It's Rifat Zayedi.

He is going in a rickshaw.

From Chankhar Pul, to the Shahbagh area.

Sutopa will be there at the Art Institute. In Mollah's canteen. Ah, Sutopa! Perhaps Purabi will be there too. Or maybe not. But no, Purabi will be there. She has this mysterious relationship with Sutopa. They are always together. Rifat has met with Sutopa twenty-one times in the last month. Out of which Purabi has been absent only three times.

On the traffic island in the middle of the road Rifat sees the doyel birds made of cement. One day they should just take flight and go away - fly away from this city. An upbeat Rifat silently gives the two birds permission to fly away. Go, winged ones, wherever you want to fly!

The birds do not fly.

Rifat looks at the krishnachura trees and notes the sky's mood. Not actually of the sky, but of the clouds. The sky is overcast. So many clouds, like a painting. Clouds floating, gathering, drifting. Gray-coloured clouds, rain-laden. When will it rain? Any time now! And so many krishnachura flowers, all these amazingly red krishnachura flowers - it seems a surreal scene to Rifat. Such a gathering of gray-coloured clouds, is it - or isn't it?

Today Rifat's poems have been published in the daily morning newspaper. In the literature page, titled 'A Few of Rifat Zayedi's Poems.' Great care had been taken in publishing them, accompanied with drawings done by Hasan Habib. And so Rifat today is in a rare mood! Any and all scenes seem surreal to him today! Or even half-ghostly, unearthly.

Has Sutopa seen the morning paper? Which paper does she keep? That particular newspaper - no, not likely. If she did, then she would have seen his poems. Would have read them. And would have mentioned it. She hasn't said anything. Sutopa has a mobile phone. Rifat had called her from a mobile phone shop, and had talked to her for a total of seven minutes. Out of which Sutopa had spent four minutes lecturing him on what he should do, that, in the context of the present socio-cultural conditions, what did he think he was doing? In short, why wasn't he getting a mobile phone? And what, Rifat had asked, would happen if he did? The price of a mobile phone had recently come down greatly, she said, one could manage it within twenty-two or twenty-three hundred takas - the whole set. Why wasn't Rifat aware of the fact that if he owned a mobile phone then he could talk all night with her? All night? Yes, all night! But aside from this, why else should he get one? Weren't poets not supposed to have cell phones? And so it had gone on and on...

The rest of the three minutes they had spent talking on other topics. The essence of it was that Sutopa would be waiting at Molla's canteen. Inshita, Sutopa's sister, or related to her in some such way, studied at the Art Institute. She may also be there with Sutopa. So that would make it three of them: Sutopa, Purabi, and Inshita. Inshita had a lover, a well-known singer. Would he be also there, wondered Rifat. He was always hanging around at Mollah's canteen, when did the beggar find the time to sing?

Is Sutopa already there?

If he could only show Sutopa this surreal scene...

Red krishnachura, the gang of gray clouds...

Hardly has he finished the thought that the rain came down. Jhum, jhum, jhum, the rain suddenly slants down hard.

Of course it stands to reason that it would be sudden.

Big drops of rain.

Rifat gets wet.

"Uncle, don't you have your plastic sheet?"

The rickshawallah replies, "No."

"Then stop! I don't want to get wet."

There is a bus stop shelter right by the roadside.

Rifat leaps down from the rickshaw. Scurries under the roof of the bus stop shed. Others have also taken refuge there. Rifat's rickshawallah too scrambles for cover.

Rifat looks around.

On the other side of the road is the old racecourse, now a park, with its mausoleums of three national leaders. Getting wet - the trees in the park, the mausoleums. Getting wet too are the two cement birds. One can barely make them out from here.

It is a pelting, driving rain.

It streams down from a desolate sky.

The wind and the rain -- they are masters of the universe now.

There is a crack of thunder, then a flash of lightning.

The rain comes down even harder now.

