Aabdus sattar was returning home; some people observed him after he got off the bus at Taltala and made hisway towards his residence in the colony in the soft glow of evening, although this daily event of a thin, dark-skinned, middle-aged clerk returning home from office was nothing worth looking at. When he reached the road inside the colony, perhaps because it was the rainy season, or because of some unseasonal rain, the countlesspotholes in the rundown, brick-lined road were full of water, and where there wasn’t any water the road was slippery and the treacherous slime made him hold his back high and crooked. Abdus Sattar hopped like an egret and traversed the road with the bottoms of his trousers rolled up to just under his knees, and when he reached the front of his building, he stumbled on one such slippery part and fell down; he then spread his hands behind him and sat down in the wet slime.
Those who witnessed this scene burst out laughing, and then they hurried towards him and lifted him up from the mud; contemplating the incident as he sat there, Abdus Sattar’s own lips too quivered a bit and he said, “I fell down,” and thus, after a long time, solely on account of having slipped and fallen down, he got the opportunity to exchange words with his neighbours. When he returned home, he could only say the same thing to his wife Shireen Banu, “I fell down in the muddyslime,” and then, like he did every day, he went and sat in the balcony in the grey light of dusk.
Sinking into the cane chair there, he used to sit until night while his wife helped his two sons and daughter with their studies, after which they made a ruckus and then went to the flat next door and watched television, and all the while Abdus Sattar blended into the darkness in the veranda. He observed how dense and almost tactile the darkness became after the light of day was effaced; he just kept gazing, but that didn’t make him happy or tired, just like he never experienced any feeling of tiredness in his clerical government job.
Sometimes as he sat like this, when the southerly breeze wafted in and the green potted plants arrayed by his wife in the narrow veranda of their colony flat swayed and their leaves made a fluttering sound, the air was suffused with the faint petrichor-like fragrance of the noyontara flower that had been born from the soil in a potthat was fastened with a string to the railing. Abdus Sattar used to sit on the cane chair amidst that flutter and fragrance, as if from time immemorial, and his wife Shireen Banu filled their flat with a variety of potted plants; besides the noyontara and patabahar plants, she had also planted rajnigandhasaplings in the veranda. Abdus Sattar either observed or didn’t observe all this, he didn’t say anything about it; whether or not he was mindful of the green world of foliage that had grown inside his residence remainedunexpressed until the day he died.
Under Shireen Banu’s indulgent tending, the sloping patabahar plants spread to every doorway of their flat; green, snake-like vines of money plants hung down from the cupboard, bookshelf, and mosquito-net posts.When Abdus Sattar went to sleep after dinner, a long and clustering plant placed beside the dressing table by the head of his cot swayed as it respired; Abdus Sattar didn’t notice that, he remained asleep; but his neighbours did notice, they praised Shireen Banu endlessly, and the womenfolk of the colony were beside themselves with excitement on seeing the sylvan assemblage inside the flat. Following the arrival of Abdus Sattar and his family in this colony four years ago, his wife had brought about the ultimate blooming of the artistic practice of growing plants in pots, and these plants crossed the limits of their flat and spread to their neighbours’ flats.
All the residents of this building in the colony -- i.e., the wives of the clerks, inspectors, and junior officers invarious government offices -- began competing with each other to fill up the space inside their flats with plants. And thus, the balance in the relationship between nature and man that had, according to knowledgeablepeople, apparently been ruptured in the modern age, seemed to have been restored in this building. For that matter, the estrangement that occurred every day in the relationship between the residents of this building in the colony and people at large also seemed to have been repaired somehow by the green foliage of various shrub-like plants. All these young ladies and their menfolk in the colony finally learnt to discover the beauty of life, they found arboreal significance in theirmeaningless and isolated lifestyles, and all of them were grateful to Abdus Sattar’s wife, Shireen Banu, for that.
Only Abdus Sattar remained outside this circle; nothing occurred to him when he gazed at the lovely cactus kept inside the flat, and when something did suddenly occur to him, he then felt that this plant was graceful,incomparable, and entirely thorny. Green creepers descended from every balcony of the building in the colonyin which Abdus Sattar lived, and a reddish-purple-coloured pattern was composed on the front side of this yellow-coloured building from the noyontara flowers planted along the balcony railings. When sunlight turned pale inthe late afternoon, butterflies abandoned the shrubs at the aerodrome near Agargaon and began fluttering in front of this building in the colony, and the arrival of the butterflies and their hovering and fluttering like this continued for many days. The first day the butterflies arrived, the people in the colony were afraid that perhaps they would remain in their flats and lay eggs and build a kingdom of golden caterpillars among their verdantdreams.
