Rain fell steadily in the courtyard, forming shiny, reflective pools. It tap danced on the curvy, tin rooftop, before dashing down the edge in thin waterfalls. I sat on the front porch of my grandfather’s bari, or country-side cottage, watching the rain’s silky veil fall over his quiet village. The July-August monsoons came a bit earlier than expected, but Dada took it as God’s blessing. The dry season was pretty harsh, but the monsoon washed out all signs of a crusty, bark-dry landscape. As soon as I heard the drumbeats of the rain, he declared “Allah-u-akbar!” or “God’s the Greatest!” raising his hands up, in gratitude, towards the gray heavens.

To my dismay, Dada warned me not to go out into the rain, but I was unsatisfied with a glass window barricading me from the perils of the lively weather. With his consent, I went out onto the open porch. From there, I could sense the cooling moistness of the rain without getting wet, a feeling that was just as real as the rain that tumbled down, not my imagination. Within minutes of the rain’s initiation, Dada came out of the house to sit next to me, spreading his bamboo legs out on the stone porch. We sat for a while, not speaking a word or causing a sound, but enjoying the thundering peace. To break the protracted silence, Dada started to sing about the wind and the rain, the batash and brishti, in tune with the symphony of the dripping rain. His voice was sharp as a jackdaw’s cry yet sweet as a magpie's chirp. It was not trashed with the cacophonies of western “music”, but rich with the echoes of a bygone era, when the art of singing was brought to perfection.

Dada sang in a voice and style unfamiliar to my ears, but it carried a sense of rustic freedom and avian liberty.  He was a free soul out in the countryside – an idiosyncratic voice. I closed my eyes to imagine my grandfather’s singing unite with the voices of the wind and rain.  This was the true Bangladesh, the clean, unbroken spirit. But so few could see it.

Modern society, as it progressed towards smog-laden urbanization, had attempted to deter my grandfather from his traditional mores. Thousands of people, including most of Dada’s family, had followed this progression, leaving behind simple lifestyles for the promise of better, more citified ones. It was a huge transformation in the cultural identity of Bangladesh, and one that my grandfather disliked and refused to accept. Bangladesh already has its own culture, my grandfather claims, and it was fine without the pollution of western ideas. Yet, no matter how hard he tried, his beautiful voice was only heard or felt by so many, before it would be drowned out by the destructive blare of modernization.
***
Within heartbeats, the rain stopped, and so did my grandfather’s august singing. A long, awful silence proceeded afterwards, taking away all the beautiful sounds I had heard before. I wondered if I should ask him to continue singing, but I decided not to. It was now too silent, too strange without the accompaniment of the raindrops.

My grandfather struggled to his feet, holding the protruding lock on the door to hoist himself up.  I looked at his legs, which were shaking and looked quite frail. As he found his way onto his feet, he released a loud grunt. I expected his grunt to turn into a yelp of pain, as I thought his knees would buckle, but instead he turned the guttural sound into a short, gleeful hymn about dying. I chuckled at his behavior. It was the way with Bengalis, always acknowledging the presence of death in such uncanny ways.  I assumed he made up the tune, for it lasted only ten seconds and made no sense.  After I finished laughing, I stood up next to him.

“My legs will fail me any day now,” my grandfather remarked, speaking with a non-cosmopolitan Bengali accent. “Learn to cherish and use your legs now, Shona, before it is too late.” I frowned at the weird remark, but I figured it may be useful advice for the future. Unlike most of my family, I paid careful attention to every syllable, every musical note Dada articulated.  There lie a special meaning and a purpose behind everything he uttered.

Later that day, as the sun peeked out from behind the thick clouds, my grandfather and I went on a silent walk through a forest, which lay behind our house.  The dirt yard that lay between the back of the house and line of trees thinned out into a narrow dirt path that ran through the forest, snaking its way among the tall bamboo and palm shoots. There was just enough space for two people to walk side by side and enjoy the wonders of the forest. All around the path, large, fully-leaved sundari trees and gewa palms stretched their trunks to meet with the hazy sky above, casting green and golden hues that colored the forest floor. The cries of the jackdaws coupled with the cooing of wild peahens, running and fluttering about among the sundari trees, and the loud chirping of magpies, as they burst out from the trees to take to the sky, filled the forest with a joyous cacophony of disparate atonal notes.        

To my surprise, my grandfather started humming a tune, with the avian noises acting as his accompaniment. I felt my heart running as I heard his humming mingle with the voices of the forest. To enjoy the moment to its fullest, I closed my eyes again to feel the wild, musical energy sweeping through this place, rolling off the trees in harmonious waves. When I opened them again, my grandfather had already progressed a few paces ahead. I thought he was humming, but he was now silent, just looking ahead at the path. Sighing, I caught up to him.

As we walked through the forest, I noticed something oddly familiar about this path. Narrow. Gravelly dirt. Trees. Scattered Leaves. Tall bamboos and palms. Curvy and twisted. No, it was not something I’d ever seen before; it was something my mind had imagined.  This was the path my grandfather described in one of his tall tale stories about a war and a song. So vivid were his descriptions that I believed I was here once before.  This was not fiction. This was real, just as much as my grandfather’s unique voice was.