It's raining cats and dogs -- that's what the English would say.

A nasty phrase!

And in Bengali?

Mushuldharay, the rain, coming down in torrents...

This phrase, too is no less ugly...The word 'mushul' meant 'mugur', or a cudgel.

The rain, cudgeling the earth.

What would that be like, the rain falling like cudgels, like hammers? There was a song by Bob Marley - 'Got to have kaya now/ For the rain is falling...' which Pablo Rahi had translated it into Bengali: 'Hang loose and smoke ganja/Because it's raining...

'

Oh Pablo, where are you now?

Rifat has cigarettes in his pants pocket. A packet of Gold Leaf cigarettes. And a Ronson lighter. The lighter was in memory of an almost forgotten girl. She now lived in Wisconsin -- had married and left, was now the mother of a child. Children - two, in fact - born in the USA. Will they learn how to speak Bengali? Will she teach them?

Rifat draws out the cigarette packet and the lighter.

The rain has not damaged the cigarette packet since it had been in his jeans pocket. Rifat extracts a cigarette and lights it. He draws in a lungful of smoke and thinks, that woman now in Wisconsin once liked to get wet in this kind of rain. That was a long time ago. She and Rifat.

And Sutopa?

Does she like to get wet in the rain? And Purabi? That girl too is interesting. Arunima Chanel Purabi. After being introduced to her Rifat had immediately thought of a wild duck - had thought of a village once upon a time and Arunima Chanel Purabi. Was this the same Arunima Chanel?

Purabi was in Statistics. Sutopa in the Bangla department.

Again there's thunder, and a flash of lightning.

And the rain, is it now coming down harder?

Wasn't the rain's musical instrument the kettle-drum, the one used in wars in ancient times?

Today, this city, Dhaka, is going to drown.

Before the rain there had been a wan light. Not anymore. On every side there's now a late evening darkness. Even though it's not yet time for the Asar call to prayers. Or had it sounded, and Rifat hadn't heard it?

Somebody else lights a cigarette.

It is only now that Rifat sees the others -- those who have taken shelter in the bus stop shed. He glances at them cursorily: Ordinary people, off the street. Poor people, one could plainly see that. Besides Rifat, there are seven others. Two women. Sitting on the cement bench. Quietly. The others are talking. About the rain.

"Its been quite some time since it rained like this."

"If I could only get my hands on this bitch of a rainy day..."

"Why, what has the rain done to you?"

"Done to me? Done to me, you say? The harm's been done to those who till the land -- could anyone of them scatter any seeds today? This is not rain, this is Allah's curse!"

"Curse it is, and here it comes again."

Thunder, and then a streak of lightning!

Rifat thinks about the two girls. Who are they? They were not 'good' girls. But then who are good girls? Are these two women really women? Or just bodies, for sale for fifty or a hundred takas? When it was after evening they stand with all the world's desolation inside them. Go around in rickshaws in designated areas. Whoever wants them, gets them. Rifat feels a vague kind of uneasiness. The two girls have started to talk to each other. But in low voices, and nothing of what they say can be overheard. And of course over and above it there is the sound of the rain. Rifat wonders, what is it they are talking about, is it about him? But no, there is no logic to his thinking such a thought, is there? No, there isn't. So, then?

Rifat again turns back to the rain.

Yes, today Dhaka is definitely going to drown.

This rain is not going to easily go away.

And over there Sutopa --

So Rifat, what do you do now?

Should he walk in this rain? Walk all the way over to Mollah's canteen? Will Sutopa be impressed by it? In the last three months how impressed has she been by him? A lot? Some?

The last time they had met was day before yesterday. Dhanmondi Road Number 2, at the Alliance Francaise, for half an hour at the Alliance's cafe. They each had a mug of coffee. And talked and chatted, after which Sutopa had said, "So what are you like?"

"Not nice," Rifat had replied.

"So then it's impossible."

