From the Bangla language novel Trimohinee, translated by Nadira Bhabna. A review of the novel can be found in the Interview and Review section of this issue.Cover image by artist Dhruba Eash.
Chapter One
Trimohinee lies on the eastern bank of the Karatoa River, through an almost shadowless stretch of golden paddy fields, across a whitish dirt path; a sprawling hamlet of just a few houses. It was in this peaceful village that Nawfel Akhand, the revered elder of the Akhand family, passed away on a Monday. As his body was carried to the graveyard, a vision flashed before the eyes of his eleven-year-old grandson, Shubhro. A late afternoon, besides their backyard garden and pond, on the vast field that reached toward the western horizon, just before the northwesterly Kalbaishakhi storm rolled in, his grandfather, seated under the barn’s sloping thatch roof, had been busy intently sharpening the blade of a plough, completely ignoring the existence of the menacing billowing black clouds, darkening the earth. That very afternoon, a band of Bede and Bedeni— traveling river gypsies—had anchored their boat by the Karatoa and pitched their tents on the riverbank. Their arrival stirred the solitary air of the village. Even someone as collected as his grandfather found himself urging the boy to attend the gypsies’ magic show, which involved a magician performing the act of reattaching a severed child’s head, gathering applause from the crowd watching in awe.
A snake charmer was also part of the troupe. In an attempt to swallow a live venomous snake, he got bitten on this tongue. The performer showed his bitten tongue to the crowd and quickly proceeded to save himself by taking the herbal remedies he carried with him. He then promptly launched into a promotion of the efficacy of their herbal remedies. The crowds went out of control trying to buy the herbs that acted as antidote to snake bites. Some people traded rice, potatoes, lentils, and even chickens in exchange for the healing herbs.
The women of the Bede-Bedeni troupe were no less remarkable in their craft. Though Trimohinee had only a handful of children still carrying their milk teeth, the Bedenis insisted on extracting “teeth-worms” from the little ones. They warned that if left untreated, those worms would crawl into their stomach and grow into serpents, making the children’s bellies swell larger than their bodies. In truth, many poor children in Trimohinee showed visible signs of malnutrition. Distressed by the Bedenis’ words, some of the mothers of those frail children confessed that since their children’s “tooth worms” had never been removed when they were younger, perhaps the worms inside had already grown as big as snakes. When the Bedenis assured them that they also had medicine to kill such worms, the mothers rushed to buy it in even greater numbers. Yet this time, the Bedenis were not overly deceitful. They actually handed the mothers nutritious foods prepared with honey freshly taken from beehives as well as flower and fruit extracts. Along with these, they advised the mothers to give their children two teaspoons of the medicine mixed with milk after dinner every night.
Shubhro was not malnourished; on the contrary, he was strong and lively. Yet Nawfel, his grandfather, had taken on the role of mother for his orphaned grandson, caring for him with tender devotion. It soon became the talk of the village that Nawfel was the only man in Trimohinee who had purchased herbal medicine from the Bedenis. Even after selling all their herbs, the Bedenis continued to collect rice, lentils, potatoes, vegetables, and chickens as advance orders to ensure supplies for future trade.
After his retirement from the British Court, Nawfel seemed to have regained an unexpected vitality. Though his energy was largely consumed in tending to the plough, he held his lasting fondness for early morning walks with his orphan grandson Shubhro to the distant hillock, a small rise surrounded by trees and bordered by a vast swamp. When asked why he seemed so joyous in this place, Nawfel would tell Shubhro stories of his youth.
“When I was a child, I used to feel very sad because this hill was occupied by tigers. But after the tigers were moved, one by one, to the zoo, I took the initiative to transform this wild place into human habitation. I remember the day, when, with hundreds of others, we cleared the jungle of grasses and weeds, despite the snakes and insects. We made it into a green paradise, a dreamland. On that day, as I looked upon the land we had reclaimed, I felt the joy of discovering my first world. You see, boy, as I lay on the grass here, reading the best books in the world, it felt as though I was reading two books at once. One was the world of nature. Please do tell me, how many people, are lucky enough to stand on high ground and gaze upon the swamp and the dreamlike world stretching beyond it?”
When the men carrying Nawfel’s body reached the bend by the pond, they passed through a patch of ancient woods the villagers called Sharotola. At that very moment, Shubhro remembered the stories his grandfather used to tell him about that stretch of the forest.
It had been a full moon night. Nawfel’s father was returning home from the fields, and as he walked past the edge of that forest, he caught sight of something strange amid the silvery light and shadows. Terrified, he hurried home and asked his mother breathlessly, “Mother, were you just there?”
