As a person, I am remarkably unsuccessful. To be honest, my position is at the very pinnacle of failure. I’ve never had the ability nor the patience to make it to the top. Suddenly, I wanted to become a reporter, to read news on TV. With just a little effort, that desire was fulfilled. Although with that little effort, perhaps I could have written a book. I burned the candle at both ends, and I believe that if that candle were burned properly, it would be easy to burn down the TV channel itself. But before I knew it, the number of episodes of the TV program exceeded 176. And at that moment, I realized I was again unsuccessful as a TV presenter because no one recognized me. While the people around me were reporting and filling their bank accounts with awards, I was going to the office with twenty or thirty taka in my pocket, hanging on the bus. Occasionally, some people say they saw my program on TV. That "I saw" is the entirety of my claim. Whether it was good or bad, was something I never got to hear. Talking about failures, let me tell you my story.
While I was still a college student, I got the opportunity to write for a national daily. I was ecstatic. I waited for Thursdays every week. Whenever my writing was published, I would take twenty taka from my grandfather and buy two newspapers. There was a small newspaper shop a bit far from home. As soon as dawn broke, I would go to that shop. I would buy two newspapers and return home swaying. Before I knew it, that number reached two hundred. And a few days later, I realized that all that effort was in vain. It felt like the number 200 was a curse for me. At one point, I saw that as a feature writer, I am even more unsuccessful because no one recognizes me as a writer except for myself. One major publisher even bluntly asked, "What kind of writer are you that I would publish your book?" After hearing this response, it hardly made any sense to continue writing. Only a few people knew me as a writer, and the ones who did, considered me one of the lowest tier. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary though, in a world where everyone’s a poet, I’m nobody special. Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked. Let me start with the actual spectacle.
I have heard all my life that girls go crazy for RJ (Radio Jockeys). Whether it was from that thought or some other thought, I decided that I would work in the radio instead of in magazines. And when I started working in the radio, my misconception was shattered. Far from being adored, no one listened to my program. Rather, I think those who regularly listen to the radio probably even avoid my programme. But for some strange reason, one day, the complete opposite happened. As soon as I entered the office, I heard someone was waiting for me at the reception. The name was Ataur. I couldn’t remember knowing anyone named Ataur. My uncle's name was Ataur, but he passed away nearly 9 years ago. Surely, after 9 years, he wouldn't come to meet me at the ABC Radio office. Anyway, without thinking too much, I went to the reception. And as soon as I arrived, I was surprised. A middle-aged man had come to meet me. Upon seeing me, he was startled like I was a ghost. Maybe he had never seen someone as ugly as me before. Seeing him shocked, I was also a bit taken aback. I couldn't understand what to say to him, or why he came, or why he was so surprised. However, he introduced himself.
He lives in Nawab Katra in Old Dhaka. Nothing remarkable. His profession is a driver. The reason for coming to me is also nothing remarkable. He wanted to share an incident from his life. This is a new kind of annoyance. I have started working on the radio through writing "Kuwasha." The esteemed RJ Sharmin Apa has assigned me the responsibility of writing the script for her popular program "Kuwasha" without understanding anything. Since I have to write two episodes most of the time out of four in a month, some of her listeners know me because of her. Not by face, but only by name. This driver is no exception. Lately, I have been noticing something interesting. Whoever I meet tells their story as if I can write those stories on the radio. Since "Kuwasha" is based on ghost stories, there hasn't been a shortage of people who have seen ghosts lately. Everyone has some sham story to share. Driver Ataur is surely one of them. But for some strange reason, he proved my assumption wrong. After chatting with me for a while, he left. I took it normally. Many people love to concoct ghost stories. When they reach the end and can no longer fabricate, they leave on their own. However, even though he left, he gave me a card and took my mobile number because I don’t have a visiting card. He mentioned that he would tell me about an incident one day. I sighed and figured that the day would probably never come. However, unfortunately, that day arrived sooner than expected. I was having a meal with my celebrity friend at a restaurant in Old Dhaka. I am not mentioning the name of this celebrity for specific reasons. At that moment, Ataur showed up. Since my memory is quite poor, I had a hard time recognizing his face. However, he reminded me of his arrival on his own accord. For the first time, I realized that the guy had a sense of humor worth observing. Whatever he said, he said it with a certain flair that was quite enjoyable to listen to. Interestingly, he is not just an ordinary driver. However, by not ordinary, I don’t mean he is anomalous. He drives an ambulance and works as a driver for a private charity organization. Although my friend was slightly irked by him, I found him very interesting. So, I took the initiative to set up a meeting. The purpose was to work on a good story if there was one. The main problem for storytellers is that they often tell stories in such a way that both the desire to write and listen vanish as soon as you hear them. If he is someone from that category, then I decided I would excuse myself. I even prepared a faux scenario. I decided that instead of listening to stories in the office, I would do so at Charulata Restaurant. If the story was not good, I would make an excuse to leave for the office. He arrived at the restaurant at the designated time. I ordered two faloodas and paid attention to what he was saying. After half an hour of eating falooda, he informed me that he couldn't tell a story here. However, if I had no objections, he would share a personal experience with me one day while sitting in the ambulance with a corpse.
