Of shadows and purple

Lost, where it is difficult to be found

2012-01-14T06:25:00.000-08:00

I have not been writing for a very long time. Staying detached from something I so dearly love has taught me many things. First, what you do out of love is always a thing that is extraordinary. Second, when it is in your life, you should consider it as a gift and when it is not- you should set it free, so that it flies in a relentless sky from where it finds somebody else who will worship it the way you do. Thus, I hope what was my even some two days ago, is somebody else's today. Something they love, cherish and celebrate- every time they write, scribble or even contemplate.

Keeping the pen down has also taught me other things which I now believe I should have been taught much before. I have learned that no matter how much you love something, unless you dedicate yourself to improving the totality of that thing, it will never find you after the vacations. You need to invest and invest on this art, in order for it to give you total satisfaction. Just writing once in a month is not enough to satiate the hunger of the soul. It's deeper than a palate of food. It requires nourishment every other day to be truly alive and a part of your ever-growing, ever-glistening world.

I knew the aforementioned things well enough, but even then I decided to be lost. I wanted to hide my soul behind warm drapes of 'other things apart from writing.' I choose my path myself and so I was lost, from where it is always difficult to be found. Today, however, contradicting the natural laws of the universe, I have found my way back. I am back to the pushing-of-the-keyboard-keys, writing like a kid, smiling at my own sheer lack of common sense, being unable to fathom what has put me here today. Earlier, I always knew I wanted to write because I wanted to de-fragment. By writing, it was as if i solved the puzzle that is life. Today, I don't think the purpose of puzzle-solving anymore. It's something more intricate, more confusing- a thing that heart aches for, hands retire to, emotions struggle for.

Writing is a railway station- I can be anyone I want to be. It is the place that gives me most of my mental serenity. I can jump on any train. If I don't want to take a train, I can simply stand in a corner, occasionally pushed in my body by a mad crowd- large, moving, desperate for another destination and watch them change places, change time, change moments. On winter, I can even warm my numb palms before steaming cups of tea from the stalls. Giggle at jumping-frog-like children. On the tension that reigns in somebody's forehead like stretch marks. Wail with sirens. Flow like red flags before trains do. Simply enjoy time going into a different direction. Where you are happy to be lost. Happy, not to be found back to reality.

Thank you

2010-12-16T02:13:00.000-08:00

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.”

The tearing-skin at the bottom of my feet had goosebumps where the heel gripped it. I was breathing in cold and serenity. Pellets of darkness clouded towards the whiteness of my eyes; few movements from people sounding like the rage of an unlabelled cyclone - poverty. An under confident, class four student, the thought of delivering a speech on a much-hyped topic petrified me to hallucinations; given that if I scored well, that would land me with a highest grade in English.

Stammering, stumbling, miss-pronouncing words and forgetting the existence of anything such as enunciation this scared dot in me drew the line to the end of her speech. It was a cherry blossom one. Made possible by the resonance of the hands of a familiar person, with two big and one small vein; his pistachio eyes boxed in a moon-glass. Smart, bold and extremely emotional, Rashed Sir, my first RAM of knowledge, helped me to believe in myself with an array of praises to follow.

If it was not the standing tall of that moment itself, I would have been someone else, maybe spectacular or absolute crazy. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. William Shakespeare. T.S Eliot. He introduced me to the three dimensions of literature, to the world of wordsmiths where a scribble in the pen can create and destroy zodiacs. Most free periods marched away with us talking with indifference in the voice, beside rain-drenched tins and calculated miles away from the vigour of nonchalance. Someday, sometime when paper planes landed on the grill of window slits of active class-rooms and ayahs expanded their gaze to the haze of a kokil’s house on the distant tree log, I left. Owing my tormenting gratefulness to him, I really left. Kazi Hosneara miss: mesmerizing pretty, outspoken, there was a cliché accompanying her name like sweats on a brooding month, which I from the start of my un-stable class nines tried succumbing. Another new class to graduate, a speaker would emerge into the podium to thank this renowned miss for helping him create a niche for himself. To unleash my potential. To my utter dismay, things turned the violet way down for me in that year: all scurvy and unpredictable.

Mathematics is a passion that one nurtures in the heart like an adorned cobalt aquarium or a gold-bead-with jacket. Tap a finger and you are awestruck from matrixes to permutation. She advised that I believe in myself. A tiny step, her long one, we crossed the bridge for the meadow. Until and unless the drapes dangled down, the final exams ran down its grim pipe, she persistently kept inputting on me. Like we feed morsels of grease to a dish cooked on blazing fire. Never knowing the flame with which it weeps gently. For this, she is a wonderful mentor. Her neatly worn light hue silk saris, long hair made into a bun and the bumping friendliness of body language; her personality was stunning but more than anything the ease with which she taught you to love was it. She taught me to love. Mutter those three words with confidence that I would live up to their grandeur. She taught me to love words, not a language. She taught me to love skills, not rules. She taught me to love the emotions in a book, not its story. She taught me to paint freestyle, dance freestyle and write freestyle. Ayesha miss, I still remember the suppleness with which you blew a kiss on the overcrowded breeze on the last day.

[P.S- Thank You Tazeen miss for being the best Bangla guidebook in this entire world and bringing me up as a patriot.]

Transparent pain

2010-12-16T02:11:00.000-08:00

She could, to the perfection of an ultrasound detector speculate the soft sound of her fighting, bruised ligaments and the hard noise projected by the frictional resentment of the floor in which her body lay still, encircling a bloodbath. It was a life, a nauseating breathe she had mastered at. It all began then. A beautifully born girl, but on the mouth of a reeking gutter. Like pencil inks on a pothole. Like crimson roses on a growling breeze. Like a bottle green scarf half attached with an antenna. Like a bard creating copyrights. Like a grey-brown streak of light drifting apart to vacuum.

Elna meaning courage was the namesake of a Scandinavian Princess. She was by every inch a princess- her beauty the order of matrixes unless her kismet played a dice game on her. Elna, from a shaky perspective chewed in the fact that she was not a princess to it’s realism but an uneducated, poor girl haling from a 10 feet by 10 feet makeshift on a Karwan Bazar street, whose life was meant to extend to the sidewalk and someday extinguish. Like Henry Wadsworth’s “Dust to dust returnest”. With eyes drifted off to sleep, mind settled to accept injustice and abuse, she was made into a dark, vivacious and outspoken girl selling two taka kodoms and bellis on the streets.

