THE GIRL IN THE TEA SHOP

Over the table, at the far right-corner of the drab, dingy tea shop, which I had become a regular patron of, owning to my desire for passive reclining as the light of the day irrelevantly functioned outside its hood, she sat, all the table to herself, immersed in some silence that she preserved amid the otherwise noisy atmosphere. I saw her as I walked through the narrow aisle past the counter where the sizzling aroma of tea rose out of its rusted teapot, which I sometimes wondered if it had ever been washed or not. But, on that occasion, my mind was fixated on her solitary, quiet presence.

I must say that I am not a man who readily notices another, it is such a rarity that initially I was stumped that my eyes fell upon her unsolicited existence. She had her elbows rested on the plastic-blue surface of the table, and chin on her palms. She had crocheted-fingerless gloves on her hands, green perhaps (the lightning in the place wasn't generous enough to tell that with surety); her tiny fingers looked as if they had just recently grown out of its woolly texture. Her nails had a black polish(I could tell because it added a natural intensity to the dim air about her) and out of her bleak corner, the soft silver glint of her rings meekly flashed out.

I had occupied the wall-side of the other corner, which was where I always sat, barring the times when the shop was irritatingly crowded and I had to compromise my spot. Always it gave me stability when I laid, with my legs crossed over the bench, on that particular spot. I do not know who glanced at who, but I remember sharing a silent nod, lips puckered up in admission of each other’s presence.

In that instant, I realized how much one requires beauty. Beauty is such a thing that can dismantle one’s mental landscape entirely and bring one into its world. It is a silent lure to a mind stuck inside itself. Had I not seen her, I would have no recollection of being in that tea shop, on that afternoon, at all. In the moment I saw her, my aloof mind had reconciled with reality and brought me back, instantly, to the world.

Under the wall mural, which had been illustrated by past-alumni of our college, she sat, like a human sculpture, still in time, as the warm fuzz of the tea rose out of its glassy world and wavered in the air around her. The swirl of warm air had in her proximity become so palpable, detectable, as if it were a flux of great turbulence at which center she sat, completely oblivious of the vortex that originated out of her.

More so than beauty, the definable, visible trait that she possessed, what had captivated me more was the intangible, mysterious web of silence that seemed to flow from her. It had called to me, to its past dweller. She had presented to me the memory of my own past recluse in silence — sitting alone in cafés, park benches, secluded rooms.

As I ruminated over my history of silence under this torrent of immediate silence, soft music diffused from her corner. Music had now accompanied her, in the exact way it used to accompany me. At one time, when silence was all I could muster, I conversed with the world through songs. It felt that she now had, unintentionally, done the same; and I maintained that through the song, she were communicating the deepest recesses of her heart to me. I listened intently to her hushed internal voice, and much to my delight, I was well acquainted with the language of this style of communication.

Yet to my delight again, in the dimly-lit, buzz-swarmed background of the shop, the familiar melody of Mehedi Hasan’s ghazal-voice perpetuated. It had risen from her table and, all along weaving an invisible string, reached my ears; for a while, I was astounded that it was indeed Mehedi Hasan’s song she was listening to, for the elegance of classical music is still abstruse and inconspicuous to the youths, especially since the metallic drill of upbeat songs is favorable — punchy, resonant, bassy, and in tune with the hurried world. Sharply contrasting the vicinity, she had let the slow, soothing music ripple in the dull air. The meditative ragas flowing out of the music maestro submerged the incoherent buzz of the front-tables and tranquilized the smoke-dense air. An oblique stillness wavered between our tables, and as if linked with something intangible, it had allowed me to peek into the reserved matters of her heart.

Her round, sheeny eyes had turned plaintive and kept on flickering around with the silent hum, perhaps her heart had been roused with some sentiment which wasn’t hard for me to surmise since the Urdu ghazal of which the song was composed was penned in reminiscence of a romantic affair. In the soulful resonance, I felt the tug of a longing which perhaps wasn’t my own but had been carried over from her side. I felt the smoke-dense breath gain weight and turn into more of a sigh, that I kept from being noticed, keeping myself at the fringes of the expanse of her stillness. And yet, without deliberation, I had let myself be carried on with the ghazal and sing along, which I was made to be aware of when she craned her neck slightly towards me. This singing along had registered me into her quiet domain. I have interjected her contemplation, or rather I had simply put myself to be contemplated; I couldn’t tell. Due to that attention, I immediately felt the fresh shyness of an infant child, and my voice was cut sharp with abashment. But it did allow me to notice how attentive she had been, and how, in the sustained meditative resonance of Hasan’s ragas, she must have felt the relevance of a deep, intimate feeling she had pressed inside her. Having been a long admirer of Urdu nazms and ghazals, I knew how it struck a chord with one’s inner affliction — its retrospective effect I had myself examined, so I couldn’t help but surmise that she was moved by the song as well, given to her silent disposition.

