thefirelookout

[thefirelookout]

Read my short story, "Feet", published in Small World City's anniversary issue:

https://smallworldcity.com/Feet

[thefirelookout]

Dead silence

This post is an attempt to share or let out some of my complex feelings about the situation in Bangladesh.

We went to our city's protest yesterday. It was a silent, peaceful protest. The Bangladeshi student community here in Kingston stood in a human chain with placards. "Save Bangladesh student", yes grammatically wrong, yes, it assumes that young revolutionaries need saving, so on and so forth. The protest started and ended quietly. My non-Bangladeshi friends were a bit confused, since they're used to chanty protests for Palestine, or union picket lines with cars passing by, honking in support. There was more noise even for the Iranian protests, Zan Zendegi Azadi. The silence of a graveyard in this one, though.

Who cares about little old Bangladesh? I sometimes wonder. We're not in the eye of the middle eastern storm like Syria, Lebanon or Palestine are. We're not strategically important, we don't even have many natural resources like Sudan or Congo do. The Prime Minister visited China recently to ask for an aid or a loan, and came back pretty much empty handed. China isn't very interested in us. India has gotten what it needed to get, and can milk more out of us, but they can do the same with Nepal or Bhutan too. We're never in the headlines, the US or the West in general isn't interested in us at all. And Pakistan denies that the 1971 genocide ever happened.

Which is why, the world isn't missing our voices due to the internet blackout.

The voices were all over my Facebook newsfeed. Aunties and apus on Facebook live selling sarees, jewelry, crafts, elderly boomers sharing gardening tips, quick fixes or herbal remedies that they swear by, people sharing posts about cricket or which cricketer's wife wore what, food bloggers calling every possible dish juicy (be it a burger or the meat in biriyani), celebrity drama, political drama to the extent of what was allowed back home. That sort of thing.

Now, again, there's the silence of a graveyard over here. And I feel like screaming till I snap my vocal cords. Can you all please come back? Please? The silence is unbearable! Please! I won't judge you if you sell your wares! Please! I won't judge if you think turmeric water can act as a miracle detox! Please, please I won't say a word if your post about your stupid cricket match! Just something, please say something! I haven't seen a single one of you online. Please don't die, please stay safe. When the internet comes back, please, post about your vacations and your pets. Not the dead, please, don't post about the bodies. I can take a bit of silence but not more bodies please!

Speaking of bodies. There was an armoured vehicle, painted navy blue in the colours of the police (fuck them). And there was a body on top of it. Dead, obviously, very dead, because it flopped down with the slightest nudge, and was left on the streets. Before that happened, the vehicle drove about as if parading its spoils of war, with the body on top. Sending a message. This will happen to you if you raise your voice.

That image has been haunting me for two nights now. So yeah, I'm not man enough to get some incisive political analysis out. I have no either or predictions for what happens if the regime falls or doesn't fall. My body feels numb, I've been binge eating because I still have food in the house and I won't be gunned down if I go out to get groceries now. My non-Bangladeshi friends, bless their first world hearts, have never had to live under fascism. Bless their hearts, have never had to stifle their voices to the extent that we've had to. Bless their beautiful hearts, could hardly pronounce Bangladesh. But they still showed up to that docile little protest because they care about my spouse and I. I can't even begin to thank them.

My insides are tearing up. I'm sitting with a poker face typing all this word vomit, but my insides are nothing but a scream. No clever realpolitik comes out of a heart that's screaming, because our mouths are sewn shut.

[thefirelookout]

A day will come

It can hurt for fifty days and fifty nights.

It can churn and churn, rumble and rumble, gurgle and gurgle inside your stomach. It can make all your allergies flare up, make your nose run, make your eyes so itchy that even the strongest fexofenadine type of drug doesn’t cut it. It can make you toss and turn in bed, surprise your cats when you move and destabilize their nightly position near your legs.

