The Grotesque Look

Aleeya Tamzida Kanti ।। 

With a briskly motion, I attempted to climb the steep stair leading to the top of the hill where we had just started to live a few days ago, but stopped at the middle. My heart started pounding and my legs stood still though I was in my vigorous teens. After the completion of the exhausting upward movement, I reached the hill top. The look of our house which vied with nature amidst the fragrance of colourful flowers, the murmur around, the gentle breeze of green forest, shook off all my weariness.

I sat on the sofa in the porch and started to observe the dancing branches of big trees in the sunny afternoon and feel the spirit of nature. I wondered how it was possible for human beings to make such a magnificent house on the hill top in the forest. I felt proud of our “Notun Basha” (our new house). It was a government quarter for which we had to wait a long time while living in our old quarter. The lively environment took me to a world of bliss and I felt as if my mind, released from my body, was hovering to feel the spirit of nature. I felt sleepy. I went to bed and I don’t know how long I slept.

I woke up hearing a thud as if somebody hit the window. When I opened my eyes and looked at the window, I found a band of strange people passing by our house. All were wearing loose cloaks of faded black as if they had no colour in their life and even in their mind. They all were stepping in the same manner as if they were not walking; they were just dragging their feet, leg, bodies and even their minds. From my bed, I shouted, “Who are you?” but I got no answer.  All fellows, male or female, were passing in the same sluggish manner following a leader whose muscles and vigour of mind were also covered by black colour, the absence of all colours. I leaped out of my bed, rushed to the balcony, and shrilled, “Halt, I said, who are you?” The leader didn’t utter a single word but stared at me for a while. All of them were moving forward towards a stair leading to another hill, higher than our hill but the strange look, the leader gave, remained there and started to talk to me.

The look was not sharp or vibrant but it seemed to mean a lot. It didn’t have any queries but it had a lot of answers. The weird look said to me, “You don’t know who I am because you never bother to know who I am. Now listen to me; I am the person who represents a lot of people for whom you can stay in such an attractive, cozy and safe house, built on the smooth surface of the half-cut hill full of hard earth and stones. I represent all people who are destined to serve for your comfort by paying sweat all day long by hard work and hide their head inside the straw-built shabby huts at night in the slum, unpleasant, uncomfortable and unsafe. We are bound to sell the strength of our muscles and the moments of all our days in life at the exchange of the amount needed to earn meals twice a day. I wonder why we are not so-called intellectuals. You feel disturbance while hearing the screeching of metals, noise of breaking bricks in the dusty area, but never bother how or what we feel. So never shout; just bother to think who I am or who we are.”

I listened to the words of the ‘grotesque look’ spell bound and when it stopped, I found all of them to reach the higher hill by that time where another house was going to be built for a high official. I was hearing the sound- “Heio! Aro jore! Heio! Aro jore! ( the Bangla words, made by labourers while pushing or pulling something heavy). The words entered my ears and went into my mind and brain. I felt an acute head ache and at that time my mother’s voice awoke me from deep sleep. “Wake up, wake up, it’s night, won’t you study?” I discovered that I had dreamt everything. Yes that was a dream, but later in my life, whenever I imagined the same dream like a vision, I got absent-minded. The queer look haunted me many times in my life.

When I got forty, I felt the urge to go to see our “Notun Basha” in Sylhet, a hilly region of Bangladesh in my holidays. I made a plan to visit that house. When I approached the road leading to the stair to our hilltop quarter, my mind seemed to be heavier. I couldn’t recognize the pitch-built road, but found a muddy road full of brown grasses. When I climbed the stair, I found how all the toil of many labourers went into vein. Our “Notun Basha” turned into relics; my heart cracked.