The heat of Chaitra, water lilies, and puti fish curry

No one had ever seen such a strange thing. No one had ever heard of such an odd tale. And meeting such a peculiar person? Out of the question.

Yet, the incident did occur—that much is true. And that person is none other than me. I've lived in this village since birth.

The primal instinct born at the start of life that urges one to fulfill basic needs is always at work. One of the fundamental motivations for survival and a major source of joy in life is satisfying food—the experience of its form, flavor, smell, and touch. Dreaming of food or savouring it is human nature. And for that, people go to great lengths. They chase after it with all their might.

But the complete absence of desire or craving for food, the lack of any restlessness or bodily reaction even after long periods without eating, and never reminiscing about delicious food on an empty stomach—that is highly unusual. Normally, after eating, one feels the need for food again at regular intervals. Hunger demands attention and makes other discomforts seem minor. Yet, I have no sense of hunger at all. None. It's quite astonishing.

Even if I don't eat all day and night, I feel no affection or longing for food. But the real problem is that even if I remain calm, the household goes into a frenzy. Doctors, herbalists, Ayurvedic and homeopathic treatments—none are left unexplored. In the early days, I was tested from head to toe—blood, saliva, urine, feces—all examined. The chief doctor at the government hospital was especially concerned with monitoring my blood pressure and heartbeat, matching the rhythmic opening and closing of heart chambers with the flow and pressure of blood. Yet every physical measure remained normal, whether tested after 4, 8, 12, 16, 24, or even 36 hours of fasting. There was no medical abnormality due to lack of food. No sign of mental fogginess or nervous imbalance due to low blood sugar. My behaviour, inside and out, remains steady whether my stomach is full or empty.

So, it was assumed that this odd man—someone no one had ever encountered before—must be suffering from some mysterious, unnamed condition. Eventually, no one bothered to spend time worrying about me anymore.

I've crossed fifty now—passed that milestone a few years ago. And I can say with certainty that I've never truly felt hunger since childhood. Like everyone else, I eat three meals a day, but only because it’s expected—because it’s routine. Over time, eating became just another part of the daily schedule. I never have to be forced to eat. I eat regularly, but without attraction or interest in food.

That’s why, no one worries about me when, after twenty-four hours of fasting, I can eat a full meal and then calmly head to school with my umbrella in one hand and notebook in the other. Except Fridays, I teach at the school every day. My modest salary from teaching at the village school—where I ended up working after finishing my studies in the local school and nearby town’s college—is enough to support my wife and one child.

There was a time when villagers opposed co-education, but they didn’t object to teaching girls and boys in shifts at the same school. So, girls were taught from 8am to noon, and boys from 12:30pm to 4:30pm. By the time I went to school, it would be afternoon. On the way, my friends and I would often see the girls—Shobha, Rowshan, Hamida, Indira—returning home after school.

In recent years, separate buildings have been constructed for boys and girls about a mile apart. The old building we all once studied in still stands, now serving as the girls’ school, with new additions and a larger playground that includes a pond. Girls in grades one to four have weekly swimming lessons there.

The boys' school has a new building. My nine-year-old son leaves for school early with his friends. Unlike him, I don’t start getting ready until noon. After brushing my teeth and bathing, I might eat before heading out—or not. If there was food at home, I’d see my mother in the kitchen when I returned from bathing. Whether it was hot rice, leftover rice, puffed rice, mango pickle, beaten rice with molasses, or flatbread with curry—whatever it was. But if the kitchen was locked, I’d head to school a bit early, knowing there was no food that day. Somehow, the walk home felt longer on such days. I don’t clearly remember anymore if my body craved food on the walk home or during class. But I do recall how good it felt to eat lunch with my mother in the afternoon. We’d eat until five, even five-fifteen, and skip dinner that night.

The old tin-roofed school building stood about two miles from our home. Because school started in the afternoon and was far west, it gave me an unexpected opportunity. My neighbor, Uncle Saifuddin, had a good amount of land. Yet, he spent every day laboring in the fields, especially at his prized sugarcane patch near the school.

Fatherless since childhood, my mother never remarried nor returned to her parental home. Thanks to Uncle Saifuddin and Aunt Rasheda, I could earn a small wage. The task was simple: every day on the way to school, I’d deliver Uncle’s lunch from Aunt Rasheda. In return, she’d give my widowed mother two kilograms of rice, one of khesari pulse, and half a kilo of red lentils each month. At the time, village women had few ways to earn money. Washing dishes, mowing the yard, and washing clothes were not available on a regular basis. Even if she wanted to, my mother could not earn enough money for the month.

