Broken Hug

Talk

Rohan looked straight ahead, his mind penetrating through the wall of the shopping mall across the road. A thoughtful mood had invaded his mind. “There are some fungi, a cupboard, and a pair of jeans. These three and a small room, and a moment that comes and goes.” He continued whispering to himself. “First of all my eyes fall on the entire cupboard. It’s brown with a maroon tinge, and these appear in straight but irregular lines to a slight degree. Next the cupboard’s right door opens, followed by its left door. And inside the bottom-most shelf, where trousers are kept, especially butter-jeans, black, and military green in colour and the various shades of white, there is this new pair of navy blue jeans.”

He turned his eyes at Charoen as she held his hand. Her eyes were far away, and in a trance too.

“The dream torments me,” Rohan continued. “There are some fungi, a cupboard, a pair of jeans. These three, and a small room and a moment that comes and goes. First of all my eyes fall on the entire cupboard. It’s brown in colour with a maroon tinge, and these appear in straight lines, not regular, but irregular to a slight degree. Next the cupboard’s right door opens, followed by its left. And inside the bottom-most shelf, where you keep trousers, especially butter-jeans, black, and military green and the various shades of white, there is a new pair of navy blue jeans. This dream torments me. I get up in my dream and another similar cupboard opens with similar clothes and the new pair of navy blue jeans. I take this out but I cannot remove my eyes, because to my horror, damp and fungi have accumulated around the thighs of the jeans. The fungi are light green in colour.” Rohan paused and rested his right hand over hers. “But soon a face appears in my dream, but it is hazy, and as much as I try, I cannot clearly make out the forehead, the eyes, the nose and the chin. But the set of teeth sparkles.”

Charoen knew whose dream it was, and so she did not ask Rohan that question, but she was stupefied, especially with: light green in colour, whitish green in colour.

Rohan looked into her eyes. Searching there, probing deep into the core, some hidden pain woke up. But he could not get at the solution. Finding her quiet, finding a stamp of wonder painted on her face, he said, “I’ve been dreaming this since the pair of jeans was purchased sixteen years ago.” He went on to tell her when that was and how he had looked after the jeans.

“But,” he continued, “since the last three months I’ve been dreaming that the jeans have been cut into various bits, and you say that bits of blue cloth have been falling in your hand.”

A look of surprise filled her face. “But I’m sure this pair of jeans is not any more with you.”

“No, not at all. And I don’t even remember whether I had given it to our domestic help’s son or sent it to some orphanage with other clothes.”

“But this destruction of the jeans, I mean it in tatters followed by the zipper handle, does it point to some destruction?”

Rohan searched in her eyes for answers. “I have no idea.” He shook his head.

“From my tenth year,” Charoen said, “I’ve been unmindfully sketching a woman in an orange sari with green border. She sports straight long hair reaching below her knees. Another sketch is of a room with a bulb hanging low over a table, and only one wall with the sketch of a man, his arms horizontally raised. Then there’s another sketch of a red carpet.”

Somehow they felt their dreams were strangely linked, his with hers, hers with his, and there was some connection between these two dreams. 

“But let’s not discuss this anymore,” Rohan said. “In fact, let’s keep the dreams away, let us fold them together like clothes, like my shirt and your top coiled together like sleeping snakes; and let them remain in our hearts so that we can take them out anytime we desire to and unfold them, and smell their closed smell, yours and mine.” He paused, still looking deep into her eyes. “But as of now, let them relax together.”

She nodded, and she smiled, and her white teeth shone; and they sparkled in their own radiance.

Rohan looked around with a far-away look, an unknown look; and after a small pause, whispered, still in the trance-like state, “Let’s do something. Look around you, and then write down the names of objects you see. I will do the same, and then we’ll match our lists, and draw a line through the common names of objects, after which we’ll take the uncommon ones and make up a story.”

Uncommon objects in Charoen and Rohan’s list:

Apex Chemist, Y Salon & Spa (fresh and new), motor-car taxis (standing in queue), roadside food-joint (selling dumplings), stain in wall with splashed tar (from the municipality’s road-repairing material), a crow pecking at a branch, a man with no legs from thigh (stain and dirt marks on face, hands, legs).  

Rohan read, “The Apex Chemist is an island situated in the continent of Y Salon & Spa where the souls of the suicidal youths have finally arrived. The salon and spa will touch their bodies and their minds; and the youths will be rejuvenated here. In the middle of this island there are motor-car taxi trees; their leaves are green and their boughs are as soft as dumplings sold at Minto Park whose steam arises from perforated bowls. These cars are those which the youths had rushed into.

Charoen continued, “But the cars are blameless; their conscience is free from guilt which can easily be made out from their green leaves staring at the wall called Unmoving Wall. This wall is the government feeling sad; it has lost a lot of colour in the form of youths and hence it is pale; and this paleness has spread around which is visible on the motor-cycle taxis. The crow is pecking at the stain of tar on the wall, the stain bulging out forming into a branch. The crow is happy that its effort has borne fruit, because it knows that very soon the branch will turn into a green colour, leaves will sprout and they will flutter in the breeze…”

And Rohan continued, “…This fluttering will bring in the sunlight, and chlorophyll will be formed; then more branches, and a trunk. And roots will hold on to the soil. Photosynthesis will take place. The man with no legs from the thighs will be happy with the changes, and he will sing a song, a song of his home in Bangladesh (East Bengal) which was destroyed during the 1971 Indo-Pak War. And a smile will light up his face because a new sun will arise which will make the entire state happy.” 

Charoen’s eyes began to turn heavy, the lids drooped, and she could hear the plop-plop of something falling in her open palm. In a moment a faint smile lighted up her face.

She laid her hand on his and brought her face towards him. “Hold my palm from the bottom,” she whispered into his ear, her lips in gentle contact on his lobe. “The sound in my palm is changing to something heavier,” she continued whispering. “Little bits of the same kind are falling; little bits with soft-green and white-green daubs in them.”

She rested her head on his shoulder, the left side of her head.

As soon as Rohan’s palm touched the back of Charoen’s palm, the half moons on the back of their palms stirred in unison. They formed a round moon; and a shudder passed through her. Bats sparkled like electric energies and orbited through her brain. Her shudder passed onto Rohan’s body, palpitating his nerves. The cupboard and jeans in his dream and the lady’s face and her outstretched palm blended into a huge cauldron-like brain.

At that very moment a young man passed by with a young woman with a video cam in their hands. Behind them followed someone, peeping at them from behind one of the trees across the road. That someone with his shirt button open at the chest.

With a gentle touch on her shoulder – so that he did not disturb her thoughts, but his touch was enough to make her understand that he had touched her, and he was next to her, and that he wanted to say something, to indicate something – Rohan caressed her; first her smooth hair; then her shoulder; her arm. She opened her eyes, and looked at him while her head rested on his shoulder.

“A walk?” Rohan whispered.

“Umm…” She whispered as if to herself but directed to a certain god and Goddes of  Love.

He held her by the arm and she got up in slow measures, her mind resting on someone, and walked across the road. Her dreamy eyes fell on the one-floor shop.

With only a few customers, the shop appeared more spacious. Some saleswomen moved about around large tables, with plastic trays on them containing sparkling nail-polish of various colours, and the other plastic trays holding colourful hair clips, nail-polish, along with colourful rubber bands.