"What's impossible?"

"If you'd been nice," Sutopa had replied, "maybe I'd have married you."

"Should I try?"

"Try what?"

"Try and see if I can be nice."

"No use. I won't marry you."

"Will Purabi?"

"Purabi? No. Purabi is not going to marry some boy."

"Oh, so is she going to marry a girl?"

Purabi had not been there then. It was one of the three times she hadn't been there. Rifat takes a drag of his cigarette.

There's no smoke.

Oh, the cigarette has gone out a long time back. A raindrop had put it out. Re-lighting this one again would not be the intelligent thing to do. Even if he did light it, smoking it would be useless. A waste. What else can he do?

Rifat takes out another cigarette and lights it.

Isn't this rain going to stop today? How long has it been?

Not less than half an hour.

It has rained this long!

Come on, take a rest!

It should be like a television program: We're going to take a small break and we'll be right back. If only it would stop for even five minutes. Mollah's canteen at the Art Institute is three minutes by rickshaw from this bus stop shed.

But this rain - this cats-and-dogs-and-cudgel rain. Not going to stop anytime soon.

A poem--can't one dream up one now?

Jhum jhum jhum -- a poem about rain.

Yes...No...Yes...No...Yes...No...This is the rhythm of the falling rain, it seems to Rifat. Seems not rain, but simply foul weather. Tomorrow there will be photos of this storm in the newspapers. It'll be all over the news on television channels. The water-logged city of Dhaka, its inhabitants the victims of rainwaters. No government has yet taken any steps to relieve the people of waterlogging. A poem comes to Rifat's head:

Rain rain mayuri dances...

A line of poetry. Not the peacock, not the bird mayuri! No, the 'mayuri' here is the actress Mayuri. The Bengali movie actress Mayuri. Let's envision the scene then: in this torrential rain Mayuri is dancing. A blue rain, a white Mayuri. She is wearing a short white dress because her 'character' demands it. And in this rain her dress is soaked through. A very wet Mayuri is doing a frenzied dance. No matter how fearful the image, can't a poem be written about it? Sure!There's no bar against it.

Rain rain Mayuri dances...

What should be the next line?

Rifat thinks about it. Rain, rain, rain, rain...

Behind him one of the women laughs.

Rifat hears the laugh, and quickly returns to reality.

It seems as if all the chatter among the people who have taken shelter in the bus stop has come to a stop. Nobody is saying anything. The only sound is that of the rain. But now, the woman's laughter. Low but clear. The girl says, while still laughing: "You're blind, you unfortunate bitch."

Did the other girl laugh too on hearing it?

Why?

Blind? Who is blind? What blind are they laughing about?

Rifat turns around. As far as he can make out in the gloom of the shed, there are two young women wearing shalwar kameez. A tiredness about them, a fatigue not erased by the bright lipstick or the powdered cheeks. The girl in the green shalwar-kameez, she has tied a red ribbon in her hair. A red-ribbon flower. This girl is looking at Rifat. Looking at him and laughing.

Looking? At Rifat?

Rifat's blood goes cold. In this gloom, no matter how little can be seen in this darkness, yet she cannot see it. She has turned towards him, in his direction. Has turned towards him.

She cannot see, because she's blind.

Rifat can see the white irises of her blind eyes.

An empty white.

Can see it plainly even in this rain-heavy, untimely darkness.

Rifat freezes. A keenly unpleasant sensation floods throughout his entire body.

Blood races to every corpuscle. Is it distaste, or is it anger, or what is it?

A blind girl, one who can't see...

A blind girl, whom nobody sees...

Who buys this girl?

Who?

Are they blind, too?

Can one see their faces in the dark?

Or in the ugly yellow glare of streetlights?

Is it faces they see? What do they see?

Dhrubo Esh is a Bangladeshi artist and short story writer. Farhad Ahmed is a translator/writer/contributor to The Daily Star literature page.