But their fear was at once eliminated; the butterflies didn’t stay on in people’s homes, as the evening light waned, they melted into the surroundings. This processcontinued in front of this building in the colony for a year, and through all of it Abdus Sattar sat awake, with amotionless presence, like some ageless and immovable piece of stone; when the butterflies ascended to the veranda and fluttered around there, yellow pollen from their flapping wings accumulated on Abdus Sattar’s face, chin, and earlobes. He gazed at them, and he wiped the pollen off his ear with his fingers, and if a butterfly entered his shirt he freed it; it seemed he had got used to living in the dominion of all these insects, it seemed he wasn’t inconvenienced now, although a year ago, when the butterflies were first overwhelmed by the beauty of the noyontara flowers and began arriving there, the excitement it created in this city had interrupted thetranquillity of Abdus Sattar’s life. When news of the capriciousness of the butterflies spread through word of mouth, the city’s tired, sad and drowsy folk became excited, and when one day a report accompanied by a picture appeared on the last page of a newspaper, the situation took a decisive turn.
Every evening, even before the arrival of the butterflies, the road in front of this six-storeyed building in the colony was crowded with all these entertainment-starved city folk leading dreary lives, and when swarms ofyellow butterflies arrived and danced around the noyontara flowers and created the appearance of a moving garden of marigolds floating in the air, the people gazed in speechless wonder; and they kept thinking that it wasn’t humans but beautiful butterflies that led fulfilling lives. The middle-aged man whom these people spotted through the gaps in the railing of one veranda, sitting amidst the crowd ofbutterflies from beginning to end, was Abdus Sattar.
Although he initially tried to remain indifferent to the comings and goings of all these people, he gradually had to become conscious of his surroundings; as the astonishment of those who came to see the butterflies was dispelled and they forsook their earlier conclusion about the fulfilment in a butterfly’s life, they were once again afflicted by the fatigue of monotony. In order to drive away this annoyance, some of them began to throw clods of earth aimed at the butterflies; all these lumps of earth missed their target and fell into the verandas of the building in the colony, and one day a lump like this hit Abdus Sattar while he was sitting in the veranda. Also,given the situation, suddenly peanut and ice cream vendors arrived there for the delectation of the vexed folk and the whole place resounded with their cries and the sound of bells.
The guardians of the city too were prompt in this instance, and in order that peace and order were notdisrupted, a temporary police outpost was erected in a corner of the field in front of the building, and then people from the Forest Department arrived one day, and they put up a signboard on bamboo poles on the side of the road in front of the colony, on which it was written that the butterflies were only for observation and they could not be caught or harmed in any way; if anyone did that, they would be punished under the Wildlife Protection Act. When the colony took on the disarranged look of a dust-laden and noisy fair, and it occurred to Abdus Sattar for the first time that perhaps it would no longer be possible forhim to sit in this spot which provided him the greatest shelter in life, the people in the colony woke up one morning and heard on the radio that the government of the nation had changed the previous night; and as a result of that, a situation was created whereby Abdus Sattar found deliverance, and he did not have to forsake his veranda.
This new government of generals took many quick and significant steps in the interests of the nation and the people, and among these was the project to modernize Mirpur Zoo. A dozen chimpanzees were imported from Kenya on an emergency basis, and they were exhibited in a new cage beside the old monkey cage. When pictures and reports of these chimpanzees appeared in the newspapers, the vexed folk who were tired of monotony were shaken up, they ran towards Mirpur Zoo to see the chimpanzees, and the field in Agargaon Colony once again returned to silence; Abdus Sattar could once again submerge himself, with shallow breaths, in this silence. But most people in the world are always capricious; people are not mindful of the fact that their capriciousness is infectious, just like waves are created when a stone is thrown into a pond, and at this time oneday, some caprice like this, arising somewhere, was transported and flew through the darkness, and it landedon Abdus Sattar when he was sitting in the balcony. He picked up the object that had accidentally landed there, and even before he sniffed it, he realized that it was a flower; and when he brought it close to his nose, he was certain that it was a rose; he kept the rose. The next day’s rose fell about a foot away from his chair, but for the next five days no flowers landed there, and then on the sixth day, two flowers landed in quick succession; and in this way, roses kept piercing the darkness and flying into Abdus Sattar’s balcony. Abdus Sattar accepted the flowers, he took in their fragrance; but he didn’t think too much about it. Then one day, when Abdus Sattar went indoors to eat dinner earlier than his usualtime, his wife came and stood in the balcony to enjoy the cool breeze, and that day’s rose then flew in.
When Shireen Banu realized that a flower had flown in from the darkness outside, she became unsettled, but she couldn’t figure out this mystery; she remained seated with the rose in her hand. When Abdus Sattar came to the balcony after dinner, Shireen Banu extended her hand towards him in the darkness and said, “Take it.”
