by Monirul Huq<\/p>\n
Let us go then, you and I,<\/em> \u201cIs it an extension of the Winter, or the beginning of Autumn, or by any chance a makeshift rainy season?\u201d Clouds were slowly crawling over the tree tops covering the hill. Looking outside from the shared window of a ninth-floor pantry, it was obvious that I would be musing among the clouds. It is in my blood. From where I have come, rain makes people crazy; they get rain-struck. Thousands of rhymes, poems and songs have been composed on rainy days, rainy nights, rainy dusk, rainy morning, rainy vegetations, rainy fauna; the list will go on.<\/p>\n Though it was one of those long, rainy days when you should not think of going out without some crying excuse, it came to my rain-struck mind, \u201cYou have a brand-new umbrella \u2013 why not go outside to test how it creates affective sound patterns when the water sticks hammer its roof?\u201d \u201cCome on\u201d, the rational part of me, the \u201cother\u201d, countered, \u201cWhy romanticize climate change? There shouldn\u2019t be any rain out there this time of the year. It\u2019s all about the bizarre impacts of the climate crisis slapping about this tiny island.\u201d \u201cExcuse me, climate change!\u201d, the conversation continued, \u201cForget it man. I\u2019m feeling nostalgic with the good memories of rainy days imprinted on my mind, with the nonstop drizzling and pouring of a real monsoon season back in my neighborhood, my private window overlooking the forest of seductive kadam flowers, bedraggled crows in deep contemplation on electric wires, Tagore songs in the background and the irresistible smell of delicious Ilish-Khichri . . . Wow! A delightful rainy day indeed.\u201d Well, the dialogue went on for a few more minutes, and in the meantime, I donned the public costume for showing up on Pokfulam Road: t-shirt, jacket, jeans and sneakers. \u201cDon\u2019t forget the umbrella and let\u2019s hit the road. Yo ho. Here I go.\u201d<\/p>\n Good. Not many people were roaming around. Not that much traffic on the usually busy road as well. This part of Hong Kong island suddenly turned into a surreal city that, at that moment, truly belonged to me. I started to enjoy the recurrent sounds the big drops of water were making overhead. It was nothing less than Mozart or Beethoven. Truly, a happy moment. \u201cWhat if an epiphany passes through my conscious being and I find out the answers to all my queries of life now?\u201d With the Baroque music of rain playing in the background, my mind was busy sketching the matrix of a sudden interrogation. Something like John Stuart Mill\u2019s mental crisis creeped into the alleys of my sin city. \u201cWhat if all my aspirations get accomplished right now? What would I live for after that? Am I ready to answer the question?\u201d The essential power supply failed \u2013 on and off, off and on it went, then load shedding and then a black out: \u201cdarkness visible\u201d. This mischievous mind mocks our inability to demystify the purpose of life. Human beings have been carrying this query with them since I do not know when. We have no answer. This is where poets fumble, painters get stuck, playwrights become absurdist, narratives get dull. The \u201cother\u201d awoke in an act of self-defense: \u201cBut, you are no kin to these creative subspecies of Homo sapiens<\/em>, are you? So, why this fuss?\u201d \u201cBut, I\u2019m a damn researcher. I need to find out answers to so many questions. Why not this one then?\u201d \u201cYa, a researcher you are, not a philosopher. Better leave it to them to discover all that gibberish.\u201d<\/p>\n By that time, the rain was in the third gear with wind blowing from the direction of the sea. \u201cIt\u2019s not a storm, is it? No, I didn\u2019t see that in the forecast.\u201d I switched hands to check the vibrating mobile phone in the right pocket of my trousers. \u201cWho may have a worldly business on such a day. Some more than realistic guy called me, for sure, but who?\u201d Suddenly, I felt myself enmeshed in the rain as if my whole body was the sole object needed to be drenched to perceive the phenomenological characteristics of the weather. A gale came from somewhere and my timid left hand lost its grip to let the umbrella fly like a kite towards a direction I could not follow. Lo! How perfect the shot was! Without acting I felt like a great actor on the screen who just performed a mise-en-sc\u00e8ne<\/em>. Bravo! Applause! With an unusually big umbrella in hand a girl was rushing towards me. \u201cWas she coming for me? She might have seen my shelter flying away.\u201d As it should be, she did not stop by me, why would she? It was pouring incessantly, and as if watching me exposed under the grey sky, all the agents of nature took me to be the bull\u2019s eye and started darting sharp pencil sticks towards me. For the first time in years my vulnerable romantic self had merged with the \u201cother,\u201d pushing my five-foot-nine-inch frame galloping towards the HKU MTR station.<\/p>\n \u201cNo! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be<\/em>.\u201d Now, this is what I call epiphany.<\/p>\n \n by Monirul Huq Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table \u2013 T.S. Eliot, \u201cThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock\u201d (1915) \u201cIs it an extension of the Winter, or the beginning of Autumn, or by any chance a makeshiftContinue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19831"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19831"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28863,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19831\/revisions\/28863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.hku.hk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWhen the evening is spread out against the sky<\/em>
\nLike a patient etherized upon a table<\/em>
\n\u2013 T.S. Eliot, \u201cThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock\u201d (1915)<\/p>\nPublished on: April 29, 2019 < Back<\/a> ><\/strong><\/em><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"