It can cause tears to come during expected and unexpected times. It can come as a shock or not. It can make the sunscreen get into your eyes and make you cry some more, just to add insult to injury or something like that.

It can make you eat a lot less than you used to, and it can make you come down two dress sizes. It can make all your pants not fit all of a sudden so you need to bore more holes into your belts.

It can stop your writing. Yeah, it can do that.

All this, for fifty days and fifty nights.

Then what? Then comes day fifty-one.

That’s the day when you wake up and decide “today is the day”. Jump the fuck out of bed, get the fuck out of the house and not bed rot for a change. Jump back into your work as if you’d never left it. Jump back into life, into living, into laughing big like in the beforetimes. Magic day fifty one makes you giddy, emotional, but in a good way. There’s colour to your face, there’s more flesh in your bones (you’re gaining that weight back, straight away, on day fifty one).

More importantly, there’s a bit more “give” to that grief. The people, or person you’re missing seem to have a foggy outline on day fifty one. You can’t trace the lines on their faces with strokes of memory, it’s all a blur, a soft focus effect, a heavily edited photo. You’ve been keeping track of their social media perhaps, but there’s just nothing new, same old, same old, yeah they’re happier than you are, but hasn’t it always been the case? That seems to make you feel better. On day fifty one the cats look fluffier and cuter, they come to you and you pet them. On day fifty one there’s no overpowering urge to open social media and see whatever it is that is up with them.

What I’m doing right now is waiting for that magic day fifty one. I’ve stopped keeping a count on the exact number of days, because I’ll know when it arrives. It’ll be the day when I jump out of bed, into my work, and right back into life. I’ll just know it.

I’m waiting for the magic day fifty one, because I’m still in hell.

I’m still in hell.

[thefirelookout]

Lines

These days I think about wearing a hat before heading out and going about my day. Now that I'm in the "over thirty" league, it's high time to double down on the sun protection. The Meta algorithm has really caught on: I get ads for full-face red light therapy masks as I'm looking at Instagram stories or scrolling my Facebook feed. Those are 500 dollars apiece, which is a lot of money for untested technology. Might end up giving skin cancer to people, according to a Johns Hopkins journal article or something. So I smear sunblock in exactly the right amount: a large dime sized dollop, or if your bottle allows it, two straight, parallel lines on two fingers. I hope it'll keep the lines away for a little longer.

I did a face analysis in front of the mirror this morning, and this is what I have so far: smile lines, a slight indication of nasolabial folds, fine lines on my forehead and deep set lines under my eyes, two on each side. The crows still haven't landed on the corners of my eyes, the forehead lines haven't become very deep set (I make it a point not to raise my eyebrows in surprise). But the lines under my eyes, and the smile lines look like penalty for laughing too much in unsavoury situations. Not a lot of struggle in that face, and for good reason. I've been raised well, eaten right for the most part, I've hardly ever been skinny in my life, haven't really known starvation beyond ceremonial Ramadan; no wonder I don't have it, the struggle I mean. Maybe you'll see a bit of grad student poverty in the forehead lines, maybe a bit of depression or whatever it is that I have, but that's it.

There are some lines in there that reek of heartbreak. Those and the dark circles that come and go. Nothing that a good concealer can't fix, and my skin seems to have enough collagen to make repairs. The rest I leave to fate, and drinking enough water.

Something else is a lot of help: the melanin. I always remind myself that I have melanin. It's not gonna be that bad, after all.

[thefirelookout]

Gifts

We want to go home at some point this year. Nothing is certain, but it's something to look forward to. I feel like buying the entire Hudson's Bay store for Maa; for Ammu I feel like I can carry the entirety of Bed Bath and Beyond in my suitcase. I know full well that there's no splurging with our dwindling grad student finances, but still.

I thought of a Humayun Ahmed horror story that I'd read long ago; a story called Ouija Board. Alauddin, a not-so-prodigal Bengali son has returned home with a white wife; his seventeen-year-old sister (that's a Humayun-favourite age if I may say so) is judging the hell out of them. What really struck me in the story are the gifts he brought for his family: a gray pure wool sweater for the mother, a gadget for the father, and a lip gloss for the sister.

