Fiction

Swimming in the Clouds

Wasi Ahmed

The had been spared only barely that time. Normally he was not careless, but on that day it didn't occur to him that there could be someone watching him as he stoned the windshield of the car, the dark-grey one parked around ten feet away.

As the sound of glass smashing went off with a bang, a sharp screech from a whistle close-by swished past the ears. He turned around to see a tall fellow sprinting towards him, a shiny black stick in his hands and a football referee's whistle clamped between his lips. Sensing danger he decided to run the other way. But only a few quick strides, his feet came to a halt. In front of him, a few paces away, stood another fellow identical to the earlier one with a shiny black stick in hand and a whistle like that of a football referee stuck into his lips.

For a moment he was transfixed. Suddenly, he thought of a trick. He quickly bent forward as though to pick up a piece of invisible brick from the road in a threatening gesture to throw it at the man. The trick worked: the man stood still where he was, the whistle dropped off his lips and the stick left dangling uncertainly in his hands from a loose grip.

Taking advantage of the moment's confusion, he ran as fast as he could through one alley into another, for a very long time.

That evening was different. Walking past Dhanmondi Lake along Road number 8, he wondered if at last winter was at the doors. There was not a nip in the late November air, but the breeze wafting from across the lake pricked his skin with a mild wintry shiver.

He was enjoying his walk, the solitude too. There was the uncertain shiver from the cool breeze and sudden glitters on the pitch-dark waters like comets diving from the sky. He also felt the smell of wild flowers along his way. Taking the smell into his lungs, he thought it would soon be raining heavily. The lake water would begin to dance to the rhythmic beats of rainfall and the glittering comets would crawl their way out of the water on to the banks.

It was about that time that he noticed the car, the dark-grey one in front of a white gate. The gate stood half-lit by a yellowish light lending a dim glow on the roof of the vehicle that melted slowly down the shut windows. Watching, he forgot what he had thought about the coming rain. The sky looked clear and star-lit, and for a moment the scent of the wild flowers seemed to choke his breath. He kept on watching, baffled by the maze of the light all over the car in a fixed gaze until suddenly he got drawn to it. Throwing the stone from a distance of around ten feet, he wondered what a marvel that was!

He had never been in such a danger before. On other occasions, he had considered his actions simple despite the risks that they involved. The risk factor had never come to his mind, or may be his instincts had not got a hunch of what he was doing. And every time he did it, he felt extremely light in his body and soul, strangely weightless as if he could fly.

In the beginning, he did not have any of these feelings. When he had got into action the very first time, he had no clues whatsoever, no reason for what he was doing, and no thinking at all. He had done it as if only for the sake of doing it. That was the first time.

The day was hot, and the month was June or was it July? He was on his way home from office when it struck him that there was barely anything for dinner back home. He thought it would be a good idea to buy something to take home. May be some fish or vegetables.

The bus had dropped him at the Panthapath crossing from where he took a brief five minutes walk along Green Road to reach the Kathalbagan kitchen market. It was nearing dusk when he entered the market. He looked around watching a variety of fish and soon found out that most of the lot did not look fresh. In a far corner, he noticed some hilsas, small in size but fresh-looking, waited upon by an old man. He wasn't interested in hilsas, and was about to walk past when suddenly the face of his eldest daughter flashed across his mind. His eldest daughter, a class eight student, loved hilsa more than anything. Just a piece of hilsa would get her so deeply absorbed that watching her one might wonder whether she was in a state of meditation.

Remembering his daughter's face, he changed his mind. But soon he was baffled as he haggled for the price. The hilsas were tiny and the seller was asking seven hundred takas for each of those. He went down to four hundred and fifty but the old man didn't care.

Upset, he thought of telling the fellow that no one was going to buy his fish at that odd hour and that if he couln't get them sold right away, he wouldn't be able to sell them at all. So he was sure to suffer loss. He even thought of telling him about his daughter, that she belonged to the tribe of cats, loved fish, and that hilsas were the ones capable of transporting her into a state of meditation.