His grandmother looked at him in surprise. Nawfel’s father insisted, “But I saw you sitting under the Sharotola with Grandfather, talking. There were others with you as well…” Then he began naming people from the village—people who had died many years before.
His mother shook him firmly and laughed. “Ah, so the ghosts of Sharotola have followed you home! Your grandfather has been dead for eleven years!”
When Shubhro heard this story, he clung to his grandfather in fear. But Nawfel gently explained, “There’s nothing to be afraid of, my boy. This is the power of stories.”
Indeed, the villagers often claimed to glimpse those departed souls within the Sharotola grove—spirits of men and women who, in their lifetimes, had kept the village enchanted with their tales. People said that when the fish ghosts came asking for rice or fish, if you handed them a hot pata-shil from the kitchen, they would shriek and vanish back into the forest.
Because of stories like these, the small grove known as Sharotola became the center of the village’s imagination. That imagination was so vivid that even after death, the villagers longed, in their moments of solitude or in the weariness of life’s unending travails, to hear once more the beloved voices of their storytellers. And strangely enough, the ghosts that were seen in Sharotola were always the same ones—the spinners of tales, the storytellers of Trimohinee.
He paused briefly and then spoke to Shubhro again, “Life keeps searching for stories where existence feels ‘eternal’, imagination becomes ‘boundless’, and the soul finds profound ‘fulfillment’. It is these stories and the visions they conjure that enlighten our minds, make us truly see—and compel us to go back to our dreams. That dreamlike haze stretches so far that we begin to feel the pulse of souls we’ve long lost. Our lives, then, become expansive.”
As the group carrying the dead body disappeared into the jungle grove, Shubhro suddenly remembered that a few days before his death, his grandfather had expanded the land around this old pond, the one where the final rites were now taking place. But out of respect for the ancient, mysterious aura surrounding the bordering forest, the pond had not been dug in a straight line, it curved inward to leave the jungle untouched.
Shubhro was only a little boy then. Every morning, his grandfather, Nawfel, would walk several miles before dawn and return to begin the day with Shubhro, brewing his own handmade raw tea. Before that, Shubhro’s mother, Jebunnahar Shoshi, would wash her child’s face and hands and wrap him carefully in a warm shawl. He barely remembered that time. Later, he would learn from his grandfather that it was the moment of Partition. His father, Nafi Ahmed, had left his pregnant wife behind in Trimohini and gone to Calcutta to sit for his M.A. final examination. But his dead body was returned home, even before the end of the exams.
Some said he had fallen victim to the Hindu–Muslim riots that erupted before Partition, burned in the wrath of the Congress supporters; others said it was an accident. Whatever the truth might be, Nafi Ahmed’s lifeless body was found beside the road nearly eleven hours after sunset.
After his death, Shoshi would often stand near the jungle by the pond, believing she might have a sudden encounter with her husband’s soul—or perhaps her young son Shubhro would somehow make eye contact with that disoriented asteroid the village seer once spoke of. Even if it meant her own death, she wouldn’t regret it, if only her son, Shubhro, could become the sage the astrologer from Kagail had foretold, one who could read a silent language in every creature’s eyes.
A few palm trees and a dense bamboo grove stood some hundred yards from the entrance of the Akhand house, just before the jungle. One evening, as darkness thickened around them, Zebunnahar Shoshi stood silently with little Shubhro in her arms, quietly observing nature’s mysterious whims. Suddenly, she saw something astonishing—a blazing comet streaking across the sky just above the tops of the palm trees on the far side of the pond. Its tail cast a brilliant light upon its own shadow, as it became elongated, passed through the bamboo grove, and then soared far, far away, beyond what the eye could see. That light transformed their mother-and-child silhouette into something radiant, as it rushed across the mysterious jungle, past the tallest tree at the Trimohinee’s edge, and into the heavens. It disappeared into the infinite night sky, near the constellation of the Great Bear.
Startled, Shoshi turned her head to look at her three-year-old son—and was shocked. In his eyes was the wisdom of an old soul, tempered with the joy of a child. With a sweet mispronunciation typical of toddlers, Shubhro said:
“Ma, tolo! Amrao dai!”
(Mother, come! Let’s go too!)
Shoshi, her voice trembling with fear, asked softly:
“Where to, my love?”
“To the sky!”