How bad were these gifts, really? I went over to some websites to check. On the lowest end, merino wool sweaters on Banana Republic start at 99 dollars. I searched "pure wool" and an Eddie Bauer sweater for 189 dollars showed up. In the print I'd read he kept calling it a lip glass. Could it be a Mac Lipglass? Those are 25 dollars apiece. Little stocking stuffer type lipglosses from Elf are 5-10 dollars apiece, but of very good quality.

I remember how Alauddin's behaviour broke his family's hearts, I remember that well, but a chill ran down my spine when I thought about gifts. Just last week I was talking about taking sweaters for my mother and mother in law. Just a few days ago I was thinking of taking lipsticks for my younger cousins. I remember how in the story, Alauddin explained how money was tight; how his wife had decided to travel in the last moment. Money is short on this end too.

Back when I'd first read it as a teenager, these seemed like weird gifts. Now that I'm older, these are the exact kind of gifts that make sense. We are to pack light to avoid suspiscion and a monetary fine. We are to carry something for everyone and make the most people happy. It's not like we have to, but we do love everyone. Strange how we remember experiences in one way but their interpretation changes over the years.

I'm on the other side of this gifting business now, the seventeen-year-olds are going to judge away. I hope they understand though, just like I did today, or at some point.

[thefirelookout]

Non-starter

My best friend got us down a Princess Diana rabbit hole the other day. She explained to me, in her signature articulate manner, how in the 1995 BBC interview ("The Martin Bashir interview") Diana aired out the most dirty laundry about the royal family ever. It burnt all the bridges, and potentially killed her too. I've brought home just the one sentence from that interview though. "Actually, when I say many people I mean the establishment that I married into, because they have decided that I'm a non-starter." said the queen of hearts, the woman during whose live TV funeral my mother couldn't hold back tears. As if a friend, a sister, has been killed in a car "accident".

A non-starter. It's an animal, probably a racehorse, that outright refused to run the race. It's the yeast that never bloomed, let alone made bread. It's the sourdough germ that died, hence no longer a "starter". It's the player on the reserve bench, in the dressing room during a cricket match, who never got to play with the original eleven.

I decided, then and there, in my best friend's room, that this year is going to be my non-starter era. I ain't starting shit. Last year was a bit of a fuck around and find out year. People are in their coquette era now according to Tiktok and Reels; they're painting little bows onto their nails and wearing little ribbons in their hair. Wearing leg warmers, red tights, soft colours. Been there done that, just last year, appealed to a certain gaze a bit too much. This year I'll be a non-starter; no confrontation, no challenges to your views, no laughing at whatever farce I can recognize. I'll turn the stove off the moment there's turbulence in the milk. I'll follow the rules, but not the rules of play. No racing, no competition.

"A non-starter?" Rohu wonders out loud, "Isn't that like a good thing? So you're not a starter Pokemon then: not Charmander, Squirtle or Bulbasaur. Most awesome Pokemon are in fact non-starters!" Optimism, encouragement, love.

This year, to save me from tears.

[thefirelookout]

Void

A portal opened up in the kitchen, really. It's not a very promising portal, quite the opposite, it's a hope-killer. It's a direct kitchen-to-bathroom connection, it's gross, it's necessary. The mold has to go, the drywall has to come off so that the moisture dries. It also means that we have to leave this house by May.

We've started watching Beef. It's always something. We nod when they say that. Yup, that checks out. It's always fucking something.