“What is it?”
Shireen Banu didn’t speak, but Abdus Sattar realized it was a rose when he received it.
“Who throws you roses?”
“I don’t know.”
It then occurred to Abdus Sattar for the first time that this was definitely a mystery, but his mental inquiryin this regard did not proceed very far.
“Is this why you sit on the veranda?”
Neither of them could see the other’s face. Abdus Sattar said, “No.”
“Do you feel ashamed to admit that?”
“Ashamed of what?”
“Then?”
“Then what?”
“For the last one month, I’ve been clearing torn, dry flowers from the veranda.”
“What of it?”
Shireen Banu then mumbled something softly, Abdus Sattar couldn’t hear it properly, but he suddenlyremembered that long ago, a bluebottle had flown in from the darkness outside, and he asked, “Do you remember the day of 18th March 1970?”
Waves of meaningless time had steadily dissipated in Shireen Banu’s memory, she couldn’t remember anything; she asked, “What happened that day?”
“That was a day three months after our marriage,” Abdus Sattar replied. “It was before your second visit toDhaka after our wedding. I had gone to Sirajganj to bring you back, we were going to take the evening train onthe 18th of March 1970; you had got ready, your luggage was packed, there was a two-horse carriage waitingin front of the gate of your house on Kalibari Road. Everything was ready, everyone was standing in the veranda or on the compound, and you were inside, just about to come out. I was standing in the darkness under the sweet-and-sour mango tree behind your house and pissing with the zip of my trouser undone; one of the shutters of the window at the rear of the house was open, and I spotted you.There were biscuits smeared with honey on a saucer, you picked one up and ate it; some honey stuck to your lip,and a big bluebottle came flying in from the darkness then, and it sat on your lip. You flicked it away, wiped yourlip and went out, and I was pissing under the mango tree then; can you remember that?”
They had nothing left but darkness and silence. Then after a long time, Abdus Sattar once again asked,“Can’t you remember? I know that the bluebottle had come from the dirty latrine in the clump of palm trees behind your house; can’t you remember that?”
“No, I can’t remember,’ Shireen Banu said. “I’m living with a madman.”
After that, Abdus Sattar kept receiving roses in the evening’s darkness, and in the mornings, Shireen Banuremoved the corpses of dried-up roses from the balcony; they were unable to solve the mystery of the roses thatflew in. But it seems like a very simple answer to the puzzle was soon discovered; one day, when Fazlul Karim,who lived downstairs on the first floor with his wife, two daughters, and a young son, moved out of their flat inthe colony, the sound of Rahimuddin Bhuiyan’s young daughter’s suppressed weeping could be heard from thefourth-floor flat directly above Abdus Sattar’s. No flower landed that night, and after that, just like rain ceased,the hitherto inevitable process of roses flying into Abdus
Sattar’s veranda too ceased.
Perhaps there was a direct link between Fazlul Karim’s young son departing the colony and the cessation of flowers flying into Abdus Sattar’s veranda; or maybe there was no connection between these two events which happened at the same time merely by coincidence.
Whatever the truth might be, Abdus Sattar remained indifferent to and removed from the mysteries that are at play in nature or within people, and all these changes did not cause any change in his life. He sat at dusk among the silent swarms of butterflies, he watched the darkness spreading, although the dance of the butterflies didn’tcontinue for very many days after that either.
Just a few days later, late in the evening one day, the city was rocked by severe tremors; cooking utensils came crashing down from all the kitchens in the colony, people screamed, they rushed down from their flats, and ran towards the field. Abdus Sattar was sitting in the veranda that day as well; a few moments after the first tremor, startled, he realized it was an earthquake and he thought of going down. The building was then severely rockeda second time, and he could see that the pots of noyontara placed on the railing and fastened with string were tearing the fastening apart and about to fall down; he moved forward hastily, leaned over the railing, and put his arms firmly around two displaced pots. But as he rushed forward, leaned over, and then grasped the two heavy flowerpots firmly, the upper half of his body grew heavier and he lost his balance; instead of retrievingthe flowerpots, his body went over the railing and descended with the pots. Abdus Sattar’s trajectory was exactly like that of a bomber plane on a kamikaze mission.
Twenty-seven buildings in the city developed cracks as a result of that earthquake, a building beside the lake in Rampura tilted, and in Agargaon Colony, all the noyontara plants, and Abdus Sattar, fell to the earth. Abdus Sattar’s skull was smashed and spread out like a bloody mushroom on the upper part of his neck, his brains spilled out and became one with the earth. After Abdus Sattar was buried, the grieving folk of the colony put their fallen noyontara plants back on the railings; only the widow Shireen Banu’s plants lay on the ground below.
