I spy a man in the darkness over the bridge walking this way. Unusual for a man to be out here at this late hour. He approaches me and asks for a light. I have no matches. He leans over and whispers: 'I fall upon the thorns of life/ I bleed -- whose lines are these?' After waiting a few minutes for a reply, he strides off, whistling. It's been a long time since I heard someone whistling like that. But then the man comes back. 'Listen sir, literature was not born the day a boy ran out crying Wolf! Wolf! with a huge, brown creature in hot pursuit. It was born, when that boy shouted Wolf! Wolf! and there was no wolf behind him!'

I laugh softly. The stranger flings his cigarette into the air, catches it and walks off. Who is he? Some moon-struck poet perhaps?

A passenger bus screeches past on the bridge, making the railing tremble. Then silence again. Somewhere in the distant village a song blares on the loudspeaker. The words reach me indistinctly:

The fisherman casts his net in the ocean of life/ But not a fish in the net gets he.

The river wind blows on my body.

The queen is seated to the east, the wind blows hard. The queen is seated to the west. The wind turns to fire.

Intoxicating lines. Even if here the wind is not fire; in fact, coming off the river it is quite chilly. Fire, water and wind locked in combat: who is the strongest of them all? Arrogant fire says 'I am the strongest, because I can burn everything down to ashes.' Water retorts: 'No, I am strongest because I can put out fire'. At this wind challenges them both: 'I can carry water off on a raft of clouds. Therefore I am the strongest.'

An aimless night on the bridge. A night of mists and visions.

There is a certain sadness in growing up. A B C D. The squirrel in the bush. The scent of a new storybook. The dream of becoming a pilot. Losing yourself in the tresses of the girl sitting next to you in class.

One day that impeccable beauty said to me: 'If ever you experience sorrow - name it woman. Woman means uterus an upturned pitcher in the stomach. A crying pitcher because it can never be filled. Menstruation is but the uterus's tears. Men can never gauge this sorrow.'

A cargo truck whizzes past. The air grows heavy with the scent of mangoes.

We do not know the language of others. The story goes like this: Two mangoes on a branch were conversing one day. Said one, 'Look at these contemptible human beings full of their spite and jealousy. How splendid it would be if we were to rule the world instead!' The other replied, 'Charming thought! But, brother, who among us would rule, the ripe or the unripe ones?'

Stray thoughts, our lives lived amidst the restless toss and turn of such thoughts. I think of Rafique, the capacity he had for ecstasy, for sorrow. He was always trembling on the edge of some deep wonder, waiting, waiting in the wings for an unknown love. Those were his apartheid days, when he shunned dark damsels. Yet one day a dark beauty sang to him:

Rein in your wildness
That is the way the moon laughs in the sky.

And then a sharp axe split into two the ice frozen within him. The nuptials took place on a Wednesday. Rafique said one day, 'A woman contains many horizons, gold and silver roots, dark subterranean cities. Unless you get close to a woman it remains unknown. Skin colour is irrelevant. I have not seen a white woman naked, but this one's timid, ash-coloured breasts like a pair of gray doves intoxicate me.'

The dusky-hued woman died giving birth to a dark little baby girl. The other day that dark girl trapped me in a novel game. 'Catch me uncle,' she cried. I caught her, 'Oh! silly, this is not me, it's only my hand,' she broke into laughter. I touched her head, 'Oh! this is only my head, not me.' I admitted defeat in this strange game. I cannot catch my friend's daughter, I can only grasp her limbs.

Rafique in a letter had written to me: 'The joyless days pass like beads on a rosary. When the bard's lines reach my ear. "Will there ever be another incarnation like this human one?" I'm startled into thinking: what next? One must make haste and set about what needs to be done, but what exactly is that?'

Rafique had further written: 'For me writing was never a means to fame and fortune. It was the reason for living; everything else was laughable. But I realize each day that creation is beyond me. The ineffable wisdom and stillness necessary for it eludes me. There is only deception in its place. I could become a critic of others' writing but of what use is that to the real lover of books? That leaves reading, of which I've done a lot. And now I feel that that has neither added to nor diminished my experience. How futile my life has been....'