We don't have a bathroom basin anymore. It's just a gaping hole. The cabinet and the mirror are still right where they should be though, so I take my skincare thingies out, balance them on the shelf, take the dropper out, try my best not to feel the absence of a basin while putting the serums and creams on my face. We brush our teeth at the kitchen sink now, which is gross, but we quickly adjusted to it. Rohu says that I'm really embodying my research, living it. Being resilient, being grateful (Allah ja koren bhalor jonnei...), and trying to produce work in the midst of it all. This is fieldwork, this is archival research, this is lived experience. Doesn't matter if I fucked off to my mind palace (which was under seige, by the way) last summer, doesn't matter what happend end of last year, just gotta carry on. Yet, there is domestic sweetness. In the middle of work, when I really, really want to see Rohu, I tippy toe my way into the kitchen where she's doing the dishes. Looking cute the best I can, I ask her something completely unexpected, something like, "Why'd the Titans attack?" "You're asking me that right now?" "Yeah, right now. Why'd the Titans attack at all?" "Well, because..." a free, live video-essay follows. I get a full explanation: Ymir, Historia, Eren, Levi, all the Titans, which Titans are sentient and which are not. The neurodivergent urge to just talk about your very niche interest. "So this is an Israel-Palestine analogy?" "Yes, but a poorly done one." "But it's still an Israel-Palestine analogy though." "Yeah. Removing the humanity of the Titans. I can see that yes." I satisfy myself with that and tippy toe back to my desk. Another time I remember asking, "Accha Rohu, if I tell you to stop texting me, like, altogether, what will you do?" "Then I'll stop texting you Mustu." "No questions asked? Ki bolo!" "None whatsoever. You decided that it's good for you, so I'll oblige." "I'm finding that very hard to believe..." "Mustu, I'll stop texting you because I love you. Precisely because I love you. I'll understand that me texting you is hurting you, destroying you, I know how you are in these situations. So I'll love you all the same, but I'll stop texting." I give her my version. "If you tell me to stop texting you..." "Hmm?" "Then I'll try really hard. I'll try at least one last time. Can we meet in person, can we have a phone conversation? Anything. I just want to hear what I've done wrong, and how I can remedy that. I want to try and breathe life into us once more. Is it even love if you don't try? At least once? At least ek bar?" "Looks like you found the loophole." I stare. "You told me to stop texting you, but did you tell me to not email you, or call you, or show up at your door?" "No I guess!" "There you go. I didn't say I'll disappear!" Lots of crying after that, for something that didn't even happen. A "would you love me if I became a worm" situation.

I was accused of trying to fill a void. Where is the void? Is it in the bathroom? Is it in the kitchen? I don't see it. I was accused of being bored, confused. Boredom? Not with on-demand video essays. Confusion? "I'm not confused at all, are you confused?" "I'm not either. Does a white man now decide whether we are confused or not? Does he sit in his ivory tower and psychopathologize?"

"No"

"So yeah, not confused. We're solid." Rohu says that we should get ourselves a Void though. A black cat. Now that will be a void worth nurturing. With Nimki already in the house, it becomes a Halloween kitten combo.

"There you go, that'll be the void in our relationship."

[thefirelookout]

Farce

Here's the thing, all my cards are on the table, all of them, and they've seen everything. I'm not even trying to hide them at this point. Ammu would say that there's nothing "nice" about me, or "sweet" about me. Let's get a bit more specific about this: the accusation was that I didn't have the power to win over love. Other children? Cute, running around, angelic, destructive, giggling, screaming, crying, running right back to their mothers or whoever. Then there was little me, doing absolutely nothing. Ammu still goes on about how she'd go out of the house sitting me down with some picture books or toys, then come back to see me exactly that way. Took me a while to understand why that was such a bad thing, because I like a bit of stasis. If I've left something unattended, and found it in the exact same state upon return, isn't it supposed to be a relief? So I had to learn how to be unstable.

