Novel : Midnight Bell ❣️ (episode -2)

Novel : Midnight Bell ❣️ 

Writer : Jotsna Jari  

The train is swinging erratically. The letters sent by Titas seem much more alive... just floating...  flying ! Every letter is as clear as life before Tinni's eyes. 

Dear Tinni, 

My name is Titas. Titas is the name of a river. It is not a name but a life...  life or you.  

My voice attracts you. Is that true ? After understanding this, what else should I do? I have resumed practice of music that I stopped a long time ago.  

Nude painting is my subject. You wanted to know... why nude ? Yes, now I can say with confidence, we are naked at birth... naked at the moment of creation. This in-between time is covered by the stamp of civilization.  

Your subject is history. My subject is Bengali. But you love to draw, and so do I. The two of us have exactly same thing in common. I didn't find the green touch of the field in your painting ; Tell me please...    how much feeling only if it becomes deep, the painting can be understood and touched.  

I want to walk through your naked desert, holding your hand. I want to walk in your naked desert, holding your hand. My heart flutters, when the Baul wind plays carelessly in the field. A boundless open sky floats before your enchanting eyes... and continues to float.  

You have seen the harshness of Chaitra, then the Kalboshekhi descends. What do you feel... sometimes you are clouds, sometimes you are rain. It's pouring rain....   rain. The words that blush in the morning light, the pain that fades in the afternoon light... those words and that pain become new images in the midnight bed....  become.  This is what can happen if two hearts come close... two bodies merge completely....   united. Is this called non-duality (Advaita) ?  

💚 Notes : 

* Titas river -  

The Titas (Bengali: তিতাস) is a transboundary river that merges into the Meghna river and forms part of the Surma-Meghna River System. Titas starts its journey from the Tripura State, with Haora as one of its right tributaries. The river is 98 kilometres (61 mi) long and joins Meghna river near Ashuganj, Brahmanbaria.  Bangladesh's first Y-shaped bridge is over this river connecting Comilla and Brahmanbaria. 

* Baul -  

The Baul (Bengali: বাউল) are a group of mystic minstrels of mixed elements of Sufism and Vaishnavism from different parts of Bangladesh and the neighboring Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam's Barak Valley and Meghalaya. Bauls constitute both a syncretic religious sect of troubadours and a musical tradition. Bauls are a very heterogeneous group, with many sects, but their membership mainly consists of Vaishnava Hindus and Sufi Muslims. They can often be identified by their distinctive clothes and musical instruments. Lalon Shah is regarded as the most celebrated Baul saint in history. 

 *  Advaita - 

Advaita, one of the most influential schools of Vedanta, which is one of the six orthodox philosophical systems (darshans) of Indian philosophy. While its followers find its main tenets already fully expressed in the Upanishads and systematized by the Brahma-sutras (also known as the Vedanta-sutras), it has its historical beginning with the 7th-century-ce thinker Gaudapada, author of the Mandukya-karika, a commentary in verse form on the Mandukya Upanishad.

Gaudapada builds further on the Mahayana Buddhist concept of shunyata (“emptiness”). He argues that there is no duality; the mind, awake or dreaming, moves through maya (“illusion”); and nonduality (advaita) is the only final truth. That truth is concealed by the ignorance of illusion. There is no becoming, either of a thing by itself or of a thing out of some other thing. There is ultimately no individual self or soul (jiva), only the atman (universal soul), in which individuals may be temporarily delineated, just as the space in a jar delineates a part of the larger space around it: when the jar is broken,

the individual space becomes once more part of the larger space. 

The medieval Indian philosopher Shankara, or Shankaracharya (“Master Shankara”; c. 700–750), builds further on Gaudapada’s foundation, principally in his commentary on the Brahma-sutras, the Shari-raka-mimamsa-bhashya (“Commentary on the Study of the Self”).  

(Episode - 2)