An Embarrassing Conversation
By Shaheed Quadri
Translated by Sarwar Morshed
You pined for hearing some unwhispered honeyed words and soon, oblivious of space and time,
we were cocooned into an unusual conversation – We circumnavigated a series of ethereal
realms, ultimately anchoring at an embarrassing thought-landscape -
You: My prince, pour some novel sweet-nothing into my ears.
Me: Clusters of darkness, like a pack of black-masked bandits, are trying to hound the rabbit-
white, trembling moon.
You: It doesn’t make any sense!
Yet another bout of unpronounced disclosure came out murmuringly:
Haven’t you heard that a kingfisher is lying dead on the other bank of the river after it was
accorded a fatal reception by a trinity of fishes?
Your eye-balls with their quick gyrations told it all:
It’s against the natural law and hence implausible.
A bit loudly, I continued the soft-soaping:
Honey, believe me,
The wilderness with all its intractability
Is encroaching our beloved cities.
With a depressive smile, you argued:
The fact is just the reverse -
The killer hands of men have strangled the floral season of the land.
This encounter transformed my infatuation into mild fury:
Do you have any idea about what has happened to our rivers?
Rejected by the sea, as if tsunami-driven, they are coming back to our villages and cities like the
irresistible waves of Tartar bandits!
Disdainfully, you responded:
None should pollute their auditory organs with these ominous words.
Me at the tether, threw the ultimate bait:
Look! There the top-predators, the majestic tigers
are running helter-skelter for refuge being chased by the fawns!
With a melancholy-inducing smile, you:
Will the world be ever blessed by the celestial landing of this brand of golden days?
*
Sarwar Morshed has been working as an Associate Professor at the Department of English, Chittagong University, Bangladesh. Mr. Morshed, a Ph.D. scholar, has to his credit a second Masters on ELT from the UK. Apart from research and academic writings, he is also interested in creative writing and translation. His works both in English and the vernacular include Depoeticized Rhapsody, In the Castle of My Mind, Figuratively Speaking, Rendezvous with Words and Husam Uddiner Election Khela (A collection of belles lettres penned in Bangla).