Expressions, yeah? Bring it on. I still think about how much I laughed at that one silly thing even though it wasn't funny at all. My face just had to do something, the situation demanded it. Or about how I feinged interest in something I'll never even remotely touch. Touch is difficult still. I want to find some time one day, take the seam ripper out of our sewing kit and get rid of every tag of every single jama that scratches the back of my neck. I cringe sometimes even as Rohu is touching me, and surprises are so scary even to think of. I'm tensing up right now just thinking about some imaginary thing that jumps out at me. So I overshare, I show overenthusiasm. Big laugh, all teeth bared in pictures. I even make sure I get my eyes to look wide enough. All cards on the table, see as much of me as you'd like to see but please don't see through the farce. Please. I'll haha-hehe with you all you want, I'll pick the silliest song in karaoke, I'll be fun, I promise I'll be game, but please don't be a garment tag. Don't gnaw, gnaw, gnaw at the nape of my neck. It's all a performance really, I'm telling you that over here, in my little echo chamber. Even as I'm crying in the library, I'm making sure I'm not yelping or howling while I'm at it. I picked a nice window, all the sunlight is coming in, hitting the Greek Orthodox church's rooftop and columns on the opposite side, I made sure to look nice while crying. With a view and all. The little girl who didn't know how to mask wouldn't have to do this at all. Now that I've picked up on it, I can't stop. The quiet is gone. It's just noise now. Mask upon mask upon mask.

[thefirelookout]

Not special

See I'm exactly like other girls hey.

I'm very materialistic, I like a good dress, a good perfume. I regret missing out on a good sale. I sit at the computer, watch the website like a hawk, check prices on the Honey extension and pull the trigger when there's a good deal.

I'm a little Aritzia girlie with the exact same jacket and the exact same leggings and the exact same top as thousands of others. I like a good thrift haul. Pretty things bring me a lot of comfort.

Many of us got punished at the dinner table for eating too little or too much. My mother emptied a bowl of noodles on top of my head. These things happen.

Many of us dropped out of college and walked around like an orphan for a few months. Many of us got back on track maybe at a different discipline, a different university. Not a problem.

I like yoga and scented candles and a good TV show. I like a good mystery and a whodunnit. I like a good true crime podcast.

We've all called our city's dating pool a cesspool. I've said that about Dhaka many times. You've said that about whatever city you're in, or have left. Many of us have left a couple of cities and cried over them. My landlady in Hamilton threw me out. Doesn't matter.

Love makeup. Just love it. But less is more, I think. You do you, if you disagree, but support you no matter what sis.

I too, like many of you, faced what is fancily, tantalizingly called sexual harassment. Could've been worse. No matter. I'm not a special snowflake. I'm just like other girls.

Like you I had trouble spelling "harassment". This one's for my neurodivergent girlies.

We're at different stages of finding someone to love. I've found someone who has saved me from men who don't text back, from the smallness, the shame of it all. I thank her, I love her, I tell her it hurts, I mourn with her.

By the way, if it hurts, you can go to the little blonde lady who probably has a song about your specific case. Or all your cases. It's been done, it isn't anything original, you know. Basic stuff.

Many of us walk around with a gaping wound in our heart. No worries. Again, not special. Just like other girls.

[thefirelookout]

Roots

My cat and his foster brother are intently watching a squirrel through the screen door. There's a birdsong or birdcall in the background. "Our" backyard is lush green; the vegetable saplings we planted are doing okay, I've recently started taking the remains of our steeped tea to the backyard and sprinkle some of that goodness onto the earth, Ammu would probably suggest "mach dhoa pani" but we hardly get fresh fish here.

I should be very happy here, I am very happy here, but my worth as a human being condenses into some files and my days "here" are numbered. Our happy little life is a dataset, our experiences don't mean much unless there can be points assigned to them, and we aren't sufficiently colonized if we're not taking standardized tests every two years or so. It's one hoop after the other to jump through. I couldn't jump through one of them, I found out, and cooked a bunch of food. Must feed ourselves before anything. I knew and know all along that we're disposable and things can come crashing down at any given time, but didn't really "believe" it perhaps. So I let another day just happen to me, I let the cooking and cleaning and feeding the cats just wash over me. I hold my only constant tightly against me, cry a river each, then get back up for the next hoop to jump through.

