Reverie at Midday*
art work by amina
At midday, when her eyes become moist and blurry from the searing heat, there is nothing that Deepa can do but sit idly, counting her fingers. First those on her right hand -- one…two…three -- from the thumb to the little finger; then those on the left in reverse order, from the little finger to the thumb.
When she was a little girl, she would touch her nose no sooner had she finished counting her fingers. Then her lips, eyelids, eyebrows and ears. No longer a child, Deepa, now well into her thirties, is yet to be fully rid of her childhood habit, and the one thing she carries even to this day is the counting of her fingers. Touching her lips, eyes and ears is no longer necessary since she knows they are still there where they used to be. Where else could they go? However, now and then, she does quickly check her face in the small mirror she carries in her handbag. Not a flattering experience anymore. She knows this face of hers is fast receding from her.
Her face is changing, she tells herself. It's not the one she once loved to explore. Despite her dark complexion, there was a time when she would find tiny ripples of light and shade crisscrossing her heart-shaped face, which is now totally absent from her reflection in the mirror. Besides, these days her hair -- curly and too tangled to be brought into some kind of order -- covers most of her forehead and the sides, falling in a way that lends an extra aura of dimness over her face.
Sitting at the reception desk of Modhumoti Courier, sweating, Deepa would wander into a maze of drifting images and thoughts -- disjointed and scrappy -- between the counting of fingers. One such thought is about the brightness of her eyes which light up with a glimmer that only she could tell. Another is about getting out of this suffocating, two-room office at Dilkusha to a cool, tree-shaded place. If it was Ramna Park, she would have been very happy. As the idea slowly grows in her, she confronts the hazy image of a man -- bulky and huge and dark-complexioned. Deepa has no clue where he emerges from. But as the image takes shape, she is thrilled to imagine the man handing her an ice-cream cone -- chocolate- or vanilla-flavoured, or whatever.
Last year when the heat was terrible, her employer spoke of an air conditioner. Only he knew why he had said so. He doesn't spend much time here. Busy with his other business, a transport company, he spends most of his time at Saidabad. It is only in the late afternoon that he pops into the courier office and goes over the books with Shadhan Babu, the accounts man.
The idea of installing an air conditioner in the office where he sits only for a short time does not make sense: Deepa should have known that. Even then, the people working in the two-room office, Deepa included, hope for it to happen. But, as the ceaseless summer heated the two rooms day after day like a furnace, everyone, especially Deepa, became realistic. Why should he want an AC here, he doesn't sit here.
There are other reasons too. Those who come here, mostly ordinary folks -- lower-ranked workers from nearby offices, peons, messengers -- do not require the luxury. They bring in so many boxes of varying sizes and weights to send to various destinations. Deepa's job is to make the entries in a register. The names, addresses, phone numbers of the senders and the addressees, the weight of the packets or the envelopes as the case may be. There is a box in the register that reads 'product name' which she has also to fill up.
Weighing the packets or boxes and making entries in the register are all Deepa is required to do. The rest of the work, quite complex, is done by others: receiving the cash, issuing receipts, arranging for dispatch either by air or overnight coach depending on how the clients want them delivered.
Deepa is not depressed that her employer Sohrab Hossain didn't keep his word and fix the air conditioner. She just wished he hadn't mentioned it.
Last year the heat rose to forty degrees, and in places outside of Dhaka, it was even a degree or two higher. A few people died. This year it is hovering around 40 and looks like it would rise further. Sohrab Hossain at times would repeat his announcement about the air conditioner--forgetting his promise of last year. Although this place is his property just as much as the transport office at Saidabad, he is indifferent to it. Saidabad is where he likes to spend long hours. Here things are routine and un-exciting. One afternoon, a few days after he had hired Deepa, he asked her to go with him. She could see the cold indifference in his eyes as he spoke. Later, even while she lay under him crushed against his heaviness, he was as unfeeling and indifferent. Done, he had asked her to get dressed quickly.
After the incident, Deepa thought he would treat her differently. She was wrong. He had continued with his lack of interest. He would talk to her without looking her in the eye, would want to know about the day's business -- number of items received for dispatch, if there was anything bound for an outstation beyond the district towns, or if there had been complaints - nothing beyond routine matters.
Noontime is long. Her disarrayed thoughts do not help ease the long hours. There is nothing new for her to think these days. The thought about the AC comes to her quite often without provocation. She is not at all keen on thinking about it, but it still does.
Across the street there is a bank where Deepa sometimes goes to deposit her little savings and draw cash. Her visits are more frequent than her needs. The cool and refreshing interior is the main attraction. She enjoys sinking into one of those soft-upholstered sofas, a cheque or deposit slip in hand, not hurrying to take it to the counter. Sometimes she sits for a long time with the token for withdrawal or leisurely counts the money. Counting over, she keeps on sitting, scribbling names, phone numbers in a tiny note book.
