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Fragile Fragrance

The smell of earth. That quaint corridor just before the yard well remembered, just ahead of the moss laden pond. A room just a step ahead. Still has that black, worn out wooden single sofa. “Torabibi, Torabibi !!”, someone used to yell all day. Mayhap Torabibi still grinds the betel, mayhap the areca is there still, but not the Torabibi yelling Harun Shaheb. The room to the left, just on the other side of the wall. Love smothered. The joyous laughter used to roll around the room, the sorrows clutched its walls. The evenings invited mughlai paratha along the corridor near the pond. Five years of my innocent childhood were spent in that place. Mankiganj, the place where the almost two hundred years old home of my Grandfather was. My grandfather’s family came over from the other Bengal, and from this Bengal, Torabibi of Siddik House from Old Dhaka. I faintly remember myself with my grandfather and Rongila grandmother, singing the lullaby” Nati khati bela gelo, shuti parlam na”. The intense interest of my dada-dida for music was inherited by me. Developers went to demolish the building just a few days back. For some reason I went there, at the very last moment. Stayed there no longer than for twenty minutes. The empty house was all but haunting. Collected some memories just before all had come to its end. No one cared to take the things that were left. Perhaps using fashionable glasses was a hobby of my Grandfather. Did anyone take care of the wooden Homeopathic medicine box? I don’t know. Abandoned are the broken and worn-down utensils. Broken glasses can never be truly pieced together, a mark, a scar will always remain. One shouldn’t ever pick up broken glasses, or try to piece them together. One will bleed if one does so. I retreated that day, just like a fallen soldier, so that no one saw that I was here. None needed to know that Tithi was here, at her grandfather’s rest. For one last time.