The green backyard isn't ours really, so we need not plant ourselves like trees. We plant ourselves like saplings that a skilled gardener can transfer to a pot if and when winter comes. We don't really have the permission to get rooted here, what if they think we're weeds?

[thefirelookout]

Emails from the other side

The emails started coming in sometime in the Fall last year. I had a lot going on at the time: comprehensive exam, cat, spouse, spouse's thesis nearing completion, cooking and cleaning everyday, the works. The environment at home was high energy and fast paced like those startups promise you but the stressful kind. We were drowning in workload and grading and workload and grading and Nimki kept screaming at the top of his lungs.

Then one day I paid attention to one of the emails: it invited me, a manoniyo shudhi, to their annual sharodiya Durgotshob. From the email I could gather that they are a tiny little Bengali community in the North American diaspora. Their acronym reminds me of the much-dreaded Bangladesh Civil Service exam, except they're the Bengali Cultural Society, Cleveland, Ohio.

Now what business a BCS (a different BCS) from Cleveland, OH, has with a grad student somewhere out there in Kingston, ON eludes me. I can guess that they found my email from some mysterious listserv and assumed that I'd be interested in coming to their Durga Puja, Dol Utshob, Shangskritik Shondha, film screening, potluck or family day events. What surprises me is that they placed my very racially ambiguous sounding name as somehow Bengali, as Bengali as them. Otherwise in every way I am the wrong kind of Bengali: I'm Muslim or Muslim-looking, I'm from the "wrong" side of Bengal that didn't deserve a university back in the day (but got one anyway), I'm from a place that exists in the West Bengal imagination as a part of the Ghoti-Bangal debacle, I speak in that poorly imitated idea of an accent that sometimes appears on jibon maane Zee Bangla.

But I have a little something else: an independent country somewhat free from the agrashon of Hindi, the jamdani sharis in my closet are actually the real thing, the ilish is costly but it's really Padmar ilish, I can go to that pre-Partition ancestral home they think about all the time somewhat faster than they can. Our shared language is probably safer in my side of Bengal (but we never know).

BCS Cleveland, OH still invites me to their picnics and parties and ladies nights and alochona shobhas though. I'm too lazy, or perhaps too emotional to unsubscribe from those emails, or tell somebody in their executive committee to please take my name off of their list. Thing is, I don't want my name to be off of their list. I want to keep getting emails about what they do in their little Jhumpa Lahiri or Shamita Das Dasgupta-esque world.

So keep 'em coming, BCS Cleveland, OH. I won't be the one to break that spell.

[thefirelookout]

Bangles

I barely remember putting these bangles on at the makeup artist's studio two years ago. I mean, there were other painful things to wear like those heavy jhumkas, the wider bracelets and the necklaces of gradual lengths. One of my rings with a solar or floral motif even cut me a little bit, since the gold flares out in a circle with sharp petals/rays; don't remember which. All the other stuff came off, thankfully, after the ceremony was over. These guys remained firm and permanent to date; even my wedding ring isn't awarded this kind of privilege. These bangles are relaying a message 24/7, that this is a married woman's hand, that this woman is married, that upon looking at this woman's hand, you'll know that she has crossed a certain bridge, that the wrist on which these bangles rest gently belong to a woman who has entered stage 2 of life.

I mentioned how even my wedding ring doesn't get to be on my person all the time, but these bangles do. I feel like I should explain that bit now. You see, I'd lost one of my rings during my notun bou days. I was still insisting on wearing all of them and thinking myself very powerful (thinking I have some control over the orcs, dwarves and elves of my universe). But then I'd misplaced one of them, couldn't find it for days and then luckily it materialized when I dusted off an old shawl. That was the day I put all my rings away, I can't afford (financially and emotionally) to lose any more of my wedding jewelry, no. The rings went back inside the box, the bangles stayed. They, for one, can't hide inside shawls, won't go down the sink when I'm washing the rice, won't fall into the toilet, especially not into the squatting pan style toilet. They're going to just rest on the wrist whilst I write or chop vegetables or fill up forms or dust the furniture. They're harmless, they're pretty, they're a family heirloom, they are a wedding gift, they're harmless.