I begin to imagine a story taking place in front of me, the very one my grandfather had told me once before. An irregular beat of gunshots filled the distant air beyond the forest.  Instead of the hazy light of day permeating the forest, moonlight washed it with a milky glaze, giving enough light to allow a person to run without tripping. As I walked slowly in the light of day, a young man was running on swift legs, many decades ago, through a night-laden forest on the very path I was walking. Dada was escaping from the chaos caused by an invading Pakistani army, along with his wife, children, and several other village families, as the nation tore itself apart for independence and justice.  The scraping and scratching of the villagers’ sandals and bare feet against the gravelly dirt path created sounds that swirled through the still trees, coalescing into a single, unified rhythm.

Their small-frame, grain-fed bodies, which were built for endurance and stamina, were their biggest weapons against the firing of Pakistani gunshots. They could run a long enough distance to outpace and outwit the bulky Pakistani soldiers. Following the twisted curves and confusing loops of the dirt path with alarming speed, the group of villagers and their young children became safely lost in the moonlit forest, far enough so that the gunshots were just barely audible. As they all came to a halt at a group of low hanging palm trees in the middle of the forest, they panted rapidly until their breathing resumed to normal.  This group of villagers was lucky, for they had access to water from a small stream nearby as well as bananas from some wild banana trees, circling around this safe refuge.

As the villagers began to settle in for the night, by making beds out of the large banana leaves under the bent palms, they began to worry about their dreary-looking futures. How much longer would this war last? How much time until they ran out of food? How many more of their children would die? What were they ever going to do? Out of desperation, some villagers began to cry for their fates, for their ill-treated families; there was commotion among the villagers. But then, my calm grandfather started singing about the moon, the sky, the forest, and the river. His melodious voice rang through the quiet murmurs of the forest, putting all the villagers at peace. As the war raged on, Dada stood proudly on the trunk of a bent palm, with the stream running below him, and the moon shining behind his back, while he sang his comforting ballad through the night.  He was free.

As my senses came back to reality, I saw my grandfather had trod ahead while I was lost in thought. Clearing my senses, I caught up to him. We hiked on through the forest, following the curved path my grandfather followed so many years ago during his escape. As we walked, I let my hand run free along the tips of the bamboo shoots, letting the soft leaves tickle my fingers. I imagined the bamboo stalks singing to me as they swayed gently in the breeze. Their voices seemed to couple with my grandfather’s voice, filling the air and my soul with blissful melodies.

While I was still dreaming, my grandfather was once again taking the lead, walking several paces ahead of me now. I ran up to him, my feet stirring up fallen leaves. Dada turned his head towards the sound of my rhythmic running. He gave me a blank look, disclosing a faint layer of sadness behind his coffee irises. I feared his look would be filled with frustration at my constant inattentiveness, but I sensed nothing of that sort from his somber eyes. It was as if the music of my feet reminded him of something depressing. Perhaps the war, when he had to flee on fast feet? I could not say for sure.

We continued our trek along the curvy path, still enjoying all the different sounds we could hear, although my grandfather did not sing anymore tunes. As the strong afternoon light gradually dwindled to the glow of early evening, our feet grew tired, but I still kept walking despite my drowsiness.  Dada was now falling behind me, for he seemed more out of breath than I did.  Just before I asked him about returning to the house, I caught sight of the familiar dirt yard several paces away, just beyond the line of trees. I muttered a silent thanks to God, for this curved path had indeed taken us back home.

We made our way to the front porch, where we sat down to rest our tired legs. As we sat in silence, the clear sky slowly became enflamed with the reddish-pink hues of evening, while the red orb of the setting sun gleamed before us. Its blood-red color was a national symbol, my grandfather says, for it was a reminder to every Bengali of our nation’s bloody yet victorious birth. I sadly realized this was one of the last things that would bring Bengalis back to the golden age for brief moments, before the ephemeral evening would be swept away by the onslaught of night. As the vibrant red slowly receded to the dark blue hues of late evening, the original, continuous cries of the jackdaws, peahens, and magpies were now reduced to sporadic noises here and there, amidst a new wave of rhythmic cricket chirping. Dada began to sing Bangladesh’s national anthem, Amar Shonar Bangla, in harmony with the gentle, yet loud chirping of the crickets. His voice resonated through the crisp, evening air, carrying with it the essence of the old country.

I felt the wind whistle through the trees, as Dada’s voice created a tune out of every natural rhythm I could hear. Everywhere I looked, old stories bloomed like lotus flowers out of the water, a new memory extent in every note. This was our Bangladesh, old in history but still young and graceful in its untainted beauty and hope for the future. I wanted to keep this place alive, along with the many stories and songs that bound it together like a multi-patterned quilt. I would be a weaver of the musical communal memory.

And my grandfather had given me the tools.