He altered her kismet.
He took her through the narrower road.
He made her taste the saffron and the beetle leaf.

Ethan’s first impression after stepping in the aisle of Dhaka was one intertwined with confusion and distrust. The numerical values in the Taxi meter outside the soaring, dome-shaped Hazrat Shahjalal Airport, the maze before the smell of light tea and the obscenity of two, grown-up officials holding each other’s index finger- it was an enigma to him. The 26 year old fresh graduate of Princeton University and affiliate of Jaago Bangladesh entered the threshold of this country believing to make a difference, in his resume for Marks and Spencer.

Soon however the country began to unfold it’s magic to his delight. Dhaka was relentless. The sirens late at night, the stinging nettles, traffic and the oily street food- he started to appreciate them amidst their oddity. The NGO that he ran along with JAAGO was granted the name, “Blue Bird”. The line next to it said, to hold the light close to your eyes. Working with the bed sheets still on his hip, crashing deadlines for arranging funds- these were the times when something in him woke up, something that usually wet him with sweats, but he could not grasp it.

Humanity or its dearth raised his consciousness.

It was 4 minutes past 3 am on the frontier of midnight. The sky hung like a colossal black hole from his glass-bottomed window. His breath was suffocating, he was missing his family. Mom’s mango pudding. His sister’s wacky tone.
It was time he went out for a cigarette. Booting down the cigarette butt, his ribcage was torn apart by a speculation. The girl with the two pony tails was dancing a foreign dance over bricks. She was enigmatic.
Elna was sparking bright. Before her abusive family served as an upright obstacle between her joining Ethan’s NGO for a primary education course, but then when money was tossed onto their face, Elna was a late summer morning for them. Either they cared or did not want to show it. With unshaken diligence and concentration, Ethan took up teaching the first few English alphabets to a batch of 10 street children, each one of them by an inch less traumatised and gifted than Elna. Elna, by then when she could accentuate on the foreign accent of Ethan and his affiliates names, was a widely opened book, any reader could skip through her emotions. Shining bright in the armour, every page of her life, unscrewed all knots, untied all barricades, summoning her readers to the realization that they are sanctified to be part of a the world where you can differentiate between the white light of day and night.

There was a passive composedness about her. She nodded and answered back during lessons, but during a little more personal discussions of the children’s life, like where they come from and the difficulties they face; Elna usually turned a deaf ear. Her silence was as casual as the whim of caps on a bald hair. The infuriating pain surrounding the skull like a tormenting, full bladder. A smell of a familiar dish on unaccepted hands.

That conversation was one from the only few that they had.

“Are you afraid of me being a stranger and protruding a willing hand to open the door to your life? Is that too bad? If it really is, then tell me, talk to me, I will back off. We only talk during our lessons, encircled by people of the same identity as yours. I fire questions. You answer them back after the five concentrated moments. That is it.”

“I am not afraid of you. I am afraid of myself. I am afraid of the line that I need to keep track to before telling you about my life. This line is my lifeline. My language, my small nationality compared to your grand one, my religion, my society. It is the bottom line of everything. Tick. Tack. Tuck. You see. It rules my life. It does not give me the liberty to talk to you about my pain in case I grow feeble.”

Images haunted, fixed themselves on the blue of his eyes. Past. An old friend. It was her a-thousand-separable words that had the rhythm of the ringing air resistance. Ethan could not hear her clear. The saffron blanket of her face lined by coal black tresses, her butterfly-skeleton lips rising to muffle even more as she spoke with the rain outside. Bending down, her index finger touching the basement of the unpolished brick, she licked her lips. A drop of rain had just landed between the brown mole on her right cheek and the pink of her blush-on.
The brick danced on the pothole as her hand forced itself towards eternity.

She was telling him.

Ethan I can move in anytime from Karachi, but you need to understand my homesickness. You see, I am girl who believes in small things. The dot ones. The scratch ones. The fragile ones. I was raised in a Muslim family where our diary-moment of the day was jamaat prayer of Magrib along with the whole family. A gulab jamun divided between us four sibling ignited our livelihoods. And you know what; I ate 4 jilabis during my sister’s wedding, never thinking about the fat I’d acquire. This is my life Ethan. I am afraid that I will miss it. I will miss the liberty of wearing Hijab along with being questioned by the Police here, accusing me to be a terrorist. I am afraid, this sodium luminance, casino life will ever give me more than satisfaction. I am afraid.

Ethan waved Elna goodbye.
The lace out of her grim adorned shoe not fading away with the footsteps.

The nights brought goose bumps on Ethan’s cold scars. From the time Aria and he broke up, first which he thought was only literally, his life had taken the deserted back seat. The Queen of his heart, who he was dreaming to marry, on a church of Boston first and then in a Masjid of Pakistan; had left him with heartache and for good. Maybe she will have a satiable life now. An established, generous family will be her destination. The baby girl will have her kohl-dipped eyes and his nose. His.

Humanity

2010-12-16T02:07:00.000-08:00

~ You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Have you ever really woken up from your deep slumber with a prayer in mind that is it not your last 5 breathes? Has a small girl in the streets selling two-taka bellis and kodoms created smudges in your perception window even if for a while? Where you always composed with the sound of sheer violence? Then you just know the meaning of humanity. Humanity is skin deep. You can feel it, touch it, love it and hate it at the same time. It sparks those bumping fireballs of guilty-conscience and awareness all our ways. It is the cord that binds us universally with no heed for race, colour, language or nationality. When performed the seven stages of life in our little arenas, the drape dangles down and humanity or its dearth strikes us in the face.

It was 15 minutes past 6. Late by an hour and trapped in one of those immoveable jams, it was a very bizarre sight that peeked with the skylight. It was a conventional double-decker bus engulfed with flames of suspended cigar. The wavy-haired driver had two vein-blue lines run across his forehead. Accompanied by a dominating proportion of men burning their sweats in the seats, the driver lured his only counterpart female passenger, standing, with her fists tightly grasped on her backpack. In her early 20s, a typical university student, she kept ogling her crowd with occasional clog of sweat under her eyes. Many a times, when the situation became a little less immobile the bus moved on with its speedometer and many a commuter took the bus and some walked away for the nearest footpath.

