The Calling
By Naznin Sultana
The clock is ticking around 11:00 pm. There is a deep silence in the library except few whispers. I am working on my upcoming Ph.D. work-in-progress presentation. I am almost too sleepy and tired, but I have to keep working. I am writing a draft chapter of my thesis, while having several thoughts in my mind. The thoughts are distracting my work, then again, I am bringing my mind back to work. Because I have to keep going with both thoughts and work. That’s what I have been doing for the last decade, or perhaps more than that. I don’t remember clearly, as the struggle is so long, or perhaps I am too exhausted. At one moment, I am trying to focus on my thoughts. Then at the next moment I am trying to work. Thoughts and work are in constant struggle to overpower each other and I have to give space for both. That’s how it has always been. That’s what I have learned.
Around the midnight, the library is about to close. I take my laptop and start walking towards my hostel. It is quite exhausting with both laptop and mobile screens, so I decided to follow the moonlight instead of turning on the torch. It always feels good to follow the path shown by the nature rather than depending on man-made devices. I feel more welcome within the nature. Nature always creates objects selflessly, with love, warm affection and care for everyone. Moon just spreads the light without even thinking for whom. Man-made things lack that kind of natural warmth.
My thoughts are still there in my mind, but today’s work is over. I thought that my walk under the moonlight would help me to unclutter the thoughts. But the thoughts are all so deeply enrooted in my body that I cannot cut those off. The trees on my winding path are trying to comfort my body. Can they sense my inner conflict? Maybe, as this breeze is not unfamiliar. It feels like the moon and the sky have been watching me for a long time. The nature reminds me of my village, where I spent half of my childhood. My village is near the Indo-Bangladesh border. There was no border before. It was just a river. The river, which connects the lands of two villages of two different countries (one is in India and another one is in Bangladesh now), has become the human-made border now. There is neither any fences nor any walls as a marker of the border. It is also difficult to build the border in the middle of the river. So, the authority decided to mark the river as the border between the two countries. The river is quite wide there. The river might have divided the lands, but it provides equal natural resources to both the villages. The villagers share the same water, and catch Ilish (Hilsha fish) from the same river.
As a child, I have always been fascinated by the river. I always used to wonder about the other bank of the river where the ‘Bangladeshis’ live. I imagined thousand possible scenarios about the lives of the other side people in my head. It was a mysterious land and mysterious people out there for my mind. Perhaps all my thoughts started rooting since then. My grandfather shared many stories with all of our cousins about the partition and our family history before. He told us how our relatives moved to the other side during the partition. Before marking the ‘border’, it was easier for them to visit us, or for us to visit them, by just crossing the river, by boats. Even my father told my brother and me the stories about crossing the river to meet the relatives. But now, we can’t cross the river easily to meet our relatives there. There are many protocols to follow. There is no simple way to just cross the river. As a child, I always had this idea of swimming across the river and reaching the other side! Sometimes I used to think of sailing a boat to the other side. Can someone cross the border in that way? Is there any chance to get caught in that way? My curious mind has never found the answers.
Once my father went to the other side of the river to study medical sciences. It was just after the partition. One of his distant relatives offered him to stay at his house and to marry his daughter. My father was sure about pursuing the study, but not about the marriage. But suddenly, a communal riot between the Hindus and the Muslims occurred, which led to a few incidents of violence. He was young and afraid, so he returned home and couldn’t continue his studies there. The elders in our village often say that the communal riots are the aftermath of the partition and how everything has changed after that. Hindus and Muslims used to live together in the same land. Now, there is a sense of hatred between these two communities. Time has suppressed the nature of hate and aggressive violence, but it is still there in a very subtle way. But I still feel that the hate is not only between the communities, but also between the people of two lands, divided by the ‘border’. We often receive phone calls from the other-side relatives. Previously they used to ask about our well-being, now they only talk about their shares of land and other properties.
We have an ancestral house in our village, which is almost 150 years old with few renovations. This house has seen seven generations of our family to grow. This old architectural foundation is also a witness of the colonial period, the partition and many communal clashes. 150 years is such a long time to feel. It must have overburdened the house. That’s why it has started collapsing now. A few days back the ceiling of one room fell down. Perhaps it is too tired to carry the memory of 150 years. This house was built by the progenitor of our family, Haji Manik Mandal. He used to sell utensils at different places. Later he started his own business with the Britishers and became rich. People say that he liked this place, near the river. The river attracted him, so he decided to settle down in the bank of this river. I always used to wonder what would the river have whispered to him! How did this river make him to choose this side and not the other side! But my grandfather told me that Manik had bought land in both sides of the river, because he was overwhelmed with the idea of staying closer to the river. It was my grandfather who chose this side of the river after the partition and not the other side, though his elder brother left for the other side. I have also this feeling to get a call from the river like my ancestors received. Even now, when I am in Hyderabad, 1800km away from the river, I can still feel the gentle breeze coming across the river whenever I close my eyes. I can hear the splashing sound of the river-water while touching its bank. I feel the river is calling me to watch the sunsets daily like I used to do during my childhood.
The river is not always calm though. It also bursts into anger often. Probably it gets angry as we have marked it as a border between the two countries. In the year of 2000, it got so angry that it flooded all the villages around, including ours. It flooded everything around except our ancestral house. Every old thing has its own enigmatic connection with the other. They share the memories together. Perhaps they share the sorrows of the memories too. All the villagers came and stayed together with us in our ancestral house. We humans try to divide us – divide our lands – create more borders among us; but the nature has its own strange way to bring us back together. That flood is such an instance. Snakes, humans, cows, cats, dogs – we all lived together in that house and nobody harmed each other. We all shared our stored food and our ancestral house to stay. Often, we used to share the same boat to check the water level. Surprisingly, the whole village were able to fit into the same house. And we realised how smaller spaces we all actually need to survive and how often we do fight for the larger lands! Nature brings crisis in our lives to bind the boundaries and we create crisis to create more borders. That’s the main difference between the nature and the human inventions!
With all these thoughts, I am about to reach the hostel. My walk is almost finished here. Suddenly, a snake just appears in the middle of my way. I stand for a while to give it space and to find its own way. It is dark. I can’t see it properly. But somehow the moonlight makes both of us visible to each other. I prefer not to call the security office to catch the snake in such a situation. Without disturbing each other’s way, we can move to our own space. We can still co-exist – respecting each other’s boundaries. That’s what I have learned from the river, the flood and the ancestral house. Possibly, this is the calling!