Then one day I was incapable of taking them off. The gold bent, the bangles got bent as I was wearing them, and now they won't come off. I've tried Vaseline, I've tried Cerave, I've tried every and all emolients in the market. They've decided to stay, no matter what, to signify that this woman....I won't go into the announcements. You know what they mean.

I recently took off my chain with an Ayatul Kursi locket on it. My hair would get stuck in the chain often, poor Rohan would have to help me free myself from it every time. I felt an immense relief the day I took it off honestly. I could now run a cotton pad or loofah down my neck without something metallic interrupting it. I can always put it back on, of course, this too is a family heirloom; straight from the childhood. That necklace has given me an easy out, you know, but the bangles won't ever give me that kind of freedom.

See, now these hands are the hands of a married woman. It's not traditional shakha-pola of the Hindu bride, but it's still something. It's my mother's warning that a newlywed's wrists and neck should never be devoid of adornment. It's my grandmother's warning to my mother that notun bou er haat khali thaka bhalo na. It's all of my foremothers whispering in my ear and reiterating this warning in all the languages that I know. It's the physical difficulty of taking these off too. I'd probably have to cut or melt the jewelry, and is that even worth it? So I conduct myself in the world as a married woman. When I sit down to write, one of my wrists is ever so slightly elevated, the bangles rest on top of the keyboard, not exactly getting in the way but still very much there. When I play One Night Werewolf with my friends on Halloween, they figure out that I'm the wolf because my bracelets are tinkling. When I'm shaking out my arms in a forward fold in yoga class, I stand out in that serene silence. They're always talking. They're saying that the hands on which these bangles are belong to a....

So when I die, and if it's in a kind of accident where you can't make head or tail of whose body it is, I'll die as a married woman. The retrieved body will be unrecognizable, but there will be these unmistakable pair of bangles on a blackened wrist. Some resourceful rookie at the investigation site will hesitantly supply that this is a married woman's hand. Somebody in admin will praise not only the rookie but also the EDII and intercultural awareness training they've all undertaken, and how culturally aware the troops are now. The bangles will transmit their messaging, from start to finish of my life, saying that these hands belong to a woman who is married. 

[thefirelookout]

Sister you're so good heart.. Wish you a calmness life.. Thank you!

Thank you so much. Please keep reading my work and supporting me even though I don't post much these days.

[thefirelookout]

It may sound wild, impossible even, but your ex probably works at Coke Studio Bangla.

The musician, elebele, baundule, nomadic type might just be one of the singers. You open the latest video one morning and see them standing with the other back vocals, vibing with the feel of it. He's probably one of the guitarists, proudly showing off his jaate utha moment. From college rag day to university rag day to underground band to their lucky break. Maybe her Chhayanaut classical training finally paid off. You don't wait for her outside her music school anymore, you're not keeping track of her work, but now she's unmistakably there. Blink and you miss.

Don't stop reading just yet, it's probably true.

Maybe they were the prim and proper corporate type and never stopped talking about never not networking. You can still hear their shiny shoes tap tap tapping on the stairs of GPHouse as you bid them goodbye. You can still feel her excitement as you both read the BAT appointment letter together, maybe you still remember how he complained about the BRAC Centre Inn food (even though most of his colleagues disagreed). The Grey job came with the cloudy skies of your relationship; look at them now! Your friends dilligently tell you about her Instagram stories full of teaser-trailers of what's to come in the musical jugalbandi of the greatest stars of Bangladesh. The carefully curated content is on all socials, not just on your ex's, you tell those friends. "No but I saw it on X's profile first" insist your well meaning friends.

Bear with me.