The entire one hectic hour of being in a jam, no passenger ever came out offering his seat to the girl. Had the bus authority not noticed it? Did they not have certain reserved sits for the female passengers as per government propaganda? Was there not even a two or three who respect a womanly figure? There have been uncountable colloquiums, seminars, roundtables and announcement about gender equality and zero discrimination. Posters, banners and advertisements are seen in every area and it’s vicinities about granting the character of a woman dignity, pride and freedom. All the men who speak obscene of a woman in the roadside have a house, a family, maybe a mother, a father and a sister who they confront at the end of the day. Can’t the harassed woman in the roadside be his much adored sister?

We also disgrace people who are an inseparable part of our lives. Two-third of the Bangladeshi people is still behind a thickly drawn poverty line. While we churn down delicacies, a million people live the lives of vagabond and sleep with empty and burning bellies. Some of them are not even legitimate citizens and most have had to drop schooling even before completion of Pre School. The little education they have accomplished is used to fulfil their basic work necessities. They do the toughest labour, build the sky-high buildings, work on machineries and at the end there is no difference in their lives. We become rich. We drive Mercedes-Benz.

Drops of good make human beings and one drop of humanity can write its own cliché of change. Everybody wants to be a part of a change, a staggering one. But change starts right at the moment when we come out of the narrow confines and deliver to humanity with passion and zest. At the end of the day we can truly mark our existence in the smiles, the happiness and the betterment of the people.

Sprinkle of dust in the soul

2010-12-16T02:05:00.000-08:00

After a long time, today I have decided to put my two palms in alignment on the keyboard and initiate writing, this time with concentrated respect from my mind. With the complicacies of life and the pleasures a published work brings, my mind was programmed to only write when I needed to rather than write for every joy and sorrow down the railway track. I allowed my writing the audacity to become publishing-centred rather than emotion and expression-centred. What has writing always been to me? It was a thick, hollow train that communicates at every other station with my varied emotions and picks up the one to take along which might help my storytelling to an effective level. I remember writing without a full-stop, comma or in one jumbo paragraph before when I really produced work for self-contentment. So, today I will be doing the same. I’ll write what the bubbly girl in me wants to say or what my collagen-less skin wants me to display. I’ll write as I listen to a soft number, eat my usual, sometimes boring meal and dream to sleep.

Yesterday my twin sister had a counselling session and we were driving back after that, we were stuck in a traffic signal where I saw a woman, her footpath and the agonizing pain you can leave on it when you get up and leave it for someone else alike you. She was in her early 30’s, maybe a mother to children and protruded the most battered features. Her tightly-clad sari was torn where the eyes reached further; the black skin on her face was coming out in patches, her hair a thin bundle of lenticels. She carried a polythene bag on her waist, from where every two minutes she would bring out some money, count them five to six times, tie them around by a rubber-band and place it carefully on the bag. I wondered why she had so much money and more than that I was bewildered at the way she kept counting the notes. Maybe it was very important to her after all. It could be for the treatment of her daughter’s ailment, or medicine for her husband, two-square meals for her family. Anything, I felt, was possible.

Strangely, amidst two open sides full of cars, people with deceiving complexions; she sat there counting her notes to perfection, her eyes braving every fear. I had hardly seen a daring woman like her. Even when another guy came up from nowhere and sat cross-legged beside her, maybe pleading for some money, she neglected him and kept counting her notes. He scorning her resentfully gave up and walked out. It was a long signal, but it was a longer tragedy. I was so close to seeing someone’s life being sorted out: maybe this is how things happen in the street. Money makes you hooligans; it drives you to yaba and liquid ecstasy. Slowly deleting the morals we learn in childhood and that is if we’d ever learned, money or the deprivation of it takes its toll on innocent lives.

When the traffic signal came out and cars where again racing, on a little free little jammed road, my mind could not get out of those illustrious images. My heart was filled with empathy for that woman, who I might never come across any other day and If I do I might step down and give her everything I own: at that moment maybe it is a VINCI shoe, 10 taka kept hidden inside one of my book’s to buy us 2 steaming cups of street tea or simply a hug. I know, these things are very insignificant for her, because even with them in her waist, she will have to wake up tomorrow and fight for two pieces of plain bread. But, I know, I might end up giving her spirit another stir, so that this time she looks back and gives me her supari stained smile. I’ll wait for that.

Pain makes you very courageous. That is the lesson I learned the other day, when I saw pain sit on her face like veins in a dicotyledonous leaf. Maybe, if I had no so closely observed her life, I would not understand what people in this world go through every day. She is not alone. There are so many people in this world, who live their life, an inch away from death. A bus-conductor. He has one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. In Bangladesh, any double-decker or a single one rarely has headlights and looking-glass. So, a low-paid conductor does the job of these. All the time during the almost 20 hour bus journey, he stands on the staircase, one leg and hand out, waving to other buses to control their speed or muttering directions. He might get run over anytime, but he has done it for a living.

On my dad’s death anniversary, we always cook tehari and distribute it on an orphanage in Uttara. I feel so happy when the food reaches the orphanage during lunch time. My intuition tells me that now the children are being escorted down the orphanage veranda, plates and glasses stacked up and after some time they’ll paint their fingers on tehari. It’s a beautiful feeling then. You know that you are the reason behind the children’s temporary happiness. For those who can’t afford to buy happiness, you are helping them to buy it. You are adding moments to their life when they feel loved and looked after. So, during winter when I have given my warm clothes to the orphanage again, I imagine a small toddler walking across the street with my favourite candy-doll pullover on and I can’t help but blow a kiss.

