TRANSLATED FROM BENGALI BY ARITRIK DUTTA CHOWDHURY
Uddalak is very amiable. He sips his morning tea while simultaneously forwarding a bouquet of roses each to 143 WhatsApp contacts. But people around are ruthless. Hardly three of them revert. Meta has now restricted forwards to a maximum of five at a time, making Uddalak’s task Herculean. Uddalak feels exhausted after forwarding the same message for 29 times at a stretch. One would feel pity looking at Uddalak during the time of festivities. Ranging from Rath Yatra to Manasha Pujo, Diwali to Shivratri, everything is meticulously saved up on his digital calendar. Uddalak spends his new year eve doing the needful. He makes it a point to send messages following the calendar notes.
But the task isn’t as easy as it seems. It needs a lot of preliminary preparations. Uddalak reschedules his daily marketing chores on the eve of Mahalaya. Special days call for at least 500 forwards, so he begins at dawn. 5 forwards each for about 100 times compels the clock-hands to turn to the hour of bathing and lunch in a jiffy. Birendra Krishna Bhadra keeps humming intermittently through the amplifiers in his neighbourhood. Birendra Krishna pauses too. Uddalak doesn’t. He doesn’t even realize all this happening around. Panchomi[NP1] spills over for Uddalak into Dashomi[NP2] in anticipation of forwarding Bijoya wishes. It is an incredibly laborious endeavour. Bijoya[NP3] messages are never below three thousand! From his school batchmates of 1962 to the pupils of his mom’s music school; from random afternoon strollers like Pradip Da whom he meets on his way to the bazaar to his uncle’s friends – no one is missed out. Uddalak is bejeweled with dark circles by Diwali. Fatigue, messy hairdo, crimson eyes, relentless persistence…
Uddalak, these days, look haplessly exhausted. Spreading Corona awareness to people after Lockdown, quarantine measures, threatening people not to leave their houses, updates about the increasing mortality rates, government declarations for clanging utensils, 9 – minute blackout notifications on behalf of the Prime Minister, Corona vaccine updates, research failures for prospective antidote… Uddalak single – handedly shoulders the responsibility of being the harbinger of all these tidings to thousands of known and unknown people. Additionally, he considers forwarding famous Swami Vivekananda quotes for encouragement. Uddalak taps the phone numbers from Facebook profiles that are left ‘Public’ and tries to make them aware as well. Not to forget his red roses and “Good Morning” messages. Facts have to be backed up with photos, videos, articles and poems written by random strangers, dance performances, songs, celebrity demises!!! Nothing is not included within the domain of Uddalak’s dispersion.
Meanwhile, Uddalak has had changes in his personal life too. His spouse and widowed mother – in – law have abandoned him, alleging that Uddalak is unkempt and loony. His wife had welled up while leaving him, but Uddalak failed to address her as he was busy spreading the news of Rishi Kapoor’s death!
The neighbours of his apartment blocked him long ago. Strangers have blocked him within a week. His acquaintances and friends have also started blocking him. They happen to receive about forty messages from Uddalak each day, naturally their threshold of patience is overstepped with time. Eventually Uddalak found himself blocked almost in everyone’s chatbox. He grapples with the dejection of not being able to convey his tidings to anyone. The world is wielding news every second; Amphan, typhoon in Maharashtra, Sushant Singh’s death, India – China truce and rifts, Ramkrishna, Tagore… few recent quotes of some Chomsky and Russell… mankind is deprived of so many updates! Uddalak feels helpless and tardy.
Uddalak concocts a way out. If he could manage to steal the handsets from his neighbours, he could unblock his number and forward the messages easily. Oh no, the devices would most certainly be password protected. So, he dismantles the plan. But he knows the passwords of his wife and mom-in-law’s mobile. What about stealing them? At least two individuals in this ignoble fraternity would be enriched by him. Uddalak doesn’t waste time; he heads for the new tiny apartment that his wife has recently bought in Garia…He is still anxious. What if they scream when the mobile phones are being taken away forcefully? What if they file a police complaint and change their numbers? What if they then block this old number?…
In two days, the bodies of Uddalak’s wife and her mother were recovered from their Garia apartment. Uddalak was arrested from his apartment in Baranagar. All three mobile phones were found in his bedroom. Two of them had 95 unread messages each… two “Good morning” wishes with a benign bouquet of red roses… justifications behind Sushant Singh Rajput’s death…appeals to send reliefs to Amphan – affected people…monochrome clicks of Spanish influenza…Paulo Coelho quotes… a five-minute flute-playing by Chaurasia…
GLOSSARY:
1.Birendro Krishno Bhadra: Acclaimed elocutor who performed Chandipaath (Hymns for Ushering of Maa Durga before Durga Puja in Bengal) for the radio programme “Mahisasurmardini”.
2.Panchomi: The 5th day of Debipokhyo or the lunar cycle that ushers Maa Durga’s arrival.
3.Dashomi: Dussehra
4.Bijoya: The ritual of greeting acquaintances and exhibiting felicity after the immersion of Durga idols at the end of Durga Puja.
Also, read Poems by Saleh Diab, translated from the French by John Doherty, and published in The Antonym.
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