The Unfinished story of my life
Part: 1
The year was nineteen eighty-seven, and the day was Tuesday. The sky above matched my heart completely that day, heavy and overcast. A fine, steady rain was falling, and with it came the low rumble of thunder. It felt as if every cloud in the world had gathered right over our home. Our house was a broken-thatched hut, a poor man’s deep, silent drama playing out under its roof. Hunger grew larger and larger, filling every corner of the room. Day by day we grew smaller, in the eyes of the world and even in our own. On the first day we managed to eat a bit of bread made from corn flour. On the second day we survived on coarsely pounded flour. After that, there was nothing left in the house at all. One day the rain poured, and it felt like hunger itself was falling from the sky. The vast, open world felt like prose, flat and unfeeling. Our lives seemed like an expansion of that same poem by Sukanta Bhattacharya. The weight of a confined world was swallowing me, the darkness all around, the sky thick with storm clouds. It was a darkness born of want. In our house of scarcity, there was no food. My father was old and worn. As the eldest child, my worries had no end. For three days I had lived almost without eating. I wasn’t doing anything to take on the responsibility of the family, and that burden crushed me.
There is always a strange proportion between scarcity and kin. The deeper the want grows, the fainter the shadow of relatives becomes. That is when you see people for who they truly are. You realize that no one is closer to you than yourself. It took us time to understand this truth. Help with money was far out of reach, and no one even came to ask how we were doing. Hunger and lack taught me, bone deep, what truth really is. To live is to fight by another name. To hold life close, you must fight against life itself. From that day, I began to share a home with my struggle.
We had a thatched hut with a broken roof on one side. A few coconut trees stood behind and beside it. When unbearable hunger tore at my chest and I saw no way out, I climbed tree after tree in the rain, hoping to pluck a coconut. After gathering some coconuts and starting to climb down, my hand slipped. Scraping my chest against the trunk, I began to fall. I wasn’t used to climbing, but circumstance forced me. I didn’t lose heart, because so many lives at home were starving and I had to win this battle. Barefoot, the skin on my chest was torn off. Looking down I saw heavy bleeding. But the bleeding inside from want was so deep that the blood outside didn’t shake me. I got up quickly, covered my chest with a gamcha so no one at home would see, put the coconuts on my head, and without telling anyone slipped away toward Kanai pur market. That was the first time I started walking forward.
A soft drizzle falls before me, and the ache of hunger roars in my stomach like thunder in the clouds of the sky. Who will hear this sound of thunder? I reached the market and sold the coconuts for a small amount. With that I bought rice and lentils for one meal, and two tiny jhatka hilsa fish, then came home. It was that straw-thatched hut with a broken roof where all of us lived together. Whenever it rained, water would pour down one side of the hut in streams. Father would cut banana leaves and lay them over the roof to stop the water. Mother would sit us all on the dry side of the room. After coming back from the market, we all waited for the rain to stop. When the rain stopped, Mother would cook, and at that thought joy would play on our faces in smiles, while unseen tears welled up inside our chests. At last the rain stopped. Mother quickly finished cooking and served the food. After days without eating, the smell of the food alone seemed to fill half our empty stomachs. I can’t describe the taste of that meal. I can only say it felt as if God himself had sent the food for us. It was a taste I have never found anywhere since. Even today, when it rains, my heart longs to taste that food from that day again. Even now, when it rains at home we cook big hilsa and lay out a nice spread. But nothing ever satisfies me. I never get that taste back. That taste from that day seems to have mingled with my blood. Whenever it rains, the thought of that smell brings tears to my eyes. Rain and rain-soaked cloudy skies remind me of everything. That was the day I truly came to know myself for the first time. Want was my first adversary, hunger was my first teacher. The story of my life is incomplete without them.
Toronto
06.10.2026