This suggestion piqued my interest. I almost immediately expressed my agreement. He also informed me that if he had to leave Dhaka with a corpse at night, he would let me know. I became impatient and restless . However, that scenario never came into being. One Saturday night at 11:30, we set off with the corpse vehicle, minus the corpse .He intended to tell me stories while driving. Once the story was over, he would drop me home himself. I didn’t mind the idea. During this time, we would go as far outside Dhaka as possible...
In accordance with our plan, I set off with him in the deep of night. I didn’t even know the destination. I would go wherever he took me. Shortly after we started, he began telling a story. I was somewhat surprised by Ataur's way of speaking. It didn’t feel like a driver was speaking at all. He pronounced each word in perfectly proper Bengali. I’ll tell you all the story in the words of Ataur himself-
I must have been around twenty or twenty-two years old then. We were struggling a lot financially. My mother was completely overburdened trying to manage the household with such scarcity. My father was a grocery store owner. All the shops around him were doing great. For some reason, there were no sales at his shop. We passed our days just scraping by. At such a time, it was hard for anyone to accept that a twenty or twenty-two-year-old man was unemployed. However, my family had accepted that long ago. Perhaps due to my lack of educational qualifications, everyone’s hope and trust in me were very low. Not just low, but one could say no one had any trust in me at all. So, I could see no possibility of getting a job. I once thought of starting work in Dholaikhal. I even wandered around for a few days, but I couldn't find anything else to learn except for stealing motor parts from a big car. So, feeling disappointed, I thought about doing something else. And then, the Almighty showed me a way. I went to Dhaka Medical. On my way back, I was sitting at a tea shop in front of the Shahid Minar.
I ordered a cup of tea, but I didn't even feel like finishing it. Everything felt empty with my empty pockets. At that moment, I met an elderly man at the tea shop. He was talking with his mouth full of betel leaves. Two people were listening to him with dry faces. With nothing to do, I started listening to his words. He was spouting some religious enlightenment, like old people do. However, there was something about that man. When he was leaving after having tea, I told him my entire story of poverty. I also asked if he could help me a little. While chewing betel, he asked, "Can you drive a car?" Since there was no reason to say no, I replied, "Yes, I can." I already knew how to drive a car.
He frowned a little and said, "Not a regular car, it's an ambulance. The microbus you see in front of the medical is mine. I drive the ambulance." I assured him very politely, "Yes, I can. Whether it's an ambulance or a bamboo cart, there's no problem." He laughed and said, "There's a huge difference between a corpse and bamboo, my friend. I stay around here, come over. Let's see if I can do something."
“When should I come?”
“Come tomorrow or the day after. Bringing and taking a corpse isn't something fixed. However, the medical aspect is different. Even if there's a shortage of something else, there's no shortage of corpses.You should come... I'll be here…”
I showed up after three days. He was there. There was something remarkable about the man's face. With a simple smile, he could somehow make people feel like his own. As soon as he saw me, he said, “Can you drive? This isn't a normal car. It's a hearse.”
He probably had no idea about my courage. That's why he kept asking such questions. I assured him that there was nothing to fear. Whatever was the case, I would manage.
He didn't prolong the conversation. That evening, we got a call to pick up a corpse. A 16-17 year old girl. She committed suicide. However, the girl's parents didn't want the news to spread. So they wanted to quietly take the body to their village home for burial. Therefore, there weren't many people going with the corpse.Only a man and a woman. Probably the girl's parents. Since the owner of the car had spoken about the whole matter, I left everything up to him until we quietly loaded the body from the house. It was none of my business who would be in the car.
The owner of the car, along with a man and a woman, loaded the body into the vehicle and we set off. I forgot to mention the name of the car owner. His name was Aligol. I didn't understand the connection between Ali and ‘Gol’, meaning round.
