Human Being, After All!

By: Syed Shamsul Huq

Translated by: Sarwar Morshed

I went to enjoy the evening show of that much-talked about Bangla film. Movie-worms were speaking very highly of it. They were also very enthusiastic about the heroine of the movie – the secrets of her private life seduced their attention. Those personal pearls were no less charming than the movie itself! I had enough money in my wallet and the evening was incredibly pleasant. The sky was crystal-clear and the weather was mind-soothingly breezy.

It was really a fantastic film. When I came out of the cinema hall, I felt like being adrift in the cloud – I was virtually on cloud nine! It made me so ecstatic that I felt a kind of euphoria-generating storm brewing inside me - I was not here, nor there; I felt as if I were an ethereal being, a sort of humanoid omnipresent! The movie transported me to a personal fantasy land – I fancied I could do anything, I could become anyone if I merely wished – I could be a tycoon, an Adonis-like beau, or a carefree person who dwelt in a palatial house! This is the long-lasting impact of watching a good film. Some scenes of the movie, particularly the ones perfumed with the pleasing presence of the pretty heroine can even add pigments to the sleep of the cinephiles!

As I was floating in the air, I decided to walk my way home. It was such an electrifying movie! The seemingly unending spell of my obsession with the film was abruptly curtailed by a strong wind when I reached the square. The dust burned my eyes and the windborne particles suffocated me. As if chased by a gang of ghosts, I started to run. I could see nothing yet kept running. All the people in the street had to run for a safe refuge. The sky looked like a furnace. The cloudy sky, all of a sudden, was transformed into a Fury with blood-red eyes.

As I was consumed by panic, my heart began to knock at my rib-cage. A deafening sound invaded my ear-drums – may be the Norwester had flown away the tin-roof of a house which landed somewhere nearby. I feared that I wouldn’t survive the revelry of this cyclone. Any flying domestic-object missile powered by the wind might terminate my journey on this beautiful planet abruptly! How fickle human life is! Isn’t life replete with binary opposites, stark contrasts! Even a couple of minutes back, I was submerged in romantic thoughts! The cyclone had thrown all my rainbow dreams into the Bay of Bengal! Extreme fear, dark fear enveloped me, engulfed me. Consumed by fear, impelled by the drive to self-protect, I just ran, ran and ran for dear life!

It had already started to rain. The wind behaved in an erratic manner – it was threatening intermittently. The rain was now off, then on with reintensified force.

A truck raced past me – I had a very narrow escape from being run over by this demonic killer of the roads. What would happen if it had crushed me? Nothing, because everyone in the street was running to save their own precious life.

Trees were being uprooted, tins were still flying and landing in all directions. Amid the howling of the wind, I heard the cracking sound of a branch just behind me. Panting, I came to the verandah of an establishment. And immediately the street light went off. Jet-black darkness engulfed the town. The wind and the torrential rain jointly started to whip me, the houses, the city and the whole world! It became very difficult for me to breathe properly.

“Am I a star-crossed man?”, I soliloquized. To my utter dismay, I have noticed, my moments of joy are always short-lived, truly ephemeral. When I am in a happy state of mind, something unusual, unsavoury happens and my happiness evaporates, as it happened that day. What enmity do I have with the mighty Providence?

The storm didn’t show any sign of ceasing before an hour or so. I surveyed the archaeological site of my past and excavated the memory of a previous cyclone – it was a cyclone of huge magnitude wreaking colossal havoc in our delta. It swept a gigantic ship to the land, it drove humans, animals and venomous snakes to common shelters where under the pressure of the inclement weather even the fanged reptiles were shy of using their lethal arsenal! This storm didn’t seem to be of a lesser scale. Fortunately, during that ‘tsunami’, I was inside my house and hence couldn’t gauge the intensity – but alas today I was exposed and made up for the loss of that time to my experience.

My throat ran dry and I couldn’t stand up straight. I was trembling, shivering. The rain was ceaselessly invading me with missiles of its aquatic droplets. The eerie atmosphere almost froze my frame! Suddenly, a man ran to the verandah where I was standing. In the safety of the shelter, he covered his face with the extended portion of his shirt. He was breathing so quickly that his chest looked like a blacksmith’s bellows. After regaining composure, he uncovered his face and threw a puzzled look at the street. Now he could sense the presence of a fellow-man and his curious eyes landed on me.

The man felt visibly unsettled after discovering my presence under the same roof – he wore a look as if he had stepped on the tail of a venomous serpent! I also experienced an identical inner tempest. This was the culprit who one day, not long ago, inflicted the deadliest harm on me. My formidable foe now standing with me under the same roof! I saw him for the first-time after two years. In fact, I couldn’t see him well in the dark – rather I felt the heavyweight of his unwelcome presence.