The luminance of silence

2010-12-16T02:03:00.000-08:00

It is a time in the night, when silence is the only voice that is heard. Its silence in the palpations of the heart, it is silence in the aromatic environment around and it is silence that works like a stiletto to pierce through those emotions. Every single day of living, breathing life anew, we or I come to discover so many undiscovered things, learn the little and small things. For me, what I understood from the different background people, the sound of laughter, the chaos, the flavours, colourful lights today was that everybody is a story that is always not told the conventional way. An 81 year old man is a story, a very colossal one, summed of chapters that might sometimes loose its flow. But there is information, experience and dignity in those words. The story is something of a hard struggle and then achieving goals through balanced morality and working it all by oneself. In his story, there lies those parts that a reader can never set his or her mind off from. A part where the man looses his most-treasured possession, his doll of old age, the companion who sat by his armchair every single day of those lovely married 20 years: his wife. The words in the satin paper seems to leak those tears, it seems to burn with rage at the cruelty of living itself. They end with the sentences, but in them lies a deep scar that never really fades. In the story, there is also a chapter, one that the reader smiles at every time he skips through. Those rare moments of being a goat for his beloved grand-daughter, the marriage of his son and the long lists of happy days, the time of his marriage anniversary where he cut the cake and made his wife eat the first piece. There are so much of these that his story wants to scream about, the joy is so overwhelming. The words alone fail to satisfy the omnipotence of feelings that when felt can make your heart a giant pole of electric shocks or a rag sewed with sorrows.
I have invariably had these goose bumps when I scrolled through words and they had this intensity and power that transformed me into their reality. Words can be so expressive, even more than the wink of an eye of two people who had spent three decades of life together and clammed under the same roof. Words are not any jewellery with which we covet tremendous feelings nor are words just generic metaphors to life’s sagas. Words are breathing and the touch of our feelings, one that comes from the deepest core of the heart sets them glistening. Words glow like the fireballs in the ceilings of Las Vegas; they speak, sometimes soft like the eyes or sometimes as loud as the heart beat. You dedicate them to love, to misery, to angriness, to laughter and to every human emotion possibly known to men. These words make you, they break you, and they move you to the height of insanity.

So, today, while wooing a crowd of familiar people, I came to realize that the smallest things of life give you the real shape of being. In them, I could see individuality; in them I could see certain cravings as well as certain bindings. They are made up of clots of blood, but they are all not the same. Each one of them maybe wanted to be something else when they grew up. Someone ended up getting married to a chauffer and another one became an admirable personality. It wasn’t what they always willed they would be. Some things went wrong or some went right. The tracks changed and the roads became either too smooth or too stony. At the end of the day, it is always you who knows what you need to be. What your purpose of being is. Each of us is people with purposes: with no heed to their discovery, recovery, acceptance, etc.

When dearest God created us with his own beautiful hands and sent us down to Earth, he sent us with a purpose. Our job in this world is to obtain that purpose and fulfil it. Maybe a thief who one day entered a house and stole things, intentionally hurt a little son had the purpose with him to do so. By doing so maybe the little boy ended up in a hospital and for the first time in his life his snobbish and busy parents had time to visit his feelings. That’s what all the chaos was all about: the thief managed to unintentionally bring the little toddler his part of the happiness. It was a way through which he connected lives, he brought them closer and made those little voices, the skin deep ones really heard.

Life is not always the picture that we see. It is not the chorus that we hear in a cathedral from the childhood memories. Life is like a flowing river, no matter what is keeps on its transformation. We have to be really eager to work out these transformations. These transformations is the one from being a juicy dot of two years, to going through the first step of painting henna on the hands as a teenager to being the mother of a soft skinned bundle of joy.
They are the small instances that you grasp and keep locked inside the memory lane. You want them to be a glowing splint that lasts forever. These are those attached parts of life that flashes down in your mind when your last days have come. They make you feel feelings which you thought you were not anymore capable of feeling. They make you feel joy, the one that you remembered feeling when scrolling through a swing with your feet setting to flight in the skies. They make you feel sadness, the one you completely sensed when your touched the rough skin of your paternal aunt who was going through her old age. They also make you feel love, you first felt it when you were crying out loud after your husband recovered from severe injure in the ICU and kissed your gold bangle adorned hands.

For me, I don’t really have a dictionary that gives me the perfecto meaning of life. It’s waking up every new morning with the sun set either like a yellow sunflower or like a glowing ball that brings me closer to the small and big instances that sets out a new meaning for life. It’s slumbering off with drapes down, dimmed lights, a prayer in the lips, slightly trying to keep a secret connection with the index finger of the person sleeping dreamily just beside me, in this favourite side of the bed, someone who is my definition of safety. It’s being able to be with the people who intoxicate in me love that I discover life’s tricks. I know that I have to really give it all, in the fireplace to some day stand on this gigantic podium where I can go down those light adorned stains to bring up the people who give life it’s breathes. They are not only dots in the map of life, but they are life itself. Whatever I see myself when am standing in the mirror in front of me, it’s the reflection of the things they had instilled in me. Whatever I achieve, its life’s way of paying for the sorrow they undertook every moment of the day only to ensure my sole happiness.

Every emotion that arises my already jam packed mind is a part of them. I myself am a part of them. They are my creator and my sustainers. They bring hope to life when everything seems so dark and they fuse the concept of silver living with all the clouds. They distance away from you with life’s complicacy, but you always owe your existence to them. Every that distance, binding, relationship that keeps you away from them, you simply detest yourself for admitting to them. How can one live his life without actually knowing its meaning? They are the meaning and every single day when you go away from them, willing to make a life of your own, you loose it.

Still child at heart

2010-12-16T01:59:00.000-08:00

Today when I am writing a decade after my childhood, I know I have lost it- even with a photographic memory, old calendar full of red marked dates and two big photo books. My childhood, the things and people encircling it, are now the swirling of ribbons on the aroma of total black. When I meet up with an old kindergarten friend lost with time or hear someone tell a story about how I loved bread loaves, small moments engross before my eyes as if they are really big.
Pricking them constantly, sorting out fragmented memories, I get a few of them clear and when I do, sometimes it’s me ending up laughing like a drunk, otherwise sobbing to red under the skin.

Growing up with spiritually intimate parents, I was always told that people die away but their souls remain enclosed on memories: easy chairs with tarnished legs, square glasses with one frame missing, notebook pages written about the smell of ripening mangoes and others which sometimes make their appearance, to zero expectancy and take us aback with their integrity, even with the bygone years. For me, though, I remember most the two-storey house we had when we were living in Dhanmondi. It was a bridge connecting meadows, shores and lush green forests. Then we’d had a big swing to ride, neighbours to play with and long distances to run with the exercising-clad in the morning and that wearing tracksuits.

Life was very simple: wake up to the cacophony of the birds and sunlight entering straight through the hole in your eyes. Eat a light breakfast of either cornflakes or butter with pineapple jam and get ready for school. School was the workshop of the devil for us. We had impish friends along to play trick on the teacher, sometimes secluding a cockroach on the tiffin box and then flinging it to the teacher’s table for a free class. Sometimes, the teacher would identify the mischievous students’ and punish them with scale beatings and bruises, but nothing to stop them from inventing better ideas next time.