But the old fellow was in no mood to yield, so he rushed out of the fish market. Early on, he had thought of buying vegetables if fish was out of reach. But as he hurried out, he refused to look at the vegetables that were heaped in plenty. Coming out, he suddenly became aware of a gnawing pain at the centre of his forehead tearing into his brain.

Back again on the road, he looked ahead to see a stream of traffic overflowing the streets. He was surprised to find that the road didn't look the same as it had a little while back. It now looked so full with cars, people, rickshaws! With much effort, he managed to scramble through the mess and reached the footpath on the other side of the road. The footpath rose higher than the road, and right down the edge of the footpath was a ditch, some ten-fifteen feet deep.

Out there on the footpath, the maddening traffic looked like a mound of fog thickening and growing, overrunning the houses, the shops, the road itself, and then hurrying towards him with ever-growing shape and form. Puzzled, he turned his eyes sideways to notice a man at the far edge of the footpath pissing in a mighty surge into the ditch right below. With his back turned, the man lost in eternal bliss, seemed totally indifferent to the chaos around. While he walked past the man, he nudged him at the waist with his slightly angled right elbow in the quickest of motions.

A quick series of events followed thereafter. The man went tumbling into the ditch with a long scream. People began to gather quickly. A huge chaos ensued. Everyone seemed eager trying to locate the man, craning their necks as far as they could into the dark pit. All kinds of questions were being hurled: how did it happen, how could he fall, did anybody push him? Amid the growing chaos, he too attempted to locate the man in the darkness resting at the bottom.

As he moved to leave the place in a short while, he experienced a sudden shiver. He felt an absolute lightness: all seventy five kilograms spread out on his five feet and ten inches frame felt as light as a feather. And a cool breeze blew over his forehead where the pain had lodged.

Back home, he had a wonderful time that evening. He had called his daughters, all three of them to come and sit beside him. He wanted to call his wife too. But before he did, she had emerged with a cup of tea and a portion of toast. He felt an urge to apologize to Minu, his wife for not bringing anything for dinner. But sensing that his wife would be taken aback at such an extraordinary gesture, he told her he had forgotten to go to the market. To his surprise, his wife informed she had bought a hilsa cheaply from a fish vendor.

Taking the tea cup and toast from his wife he looked at his full family in a quick glance. He particularly noticed his eldest daughter whose face, he imagined, was beginning to look mysterious at the very mention of hilsa.

He had no memory of ever sitting with his family in this way. As he thought of it, he felt uneasy thinking what he could talk to them about! For once, he wanted to ask the two older daughters about how their studies were going. Moments later, he wished to pick the little one, four years old, and sit her on his lap. Finally, he chose to talk to his wife and said to her, 'Minu, why don't you give them something to eat?' But barely had he finished when he noticed his wife's face turn edgy. He then tore small pieces from the toast and despite some opposition from the daughters, gave a piece to each of them, holding those to their mouths one by one. Lastly, he poured some tea on to the saucer and held it out to his wife who, he was amazed to see, turned mysteriously bashful like the eldest daughter.

That was how strangely pleasant he felt in the company of his family soon after the incident. That was the very first time. And from then on, one incident followed the other. He soon began to realize that a complex, uncertain life had taken over him. He felt helpless because it was as if something from beyond was pushing him into a game but without allowing him any clue as to the rules of the game.

There was nothing unusual about him either in his office where he worked at the accounts department or in the family. He was rather too ordinary. He kept to a more or less similar daily routine, setting out in the morning with a plastic container stuffed with hand-made bread and vegetables, reaching his office right on time by a bus or a tempo, whichever was available. In the office, he was at ease with his work and also managed time for some adda with the colleagues. His colleagues were the same bunch as in most other offices: some good at heart, some fucking crooks. He didn't mix freely with them, neither did he loathe anyone. During lunch-break, he would join them in the canteen where gossips of all hues ran wild, no different from those in other offices. The daily newspapers were the source of most of the lot. The newspapers apart, there were other subjects that would make their way in. Women, for example, were one such subject which everyone, aged whether twenty five or fifty seven, savoured delightfully. He himself was no exception. But at times he would find himself withdrawn, barely able to follow what others were talking about. It was not that he remained engrossed in some serious thinking. Sometimes he would feel a pinch somewhere in the chest, and would soon get weary and restless and gulp long glasses of water.

