Agastya : The War

5 : The Haunting History

Perhaps, 'Tragedy' is actually my word! And, most of the times tragedy can be best encountered when the dark future traces back to a beautiful past!
And, Tragedy is what this book tries to connotate!
Honestly, I loved writing this part. Did you love, reading it? Let me know in the comments:)

----

Given a chance, if one were to enter Heaven in a conscious state, one would have experienced an ordeal, identical to that day. None of the tinglings of life could be as vivid as that day. It rained and rained. But no thunder. Those were the first moments of the first summer shower of the year and the vicinity had completely surrendered its entire being to Mother Nature.The endless showers on the parched ground, secreted the masculine fragrance of the petrichor, which, having amalgamated with the feminine fragrance of the flowers, created the most exquisite ambrosia of the season. The cold winds, the fragrance, the green-grass, the magical ambience was way too irresistible for a lover to stay within the threshold.

She was wandering aimlessly in the verandah of her house. Her long dark traces cascaded like a waterfall from a mighty mountain. The lilac-coloured saree was wrapped around her tiny frame like the curves of a poet's handwritten poetry. Her dark-black orbs, the kohled waterline, hinted at the intellectual capacity that this sixteen-year old youth possessed. At a time when women and books were as far as the Arctic and the Antarctic, she was a poet, a poetry lover - an aesthete, and a philosopher. The beauty of the day had enchanted this beauty, and to claim the beauty of the day, she loitered around, reciting,

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date."

A Shakespearean sonnet. Her most favorite poetry. To match with the beauty of the day, this youthful intellect found no other poetry as befitting as Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.

"Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed," she continued reciting.

The sudden chirping of the birds in the mid summer afternoon, summoned her to come and play with them, along with them.The chiming sound of her anklets accelerated as she ran into the open field, twirling and dancing, rejoicing along with the chords of Nature.

She was just getting to imbibe the natural ambrosia into her soul when her confidante, Kamala ran in, tensed, afraid and hurried:
"Boudidimoni! O Boudidimoni?"

She stopped her rejoice to look at Kamala with an urgency to question the latter's state,
Before she could ask, Kamala fell to her knees, buried her head in between them and lamentably shouted, "Dadababu....."

--------

A sudden jolt of shock shook Suhashini Bannerjee out of her haunting history. That day, which she had considered to be the best day of her life, had turned into the worst. And, today was quite similar to the ambience created by that historically remarkable day of her life.

That day, three years ago, Suhashini had not only lost her husband but also had lost the authority of her life. She had lost the authority to colors, she had lost her authority to apparels and moreover she had lost her authority to smile. The departure of her husband had forced the departure of thousands of ecstatic emotions from her life.

She had never met her husband - just the next day after their marriage, he had left for England to complete his education. Maybe his family was responsible for forcing him to marry, where he actually never wanted to get married. Being devoid of her husband, whom she actually never had, Suhash always felt an unusual vacancy in her life. What kind of vacancy, she herself could not decipher. Even three years later, at nineteen, Suhash maintained a silent demeanor at her house. Probably, she was in quest of her long lost rights over her femininity. She was still in shock about losing everything, for someone, whom she practically had never known in her life!

That lilac coloured apparel, all those bangles and earrings - red, blue, golden, green, were now, like a dream to her. A dream that was ought to be the farthest reach of her life. A dream that would never come true. Moreover, she was a young budding beauty, and this forced shock had left her life in ruins. She was condemned by society. She was denied the rights to dress up, eat, talk and worship, the way she wanted. She was tied in the shackles of unworthy customs, with the help of invisible chains, in the disguise of malpractices. Young marriage and a catastrophic fate were the primary reasons for her state.

However, at a time, in the 1920s, she was a young woman, unlike the folks. She was a budding literary genius. This added to her silent demeanor for she was a great observant and an intellect, wanting to listen and observe, rather than talking. And, probably this was the reason why people preferred not to be near her, owing to the superstition - that husbands die if a woman could read or write.

Her room was located at an isolated corner which was only visited by her siblings and her mother. And, it was good that her room was visited by few because the cultural richness of her room would be too difficult to be deciphered by one. Thick books of philosophy, thousands of books of poetry, hundreds of novels - English, Sanskrit and Bengali, and innumerable diaries containing her own treasure house of literature, philosophy and logic enriched her room. The room reeked of the cultural affluence and the powerful and righteous feminine aura of its owner. And, honestly, the owner was culturally affluent. True. But she was non-culturally restraint to culture. Haunting Histories!

Suhashini left the window, folded the newspaper, kept it aside and neared her bed side table to complete her favorite poetry which she had left incomplete that day. She was brave enough to complete the incomplete and unspoken words and recite,

"But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

-----

We are reaching the shore. Slowly Yet Steadily!