On summer, Dhanmondi would be a carnival full of fuchka carts, lesfita-wala, popcorn sellers, juice-makers and what not. Once in a while, parents would allow us to spend an entire day on Dhanmondi Lake, provided we assisted properly to an elder cousin. We strolled the roads with polythene bags overhead to beat the heat and munch down spicy fuchka and then Igloo ice creams to neutralize the tongue itching. I reckon buying so many useless things like rags, balloons, puppets, plastic dolls, which had to be always removed a few days later for space constraint. But, the temporary happiness that sparks in me, with their non-usefulness, is the memory to be cherished forever.

Are we finally bangladesh?

2010-12-16T01:57:00.001-08:00

Shadhinota tumi Robi Ţhakurer ôjor kobita, obinashi ganShadhinota tumi Kazi Nozrul, jhakŗa chuler babri dolano môhan purushsrishţi-shukher ullashe kãpa ...
-Shamsur Rahman-

As a Bangladeshi born post-liberation war, I think it is my established right to know the history behind 1971’s genocide that what atrocious demeanor propelled a nation to shed 30 million lives and why we had to use progressive struggle to accomplish soverignity enough to speak our own mother tongue. Gratifying, we’d had the shortest fought war in the world, but also the most brutal. Today’s generation is far away from a quivering belief that the most unacceptable and inhuman crimes had been commited prior to three decades, and the most pivotal from them is perhaps how this nation has dimmed it’s voice when it came to punishing the culprits, some of them, sprouts of this soil. Untill and unless we raise our voices to justice, bidrohi songs and the age-refined tears of a widowed muktijoddha will haunt our squashed humanity.

Times are not like before, when a nation was opressed by a giant power and freedom of speech was constrained to few gallant intellectuals and journalists, who stood out from the maze with reasonable demands to only be shot in the heart beat. Our time has changed, we have changed- the moment when young versity students devised amongst themselves a plan to bring in ammunition for the country if needed for protests just after Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s blood-centrifuging speech and also as mothers piled up stones before sentiments and bid farewell to sons fighting for Shonar Bangla. However, this change is just an intermediate because our outlook, our perceptions and our sincerity has been marginalized. Now, it is an united initiative, a rekindling protest from a nation that just wants more than geography.

We are not preachers or advocates of law, but as veterans are informed that every government, for the last 40 years has been providing a promise of trying the war criminals. It was in the last years, that this new government has progressed on it as more eye-witnesses, documentation and instituions are coming forward to penetrate to the roots of the war crimes. Our tired voices reach a pitch, because more women are stepping up, with support from their family and talking to NGO activists and war researchers about the haywire that confronted them. Along our muktijoddhas who fought on the frontier, these women are also our heroes. It just feels a little easier when they tell their stories, so that the nation is reminded of their immense sacrifice. In no way can their shame, their sufferings be undoed, but what better way to salute them, then by trying the criminals.

A question might arise that why try the criminals after 40 years. The answer is more debatable than the question itself. A person who bears crime is as responsible as the one inducing it. So it does not matter how years might have passed, but a crime should not go unpunished, because there are still muktijoddhas, their families and every one of us patriots, who do not forsee a nation’s development without avenging for the innocent deaths and malice. When they clasped pistols from baits, had they given it a second thought? Could they not also run away to a safer, calmer exile? So, should we?
And because we don’t want to, we are finally Bangladesh.

Saying Goodbye

2010-12-16T01:53:00.000-08:00

The wind chime was a melancholy window from which a choir of sadness filled my heart to the extent of non-existence. It was a beautiful day. An old, familiar breeze, in a tremulous fountain of colour hissed and whispered silently on my mulberry red ears. Droplets of rain danced on the window silt like bricks on a lane. I remembered Auro.

Auro and Auro.

He was my son- the pride in my nose that I could not just wash off labelling it as 'dirt'. Born and diagnosed with AIDs at the tender age of three, I saw my toddler grow up more bold, courageous and passionate than any other human being on the bivouac of this world. Yet his father, untouched by a love so sanctified left us for isolation and social acceptance.

While Auro's physical health was climbing up the stairs of frailty, his indecisive and inquisitive mind became attracted to every petite and fundamental thing happening to him. With electrifying despondency the other day, he asked me about death.

I said he was going to die soon.

Impressively, he was continuing school with zeal and fervour every new dawn. Any other word that his brain adhered to, was the tunnel of discovery and enormous human emotion that he bravely skipped through. Some nights, with the warm of black coffee on my wrists, an eerie fear of the curtains being drawn and my Auro withering away with the wind, enveloped my heart.

Chicken wings with soya sauce- the delicacy whose smell not only blocked his nostrils but also his haywire and relentless mind. On witty fridays, when a foam of crimson sunrise had drenched the seven skies, we would go out wild for the chicken wings. Those were times when we walked, really walked. I took my two, calculated step with him taking his zigzag, unstable ones.

He again asked me about death.

Auro: "Momma, what is it to die?"
A hoarse voice of mine proclaimed that when you die tomorrow starts without you and you float with angels on the azure sky. Then I could see the depth of his dimple, making lunatics as he fused into a shaky, I-use-colgate-toothpaste-smile.

The next day, he stealthily brought in his fists, now enclosed an A-4 size paper. He held it down the bottom of my nose. I grinned.
It was a mesmerizing poem of David Romano.

"If tomorrow starts without me
and I am not there to see
If the sun should rise and find your eyes
all filled with tears for me..."

A tormenting tear shrivelled off my cheek. He hugged me in an extreme force.

The midnight stars had slumbered off on their comfort zones. Sitting crossed-legged on the highly-raised bed adorned with satin bedcover, my index finger etching parabolas on Auro's stretched forehead, I repeated the number of an old relative on my subconscious mind. I flung opened the curtains in the room that till now supported suffocation. Smooching Auro's veiny, injection-plugged hand I left the hospital room with a stride on my pace.

I ringed Auro's father.
The hospital rang me back.

Auro, with a chill on the bones and a deep etch in the heart, breathed his last on the warmth of my body. The human sentiment that grasped me on that instant was one that fragmented and defragmented me at once. Tear is an understatement of a mother's love for her son.

On the lapse of seconds, a drop of smelly rain rustled on my palms. His funeral had started. It was the soothing voice of Auro's father echoing on my ears, from a distance,

"It seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never fading with the sunset
When the rain set in..."

"Goodbye, Auro". Saying goodbye was never this hard.

