“We’ve met a few times though, but every time we’ve met, we’ve lived our moments at best. We’ve held hands and sung songs, kind of danced (though I’m terrible at it). We’ve hugged, kissed, made out wherever and whenever we feel like a little private. We’ve made fun of each other, laughed, cried on each other’s shoulders, made promises and have promised to keep each of them. We’ve seen us at our best and probably at our worst too. We’ve traveled a lot together even in those few times we’ve met. Traveled in the world of our dreams, the world of the bright future ahead of us, traveled those days when we’d be old and senile, have kids. We’ve walked, stumbled, held each other at difficulties and have enjoyed, jigged in happiness. Yes, there are times when we’ve fought, cried like kids, talked like stupids, and have committed never to talk and meet again. But it has only lasted as long as a sneeze, is as transient as a soap bubble. The biggest truth in our lives is that we love each other. Or should I say ‘life’ because we two, are the same. We have two different bodies, two different genders, different thoughts, or different ways to solve the same problem. But then, all of them of ours intersect at a huge point. At spiritual point. We are Soulmates.
“Well, that’s all I’ve to tell you. “What’s your point?”, “Why tell this to me?” “Are you crazy?”, “This must be some kinda prank on me,” you might think so. But no, I am no crazy and am not playing any kind of prank on you. Yeah, you must be living your own sweet life very well, might have your own good things to think of, your own problems to brainstorm at and own sweet people to talk to. My point is not that you have to consider the things I told you. “None of my business,” you can absolutely say that. I told you this, merely because I had to.
“Good day.”
And he/she closes the letter.
No name. No address. No age. No hobbies. No gender. No clue of his/her appearance. Nothing.
I’d gotten this e-mail in my inbox just a week earlier when this thing happened to me. What thing? That I’m going to tell you now. It might not interest you, or you might just wind up concluding it as some tall-tale that I invented to waste your time so precious. No, I don’t have any interest on gobbling anyone’s time whatsoever with such nonsensical things. So as a caution, I say: This is not mandatory to read. And might not interest you very well. So, it’s entirely optional and up to you whether to continue or to stop right here.
If you want to continue, then here we go.
…………………………………..
1
It was around the mid-summer of 2012, around August to be more precise. Sunday. I don’t know the exact date though. That’s no strange thing. I have no memory of the weather as well. May be it was raining a little, or quite a lot, or it had just stopped, or the sun was terrible, or mild. No idea. Anything could have happened that day. I just don’t remember this to ‘some limit’. Now, I suppose, this you might find practically a little bizarre. Next thing, I could feel that my blood had started clotting inside my veins already― though I was living. Now this is strange, right? But I could feel this happening to me. No metaphorical or symbolical thing. This was actually happening to me. I felt so cold and frozen inside my skin, despite a healthy summer was supposedly leaping outside. Now you might assume that it was raining that day from this description, but I bet you won’t feel like that unless you go and settle bare bodied in some kind of igloo.
When I glanced into the mirror sometimes, I looked fine though. My skin-color looked normal; I’d not gone pale, or stiff or anything like that by appearance. It was just inside my skin. Somewhere inside me. But really, it felt like hell.
I missed my college that day.
“Why?” asked mom. She always freaked out when I did that. I was fairly a good student and received good grades enough for her to be proud at.
“Am not feeling well,” I replied queasily, rubbing the left corner of my forehead scrunching my eyes and nose.
“No fever,” she said after pressing my forehead with the back of her palm. “We’ll go to the clinic this noon,” she said and went to the kitchen, certainly to boil some water for me. I went into my room, locked the door, grabbed my i-phone from the table, plugged the earphones and tucked them into my ears, playing ‘Let It Be’ by Beatles on the track and slipped inside my sirak. Tubby―my turtle― lied asleep at the corner inside its shell. I gave it a little ‘sssh’ but it didn’t budge. I gave another ‘sssh’, the shell moved slightly like a hatching egg, but the turtle didn’t come out. And I gave up. Turning my side, I forced my stiff body to sleep. But let alone sleep, I couldn't even blink my eyes. They were all frozen, like jammed bolts in a door.
2
After taking some gulps of warm water mom made, I decided to stroll out. There were few things that I loved to do in holidays, or whenever I was at home. Walking down toward the lake, entering a café there I’d patronized, having some cups of coffee― no matter summer or winter ―with something to read, and take a boat from someone I knew there, and then row alone in the lake for some hour, and when I was toward the center, I’d open a book and start reading for some good quiet hours. I’d row back then, and give another shot of coffee in the same café, and head back home. There was nothing as enjoyable as this in my life. Sometimes, I even took Tubby with me. The creature not being that common in my area, people, especially the naked kids swimming around the coasts would comment looking at it as if they’d seen some funny thing from another plant, which I mostly didn’t like. So later, I’d started taking my bag with me. I’d place the turtle inside and walk. That’s too one big reason why I like turtles that much. You can keep them anywhere you like, as long as the oxygen is there and the temperature is fine. Dark, bright, spacious, confined, dirty, clean, it won’t say anything. You can’t do that with a dog or cat, right? But turtles are fine with that. I decided to take Tubby with me that day as well.