Even though I had walked to school at a measured pace with the umbrella held over my head to shield myself from the blazing sun, I could already feel beads of sweat gathering on my neck and throat. As long as the sweat didn’t soak through the undershirt beneath my panjabi and reach the new lungi, I wasn’t too concerned. But if it did, then there would be an awkward situation—one I absolutely wanted to avoid. I always feel hesitant standing next to a dry person with my own body sticky and damp with sweat. It doesn’t matter if we work together or live in the same village—that doesn’t give anyone the right to subject others to the unpleasant smell of another person’s body. I try to stay a little mindful of such things.

Today, I didn’t go straight to the school office. I had other things to do, so I left early. I headed to the hall where a farewell event was being arranged for Nazmul Karim Sir, the history teacher. The event was at 4pm. As soon as I entered, my mood soured. The boys had decided to decorate the hall entirely with the national flower—shapla lilies—to honour the veteran teacher and freedom fighter. They had collected the fresh flowers from the ponds near both the boys' and girls' schools, which were full of pink, white, yellow, and green lilies.

That large pond by the girls' school, known throughout the region as the Shapla Pond, was intimately familiar to me—like it was tied to my very soul.

I entered the hall and pull a chair to sit in a corner. For quite some time, I sit staring at the neglected water lilies lying on the bare cement floor. I notice that, more than the scorching heat and blazing sunlight, it is the large window on the opposite wall—whose two panels have suddenly been left wide open—that’s mostly to blame for making the lilies completely wilt. The sunlight is pouring directly through that open window, right onto all the collected lilies. Not a single person, sitting here working since morning and throughout the afternoon, has noticed this simple fact. The thought angers me internally. Still, without saying a word to anyone, I step past everyone, go to the far side of the hall, and shut both panels of the tall window in the middle of the wall. Looking closely at the stacked layers of flowers, I see that not only have they wilted, but many of the ones at the bottom have already begun to turn brown from the intensity and harshness of the sun. The petals of some in the lower layers have turned a deep brown, thinned out—just the way they look right before falling off the stem. That soft water lilies half-cook like this under direct sunlight or due to the surrounding heat is something I knew not just today, but for a long time. And yet, the stage decoration hasn’t even started. There are still three and a half hours left before the event begins.

The sight of the brown, faded petals of the water lilies suddenly triggers a memory from many years ago, flashing through my mind like a bolt of lightning. In this summer, in this sweltering heat and humidity, when the prickly heat on my body starts to itch and crawl, a sudden shiver of intense cold shoots through me—from some distant point, or perhaps from somewhere deep inside my own body. Just for a moment.

I remember the pond ghat—more like a lake—with water lilies of many colors. That pond still remains the same today, unchanged, in the same place. Only, I no longer have to walk that path every day. Because I now teach at the boys’ school. That road leads elsewhere.

And yet, that day, the aroma of freshly cooked, steaming red rice and a light curry of tiny puti fish stirred me up in such a way! Despite hearing the proverb "Half the meal is in the aroma" countless times, it felt entirely untrue that day. When the scent of a favorite dish or a familiar aroma hits an empty stomach, it doesn’t satisfy hunger halfway—it only sharpens it further.

The moment that thought crosses my mind, I suddenly realize—did that mean I used to have an appetite then? That I too once felt hunger like everyone else? A hunger that later disappeared like camphor?

What had been locked away in a dark chamber deep in my chest—what I had tried to grind down, crush, and erase entirely—now begins to surface, memory by memory, in the daylight of this present moment. That day, which turned everything upside down, that Tuesday morning which changed the course of my entire life, now seems to stretch and awaken from its long slumber.

That morning too, I had woken up at the crack of dawn. The night before, there hadn’t been much food at home. My mother had given me a bowl of dry puffed rice, mashed with a piece of onion and a single green chili. And she herself had slowly sipped, with great satisfaction, a brass tumbler of hot water—without milk or sugar—steeped with a pinch of tea leaves given by Rasheda Kakima and a whole lemon leaf.

The next morning. After bathing and returning home to get ready for school, I couldn’t find my mother anywhere. The kitchen was locked with a chain. That meant I’d have to go to school on an empty stomach again. My mother had not yet been able to manage any food.

