Iffat Nawaz

Approximately 105 people die every minute globally. This is nothing but data until in some specific wretched minute, someone dear to us adds a plus one to that digit. When those we love die, their losses dig enormous holes in our beings. Though invisible to the physical eye, these freshly cut hollows ache like any deep wound would, they bleed out more blood than we carry in our veins. A severe soreness spreads over us without any remedies, without offering us a recovery timeline. There is no telling when grieving ends or if it ever actually does.

My Bangla Sings out every morning One language Many songs

How long does a corpse of a hero take to rot? 50 years or more? What about the corpses of martyrs? One week? 10 days? The 40-day mark to blow the candles of funeral fires?

‘You must bury / yourself / Every three days’ / She said, / ‘Corpses are of / No use

Some among us might have wondered what it feels like to hold a lit bomb between our palms. One that will go off inevitably yet its spark, heat, force, weight, and pulsating nature are so fascinating that we are unable to put it down or look away, all the while knowing at the end of the wick we too will be destroyed—a chosen death, a voluntary annihilation.

My father used to take me, and sometimes my younger brother, to a particular shop in the Baitul Mukarram Market. It was a gadget store.

In the Kingdom of Rain, in the land of breeze, life moved in the rhythm of liquid glass. There, the glass was always full, and the sky never fooled one about the forecast. The stability of such ways brought people no dismays.

It was an overcast late spring day and two mynas were sitting on a cashew tree not too far from the sea. The branches were swaying as the waves touched the shore and sent out a gentle hello to all who resided close by. The earth vibrated with the rhythm of the wind’s play of multiplying ripples.