After a few days, everyone’s plants came back to life again and the butterflies returned, and Shireen Banu, who was a bit better now, brought back her noyontara plants and planted them in new pots; but instead of springing back to life at the railing, they died very soon. After that, everyone in this building of the colonyobserved with astonishment and alarm that the leaves of their thriving noyontara plants were gradually wilting; and within a week, all the plants had withered and died.
The people in the colony then obtained new noyontara saplings and planted them, but all the saplings once again withered and died in the same way. The people in the colony then requested and invited a professor fromthe agricultural college to look into the matter and advise them. The professor tested the soil and found nothingharmful, so he planted new saplings, but they kept dying as usual.
He undertook this process thrice, and all three times the noyontara saplings died for no apparent reason. Thevenerable professor arrived at the truth of the matter after a month of hard work, but he was unable to explain itto everyone, he merely advised the people of Agargaon Colony not to plant noyontara for the time being. However, he wrote a long note on the subject in his personal notebook. He wrote:
I still don’t know whether or not such a thing is possible. The noyontara (Vinca rosea) plants were thriving; but as a result of the earthquake, there was a change. The plants in two pots came in close contact with the brains of a dead man. After the earthquake, when the other plants were taken back, they were doing well; but the two clumps that the dead man had tried to save began to die, and after that the other plants became afflicted too. On examination, no infectious fungus or disease was found, there was nothing harmful in the soil; rather, it was observed that all the necessary ingredients for the plants’ nourishment and growth were present. The roots of the plants were examined and they were found to be adequately healthy and strong. All the saplings that were planted at the railing, thrice in succession, are dead; but the four saplings that were planted in the earth at the spot where the dead man’s head was smashed have survived and are becoming robust. Does that mean that the plants have got into the habit of consuming somematerial from the brain? I am not yet certain about this, but my preliminary thinking is that perhaps this is not correct. One of these four plants was removed from there and planted elsewhere, and the elements thatmake up the brain, like sodium, magnesium, chloride, phosphorus, and so on were added to the soil, butthere was no positive result. I’ve tried using the fresh brain of a cow, and for that matter (something very secret), a few days ago, I brought a human brain in a polythene bag from the morgue at the medical collegeand tried mixing that in the soil too; it didn’t work. The sapling was dying, and finally, after replanting itwith the other three saplings, it sprang back to life. It’s difficult to figure out why the plants thrive in thisparticular spot (the soil there was tested and no other special characteristics were found); there’s only onespecial feature of the spot, which is that a person’s head got smashed there, a person who, I’ve heard, was a bit crazy, and at the time of the earthquake, he fell while trying to save two pots of noyontara plants; in that case, is it something that’s personal for these plants? It could be. But my thinking on this subject of thenoyontara plants in this colony dying when they are removed from a particular spot is that the plants are simply committing suicide. That’s because I have not found any real reason for their death. I cannot say anything more about why these noyontara plants die. I do knowwhat sentient beings plants are. And in this regard, this desire for suicide first spread from one plant toanother because of the close proximity of the plants, and the butterflies performed the role of messengers in this process; I suspect that subsequently the soil too might have played a role. If contact with the butterfliescan be avoided, and if they are planted on soil brought from elsewhere, noyontara plants may perhaps grow again in Agargaon Colony. I was able to save one sapling by this method, inside a polythene bag. But one can only conduct an experiment in this way, not raise a garden. This note of mine is perhaps not asaccomplished as a scientist’s paper; but I see nothing wrong in writing down whatever I have observed and thought.
The four noyontara plants planted by the professor from the agricultural college were in the earth in front of the building in Agargaon Colony; he had thrown away the sapling that grew inside a polythene bag. But subsequently, at some point of time, people from the Public Works Department arrived and laid a metalled road in front of the building, and they paved the grassy patch between the road and the building so that no trash would be dumped there. They thus removed the final four noyontara plants and cleared that space, and ever since then there have been no noyontara plants in this colony. However, as advised by the professor from the agricultural college, if one was careful regarding butterflies and the soil, and tried hard, perhaps noyontara flowers would once again bloom here in the future.
Shahidul Zahir was a Bangladeshi writer best known for his novella Jibon O Rajnoitik Bastobota. V Ramaswamy has translated Subimal Misra’s The Golden Gandhi Statue from America: Early Stories, Wild Animals Prohibited: Stories, Anti-Stories and many other works; his translation of Shahidul Zahir’s Life and Political Reality: Two Novellas was published in 2022. This story is part of the recent translation “Why There Are No Noyontara Flowers in Agargaon Colony: Stories”, published by Harper Collins India.