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Short Story

The unknown world

Anup Saha :

Starting with a drizzle, bending trees and branches, the light rain would appear so horrendously, it was unimaginable. The evening was brooding and when the hotness of the day blended with it, rain fell as mercury drops on the earth. Mildness of the rain on the corrugated tin roof could be endured but could the rudeness of shelling be tolerated at all? Lines of waters were merging violently with the scanty canal and it was running with a murmuring sound. 
Rain was dropping on the roofs in torrents, whizzed on the branches and ran on in the head of Rahim Master. Water was falling from the corrugated tin shade, went beyond the courtyards and reserved in the canal. If it was not preserved in the canal, where it would be preserved? Water would then surely over flow the banks and would cause lives unbearable. Better water ran on in murmuring and rippling. 
Rahim was a schoolteacher and he taught in a village school. What did a village schoolteacher have? Life had become tattered, thinned and ragged like tree leaves. Rain meant flower and abundance of paddy but where was his peace of mind? Why the green leaves faded out and yellowed to him? Why repeatedly all the things went out of his grips and fragmented like straws sparingly? 
In a far away came the sound of thunderbolt. Rahim had seen thunder bolting many a times; how thunderbolts affect human body and create waves in mind, how thunder lights and sounds create vibration in the heart came as the prior subjects to him. How tomorrow would be - would it be as usual or witness the emptiness?
Rahim feared counting his life, his innumerable attempts to catch hold of joys had turned away like illusions. He could see in his closet eyes the deflected rays that play in his mind and all those things quickly replaced by the grasp of deeper darkness benumbed with the hollowness of mind. What could he do now? Would he mix up with the society like waters? He could do that, he had that much capability in him to melt and the possibility had not yet ended. He heard teachers are seer; they could see future and can show upcomings to the people. Even, heading over everyone, he can say life is 'air and light' - if you can use them - all the golden days are for you. However, life had not become full of light and air - it had become the desertion of oasis.
Kashem, a side dweller, who had fueled up by the illegal business,called him up - as he knew if he put his money he would not take a single penny and he had that proofs. Kashem sometimes could not make equations of Rahim master's attempt to be honest at the stake of his hungriness. A lustful life of Kashem could not come to the perception how a man becomes so honest when he has demands of life. He had no demands yet he could not come away from earring money, he sank into the silts and swirls in the coagulation. Lust and silt had become one in his life and those two were the means of his salvation.
"Master, it is too late at the night, do not you go to sleep?" Master could not sleep; he did not manage his dinner, whatever the money he had, spent out buying day's food. He taught village boys free of charges, where would they get so much money? Instead of tuition fees, they gave food in the night but today no student came with food as rain devastated the evening.
The thin rays of light were seen through the broken windows. He kept his eyes fixed on those lights but no one came opening doors and called him up through the windows and in this late night that opportunities had become very few. The light had become thinned and longer through the wholes, sometimes it had become thick - again it had appeared non-transparent and dimmed by the waft of the winds. His helplessness had been upheld repeatedly by the whizzed of the torrents and told him life is 'air and light' - the man who can hold much more, fate will come so nearer to him.  Thin light extinguished one time - long rays no longer existed - the shelter of all his hopes and reliance 'the light' disappeared - only whispers of the air remained.
He loved air but why air would appear so whizzing? Why his mind would shake? Why would it make his hollowness so solid and permanent? Could not this air come to him as a food for tonight?
Kashem tried to give marriage with his sister, promised to give dowry and provide all the expenses. Sometime master saw Kashem's sister in front of his house. In this drudgery, he thought tonight as hunger does not know any black or white, as food is the best for the appetite, it needs such things within abdomen that makes energies into power, through which body moves, mind forwards, peace besets. Why did not he marry his sister? Is that reason he owns black money? Do the monies have colour? What is white - what is black? Money has tremendous buying power - the only medium of defeating the world.
That money was trivial to master. He was the seer and made ways for the future and lot. People know him as seer, honest, temptless and dependable.
Life had too many paths and too many colours, all the ways were not of him, he had not all the ways but did all the ways end up in one place?
Master's sleeplessness lingered. He looked at the stars of the sky. Rain had stopped long time ago; stars had become lights in the clear sky. When he was a boy and was in his own village of Alokdia that he left long time ago, he often went to the field and counted stars. He thought these stars and those stars were the same and those stars had come to Nischintopur now.
Stars show ways to men and voyagers; voyagers reached to their destination seeing the ways of stars. He knew vespers are the symbol of good fate of life, safe danes of money and plentifulness. The vespers of Alokdia were now in Nischintapur but where his vespers of life? Where was the abundance of wealth? Wer