A shiver ran through Shoshi’s body. Her eyes welled with tears. Clutching her son tightly, she rushed back inside the house. As she did, a memory rose in her mind of when she had been pregnant with Shubhro. A seer from Kagail had come to Trimohinee; when he examined her palm, he was so startled that he looked into her face and remained speechless for a long time. Known as the Seer of Kagail, he always held his head low between his knees—but that day, for the first time, he lifted his head and gazed at a woman with such stunned intensity that all the other women, who had gathered to have their fortunes read, fled in fear.
The Seer had said: “Mother, you carry in your womb an ancient soul—a thousand years old one! Tell me, what books do you read, my dear? Do you often lose yourself in thoughts while gazing at the sky and the forests?”
Shoshi had bowed her head in silence. Ever since her childhood, she had been an avid reader. Her father had once approached Nawfel Akhand and said, “My daughter is mad for books. If you would allow her to use your library, I would be ever so grateful.”
He didn’t just grant Shoshi access to the library but even handpicked books for her, carefully selecting each one.
She began with the tales of Hans Christian Andersen, and over time, ventured into the worlds of Shakespeare and Faulkner.
Nawfel grew so fond of the curious and contemplative Shoshi that he began to teach her in the quiet hours of dusk.
He explained to her the deeper meanings behind every word of the Holy Qur’an, guiding her through the Vedas and the Gita, the Mahabharata and the Upanishads, the Bible, and eventually, through the greatest novels of world literature. Her mind, molded in this crucible of diverse wisdoms, became something rare and luminous.
One stormy night, he sat her down to explain the hidden history behind da Vinci’s painting, The Last Supper. So deep was Shoshi’s concentration, so fervent her absorption, that she dreamt that very night of sitting beside Jesus Christ himself, listening intently as he whispered into her ear. He leaned in so closely that their figures together formed the shape of an inverted M, which, if rotated, became a W. Yet, it seemed Jesus was not separate, only a mirrored reflection of Shoshi herself. The red color of her garment’s right side matched the left side of his robe, and the blue of her left became his right in that celestial mirror. She could not see the soft curls brushing against her own forehead, yet she felt them, their presence undeniable. Behind Jesus stood a man, his bold hand concealing a knife. Leaning in, he whispered in English: “You can never hide. We know you are a woman: you are Mary Magdalene. You will be killed soon…”
Shoshi didn’t have the strength to endure the ill omens of her dreams. She awoke screaming in fear. The next day, she shared her dream with Nawfel. Her mentor, the sculptor of her inner world, merely smiled, and after a long tale about Nostradamus’s prophecies, placed his hand gently on her head and said: “My child, if you have no objections, I would be overjoyed to have you as my daughter-in-law.”
Shoshi had grown so used to calling him “father,” yet at that moment, a bashful silence bloomed in her heart, reddening her cheeks with wordless joy. She fled the room in a rush. And on the day she finally entered the Akhand household, her face and body were veiled in the modest covering of a new bride. But as she stood, quietly pondering how the Seer of Kagail had sensed the secrets of her past, Nawfel broke her thoughts with another prophecy:
“For five years after your child is born, never go to the pond’s edge at twilight. Every seventy-five years, a massive comet comes dangerously close to Earth. Your unborn son shares a strange alignment with that comet. If you see it, your life will end. But if he sees it, he will become a Seer, the most luminous soul of this century; one who capable of reading the silent language in the eyes of all living creatures. But alas! This world is not worthy of holding such a soul.”
Shoshi stood at the doorway, holding Shubhro tightly against her chest. Tears of joy rolled down her cheeks. Even as she knew her own death was near, she offered those tears to the Creator in gratitude for blessing her with such a child. Silently, she prayed that the prophecy of the astrologer from Kagail would come true. It was a prayer only a mother could make; one born of boundless love for her child. With tearful eyes, whispering she asked the Almighty that the divine radiance of the comet’s light, the Creator’s greatest gift, might forever fill her son’s Shubhro’s life with endless enlightenment.
The next morning, she recounted the whole tale to Nawfel. Exactly three months later, her body temperature began to rise by one degree each day. By the eighth day, her fever touched 106 degrees. A serene smile lit up her face as she knew that death was near. Believing the comet had truly touched her body, she pulled Shubhro close, held him tightly to her chest, and said to her father-in-law, “Not everyone is blessed with a death like this. Father, when he grows up, tell him: I will wait for him in the sky, like a comet. Tell him never to speak too soon about anything — and that no one in the world should know of this. I know… the five-tailed comet of destiny shall live in his soul for all of his days.”