When one is stirred by an immediate emotion, its effect is seen outside, dramatically, with much orchestration; but when a prolonged, repressed emotion slowly bubbles forth in one’s conscious attention, then one is often ruminative, contemplative, deep in retrospect, accompanied by silence. By and by my own experience, I was firmly persuaded that such were the case with her. It was this exact familiarity that had moved me so tremendously in respect to her, and to be a witness of such a heartfelt transpiration, I took it to be a momentous delight.

Occasionally, with minimal movement, she sipped at her tea which broke her impassive, still figure, that had given an impression like she had been carved, with sharp outlines, over the marred-blue on the wall, and made her into a concrete, viable human, separate from the immobile wall. I even caught the short click of the lighter, which was hanging by a thin grey wire held by a small nail driven in the wall, as she lit her cigarette. She puffed, with intermittent pauses, that made her rumination stark and perceptible. Smoke escaped out of her in a thin, loose screen, and it hung over her head before diffusing away; in the smokescreen, some discreet, implicit secret condensed which for a while reflected in her absent, burrowing eyes. In the reverie generously allowed by the music, it felt she had let the fickle, constantly shifting feelings in her engrave deep, firmly and without altercation, that her face also couldn’t betray it; effusively, her soul gleamed in her face and it glowed with a pink blush, or perhaps this was merely a reaction to the fresh white glow of the bulb, overhead, which had come lit, presently.

Alas! The sharp light of the bulb invaded the tranquil territory in which we had secretly reposed ourselves, and by its permeance, the thin, fickle, ephemeral chord that had entangled us was snapped. We were instantly buoyed out of the vortex of silence and placed in our own world, separate and aloof. And, in the separation between us, the catastrophic buzz of the front tables had found its way towards our corners. Suddenly we were brought back to the atmosphere in which we sat, in our own separate corners, and nothing was ours for indulgence; the ashtray had been filled voluminously in our rumination, and now the ashes lay there, the remnants of our absent breaths, like dead witnesses. On account of that transition, I could no longer hear the song, whether that was due to the obvious reason that she had paused it or because I had become woefully incapable of perceiving intangible things due to the discrepancy wrought by the light, I couldn’t tell either.

As if surveillanced by the bright glow, the unreserved expression of her face suddenly became suppressed and she put on a veneer of casualness; all those evocations of her sincere self became withdrawn and reserved. The light, without consideration, had betrayed me the luminous beauty of her unrestricted persona.

I let the whiff of smoke drift slightly to my right, so by its silvery screen, I could be sheathed somehow and can feign an air of indifference, still keeping her at the peripheral of my eyes. She fiddled with the stub of burnt cigarette in her hand before letting it fizzle out in the ashtray. Her movement felt stiff and hindered. The charming feature of her contemplative posture was no longer there. She looked ordinary under the light, in that sense that her unassuming features were lost and there was no more the soulful glamour she exhibited previously in the bleakness. That I had to look at her with an eye projected outside, having lost the terrain of resonance was more to my blight.

After letting her cigarette burn out, she dragged the chair by her side, its legs made a scrubbing sound against the concrete. She scooped the boho sling bag in the dents of her shoulder, adjusted it slightly to her right waist, stood and made her way out, without ever so slightly glancing at me. In one instance, all the affair that had kept me firmly in the world had been dismissed. I was left to ponder if everything had all along been by mind’s wistful fancy which was, to be frank, quite my nature.

What had then inflicted me more was not so much her absence, but the silence that had been left with me. It is absolutely easy to ruminate in the silence that perpetuates outside oneself, but the silence that rings inside one is unbearable. This immediate change made me uneasy and restless. I ordered another cup of tea to settle down my nerves. I sipped at the tea and let its hot, sugary taste distract me from my present disorientation. How much this underlying affair had mattered to me! That as soon as I had nothing to mystify myself with, I was yet again thrown into an unsettling mood akin to my constant volatility. I peered at the mural, its long, intertwined shapes and wondered if they were indeed etched by one person or were overlapped segments of different artworks by different persons. I intently tried to figure that out, but knowing that I possibly had no way of figuring it, I dropped my eyes and took a quick glance of her chair before letting it sit on my tea-glass. I took hard puffs of my leftover cigarette, pressed its stub harshly on the ashtray and dialled my friend for a company which had become absolutely necessary now.