Without wasting any more time, I picked up my schoolbooks, notebooks, and pencil and went over to Rasheda Kakima’s place to deliver lunch to Saifuddin Kaka. The food was already prepared. Rasheda Kakima said, “If you can, go a little faster today, babu. Your uncle loves to eat rice with hot curry made from fresh puti fish.”

Reassuring Rasheda Kakima, I set off with the food tied in a red towel. But as I walked, the warm aroma of steaming red rice drifted slowly through the gaps in the container hanging from my right hand, completely enchanting me. I simply couldn’t keep walking straight ahead as I was supposed to. I slipped into the Tagar flower garden by the Chowdhurys’ house to find a little hiding spot. I wanted just a peek—just once.

I carefully loosened the red towel, nudging open the black earthen lid of the bowl inside. A rush of warm steam from the hot rice rose up and hit my face. It was already past noon. The blazing, sharp light of the midday sun dazzled my eyes. The contents inside the bowl sparkled intensely, like precious gold, diamonds, and jewels. As I focused my vision more clearly, I could see red rice, a curry with seven or eight small puti fish garnished with fried onions, mashed eggplant, and a long, green chili.

My ears were ringing. The searing sunlight made everything blur together—I couldn’t see any one thing distinctly. It was as if everything was radiating blinding, intense light. That flood of brightness burned my eyes. My vision began to blur. Warm steam was still rising from the red rice. Before I could think, I slipped a few fingers through the towel, quickly scooped up a small handful of rice with one little fish, and shoved it into my mouth.

There was no time to notice how this freshly pounded red rice tasted compared to the coarse rice we ate daily. I swallowed it too quickly to even tell. But I did sense that the burning hunger deep in my chest and belly had not eased in the slightest. And by then, another sensation overtook me—a surge of dread, a real and overpowering fear.

I stepped back onto the road from the Tagar garden, cautiously opened the bowl again and saw that though my tiny handful hadn’t made much of a difference to the quantity, the one spot from where I’d taken rice, fish, and curry now looked slightly uneven and messy, like a spot pecked at by a bird.

Just a bit further down the road, after crossing the Chowdhurys’ flower garden on the right, was that enormous lotus pond—still there, full of lilies as always. That day too, it brimmed with a riot of colorful lilies. Here and there, long, round, mossy-green lily pads floated delicately just above the surface, enhancing the beauty of the blooms—perhaps just to soothe the eyes.

I quickly ran down the steps to the pond and picked two full-grown lilies from the cluster nearest my hand. I returned and carefully arranged them over the pecked-at portion of the rice, tucking them in neatly to disguise the unevenness. Pleased with my little handiwork, I allowed myself a faint smile. Then, without delay, I ran off toward the field. Saifuddin Kaka must really have been waiting for his lunch that day—he came out to the road himself and took the food directly from my hands.

The entire afternoon and evening passed under an invisible shadow of fear—a sense of vague unease. Still, after returning from the playground, I washed my hands and feet and sat down to study as usual. Shortly after dusk, Saifuddin Kaka and Rasheda Kakima arrived at our house, carrying a hurricane lantern. It wasn’t their first visit, so no one found it surprising. But I suddenly felt parched. I gulped down a large amount of water straight from the jug.

They didn’t seem to have any particular reason for their visit. Yet, before leaving, they handed over this month’s rice and lentils to us three days early—for reasons I couldn’t quite grasp. Along with it, they gave an extra kilo of mashkalai pulse. This was the first year Saifuddin Kaka had grown kalai beans, so he wanted to share the first harvest with everyone. As always, Rasheda Kakima brought a betel leaf with zarda for mother, just as she did on every visit.

As they were leaving, Saifuddin Kaka paused by the door, turned around with a gentle smile, and praised my little artwork from earlier that day—the two water lilies I had used to decorate the food. What he said meant that the flowers hadn’t just made the food look beautiful; steamed red rice paired with fresh fish curry and the soft, warm petals of the shapla flower had made quite a tasty combination. “Almost like salad with meat,” he joked with a chuckle. Rasheda Kakima smiled softly and nodded in agreement.

And there I was, frozen like wood, leaning on the open doorframe. Once they disappeared from view, I stood upright and took a deep breath.

After they left, mother stared at my face for a long while without blinking. Then, in a soft and low voice, she slowly said words that meant: one should never touch, take, or give away someone else's belongings without permission. No matter how much praise they had for the shapla flowers today, the truth was—there were no shapla flowers in the bowl of food Rasheda had sent.

From that day onward, all my previous perceptions and understanding of hunger—and of eating—were forever altered.

Purbapi Basu: Fiction writer