Musings
Beyond dreams . . .
Art: Syed Badrul Ahsan
(Prelude: The piece was hand written in late 1982 and was thought to be lost. Recently I discovered the note book and I just tapped on the keyboard of my Dell laptop) I was about to say adieu to my Dhaka University days long ago, in my early 20s. My belief in the spirit world and supernatural elements (mainly drawn from doing Shakespeare) had slowly begun disappearing! Because the state of reality suddenly took its turn and became the central theme of my newer stage of life; thus student life over, confronting reality as a job seeker. To go abroad or not to go abroad took the place of the Hamletian procrastination 'To be or not to be'! Quite a few of our classmates joined together at a party thrown by one of us on the occasion of the end of our MA classes. We sang in chorus with a German Hofner guitar of our most popular friend Mushiur Bright varsity days, those carefree days that fly,To thee we sing with our glasses raised on high,
Soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife,
Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life..... Lots of fun and singing came pouring out that gave us a fast recollection of our time together at the Arts faculty, the English department seminar room, the corridors, the British Council Library, its auditorium and always spruced-up premises, a bit of Sharif Mia and TSC. Nostalgia ran through me so movingly that I wanted to go far from the madding crowd (a cliché from Thomas Hardy, but some clichés are acceptable!). And the place I chose to be was only an hour away from the capital! Yes, I didn't know why suddenly I felt I must see my mother and I must go to our hometown where she had been visiting lately and I bought myself a ticket on the last train like a homebound passenger that night after the party was over. I was lonely in the company of strangers while I was sipping steaming tea on number 8 platform of Kamalapur railway station. I chose to sit on the cemented bench of the platform humming a familiar tune from Simon & Garfunkel: I'm sitting on a railway station got a ticket for my destination......my suitcase and my guitar......going home where my love lies silently waiting O for me...' Well, I had no suitcase, no guitar, no love to wait silently for me, but those were quite befitting lyrics to recall. Soon I felt myself wandering in a dreamland express with the steady rhythmic sound of the moving train and got into raptures over dreaming of a new stage of life possibilities of a chosen career and a family life. I looked through the window. It was a dark night. My train of thought (soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife...) fast shifted back to schooldays (when Robert L Stevenson was among the most recited ones " Faster than fairies, faster than witches / Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches; ....Train journeys during childhood with one's parents are the best journey one can recall). But nothing could be visible through the windows of the running train. My sense of reality took casual leave to let the suspension of disbelief in. I began visualising something paranormal and found myself powerfully retaining my usual interest in the episodes of Lady Macbeth's somnambulism, Hamlet's encountering the spirit, and it further rocketed skywards to explore the ethereal qualities of the universe. True, besides the usual psychic experiences we have, we sometimes believe in the supernatural. As I kept on brooding, it appeared to me to have become further associated with terms like magical thinking, religious miracle, metaphysics, divination, uniqueness and uncontrollability, occult ideas, suggesting the possibility of interaction with the supernatural by means of summoning or trance - and other riddles and enigma of the esoteric world that leave us in bewilderment at any moment in the day or at night. We are likely to encounter the inscrutable ways of providence mostly when the stars are out at night - in stark darkness. It can also take a chance on us in the broad daylight of any halcyon day to give a shudder to our sense of reasoning. At midnight the Chittagong Mail train jerked to a stop at Narsingdi station. It jolted my train of thought. Behind a few other locals I got down from the train; I was trailing along the railway lines in that dark and foggy winter night. The locals were apart as I took another direction. I moved a little further and caught sight of a Hindu temple - a Kali Mandir, which lay ahead under a huge banyan tree, near the house of a well-known local homeopath. There ran so many stories of unusual incidents, unnatural deaths, and mishaps centring on that tree, a tree supposed to be possessed by some supernatural elements spirit, ghost, genie... As I neared the tree my whole body and spirit were convulsed with an unknown fear. I could hear myself singing so aloud in a tenor voice (F sharp!) that could amuse sopranos like Domingo, Pavarotti, Carrera...... The hair on the back of my neck stood on end and my body had started shaking so much that it could shake Elvis Presley's hit 'All