that she doesn’t have long to live.   Her twin brother sits in silence as he watches her rest. Her eyes are closed, her countenance devoid of the color, which is usually a very earthy brown hue, and she has a feeble body. She has been like this for several days, and he can do nothing but sit and pray to the Almighty that she pushes thro...
2 comments
Read more