It was winter. Driving on the highway in winter isn't an easy task. Rather picking up a corpse seemed easier. In Dhaka, winter and summer feel the same, but on the highway, you really understand what fog means. After finishing some issues with the corpse, I set off. Within two hours, we had traveled quite far outside of Dhaka. The woman in the back was sobbing intermittently, while the gentleman sitting behind scoffed at her. Transporting the corpse felt quite unusually interesting to me. I felt no fear at all. We traveled a good distance without any issues. I hadn't eaten since evening, so by around ten or eleven at night, I was famished. Just by looking at my face, it seemed that Uncle Ali understood my hunger. He pointed out a normal rice hotel by the highway and suggested we stop. As soon as we stopped the car, he addressed the people in the back, saying, "We have a long way to go. Would you all like something to eat?" The woman, still sobbing, replied, "We are not in a condition to eat. You need to eat, so you go ahead." I parked the car by the roadside, and Uncle Ali and I went to eat. Before leaving, Uncle Ali gave a stern warning: they should not get out of the car, even by mistake, leaving the corpse behind. Leaving any corpse alone is dangerous, he said. The warning didn't seem significant to me because only the living are afraid. What fear could a dead person have? I entered the hotel with a calm mind and started eating. It wasn't anything special—rice, pabda fish, and lentils. Uncle Ali and I were eating when I glanced at the front table, and my eyes widened in shock. The people from the ambulance had come in and were ordering food. Seeing this, while I felt nothing, Uncle Ali became extremely agitated. He muttered angrily, feeling deeply insulted by their presence in the hotel, and walked back to the car alone. Not knowing what to do, I finished eating and returned to the car.In a little while, the woman and the man returned. We started our journey again. But Uncle Ali was still irked. He began to mutter to himself and started reciting his prayer beads. After a while, the woman started to sniffle again. Trouble began when we left the highway and started to drive on a road beside a village. We had no desire to go that way. But the man said that it would be quicker if we went this way, and it was mainly because of his words that we were forced to take that road. As soon as we entered the road, there was a loud noise. It felt like a bomb had exploded somewhere nearby. I immediately stopped the car. There were no other cars around. The fog was so thick that we couldn't see if any cars were coming from a distance. Suddenly, Uncle Ali said, "Are the tires okay?" I realized it wasn’t a bomb; our tire had burst. He got down with a big flashlight with four batteries. I got down with him. We checked all the tires carefully. None of the tires were flat. Since nothing had happened, we started the car again in the name of Allah. We drove a little further. It must have been around one or two o'clock. Uncle Ali was dozing off with his prayer beads in hand, while I was battling the fog and driving ahead. I couldn't tell if the people in the back were asleep or not. For a long time, I hadn't heard any sniffles from the woman.
After going a bit further, a woman screamed from behind, "My daughter is missing... Driver, stop the car... My daughter is missing..." Uncle Ali jumped up from his drowsiness. Before understanding what was happening, he gestured to stop the car. I stopped the car. The man in the back said, "There is no corpse in the car. Where did the corpse go?" I couldn't understand anything the man in the back was saying. I got down to understand what was happening. Uncle Ali shone a torch. Indeed, there was no corpse. Not just the corpse, but the stretcher that had covered the corpse with a sheet was also missing. It took me some time to realize what had truly occurred, but I couldn't figure out how. Meanwhile, the woman started wailing. In the light of the torch, I saw that the man was startled by the eerie abruptness of the incident. He looked inside and outside the car with the torch. I looked at him. I wasn't sure what to do or even what had happened. He said, "Turn the car around in the name of Allah. The devil roams with the corpse. The corpse is nearby." I turned the car around. It was foggy, and on top of that, searching for the corpse while looking at the road seemed pointless. At one moment, it felt like we were doing something meaningless. How would the corpse get outside the car? Then again, I thought, just as death is mysterious, there are many other mysteries in the world; how much do we really know? Slowly, I drove the car to the exact spot where I had heard a loud noise. In the light of the car, I saw a stretcher placed in the middle of the road. On it lay the corpse covered with a sheet. Before I could think about how the corpse ended up in the middle of the road, the thought that we had found the corpse came to my mind; that was our luck. As soon as I brought the car in front of the stretcher, we got down and lifted the stretcher into the car. The corpse was just like a corpse.I saw such dark spots on the corpse's face in the torchlight that anyone who saw it would be startled. I loaded the body into the car while continuously reciting prayers, cursing our fate. On a road where I don't see another vehicle besides ours, seeing a person provides some reassurance. I began to feel a strong lack of that reassurance. After loading the body into the car, I started the engine again. I hadn't gone more than twenty yards when both the man and a woman from behind said there was no body. There was no body in the car. Uncle Ali started reciting prayers loudly. I didn't know what to do; I couldn’t understand anything. It was a cold night.The fog diminished my vision, yet I realized that sweat was pouring down my forehead. My brain didn’t have the capacity to comprehend the whole incident. I looked helplessly at Uncle Ali. He seemed restless. He signaled me to move the car forward. I understood that what was happening was ominous. Meanwhile, the man and woman behind were screaming frantically, trying to search for the body. I noticed that I couldn't even press the accelerator properly. All the strength in my legs was gone. Not just my legs; it felt like all the strength in my body had disappeared. At that moment, looking to my right, what I saw turned my whole body to stone. The girl whose body I was taking away was slowly walking just an arm's length away from my car. I no longer had the strength to pull the car forward. Uncle Ali was reciting prayers loudly. Even in the fog, I could clearly see the girl sticking out her tongue. I couldn't pull the car any further. The car stayed there all night. Surrounding the car, I saw many different things. When the Fajr call to prayer was announced, everything became normal shortly after. However, by then, I could no longer find the body. Uncle Ali said that there are complications with the body of an unnatural death. This body will not be found. The girl's parents searched extensively around the road after the morning light broke, but there was no trace of it.
Having said this, driver Ataur finished his story. Suddenly, I looked towards the glass beside his seat and saw a girl walking in the deep night. I asked him, "Is this the road you were talking about?" Without saying anything, Ataur sped up and took the car onto the highway. I never heard the story of that road again... Perhaps, some things are better left unsaid.
Writer: Moshiur Rahman Shanto, Author & Radio show host