At home, he was a quiet soul. With his modest income, he tried to patch up his poverty up to the point he best could. There was a time when his wife appeared a little demanding and occasionally the daughters too. However, it didn't take them long to conclude that with his five feet and ten inches frame, he was but a dwarf who couldn't be expected to reach out to the moon.

As days passed and he moved from one incident to another, he came to realize that he was not like the rest: he was different. He didn't consciously try to recollect the incidents nor did they stay on in his memory. But when one of those visited him unawares, he would feel totally lost wondering if it had ever happened! Sometimes he would ask himself: was it anger of a different variety altogether that crept into his brains, prowling around for the moment to rouse him, to make him act?

Sometimes he would ask himself who it was that he was angry with and why? Was he angry with everything? Did everything, beautiful or ugly, cause him anger? And what kind of release was it that came upon him with a shiver and from where?

Once there was an electric short circuit at his office. In the beginning it was the smell of burnt rubber and a swirl of thin smoke accompanied by tiny sparks here and there. The incident occurred in the most secure place of the office, in a room which housed the computer servers. As the news spread out quickly, his colleagues rushed to the spot. The sparks that had erupted from one of the cable junctions didn't look very dangerous but threatened to turn into a flame. There was chaos and confusion, but someone with a presence of mind hurried to a metallic box fitted to the outer wall of the room and turned the switch off.

Standing huddled amongst others, he watched the proceedings. Looking at the sparks, disjointed and unable to come ablaze, he felt his heart choking. Soon the feeling became unbearable as the sparks started to die down. He stood still for a moment but then was drawn, as if by a frenzied charm, to the box on the wall. Having made sure that no one noticed him, he let the switch on. The dying sparks got back to renewed life rocking the room with a mild explosion, and in no time all four walls of the room lit up with a bright red and yellow.

He had thought about the incident many a time. He was not angry with his office or was he? There were other incidents which in comparison were trivial at times.

Lately however, he has been observing that there was an interval, and a lingering one. He hadn't been called upon to act for sometime. He found this strange. Whene he pondered this, he felt very shriveled fearing an impending action he would be called upon to accomplish.

But as nothing actually was coming his way, he began to think whether the force inside him was gone. Abandoned him? He got confused, as there was something new happening to him too. Every once in a while he felt as if he was being chased by events that happened in the shadowy past. Memories of events that had nothing to do with his present state, events he had come across as a child.

Once it was an Eid day, he was moving about sad faced in and around the house. He hadn't been bought new clothes. His father noticed him, didn't like his depressed look and got angry and dealt him with all five fingers across his right cheek. There was a kind of numbness to his right cheek all his life. There was another, that too from his childhood. At the age of seven or maybe eight when one night his mother died, he woke up from his sleep and watching others cry he too started crying still under the daze of a broken sleep. At that time a woman, a neighbour from next door, had tucked into his hand a custard apple whispering something into his ears. The soft, ripening smell of the fruit in his hand made him absolutely amazed. The smell lives on his nose even to this day.

But what did all these mean for him? Why was his head heavy with such memories of a cracking slap on the cheek or a custard apple making him forget his mother's death? He began to feel increasingly tired day after day.

Then it happened. He woke up one night trembling. Slipping from the bed quietly, he came out of the room and in no time felt himself being carried away like a feather into the staircase, and up the stairs to the roof of the six-storey building. He couldn't tell how he reached there; all he felt was an unspeakable shiver that traveled from his head to his toe over and over again. Looking up, he saw a heap of white cloud. He was soon to discover it was but a gigantic elephant lumbering across the sky. An elephant it indeed looked like with a slightly hunched trunk, much longer than that of a zoo elephant. He soon noticed the trunk rushing down towards him.

Jumping in the air, he grabbed the dangling trunk at the very first attempt with both his hands. As he flew over the roof of the six-storey building securely grabbing the trunk, he snapped his fingers. Now, now ...

Wasi Ahmed, acclaimed short story writer and novelist, has published six collections of short stories and three novels in Bangla.