Cross talk
On the other side of air
He often muttered that they would come to visit him, the people from other side of air who glowed in the darkness... On the night of the storm, the madman ate his dinner and took his medication. He then quietly lay down in bed and asked his brother to help him turn his body so that he could face the window. In the morning when they found him dead, his brother said between gushing tears that he was like a letter in a sealed envelope, which got lost before anyone could open it.
The madman died as abruptly as the storm, which blew over the village on the same night. When the villagers woke up in the damp, cold morning, they concluded that the man who concealed a calamity in his heart was able to disgorge it at last. The storm was nothing but the wind of a disconsolate life that swept over the village in its last frenzy of madness.
His brother had helped the madman shift on his side before the storm started and that was the last time anybody had seen him alive. He wished to lie down facing the window and looking into the darkness, which stood between him and rest of the world like a dense wall of confusion. He muttered at the time he was being turned from one side to another, but his brother ignored what he said thinking that it was just another incoherent utterance of the delirious mind. The villagers agreed that the brother should have paid attention, because dying people often speak the profound words of wisdom.
Everybody talked about the death and the storm, how two misfortunes had coincided in one night to bring havoc on the village. Then they lowered the dead man in the grave, cleaned up the devastation of the storm, and talked more about both for rest of the day. They compared life to monsoon weather, and reminded each other that anything could happen anytime to any of them.
The madman had spent three-quarters of his life muttering to himself, counting endless numbers on his fingers, staring at the sky and drinking tea at the village bus stop. He seldom engaged in a conversation, except raving at people who tried to be rude to him. He panhandled every day in the village market, but stopped as soon as he earned enough to pay for three cups of tea, his daily dose of hashish and a pack of Kingstork cigarettes.
Once a week on Friday night, he sang and danced at the shrine of the Naked Dervish in the village. Other nights he retired early, singing spiritual songs until late hours of night. If he were particularly sad on a day, he visited the graves of his parents in the field behind the house. There he wept stretching his arms at the sky as if a child, who was lost, asked God to help him find his way home.
Most of the time he smiled at people and looked merrily engrossed in himself, although his shaggy beard, unkempt hair and soiled clothes were a contrast to his shining eyes in the manner sharp blades are undermined by rusty razors. He lived without a sense of life like a limb functioning through its numbness. He never discussed his life with anyone. Nobody ever heard him talk about the past or the future, his life stilled in the silence of an eternal present that stretched from one day to another.
Others talked about him from time to time. They reminded him at the tea-stalls in the bus stop that he used to be a reckless and handsome young man who was offered a role in the movie by a famous production house, and his parents didn't approve of it. They told him that he was a very hotheaded and hotblooded youth and once blood came out in spurts when he was hurt in the head.
He listened to them with tensile lips suspended between a smirk and a smile. Then he muttered from time to time as if to run commentary for an inner audience, counting numbers on his fingers, while the pupils of his eyes danced in the torpor of inner turmoil. He would then finish his tea in successive gulps, light a cigarette with trembling hands and leave the spot in hurried steps in the rush of someone who had seen a ghost.
The madman avoided people who sought his company. He was a loner who walked in the crowd, a man who was eloquent with himself but silent amongst others. He was content in void, contained within desolation, an unfortunate creature of the world, which lived like an alien. But people who went to the shrine often heard him talking in the state of trance. He talked loud to an audience hidden in the air; they were the souls of people who once lived on earth. He asked them questions and answered to them as if the souls could talk back to him.
He remembered nothing in the morning, looking calm and tranquil as a ruffled sea after storm. But the words he spoke traveled from mouth to mouth for several days, keeping the village agog with taunts, innuendoes, and careful analyses of what he said. At the tea-stalls in the bus stop, some people teased him, while others wavered in their doubts whether his insanity was sign of any spiritual connection.
He would again smoke hashish next Friday, get stoned and talk to his invisible audience. He would turn imaginary knobs in the air and adjust sound and picture as if watching a television. He would cry and he would laugh like an actor taking his cue from an incorporeal prompter. Occasionally he would stand up and dance, motion his body like going for a stroll. At times he would sing, lie down or roll on the floor, screaming and shouting at the top of his voice. The villagers would talk about him for the next few days, analyzing his words and acts, concluding that hashish had completely fried his brain.
Once he danced in the rain with people who, he said, lived on the other side of air. He sang an entire afternoon, skipping and jumping in hysteria until he was tied up to a post, and had fallen unconscious. The villagers believed that he was possessed by a wicked spirit and called the village Imam to exorcise him. That is the only time anybody ever heard him engage in a dialogue, as the Imam pinched his little finger and interrogated the mischievous thing that was hiding inside him.
The madman's health started to decline after that day. His visit to the tea-stalls in the bus stop grew infrequent, and he never again went to the shrine of the Naked Dervish. He spent most of his days in bed, and preferred to face the window at night so that he could look into the darkness outside. He often muttered that they would come to visit him, the people from other side of air who glowed in the darkness.
On the night of the storm, the madman ate his dinner and took his medication. He then quietly lay down in bed and asked his brother to help him turn his body so that he could face the window. In the morning when they found him dead, his brother said between gushing tears that he was like a letter in a sealed envelope, which got lost before anyone could open it.
Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.
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