One day, right in the middle of her scribbling in the note book, a man asked for her pen. As she handed him the pen without a thought, the man behaved strangely; his face did not change in thankfulness, not even in a dim flicker of a half-smile as he took the pen. He was soon engrossed filling in the columns on a long sheet of paper -- a form, Deepa guessed -- that he held on the back of a plastic bag on his lap. Sitting next to him nothing to do, Deepa felt that she was lapsing into a state of indolence. After a while she looked up to see the man still engrossed in his work, he had just finished page one and was turning it over to start on the reverse. It was around that time that a sudden thought shook her: Wasn't the man behaving too oddly, like none other than… her lover, or, puzzling of all, wasn't she herself behaving strangely too, like she was his beloved? Isn't it someone you know and depend and count on that you ask for a pen to write in such an unhurried fashion! And curious of all, Deepa waited patiently as if she took him for what he was to be!
When at last the man returned the pen, her hand reaching for it touched his hand as far as the wrist. It was then that she noticed he was huge, his complexion dark as though nearly baked. Was it this man, Deepa wondered, who hovered about her during her midday trips to Ramna Park when she was in search for trees and the cool air! Someone so big and hulking!
But one day she was utterly surprised to see the man right in front of her, a fat wheat-coloured envelope in his hand. She recognized him right away; but not a tiny blip of recognition crossed his eyes as he passed the envelope through the small opening at the bottom of the divider. Receiving the envelope her fingers touched his.
The man stood unmoved despite the touch. Deepa wondered if she should tell him he was no stranger to her, that she had met him the other day at the bank where he asked for her pen. But she chose not to, thinking he might still not recognize her, or perhaps he might ask her, as a proof of familiarity, to tell him his name, perhaps his wife's name too or how many children he had or where he hailed from. Deepa suddenly shriveled at the possibility. Did he have a wife? Children too?
Taking the envelope, Deepa opened her register to enter the details -- name, address … For a moment, she forgot the heat's torment. She heard the man ask, "How much for Shambhuganj?"
Deepa looked at the address on the envelope to be sure she had heard correctly. It was Shambhuganj, yes.
The movement of her head had an instant effect on the man. Looking over the glass divider directly into her sweat-drenched eyes, he wanted to know: "Any problem?"
"That's not a district town," Deepa struggled to say.
"So?"
"We operate only up to the district towns. We have no arrangement for outstations."
"No arrangement!"
"Ours is a limited network."
"That's crazy. Don't you claim your service is country-wide?"
Deepa saw that the man was getting irritated which, she feared, might soon flare up into rage. Suddenly she was frightened; she kept looking at him in the eye as if wanting to say, wasn't it me who gave you the pen! He did not burst into a rage. He took back the envelope and muttered something under his breath which she couldn't follow.
Relieved, she looked up to see he was wearing a light grey shirt which wet from profuse perspiration, inseparably stuck to the fleshy lumps on his chest and shoulders. There was a thin moustache on his upper lip, and his face with at least two days of unshaven beard wore a strangely tender look.
He moved away to reach the door with hurried thuds. Out on the footpath, barely a couple of yards from the door, he stopped and turned to look back as though absentmindedly. From his look, Deepa could tell he was caught by surprise. For, turning back, all he had to see was Deepa looking at him in an unblinking gaze through the glass divider.
After a couple of days Deepa had a feeling that the incident had never actually happened. Although there was nothing remarkable or memorable about it, she was absolutely convinced that she had imagined it by way of a respite from her midday tedium.
In a few days, the incident got jumbled up with the rest of her thoughts. The heat in the two-room office left her half awake, the counting of her fingers went, and the disjointed thoughts flitted about as usual. Amidst all this, one day, she found the hulking man in a light grey shirt standing right in front, his face dotted with deep dark stubble looking eager and expectant. Hands empty, rid of the wheat-coloured envelope, he looked at her in a searching gaze as though her face looked familiar but he was not readily able to place it. Deepa noticed a sudden beam flash across his cheeks. "Didn't you give me your pen?' he asked quizzically. He added, "Did I return it to you? I'm so forgetful." He paused briefly, and then went on, "Want to know what that paper was about?" Deepa waited eager to hear. He said, "That was a life insurance claim -- my wife's, she died. Did I return the pen? Never mind, I'll have one for you as a present, a nice pen…" The man was soon lost -- his face as hazy as ever.
Coming for his short visit to the courier office one afternoon, Sohrab Hossain exploded, "Is this country a desert or what! It's terrible in this heat, difficult to survive."
After finishing the accounts with Shadhon Babu, he said to Deepa, "Let's go." Deepa looked vacant, not quite certain she heard him right. Sohrab Hossain stepped on to the footpath, and suddenly turned round to look back -- just like the man the other day. Deepa was struck by the similarity, and baffled by the fact that she had not imagined it. It had been real, blatantly real.
"What's up? Quick."
Sitting behind the glass divider, Deepa was jolted awake as if from deep sleep. She got up to follow the waiting man, thinking what the noon tomorrow would be like. She would like it to be long.
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