White Dove

2010-02-25T09:28:00.000-08:00

It is human nature to always refrain from loneliness. As the physics modules suggest, the universe arose from the “big bang” explosion; we are all surrounded by the heat, light and sound from this explosion that by now has settled down to every secluded core of the universe. So, we are not different, we might be structure-wise but our passion, our destination, our responsiveness to pain, pressure and happiness remains the same. In such complexity, would it have been possible for us to live a life, with no one to understand us, no one to make us breathe a little easy, a little cold? Here come the two people, who start loving us just imaging lowering their voice to a cajole while our grandmother runs calculated steps with plate full of crushed potatoes. They are our parents, never insubordinate in fulfilling their duties towards you as they transfer the gist of their soul into ours.

When our age is a dot, we sometimes go near the riverside; we etch names and build sandcastles, small and big, chisel and nut shaped. That is perhaps the most beautiful phase of our life; it seems we live anew everyday. Witnessing a miracle, smiling into the small things, jumping into the puddles and being the top-notch naughty child, we sleep with a prayer on our lips. “God, keep us as a family always together”. But, they say, time is the biggest healer and in such cases the biggest killer. It seeps through the alveolar walls of emotion and paralyses sensations; it separates you from the warmth of your mother’s feet and the sight of your father’s rectangular spectacles. Ruthlessly we yearn for a career, for money to fill all the seven pockets of our baggy pant; forgetting to tend to the people who build those bones that makes us capable of the extra stride.

Suffering from high fever, we would shrink in bed, loosing our appetite. It was our mothers who stayed awake throughout the night, applying soaked clothe to our forehead, measuring our temperature and sometimes muttering silent prayers. When we had exams, the one when we studied bundled up notes for all the time; our mothers would fetch us back from coaching centres as far as Dhanmondi and Gazipur. In a tiffin-box, which by not had iron-rust on it, sat our mothers waiting impatiently to feed us porota and kabab as we finished the exams. It is our fathers, who did overtime at office to bring back enough money to buy his beloved child the turtle-shaped cake he saw in an expensive bakery shop. It was his son’s birthday after all.

If you have finished reading this article, your perception mind will have one question engrossed, standing with all the light. What was the last time I told my abbu, my ammu that “I love you”? Yesterday. Two days ago. Five days ago. One month ago. Parents make you; they break you into two, one that is you- their child and one that is a new identity: someone beautiful, talented and successful. No matter whatever the pinnacle you reach, no matter what mistake you have made in the past, your parents love for you will never decrease but increase with time. Nothing in this world is worth hurting your parents. They are the picture of God in disguise.

'Life will not always be this way'- a street child

2007-10-05T01:41:00.007-07:00

“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.”- Mother Teresa

They say life has a way deeper meaning than just spending on some wacky video games or eating out on a franchise cafeteria. But the world really is selfish with people only living for their own means- they just look out for the time to seize another opportunity, the richest don’t leave a penny, and that’s the global scenario of today. Then what happens to the ill-fated, the poor people all around us, street-vendors, beggars?? And from the indifference curse even the children ain’t spared. On a recent survey to forums of Ukraine my eyes gloated with snuffles as ruthless but very factual stories came up of those unfortunate children living drained lives yearning for someone to come and adopt them. In the insights of a teenager, it’s that simple answer to a considerate question; smilingly, “I want to live in a normal family”!

Kristina Zenina

The foster child of Zaporoshye Orphanage Kristina is nine years old. She is a wonderful girl who has the face of a grown-up and the intelligent looking eyes of an adult. She is a very hard-working, diligent and unfailing child. Kristina has had a hard life, but in spite of everything she has found the strength and ability to remain an optimist. Whatever happens, and under any unforeseen circumstances, her face is always beaming with a smile. Kristina loves animals. In general, she is able to love. It is said that a child is taught to love from their parents. Although Kristina doesn’t have them yet, she has the most important human values. It is always very interesting to ask a child her biggest dream. But I have not yet dared to ask Kristina such a question. I already know the biggest, main and innermost dream of these children. She might not voice the answer to this question, but the answer would be written in her eyes, which cannot conceal her deepest hopes and dreams. Such an answer would be louder than a shout . . . “About parents”.

Ludochka

Ludochka is a great lover of books; reading is her favorite pastime. If you can’t find Ludochka anywhere, you can be sure that she is sitting quietly somewhere with a book. And after she reads a good book, her friends will sit and listen to her wonderful stories about the heroes in these books. Ljuda is a dreamer, and if she doesn’t agree with an author of a book, she can easily make up her own version of a story.

Although Ljuda has a very active and creative imagination, she cannot stand to lie. Ludochka is very sure that whatever the outcome, it is always better to tell the truth. Ljuda’s only weak spot is candy – she loves it! But having a sweet tooth is really not such a bad thing, especially considering that this child has read all the books in the local library. It is wonderful to have such a child.

Vitalik

Vitalik from Zaporozhye’s orphanage is eight years old. He has never gone with his dad to a football match, he has never gone with his parents for shashlick (barbecue) to the countryside, and he has never seen his mum making jam for winter. He was not able to experience all those things, but he is sure that an ordinary family does live like that. Vitalik is grown up but at the same time he is still a child, who can help and who needs to be helped. He is also an extremely focused and determined child who is completely devoted to his studies. He feels good about his successes in school and does well in every subject. Everybody at his school is very proud of him.

Vitalik could easily manage without football, shashlick at the countryside and jam, but he can’t easily manage without mum and dad. A life without parents is a hard and sad life, filled mostly with disappointments.

Source: Ukraine forum

Circled thoughts...

2007-10-05T01:41:00.005-07:00

Growing up days was really hard for all of us – the flock of three sisters who hurdled and messed up things, sometimes wondered the society must be taking us burdens. We were not all the same, but yes, there were few similarities. Cursed, hampered with life and sharing the same unfortunate circumstances to be raised without a mother beside. And here I stop like that a summer migrated bird, flying in the relentless sky reticently- does it make sense? Birds don’t fear, not the height is fright; they fear inhumanity that can come and touch them making lives hell to breathe. I believe adventure is likely not that pointlessly amusing; but threat looms all around even in the blue and bluest seas.