Shook up' ! I didn't realise when I had started blowing in the air with my fists (in an imaginary exchange of blows to drive away the evil spirit in a Bob Dylan way, 'The answer my friend is blowing in the wind'!) as I was quickening my steps in a scamper. Finally I crossed the danger zone like a gallant knight without the feel or touch of anything (ethereal or supernatural) and seeing nothing but the sweat seeping through me on a cold winter night. I reached the main gate and found it latched from inside. Despite my repeated knocks at the gate no one showed up. Finally I chose to climb up to cross the gate. I was ready to be admonished by my mother, as she would be surprised to see me at an odd hour. The door opened and I went in. The large wall clock that spoke in wordless rhymes struck 1 a.m. I was taken by surprise when she let me know that she had fallen into a trance a short while earlier and was just visualising myself stepping down from that late train before she was trying to get to sleep. She never expected me arriving late at night and there was no way to expect me from that mid night train. How was it possible to see something really happen, something that she had just seen in a dream-like trance! 'Telepathy is what they call it!' I smiled away. She went on wondering at such mysterious coincidences and happenings that lay beyond any logic and explanations while I was settling myself at the dining table. She cited another example of Sheikh Saadi --- how incredibly he got to attend the funeral of his very dear friend. 'If the bond of a relationship is supreme, it probably can happen,' I nodded as I was eating ravenously the cold leftover from the fridge. It was already 2 a.m. and surely time to sleep. After a brief conversation we said goodnight. I checked my room before putting the lights off, then pulled a quilt over me and snuggled down in bed. I once again tried to recount how bravely I had crossed the danger zone the jet-black night, Kali Mondir, the scary huge banyan tree. The reappearance of all those frightening elements before my sleepy eyes made me drift off to sleep --- as in a village hut fear of ghosts would lull any child to sleep. Soon afterwards I fell into a deep and peaceful slumber. I had a vivid dream about my childhood days. It centred on the location of my maternal grandfather's village, which was just a couple of miles away from our hometown. One of my most enjoyable experiences during any vacation in that village was the company of my distant relative, Razzak or dearly known as Rezu Bhai. In flashback mode those good old days came running back to me in the dream. I was transported to the memories of country comfort our family trip to that village especially during Eid-ul-Azha or summer vacation. I would be often sitting near Rezu Bhai's handloom corner and eagerly watch him passionately weaving handlooms. Sometimes at midday he would take a break and put me on his shoulder and start walking towards the river for a bath in the river. While enjoying the ride on his shoulder on the way to and back from the river, I'd try in glee to pick up summer fruits from the jamrul and lotkon trees if I could catch them within my reach. Sometimes I'd walk with him along the isles between the paddy fields and narrow district board roads on way to a weekly haat at a nearby village. What a delightful moment it was to wait for every Saturday afternoon! As a person he was gentle, modest and helpful with a pleasant personality. He had love for simplicity of life and for nature (which I found to be two major elements of romanticism when I grew up and read the poets of the Romantic age). In the village he seemed most affectionate towards me, next to my grandparents. He was far away from any village politics. Yet a few years later he perhaps thoughtlessly got entangled with us in a dispute and passively was in league with some crooked villagers who had abortively managed to grab my grandfather's few lands through forged deeds. Along with others Rezu Bhai was also arrested and was locked up at the police station. I felt very sad for him and wanted to see him released from there. Soon he was free. All those memories with Rezu Bhai during my childhood days surfaced one after another so visibly. He was now living in the same village as an elderly man and I had not seen him nearly a decade. All of a sudden I woke up to the sound of loud knocks on the big iron gate of our house. I was startled and got up from bed. The wall clock sonorously sang in ringing chimes, announcing 4-30 a.m. A few people who came from our village were gathered at the gate. Their loud whispers were half-heard through the closed door: "Our Rezu died a couple of hours ago." So there it was. How could this be a coincidence? A few hours earlier, telepathy in my mother's case? Soon afterwards I woke up from my dream to the death news of someone whom I had been seeing in that very dream! Attributed to a paranormal experience? Is the strength of human bonding sufficient to lift the cosmic veil of the paranormal?
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