Seeing clouds still makes me happy. As in childhood. Rain still hypnotizes me. Let it rain today. Cloudy skies are spreading around this morning. It has been raining continuously since last night. Outside, the rain hangs like a thread. As if the tin rice is slowly intoxicated – sound. There’s only one thing I like on this gray wet afternoon, the call of a frog. Who knows why, heavy feels good. But how long do not hear the call of the frog.
I am intoxicated by the deep sound of the rain. I was a simple, ordinary person of Bangladesh. About this day in 2016. Now I stand in the monstrous city of lights in Manhattan, New York. It is ten o’clock at night. There are many others standing like me. People of different colors and languages. Beside me, a young Filipino woman is breastfeeding her baby. He does not care about the people around him because his child is small.
It was raining intermittently throughout the day. The rain stopped a little while ago. I remember going to school wet for a long time in the rain. Maybe I didn’t have an umbrella then. I used to walk around with kachupata on my head. That leaf could not stop the rain. I used to walk around wet. Wet clothes dried on pants. I didn’t feel cold. The body took everything. There was only one pair of shoes. I used to wear it in winter and summer. What was not? Yet the memory of those days brings only a thrill of joy.
I am all alone in this rainy night. I am returning to Toronto from New York. The ten o’clock bus left at eleven. No one made a fuss about why it was an hour late. Just before leaving the bus, a young lady came and sat on the seat next to me. night bus But the girl did not think so. An impossibly sexy girl in shorts and a one-piece. quite tall The bus has started moving. I am not paying much attention to the girl. After a while the girl said, Hi.
I said, hello.
i am kate
I said my name, Kate held out her hand.
Kate is a Korean girl. South Korea. He attended the University of Buffalo. Third year. Went to New York on vacation. His father is a minister. But the rest of his family lives in Manila. The night deepens. Air condition is running inside the bus. Kate fell asleep listening to music on the iPad. I try to read with a book. The girl is shivering in her sleep, I feel. In his sleep he says I feel cold. As the little child calls his father. I am delusional. I take off my jacket and give it to him and he doesn’t mind taking it. With that he covered his open back. In the morning he went down to Buffalo. He hugs me as he leaves. You are so nice. never forget you
Two days ago, I had the pleasure of walking along the banks of the Potomac River in Maryland. Looking to the outer horizon, I try to discover the fabric of my relationship with the world and people. I just think that even after living in the world for so long, even after looting all the riches of the world, stupid people could not grasp what is his relationship with this world. He has selfishly divided the land of the world, he has created a network of various complications, a narrow sense of patriotism.
Do people never see, when a bird flies from one country to another, it does not need a passport, visa, customs dingo? Who is he to divide the world? Why did he create tension within himself by dividing the country? Why he does not think about this whole planet! Why can’t he think of this incomparable world with greenish blue life in black space as his own!
It’s no wonder I love this world so much. Being born as a human is blissful. A hundred failures and no more. If not with humans, I relate to this strange soulful planet. I just can’t seem to get it all together. Pieces are still lying here and there. A lot of it is lying in that old neighborhood of uncle’s house. Thatched houses, rice fields, haystacks. One paisa or two paisa per step. However, I have a lot left there. I have a smallpox shell around me. The real me lives in that shell. Stay strong there. So I don’t want to have a relationship with anyone outside easily.
I was thinking these things while looking at the Potomac River. This 616 km long river is very beautiful. How long the shore, deep and choppy water. Jha chik chik after sunlight. This river flows through Maryland and West Virginia. Maryland’s breathtaking natural beauty is breathtaking. Then I remembered Sandhya River in Barisal. What will happen to the rivers of Bangladesh? There is no restoration of the river. Most of the rivers overflow during the dry season with dry sandbanks. Sometimes there is a stream like a sewer flowing through one side, sometimes there is not. Then the cultivation dies, there is no such thing as newness of the river. When the monsoons hit the shallows, village after village and town were washed away. What is called flood…
