Short Fiction

Mahallar Cheley

Sharmin Ahmed

The clouds grumbled and he turned around right before the lightning struck. He fumbled with the keys in the darkness, found it, and let himself into his house. The torrents came down in immense, smothering abandon, the sound deafening.

Having done with his dinner alone as always, he lay down on his bed. The day had been hard at work and he was very tired. But the noisy rain played at his nerves and made him restless. In an abrupt impulse he reached for the drawer on his bed-side table and brought out an old radio the size of his palm. As he fiddled with the regulator it stuttered into life with an “emoni barsha chilo shedin” (it had poured like this that day). It brought back an old memory stashed away in the darkest corner of his overloaded mind.

Indeed it had poured like this on that fateful day. But that was not how it had begun and it did not have to end that way.

“Six!” he yelled as his eyes followed the ball he had smacked with his bat. The ball had gone over the boundary wall. As his playmates scurried after it with failing hopes, out of nowhere his ears picked up subtle sounds of claps that jingled with glass bangles banging as the hands came together. He turned around to follow it. There she was, standing at the other end of the field that met the compound to a bungalow. But that was all he had time for; he had a game to win. Every time he hit a four or a six the clapping could be heard, and he noticed it did not happen for the batsmen on the other end. It made him smile inwardly. When the game was over he turned to look for her and perhaps share a silent celebration, but she was gone.

That night as he sat studying at his desk for his Intermediate Board exams, images of her face would tickle his mind. His eyes wandered out the window that overlooked the field and ended where he had seen her. He had never noticed the house, how could he: it was too plainly designed? But it had windows! And the window he discovered, much to his delight, faced his. All of a sudden, the light flashed on and then off. He blinked, taken aback. He moved towards the window and there she was again, half-visible, leaning to one side of her window. He ran over to where the switches to his room's lights were and did the same thing. She followed and for some time they took turns in doing so and gleefully laughing at the fun. Then the lights went out. “Load shedding”, he sighed. When the electricity returned it was very late and she had disappeared.

Many days went by with the lights flashing on and off at both the windows. And he was suddenly a great batsman smashing the ball as frequently as possible towards the end of the field where the house stood. For what it seemed were only a glimpse and a shy smile. He was also prompt to sit at his study table in the evening, closing his room's door and playing at the switches. This was before easy networks and cell-phones in a small Mahalla (neighborhood). But the father of the girl was a lawmaker and that fact should have been warning enough.

So it was on the day after Eid. His heart fluttering to songs he had just heard, he wandered about the veranda to signal 'Eid Mubarak'. She was there leaning over by the window but as he moved his hand to wave at her, she rushed away alarmed. He turned around only to be faced with his parents.

It poured all night and so did the rebukes, beatings and questions that he tried to shut himself out to. The night, though long, passed nonetheless.

He was sent off right away to the city to study. While there, he would often call the local radio station and dedicate his favourite song to her. He'd say, “Gaan ta pasher barir janalar manushtakey utsorgo kora holo” (This song is dedicated to the person at the neighboring window). And she picked up fame, so much so that even other listeners would dedicate their songs to her. They'd say, “Ei gaan ta Shuvro-er pasher barir janala-key utsorgo kora holo” (this song is dedicted to the girl at Shuvro's neighboring window). Quite sadly though, she would never know how the program to which he dedicated songs became famous too…

The radio staggered out of life, he let out a heavy sigh. A few days after he was caught, he came to know that the girl's father had told on him, he had confronted Shuvro's father; “Where did your son muster the audacity to wave at my daughter!?!”

Shuvro had only one complaint to make, “But she too had waved at me”.

He got up and sat at the table, picked up a book on it and ruffled at the pages finally stopping at a page with a few lines of a song:

It was only an 'opeless fancy,
It passed like an Ipril dye,
But a look an' a word an' the dreams they stirred!
They 'ave stolen my 'eart away!
They sye that time 'eals all things,
They sye you can always forget;
But the smiles an' the tears across the years
They twist my 'eart strings yet!

The last time he met her was after he had graduated from university. His family had long moved out. In a market place, they ran into each other. She was with her husband and little daughter. He had picked up the little girl while she introduced him to her husband, “Amader Mahallar Cheley” (A boy from our neighborhood).

Was that all he was to her?

Sharmin Ahmed finished her undergrad in Economics from East West University, Bangladesh. Currently she works as a project assistant at BRAC Healthcare Innovations Programme.