“Why go out?” said mom.
“Just for some walk, I’ll be fine. Your water is working by the way,” I said patting on my belly throwing a pretentious smile at her. She didn’t say any further except giving something like a shrug. Mom is not that much of a talking woman. I lost my dad when I was nine. He was killed in the Civil War in Beni. Some ten years earlier. It was all very accidental when he’d been there to visit one of his old friends. Later they categorized him as a martyr. He loathed wars though, as far as I know. Since then, mom had been looking after me, and I’ve been looking after her. Maybe since then mom changed. I remember, she had stopped talking, eating a thing, walking out or even looking after me for months after the incident. She used to love him a lot. My uncle and kins took care of me when she was in that kind of trauma. Later after some years she came back a little though. But she could never recover completely and was never the same. We two were the mere members of the family until a year back when she passed away.
I was in white shirt: folded sleeves, light blue jeans, dark brown shoes. After having kept the turtle and a paperback of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ from Emily Bronte, I slung my college-bag over one shoulder. I combed my hair once, smiled at the mirror, and then left off.
If it was raining, I must have taken an umbrella with me. If it was not, then surely I was on my own.
I reached the café after some fifteen minutes. Despite I came here very frequently I didn’t talk to anyone that much. But they knew me, and since I’d started visiting here, all I’d drunk was only coffee (milk). Sometimes one cup, sometimes two, sometimes more.
I took my usual seat. There were two other costumers that day (they didn't get so busy there). The two foreigners were on the same table. One was busy on his laptop with a cup of coffee behind; the other was reading some ‘Lonely Planet’ stuff, with a cup of coffee in front as well. The two seemed to be completely on their own. One typing with deep concentration occasionally taking sips, and other reading with sheer focus, occasionally flipping pages and taking sips. The boy there then came up with a cup of coffee after some couple of minutes (yes he knew my usual order). By then I’d already taken out my turtle from the bag and had opened the Spanish learning app on my i-phone. Oh, did I mention that I was learning Spanish those days? Yes, I loved to learn Spanish then. Now I’ve become quite good at it by the way.
“How’s he today?” asked the boy referring to the turtle. Tubby bent his head at him as if he wanted to reply by himself.
“Looks fine,” I said, and he left with a smile.
The guy who was reading glanced at me and then at turtle once but said nothing and resumed reading. The other guy was still typing. Overall, the café was very silent. No music was being played, no sound of wind from the lake aside, no one was saying anything. All perfectly quiet.
After keeping the turtle and the book back and slinging the bag, I hinted the boy. Taking out a hundred-rupee-note from my wallet I put it on the menu. He returned with the change after some twenty seconds. I got up and took the change.
“Dai,” I heard him call as I was about to leave. I looked back with a frown.
“Actually, dai, I want to ask you something,” he scratched his temple. He was older than me I could say. Height as much as mine, a little darker in complexion and a little fatter, his hair was short as always, his clothes were fine.
“What,” I croaked.
“Emm…. Do you know the Spanish translation of this thing, ‘My half has left me, and now I want to shut myself inside a refrigerator,” he said nonchalantly now.
I frowned. “What the hell?” it came on its own.
“I just thought you knew the translation,” he said. “I know you’re learning Spanish.”
“Why on earth would anyone do that, and why would I know the translation? I’m just learning a few basic vocabularies,” I said the last sentence with a hint of smile trying not to sound so rude.
He then shrugged, and smiled at me.
I mulled over his sentence for the next few minutes. “My half has left me, and now I want to shut myself inside a refrigerator.” What kind of sentence is that? Why would anyone want its translation? And why not ask Google translator for help if he needed it that much?
My half has left me, and now I want to shut myself inside a refrigerator.
Anyway, that would be one of the most painful ways to die. Shut yourself inside a refrigerator. It would be so frigid inside, and on the top of that you’d suffocate yourself to death. A slow cold agonizing death.
3
Walking along the coast of Phewa Lake, I reached the spot after next ten minutes where I used to hire the boat. The man I knew was very benevolent to me. He’d just let me take the boat when I gave him a few bucks for cigarettes. I’d been taking his boat since last year. We didn’t talk very much but he liked me well. To talk about his appearance, he was exactly like that actor Rajesh Hamal. Tall well built body, long hair and heavy voice. Except he was a little darker and had some rusted teeth which appeared hideously when he smiled. In his area, he was popular as Rajesh dai though I suppose his real name was something else.
I looked for him when I reached there. After a good scan, I concluded that he was not present that day. I could see his boat bind on the pole, a crow perched there preening its wings as if on behalf of him.
“Bhai, Rajesh has gone to his father-in-law!” shouted a guy from his boat, a little far away, looking at me. “To make his wife!” he smiled and laughed turning at his peers. There were some sex-seven maybe.
