Meaningless Awareness

I am forced to weave together meaningless activity and thought, and have reached a point where there is no other way out. I must live with them. Without solutions. My body, its numerous parts, strike different meaningless poses, constantly. I lose myself in neverending meaninglessness, seeking refuge in it. And yet, my neighbours, my colleagues, my wife, my daughter – not one of them has found my behaviour or my gestures, strange or unreal. Perhaps,

they have found an element of truth in all these.

Like now. The doorbell is ringing. I am inside our flat, standing at the front door. Yet, I don’t open it. There is no reason for my not opening the door. But, to my wife and daughter waiting on the other side, I present a plausible explanation.

Meaninglessly, I stretch my hand towards her and say, “Hello!” Accepting this gesture as true, Pramita retorts, “Don’t be stupid,” and with her sunburnt, red-radish face, stomps into the bedroom like a reckless, uncaring bull in the streets of an overcrowded market place. “Uff! Once again today they could not rescue the child from the manhole.” Her face is stamped with terror.

I do not wish to acknowledge such talk. Walking a few steps behind her, I stop short. Then I return to the door. I know it is latched, and yet I pretend to latch it.

Pramita is standing at the bedroom door. She turns back to stare at me. “What? Had you left it open?”

I bite my tongue. Then give sound to meaningless words. “One night …”

“Had you left the door open?” “… rain ...”

Pramita thinks I’m reminiscing about a particular rain-filled night. My silence stops her from probing further. She saves her questioning for another time. But my “one night – rain” had not been intended to start a conversation nor was I keen to share memories or the description of an experience. I had just wanted to say something meaningless. Pramita goes into the bedroom, and I surrender myself to the sentences in my mind:

One night rain

a lot of rain

the juice-filled fruits are dry

birds fly, their feet pointing downward, their spines ramrod water crocodiles collect the colour blue at the root of the banyan tree as they

“Murders have gone up in the city, so have rapes.”

… headmaster, prawn, chanachur.

“The budget session is approaching. Who knows what madness the ministers will indulge in this time.”

… headmaster, prawn, chanachur.

Pramita goes to the balcony to pick up the clothes left out to dry. She wears a solemn face. The evening breeze is blowing, the AFSAR AHMED • 23

door and window curtains flap and flare. Unknown to her, I pull faces and dance mockingly, brazenly, behind her back. I think about the result of my dancing and my gestures. If only there would be rain. No, there is no rain anywhere, there is no ocean anywhere, there are no trees anywhere, there is no earth anywhere, only this taunting dance as I kick my feet high in the air. There is no rain anywhere, there are no torrents anywhere at all.

The fragrance of fried hilsa. Shrieks and cries fill the kitchens – Where are the hilsas?

There is no rain anywhere.

Pramita descends into my rain-filled thoughts.

“You know, Rajat said the other day, there is a price for everything. Nothing happens anymore without a bribe.”

I can’t see any rain. But in my mind I see a spray of rain on Pramita’s forehead, a few glistening drops waiting to roll off the strands of her