Maybe they're the one who designed the set, fixed the lighting, put curl cream on Animes Roy's perfect ringlets to make them curl even more perfectly. Maybe they helped close caption the videos or uploaded them in the first place. Maybe they were behind the camera or further behind or so in front of the camera that you find it difficult to watch the whole thing.

Hear me out.

Maybe you reflect on yourself a little on the occassion, think about what you've done other than sit on your ass while the ex now has it all. You don't feel like dancing as much as the lovely Hajong opening track asks you to. It is a solo levelling journey instead; it's you against the world and you against yourself if it comes to that.

Otoeb ekla cholo ekla cholo and other such affirmations.

[thefirelookout]

"After all, where does one fit their favourite conversations at their favourite coffee shops? Where does your cat fit? What about your favourite dish that only a loved one makes best?"

My half-baked study-abroad piece for @ShoutDS

[thefirelookout]

On being busy

You should see me when I procrastinate. I can go into infinite browsing mode if you leave me alone with my phone for two seconds. I'm easygoing, and not as hardworking as some of my friends are. I've always been like this. When Odrika, Monika and Gullu would consistently remain class toppers, I would just float around near the fourth or fifth position, not caring much. When Rajeshwari would spend hours and hours in the grad study room, I would just float around Westdale having a coffee at Paisley, not caring much. I would leave my station at DT and meet Rohan often, love before work, always.

But even this carefree girl had to get busy. I felt pressure, real pressure for the first time in 2015; the pressure to study somewhere and "make it" in life despite all setbacks. NSU was both easy and not easy. I was working part time but it felt like full time because content writing somehow sucks the soul out of your writing. I was maintaining that CGPA to maintain that scholarship, because I was guilty as hell that I dropped out. Fast forward to my career after Masters, I found myself just hustling and bustling everyday. Before the pandemic, if someone had told me that people can be this busy just sitting at the same table and chair, listless, unmoving, I wouldn't have believed them. The second and last semester felt, still feels like a semester on steroids.

My mother accused me of being "always busy" the other day. Somehow, the responsibility of corresponding with my parents is on me, not on them. My father calls my father in law to actually complain that I don't call him enough number of times. I found that to be such a catch-22 that I laughed out loud. Why not use that time to rant to call me, maybe? I wonder if it ever occurs to them.

I noticed that I can't straighten my back anymore after sitting for an extended period of time. It feels as if my back has become frozen in time, or stuck in a creamy plaster cast to retain that bent, half moon shape. When I was younger, I could just snap back up, taut as a bow. Now I just very painfully wobble through the corridor to wash the dishes.

I decided to keep "respecting the grindset" and being a slave to this "hustle culture" by choosing to choose studies again. I didn't have to harm myself in this way, but I did. Life is about making difficult decisions like this, and sometimes at the expense of ourselves.

[thefirelookout]

The day my head got stuck in the in-between place

My walk to school had never matched the ones from our parents’ heroic hardships. Just a boring field to cross. I would hardly get distracted by the dragonflies buzzing around near pockets of water, nor would the cows have anything useful to offer. Surprisingly, there was a thorny kamini fence around that wide expanse of a field. If it had been a piece of land with any real value, there would at least be a proper brick wall or katatar.

It was getting dark that day, the coaching just wouldn’t let on and Oshim sir kept rambling about some weird equation that will never come in the exam, you know?

The walk felt longer for some reason. No kids played cricket, none flew kites and why would they? Maybe they were driven into their homes by bossy elder siblings. The cows’ eyes shone eerily in the dark. I tripped I think, over something rather smooth. I was usually nimble on my feet, but then I found myself falling headfirst into that gash that went right through the belly of the earth.

What did I even see inside?

Water, but water from a different time.

Strange yellow-green fish swimming as if nothing had entered their realm.

Horrifying giants swimming right at my direction. Those ghastly teeth bared, ready to take me between the jaws.

A hand grabbed my neck, pulled me back into the world, at just the right moment.