So this is how my life starts entering the invariable misery and suffering- I was not killed or tortured ruthlessly by some military camp, jihads or something nor there was money crisis; what lacked was the proper attention of love that one needed. The bread for stomach can be left behind instead which is the soul food: love, affection, affirmation, someone to live for, a purpose underestimates it all. Left in the middle of nowhere to walk such a big path, unless, sorrowfully for two 6 year old kids and a just grown up teenager is really a big dilemma to the young minds. They look for the same unlike faces but do they reckon any? Long ago, a day, luck played this futile game when life turned a nightmare for me, for us.

But such feelings from my part no longer exist, not that I can hug her and rub my hair off her cheeks, she doesn’t pray prayers for me to pass exams clear, nor she ties my hair into bun as I may reminisce. Life without her is meaningless and how do I carry on with it? But they say life has a way deeper meaning that just ‘death’. The going of a single person doesn’t stop you from living, it always goes on, and mine here. But some lacking always stays and no longer do you have the urge to resist, because you lose touch from your life. This is what happened to me at first. It came like a howling storm in my life and torn everything apart in its crimson love….

A murky afternoon with the sun set high above the mountains reflecting a grey daylight shadow in the skies. It was 29 June, 2000 when I happily sung out my lungs in my musicals forwarded at school hoping to tell mom I was selected for the annual function. She would really burst into laughter and hug me tight. The school day ended and as everyone got out in serial according to class teachers and met their parents\guardians on gate. I waited very long when our car finally buzzed and the ‘darowan bhai’ took my bag from the usual place it was positioned and yelled ‘hurry up car’s here’. (Of course he said that in Bengali but I translated it, slightly lets say modified). Mommy wasn’t there waiting maybe she had some work needed to be done.

Then it all came so uncertain and shock that it almost took three hours sitting under the Air conditioner freezing the room and working out two jugs of cold water on our heads; finally she left us. We hadn’t been on the prospect and seen the luggage being packed and unpacked times, how they smashed and she knocked him down and went away, very far. But everything was a mere blur. My dad no longer smiled useless nor he had this broad grin and I understood what it meant to be living without your same-old queen. It never seemed to matter to anyone. People came and showed sympathies knowing we had almost lost our mother, no one really felt the pain like we did. They just came and overheard us with taunts that we learned all these as motherless daughters. Then man can’t ever just you properly; they are unjust, but God is just and someday you’ll have your justice. If you keep judging people you have no time to love them.

Today after the long race of 7 years, its 2007, when we stand almost changed: all grown up faces, faded pains (or unladed) and searching that we built something and flashbacks come as a big force flashing everything that had once occurred…with the same hearts sore. We may laugh some time say that beat the blues, it never really happens this way. One who suffers this way only feels the pain; others just only compare it to their luxuries and most importantly the support they have from ‘rue buds’ and ‘life partners’ that make life rather soothing. I’d like to also mention that ‘pain is for some moment, but life is another era’ just in the quest of my mother, that I undoubtedly miss her so much even today, she is not that farer, but in that every rippling aches of my heart thrown on terrible nightmares sweating my worst most fears and when lumps after lumps follow the silent figure in distinctive rays. The readers won’t have any idea what you mean to me by reading this; you are making lives connect and putting a smile in the distressed cheeks. As kazim Ibn Sadique (writer Daily Star) says ‘This is what you feel inside not what other people feel and say you feel’. You are always there in my heart, until this daughter is alive, even when I die, you just belong.

The reign of bloodshed

2007-10-05T01:41:00.002-07:00

November 29. By the exteriors of Gazipur Courthouse. It was a normal day for the common people. Most of them ignorant of how they were to be betrayed, until then. At around 9:45 a diminutive-young man was seen roaming around with a bag on his hand. Now, near the gate. He looked suspicious and had a worn out face. Maybe struggled off on a fight with his mother, he bore marks that resembled alike. The clock alerted 10 am. Abdul Razzak didn’t look back but grabbed and tapped the remote controller on his hand tight, freezing for a while. A blur. The whole area was on ashes and after a moment the fire of the bomb leapt out on the whole building and ceiling. Along with himself this legendary suicide-committer killed seven. Injured: more than 40 innocent people victimized and clashed on a deadly game. The frontline of newspapers, terror sovereigns.

Black vestiges enveloped the entire place. People ran for their lives and others were too much in an awe of shock to walk a step, rest betrayed by their legs and now all collided in the middle. After, 40 minutes the irresponsible police of ours arrived…quiet normally, as if nothing happened. Journalist for BD TV Nazia ahmed arrived with her camera man Sadique. They captured snapshots of lying dead bodies, bones, mayhem, with a man half-naked except only a piece of cloth. On other side of the court stands animate the brazen statue of justice, which was solely blind.

Story-1

Abeda heard a loud noise by her shack, still sleepy, maybe it was the black cat getting for the remained piece of fish bone. Another bump. Her instincts told that someone was being hard-pressed and he likely protested and screamed. Her mother heart sunk. It was him, Rahim, her son. She quickly bashed out neglecting her sari swaying all muddy way and made it to the door. By the dark horizon was a clearer face of two men purging someone. Abeda knocked down the other man and begged and cried to leave him. But they didn’t. With the two strengthen men in black, Rahim, and Abeda, the heads soon flopped the window. But, not a single soul wished to help. The windows again mushroomed with the curtains. He left her hand.
Rahim never came back to her, but alas, one day came his bones, skeleton, and bloody shirt. Clinging the shirt tight to her chest point, the lady mother, over-flooded with the emotion of loosing her son and protest to bring justice. Her gone son, Rahim, was one who supported Awame League and didn’t heart on the JMB commands. The sorbohara people also came the other day. Abeda begged to forgive Rahim if he had made any mistake but all they could do was: kick her on the stomach. He would never come, she knew, never ever…

Story-2

This family situated in the Baghmara upazila slept serenely. The father, Abdul Motin was a peasant and his wife Rabeya a house wife supported by their one girl of 16, another 12 and their 7 year old boy. The parents never cringed to the situation of terror in their place; but rather faced it in the stripe. The girls slept hand and hand, ascertain of what happens next. A thump sounded on the door. Rabeya went to get the hariken and see who was there so late at night. Around 1 of nighttime.

