The festival time is over; festivities, too. A feel of loss weighs down. Mind gets heavy.
Nature is responding accordingly. Day is darkened. Tears rain down from the grim-faced skies.
Yet, the day- time work is on. Corns are harvested. Folks are cutting grains and the fields are empty.
Emptiness is in the air.
Towards the end-afternoon rain arrives. People scurry for shelter at a road-side tea stall. Mohd. Rafi’s voice comes out from an F.M. channel of a small radio kept behind the cheap biscuit tins: EBAR TAHOLE AMI JAI/ SUKHE THAKO, VALO THAKO/MON THEKE EI CHAI – a Satinath Mukhopadhaya – Mohd. Rafi musical melancholia. The notes are playing, up and down; rolling, gliding, cascading, oozing. The music director Satinath is at his acrobatically riveting best. Rafi sab is at peace with it, doing everything, revealing nothing. The master is at work.
Nature seems to listen. She reins in rains, sends forth, instead, a gust of wind, which carries along a smell of wet earth.
Tears stop falling. Let me take leave. Stay well and happy. I want it from the core of my heart…..