I see a woman by the river. She is covered in some tar-like black sludge. Scars and wounds mark her skin. Some of the open cuts are raw and bleeding, oozing...is that ichor? Yet, she sits serene and poised in her frayed and grimy sari. There is an unmistakable gravity to her presence. And, I feel a pull towards her, an inexplicable sense of having seen her before.
"Forgive me if this comes across as a strange question. But, do I know you?
" I ask timidly. The woman turns and looks at me with sorrowful eyes of deep, deep black-blue. I swear the fathomless depths of those black-blue eyes hold the river and ocean and, therein, all manners of ancient things dwell. She speaks but I cannot recognize her tongue.
"I am really sorry...l do not understand", I say.
She smiles a melancholic smile and gestures me to sit. So, I take a spot by her and, in her aura, immediately feel a cleansing spring-water coolness. A pleasant relief from the suffocating humid heat of summer. She gazes towards the horizon and I follow suit. The width of the river conceals the far bank. Instead, the black-blue river melts into the vault of the azure sky above. I can make out the launches and dingis sailing the calm waters, ferrying souls to and from and around Chandpur. Here and there on the river, the green patches of foliage, mostly Shoibal and there is also Kochuripana, and the occasional piece of flotsam. The woman begins to speak in a tongue that I realize with a bone-deep certitude that I once knew. I listen closely to her words as she goes on and on. Her words sound foreign.
Yet, I recognize the singsong of birds and melody of lapping waves and pitter-patter of monsoon rains and in the depths of my murky memories something stirs. Her words catch like fishhooks, tugging loose fragments of a buried past and reeling them to the surface. And, so I remember a time when I could tell a Doyel from Myna just from their chirps and talk with ilish and speak with banyan trees. Back when I knew my mother tongue and vernacular of this land and its soils and rivers and flora and fauna. When I would sit right here and chat with this woman. Nameless but no stranger.
And, soon, nameless no more. The memory of her name finally dislodges from the depths and bubbles up to the surface of my mind. Or, at least, the memory of one of the many names people called her across the ages. Perhaps, she is even older than when there was a necessity for names. When the world was new to us and simply pointing sufficed. Nevertheless, I remember, I remember now. Enough at least to name the woman beside me with her singsong voice and petrichor scent. I turn towards her and, alas, behold her true form. Have the scales fallen from my eyes? Or did my remembrance restore some vigor to her? Her skin, resplendently brown; shining golden in the afternoon sun. Her hair, a wavy lustrous black. That once tattered sari of hers, now of the finest muslin.
"Meghna?
", I say. Before she even replies, I taste familiarity in the twisting and turning of my tongue and its flicker on my palate that shapes my breath into the utterance of her name. She breaks her gaze from the horizon and looks me in the eyes, this time there is twinkle instead of melancholy.
'Obosheshe amake chinte perechho
"Of course, I know you... ", I reply. I hesitate, searching for the right word, but the word I seek eludes me like a slippery eel. So all I say is, "old friend". Someday, soon, I will remember that the once-forgotten word that I sought was dosto.