Three days later. The neighbors now grew even more tenser. The Motin house was on a stinky smell and no one ever opened the door. The police arrived. They kicked the door unlocked and found, what was a terrific scene: Abdul Motin and his wife Rabeya ‘kolli kata’, their small boy on rope attached with the fan, 12 year old sumi disgusted on bed and 16, Nila laying on the floor amid blood…how could anyone do such disgusting crimes? The walls that conceded their happiest memories, laughs and tears now shook with them the victim. If those ‘jollads’ could only look once in their eyes…and see…how it feels…a father…a mother…a sister…a brother…what remains…

Story-3

The judge daughter cried her heart out while the people present moaned on her father’s body clothed on white with cotton on his nose and unlimited fragrance. But, It didn’t matter anymore. The 10 year old pale body saw her daddy being taken to the grave and buried, her mother cried a lot and fainted. She was taking rest on bedroom. The press journalist came and she had to attend them. While everyone looked pitifully at her, she was strong enough to say ‘My father was a true believer in justice. He’ll never come back, I’m pretty much aware. But someday we’ll get justice, real one’’ and her voice broke up.

The house was now deeply on silence. Zaira searched for her mother, a long time, but couldn’t find. Alas! A worker called her and pointed to the ceiling where her mother had hanged herself. Near the scene, left-open a letter. As Zaira finished reading it, she cried ‘mummy, now who’ll I live for’…

March-6 ,2007

The News headlines flashed with a sense of rush and flashbacks, Bangla Bhai along with his JMB partners’ were arrested. The reporter Nazia Ahmed covered the event with thousands of people gathered around the court to get a glance of Bangla Bhai. He felt like a celebrity inside, but unfortunately, luck wasn’t his side this time. The court declared its judgmental procedure and ordered Bangla Bhai to be hanged along with Sheikh Abdul Rahman and his followers’. As the rope tightened and the cloth fell covering his head, good; bangla bhai for the very last time smiled, in horror to the unforgivable curses he would receive for a reign of destruction.

Nazia Ahmed now finished her story and peeked at the pen…how freedom of words killed journalist for decades. But, she didn’t care or dare to do so. She wrote her last lines ‘and until, when people like us, fear talking of such things, rape, protest, atrocity, these will go on. We have to fight for lives not be tottered, a women’s body smacked, and I’d say them ‘kill us rather, for even if we hold crutches, we’ll linger awhile in the roads and keep protesting’.

Lyrical love

2007-10-05T01:41:00.000-07:00

They met in the middle of a murky afternoon with the sun set high on mountains. The beauty of that day was undeniable and perfect for a romantic date. Both of them, coming from different backgrounds, races and culture acted like they’d met before. It was like their world comprised of that small window, they lived and happily in it. Only words seemed to meet the distance and suffice their insatiable hunger. This two people connected, touched, over-flooded with anger on each and then again sung on top of their lungs about the love they possessed, the most unnatural of all.

10 years ago

Crazy boy: Hello angel, anyone there?

Sweety pie: hmmm….how are you today love?

Crazy boy: I am fine only after I talk to you. I missed you so much throughout the day. I’d gone to tutor and it went quite boring. How was your exam, anyway?

Sweety pie: Yah, as usual jotil. So what are you doing now?

Crazy boy: collecting pictures for a slideshow. Remember saying me the other day how you love roses on your profile?

Sweety pie: Oh, yes…I don’t know what to say. Why do you care for me so much honey?

Crazy boy: For you are the girl who taught me to love. You were the one to make a significant difference in my life, you make me. I want to love you, marry you, have kids with you and grow old and die. Without you I’m nothing and nobody. I’m great and special for I’m with you.

Sweety pie: Sometimes I’m so much saddened with why was life so unjust to me. But having you in life is a blessing. Never leave me, please, until death tears us apart.

Crazy boy: I’ll love you forever…and forever. My love will never die but live eternal not decrease but rather increase in time.

He winked on the monitor. Some say that you are emotionless people if you fall in love with a girl on net. That’s not true, not all the time. Love is something that happens; you have no control over it. It is where you find it. And until you believe in love of any form never give up.

7 years ago

She silently waited there, in her full consciousness. He would soon arrive and it would be the first time they’ll personally meet. For like three years they just chatted on messenger and he seems to have no objection with virtual keepings. Zaira wore a black dress with her hair made into a bun, as he had stated his dream girl would be like. She waited insanely and as her heart beat increased, a silent wind swayed her lust. He gave a miss call. Sameer arrived with a bundle of flowers in his hands that fell down as soon as he saw Zaira.

Sameer: Zaira what are those crutches on your leg? How come you never told me about that…err…your leg??

Zaira: I’m sorry Sameer…I cheated you for my own selfishness. I was attacked by polio years back and from then am leading the life of a paralyzed. I couldn’t say, if you’d leave me.

Sameer: No, you should have believed me. My love is not the symbol of such occurrences. Those who are frauds will leave you, but I’ve loved you truly!

3 years ago

Sameer: I’ve decided to meet up with your parents and ask for their consent about our marriage. What do you say sweetheart?

Zaira: They are going to be a bit frustrated but then again, what I’m for. They’ll surely agree.

Sameer: So ready for the dinner? Oh…you put on the pink dress, looking gorgeous my princess.

Zaira: oh sweety, it’s your choices that make me so beautiful. I’ll also put on the locket with our picture.

They slammed the door behind and started for the road. Zaira’s best memories settle to be in this time when they walked on the golden fields, sat by the lake, made names on the sand and spoke on ears. Like a psalm of love. They now crossed the road, holding hands when Sameer got pushed by a truck. Zaira’s world crashed there and her dreams shattered.

Present times

As the 30 year old writer received flashbacks and shared her past with the big crowd…she tried not to cry. Finishing the speech and gluing what a very attentive troupe of people…she spoke slowly of what a tragic shock it is to lose someone you love. Her words seemed to speak for her. ‘While I look at the sky in the dark, the brightest star is him. He said to me that waiting is another part of love. And I’ll wait for him, forever and ever…’

The audience rushed into a big applause and a small pair of brother and sister got up on the stage gifting Zaira with a bunch of flowers…’you didn’t lose him, he’s up their’ said the boy pointing at something he wished was the sky. The innocence of a child.

Love never really dies, only we die when we have stopped loving
Fariha

(This is the best love story that I could possibly ever write and it shall remain consistently. Love, a feeling that keeps two souls together even after 50 years is the symphony of a sea when it's ebbs sing of freedom. Two people who had been two pillars of a the cathedral of true love are simply blessed- that's what I deemed when I stepped in my petrifying 13s and wrote this story that stirs my heart's ribcage even today because the power of love is so empowering. )