I simply nodded.
“You can take my boat! If you want to!” he added.
After looking around once leaving a sigh, I turned at him. “Okay!” I said and walked toward the boat.
“How much do you take?” I asked after I was there.
“How many hours?”he said resting one of his feet on the edge of the boat.
“Two.”
“Okay, I am like Rajesh for you, aren’t I? Two hundred,” he said as naively as possible.
“That’s a lot. He’d have taken just fifty or so. That’s ridiculous,” I was too tired to bargain.
“I said I am like him, not him,” he scratched his chin once, and bit his lips. “Okay, one hundred, I can’t do more than that.”
I didn’t say anything.
I boarded his boat (it felt a little awkward to take a different boat) and started rowing after placing my bag on the floor and taking my turtle out. I rowed calmly and gently. The people on the coast started appearing smaller and smaller, I was in a different world after some time.
Some couple of months earlier before this happened, I’d read a book ‘Kafka on the Shore’ by Murkami. It was the story of a fifteen-year-old boy who runs away from his house where he lived with his father. His mother had left him and had taken her adopted daughter along with her instead of him, her biological son. His father had made a curse at him saying that he’d kill his father, and sleep with his mother and his sister. And after leaving his house, he reaches a virtual world waiting for him. Where he does all. He kills his father, sleeps with his mother and his sister, but all in that virtual world. And in the end, he returns to the real world to live the rest of his life. It was a nice story, but I couldn’t understand the meaning of the title until the end. ‘Kafka on the Shore’, what could it mean. Kafka Tamura was the name of the boy, and the title was also the title of a song mentioned in the story. But I was still not getting it. Kafka on the Shore.
And that day, I discovered the meaning when I was rowing my boat farther and farther off looking at people growing smaller on the coast.
Half an hour of rowing, and I was somewhere in the middle of water. I looked around, but not even a hint of other boats could be seen. On usual days one or two boats could be seen somehow. Or at least the lifeguards on their sparkling coats would always be bypassing. But I could see no one, not even a bird during the whole while that day. I was there somewhere completely stranded. Zoom out, and I was like in the middle of Pacific Ocean all hungry and weak fighting for life like in that boy in ‘Life of Pi’. I silently kept reading ‘Pride and Prejudice’ with my only companion Tummy behind me (at least not a Bengal Tiger). It was moving around the boat every now and then, playing assured that I was with it. And I was just reading.
I was too tired after an hour, and started looking around again. Nothing to be seen, I looked down at the water in complete despair to see my own reflection. “I give up,” I mumbled. Maybe there was something wrong with my eyes that day, but the water slowly turned dark. Very dark and pitch black finally. I kept staring at it. The more I stared, the darker and darker it appeared until I felt like I was floating on my boat onto some void and the next moment this void would collapse and I’d fall down into an eternal darkness with no one to haul me. I felt like that. I looked at my turtle which, which though, was still playing as such. When I looked back, this time I saw the water, but from below something was coming up at me, something like a ball, a brown colored ball, and slowly I saw its limbs popping out, and then its head as well, and after awhile I saw a whole human body floating on the water. She was a girl. Her hair now floating on water, each strand drifting like long thin black living worms, her good face all swollen, so were her limbs and her body. Her breasts much larger, her good body looked pathetic. She was my ex-girlfriend.
I kept looking at her without a blink, and then kept looking at her for goodness knows how long. Closing my eyes, I cried all very silently, so silently that not even I myself could realize that I was crying. Goodness knows how long I cried.
I saw a boat heading toward my direction, laden with foreigners displaying their heavy cameras. The sparkling of lifeguards could be seen far somewhere. The water was as dusky as usual, there was a bunch of water hyacinth behind my boat and standing on the edge of the boat my turtle was trying to nibble its leaves stretching its neck. I stood up wiping my eyes, sniffling. From now on I can tell you the weather. Maybe it was raining that morning, the sky looked recently opened with some unfurling clouds and there was a sun inclining westward. Maybe it was just some early afternoon; the whole day was still to pass by.
“Gham lagyo,” I heard the boatman of the boat heading alone telling the foreigners. “Sun coming,” he corrected himself.
I picked up the ‘Pride and Prejudice’ paperback from behind. It was moist, my clothes were a little wet. Maybe it was drizzling when I left home. Maybe. It must have rained madly this morning though. I basked the sun on the boat for whole next hour, and then started rowing back. I was on the shore after sometime.
“Rajesh might come tomorrow if his budi agrees to come,” the man smiled looking at his peers again and lit his cigarette.
I smiled back. “Probably,” I responded.
After taking a cup of coffee I headed back home. The boy in the café didn’t say anything this time.
My half has left me, and now I want to shut myself inside a refrigerator.
That’s what he had asked.
Mi media me ha dejado, y ahora quiero encerrarme dentro de un refrigerador. I translated him one day though I could tell it was no more necessary. Kafka was finally on the shore in the end. I had a lot to live. I still have.
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