And in his last letter he wrote: 'We have not been able to rise above three square meals a day. The ignominy of rice and lentils.'

That was his last letter. I went of my own accord to see Rafique's body, crushed under a train. To cast a dispassionate eye over the mutilated limbs, on death. Three statements may be made of those who commit suicide under the wheels of a train:

1. They want a grotesque death.

2. They want to die in public.

3. They want to die at another's hands.

Rafique's daughter goes from room to room reciting a rhyme :

'Twelve little sparrows
Lay thirteen little eggs,
One egg goes bad,
Little sparrow is feeling sad.'

We are moved by the surreal meaning of these lines.

I have collected Rafique's diary. There is only one entry for each day as if each day was like an apple perfect and smooth.

Sunday: (What) wonderful rain- fell all day long. Only paper flowers fear the rain.
Monday: Haven't seen fireflies in a long time. Must see fireflies.
Tuesday: Before emerging all things germinate inside, below, out of sight. Like seed and tree.
Wednesday: Intellectuals are often like this - childlike, eccentric, even sadistic.
Thursday: When the sun rises, it is hard to believe it was night somewhere, sometime.
Friday: I need a solitary space to think.
Saturday:All the mystery and beauty around us are decaying, prey to a swarm of flies.

A boat glides by under the bridge. The night catches the splashing sound. One can see the light of the hurricane in the boat as it fades in the distance.

We have but one life. There is no other life with which to compare it, no other life to follow that we hold in our hands. So how can we know which decisions in this life were correct, which were wrong?

The banyan tree, the stars, the moonlit river - each transmutes into an indecipherable symbol from life. I see the stranger walking back this way. This time he has a lighted cigarette in his lips must have got matches somewhere. He comes and stands close to me, a mysterious smile on his lips.

Who will keep me company in death?
Love and religion cannot stay awake past the midnight hour.

Blowing out puffs of cigarette smoke, he walks away. Indeed, who among us keeps the other company, stays up through the night for another?

Which for no apparent reason reminds me of the story of the Baboon. We lift our baby son's foot on our chest, show him the moon. We comb our daughter's hair, pinch her cheek and ask her to be careful while crossing the road. On storm-tossed nights, jackfruit tree leaves flail our windowsills. A sumptuous meal is prepared that night the air is thick with the smell of spices. Suddenly the lights go out and we the happy couple sit down to a candle-lit dinner. And then in the shadow of night we prove in the conjugal bed that the obscene is absolutely moral, aesthetic. We whisper words of eternal love, body and soul, to each other.

The flavor of sweetmeats given by father in our childhoods long past clings to our taste buds. We remember those candy-sticks; the fragrance of childhood is perfumed with mother's love. And what to give them in return is a question that makes our hearts tremble.

And yet there is the story of the baboon.

A baboon mother tries to cross a river with her infant. Suddenly the high-tide begins to flow. Holding the baby tightly against her, the baboon jumps to a rock. But the water keeps on rising. The rock goes under. The water rises up to the baboon's waist.

She shifts the baby to her shoulder. And yet the waters keep rising. Finally the mother baboon raises her hands and holds the baby in the air over her head. The future, the progeny, must by saved. But when the waters rise even more, suddenly things take a dramatic turn. As soon as the water reaches her nostrils the mother brings down the baby in a single sweep and puts it on the rock beneath her, in the water. She then steps on it. Now her nostrils are clear of the water, at a safe level. Now the mother baboon fills her lungs with deep breaths.

Another night coach breaks into my thoughts as it hurries past. Suddenly out of an open bus window flies out a paper plane. From my perch on the railing of the bridge I watch the paper plane made by an insomniac passenger float away on the night air over the moonlight-flooded river.

Shahaduzzaman is a Bengali short story writer. The above has been taken from the book Paschimer Meghe Sonar Shingha.

Sonia Amin teaches history at Dhaka University.