When he opened that folded paper it started to get torn from the middle forming a sign plus, a sign of addition on that double folded paper. He carefully opened the folds. Opening of second fold, helped the paper grew from quarter to half and then the unfolding of first fold made it half to full. Scripts have faded. But the content is known to him. Four quarters of paper hold four letters, a full-fledged story of a faded dream. Still he wanted to feel and smell those letters. Lovely letters. Faded letters. Red ink like red blood. Those have faded and yet apparent like an unknown pain, never seen but ever present. He moved near to the window, a proud window for it looks to the sea with twelve windows below it like twelve steps of a descending ladder. The sea and sky meet with their merging color and while clouds kiss the waves, the vision does not fly further and does not feel like flying further. He held that paper in front of his eyes facing towards the window. Breeze laden with moistures from sea hit him hard. It hit hard that paper too, held in side edges by both hands. It did not cry while it got torn further. The plus sign in the middle grew bigger and bigger. Is it not strange a sign of addition creating separations? Breeze. Weighty breeze. Naughty breeze. Weighty with moisture and naughty with power of pressure.
The paper now four pieces holding a letter each separately, each pieces flutters separately from two grips of two hands still at eye level. He tried to read those letters again though it was known to him. Four piece of papers. Four letters. Like four stages of his life. A high ceiling tiled roof house with his parents. A young boy with guiding sisters when he received that paper with four letters. A sleepy life in a sleepy flat at thirteen storied level in a building which aspires to touch the cloud. Now of course he will go back to that old high ceiling tiled roof house, alone and shall wait under depressed and compressed breathes to move for his last and ultimate journey, one day, to there, Towers of Silence, where his parents have moved followed by his sister Naznin and Nilofar. When the pain will leave him for ever and ants shall walk on him and move inside his nose, he will lie in the outside ring of Tower of Silence, the Zoroastrians graveyard, waiting for vultures to eat him away as heat of the Sun rots him and his mother and sisters in second ring and father in outer ring, eaten away by vultures since long, perhaps shall sob for him, though dead or plead to that dry wind to croon a melancholy lullaby leaving that hissing sound of whirl. No complain for it is a sacred belief that dead shall be eaten by vultures and earth, fire and water, all sacred, should not be defiled by the dead. His parents and sisters, the emotional immediacy of their existence had long vanished. It is strange but true. Time sweeps away everything.
He looked to the four pieces of papers once again. They are fluttering hard. They are impatient to go away from his grips. They feel like chained birds ever eager to fly. They plead while flutter. L-E-A-V-E. Yes, he must open the grips. Those four letters in four pieces of papers appeared heavy to him. Gravity of emotions pulling down his hands. Why they want to leave? Why? Gravity of emotions pulled the tears too. Tears. Yes,tears. Those are from his eyes? Or from moist laden sea breeze? Let them leave if they wish to leave for they had never come. He had waited and waited long for those four letters to turn real. But they never become real. They remain his hope for ever. Never, in reality, but forever in hope. A piece of paper with four big letters. Now of course it has become four pieces in vagary of time. Red ink. Pink envelope. Why it had come? Who had sent it? Was it a joke? Why it should be a joke? Does it not come in everybody life?
He recalled that moment. A compressed memory of sleepy but palpating afternoon. It was exactly two years after that Navjote ceremony on his fifteenth birthday, a ceremony to initiate him to Zoroastrian fold with that Kusti tied thrice round his waist pointing to the trinity of good thoughts, good words and good deeds. Tiled roofed house. Tip-tap, tip-tap, tip-tap sounds of afternoon rain. Crotchety face of that old bandy-legged post peon irritated by incessant rainfall. And his elder sisters Naznin's and Nilofar's alternate calls by his three names fondly coined by them. Davar.Hey, Davar. Hey dispenser of justice. Dilbar. Hey Dilbar. Hey lovely and sweet heart. Dilshad.Hey Dilshad. Hey cheerful and happy lad. A letter for you. Pink and nice. Naznin and Nilofar had giggled together. He got up from his afternoon nap. He had received that envelope with levitating heart. His pulses had rushed as he opened that two fold paper. It had not torn then though that plus sign made by folds was perceptible. It was a beautiful sign of addition or lines making four quadrants in time, holding in each quadrant one of those beautiful four letters. He had avoided the look of his sisters as he rushed to that cavernous kitchen with singed and sodden walls in pretext of eating Kopra Pak. Sweet Kopra Pak was like that word of four letters in that piece of paper. The gloomy sky suddenly looked beautiful. Out side, the moss-slung, bunioned and misshapen tree changed into smiling lass.
Now that piece of paper has torn into four pieces. The smiling lass, whittled out of the ice of his imagination melted in the time and heat of reality. But he had never listened to his sisters when they have quoted to him the words of Ahura Mazda , the universal GOD.
"O Spitama Zarathushtra:Indeed, I thus recommend here unto thee, a man with a wife above a magard (an unmarried man) who grows up unmarried, a man with a family above one without any family, a man with children above one who is without children."
The breeze from the sea gathered momentum making those fluttering of torn papers more palpable. He opened his grips holding those papers. They came flying and kissed his face ,fell in the floor before they flied away through open door. He could not see those letters as the papers flew away. But he remembers those.
He smiled, the smile of a Parijat. He knows life exists without that four lettered word. Life exists without love. Who knows better than him?
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