He stared at me in an asinine way – as if he were trying to understand whether my presence was an optical illusion triggered by the surreal atmosphere.

Trying to make things easier for him, I turned the other way. The dreadful past chain of events flashed across my memory. That day this scoundrel engineered my ruin. He had some business in our office. I told him, albeit jokingly, that I would do his work if he would give me money to eat sweets.

Believe me, I only demanded a meager ten taka amount. I knew very well that officers were taking bribes in four digits. Only ten taka was what I asked him for! Like a seasoned politician, he told me that he would come the next day to fulfil my demand. Happily, I promised that I would do his work the next day. He was a man of his words, a true gentleman! He turned up the next day as promised but not alone – he came with the police and got me arrested! The police caught me red-handed with a virgin ten taka note. Corruption cost me my job. Subsequent litigation drained away my slim savings. The series of cataclysmic events did not end there. I was tried and the court of justice duly awarded me a two-year term and I ended up in jail. All this happened two years back.

Lying in the jail cell, umpteen times I promised to myself, after release, I would certainly find his whereabouts, set his dear house on fire, and murder him. But after my release, I realized what a great healer time was! All the fires racing through my veins and blood have been extinguished! The struggle for mere survival had far outweighed fancy revengeful thought.

After so many days when I got the man, so close to me, all those dampened fires rekindled. If that speeding truck, just a few moments back had crushed me, nobody would have known who the culprit was. Now, in that extremely isolated moment, if I strangled that satanic biped to death none would know anything. People were existentially engrossed in themselves in the catastrophic moment. “Should I be true to my jail-vows”, I asked myself, ‘‘What harm would there be in trying to implement my murderous project?’’

Sensing my presence and possibly my inner turmoil, the man distanced himself and cautiously dragged himself to the other end of the verandah. He was repeatedly looking at the sky with the devotion of a meteorologist or astronomer and casting furtive looks at me, on and off.

I took pity on him. What this man did couple of years back was right from an ethical viewpoint. It was my fault to demand money from him. But that day the man behaved in such a way that it looked as if he was to blame for the incident! My coincidental presence seemed to hang heavy on the poor man. It was as if he could save his skin if he could flee from his nemesis. It was as if I were an executioner waiting with a piece of Manila rope to hang him!

“NO”, I decided, “I wouldn’t tell him anything”.

But the man further cocooned himself. Each moment with the impact of eternity was rendering him paler and paler, I could perceive. Then I took one step forward to talk to him.

Even in that tempestuous condition, both microcosmically and macrocosmically, the man preferred to brave the elements with a huge jump. While fleeing, he groaned and emitted a strange, bloodcurdling scream.

I shouted, “Listen, Mister, listen, please.” He kept running, and in a moment, he vanished! I tried my best with the highest decibel my vocal chords could afford to produce to assure him that I wouldn’t cause him any harm, but all my attempts proved futile. The howling wind gave me back my loud appeals to the man.

A flying tin or an uprooted tree might kill the man. My blood ran cold out of fear for the potential threat to the man’s safety. Accumulating all my strength, I entreated my foe to come back but my philanthropic appeals miserably failed to yield results.

My voice got almost soaked with emotion. My fellow man could trust the unpredictable elements even in those doomsday-like circumstances. He couldn’t place his trust in his fellow species! How could he believe me? I am a human being, after all!

Syed Shamsul Haq (1935 –2016), popularly known as ‘the Ambidextrous’, was a Bangladeshi writer who left indelible impressions in almost all the genres of Bangla literature. The notable works of this literary maestro include "Payer Awaj Pawa Jai", "Nishiddho Loban", "Khelaram Khele Ja", "Neel Dongshon", "Mrigoya" , "Stabdhatar Anubad","Tumi Sei Tarobari", "Simana Chhariye", Koyekti Manusher Sonali Jouban", "Megh O Machine", "Anya Ek Alingan", and "Nuruldiner Shara Jibon". Syed Huq also translated some European classics like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Macbeth, The Tempest and Ibsen's Pyr Gynt. This prolific writer was awarded with numerous accolades for his contributions to Bangla literature including the prestigious Bangla Academy Literary Award and Ekushey Padak.

About the translator:

Sarwar Morshed, a Professor of English at the University of Chittagong, is the author of five titles including Depoeticized Rhapsody and In the Castle of My Mind. Professor Morshed's creative works and translations have been published and anthologized, among others, in The Bosphorus Review of Books, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Borderless Journal, Muse India, City: Journal of South Asian Literature, CLRI, Star Literature & Reviews, The CQ Magazine, Arts & Letters, and Penning the Pandemic.]