Though Shubhro could barely remember his mother’s face, today, in his tear-soaked, blurred vision, she appeared clearer than ever.
That Monday evening, as dusk fell on the day of his grandfather’s passing, Shubhro finally realized that Nawfel was truly gone. The bed stood empty. In that quiet void, it wasn’t his mother who filled the emptiness in his heart; it was his grandfather. Shubhro lay down on that very bed, where Nawfel had drawn his last breath that morning. He turned off the light and surrendered himself to memory. His grandfather hadn’t left him; in fact, he had come closer than ever. He slipped back into the haze of his small, enchanted past.
One late afternoon in the final days of the month of Poush, Nawfel took little Shubhro to a quiet field. He spread out a mat and gently laid Shubhro down on a little rise shaded by trees. Then, taking out paper and pen, he began observing the sky with deep concentration. Shubhro, meanwhile, kept glancing back and forth—at his grandfather and then at the sky. When he asked his serene, white-haired grandfather the reason behind such actions, the old man smiled kindly and told him to look up at the sky.
“I am looking at it,” Shubhro said.
With a tender smile, his grandfather replied, “Starting today, remember that there is no such thing as ‘the sky.’ What you see up there is merely a set of signs meant for humankind.”
Pointing to the patches of thick clouds scattered across the blue expanse like tiny white spots on the skin of a watermelon, Nawfel said, “Next year, on the 13th of Chaitra, at exactly 3:36 in the afternoon, there will be a hailstorm lasting ten minutes. The sky is telling us this now.”
Shubhro noted down his grandfather’s words in his class diary and waited eagerly until the 13th day of month of Chaitra of the following year. But, alas, on that day, no hailstorm came. To his astonishment, however, on the 15th of Chaitra, at 4:47 in the afternoon, hail suddenly began to fall, thundering for ten full minutes upon the tin roofs, proclaiming its arrival with fierce insistence.
As Shubhro grew older, he began to ponder the intangible essence hidden within the boundless sky. During this phase of contemplation, he discovered several of his grandfather’s manuscripts and came to a remarkable realization: his grandfather had, in fact, been chronicling the weather patterns of the entire year by observing the skies of the Bengali month of Chaitra. Through careful observation every two and a half hours, he could predict a week’s forecast for the following year; and in two and a half days, he could map an entire month.
He would often say to Shubhro, “To count tomorrow, you must deeply understand today and yesterday. The fabric of dreams cannot be stitched without knowing the past.”
And so, he spun stories to introduce Shubhro to every tree and creeper—from the droṇa flower to the humble vine. With each tale, he tried to teach him their scientific names and medicinal properties. From him, Shubhro learned the very meaning of youth. For, in truth, his grandfather had remained forever young—his love for the natural world, his intense engagement with every leaf and breeze, kept him untouched by time. It was through this love that Shubhro learned: there is no love without immersion. People grow old due both to the absence of love and because they do not know how to truly become immersed into something.
Later, when his grandfather spoke of the migrations of people across India, he narrated how, led by King Philip of Macedonia, the Greeks had crossed the seas into Turkey, then to Persia, and eventually arrived on Indian soil with his son Alexander the Great. Many years later, it was perhaps on account of these stories that Shubhro, looked even further back in time—twenty-five million years ago—when the land that is now India had been fused with South America and Africa in the great supercontinent Pangaea, which lay 6,400 kilometers to the south.
All through his search, his grandfather’s voice echoed in his ears:
“You will never truly see the future unless you know the past. Whether it’s making a decision or dreaming a dream, clarity only comes when you see yesterday clearly.”
Indeed, Shubhro had become his grandfather’s constant companion, his confidant. As he grew up, he felt his grandfather had not just given him time but had gifted him eyes to see the world anew, and wings to soar without restraint.
In his final years, Nawfel took up pen and paper once again. He wrote his memoirs, his philosophy of life. He noted down precise calculations of the degree of bluntness a plowshare could reach before it caused pain to the ox bearing the yoke. He even sketched a possible machine that could replace the ox, with rotating blades beneath it. It was only many years after his death that Shubhro understood why, after retiring as a legal scribe at the British court, his grandfather had become obsessed with sharpening plowshares. Witnessing the pain of those oxen had so deeply moved him that he searched desperately for a way to alleviate their suffering.
In one manuscript, Shubhro discovered notes about a different obsession—herbal medicine. His grandfather had documented which plants, in what proportions, could be used to treat ailments. This passion had been sparked, Shubhro learned, when a woman died during childbirth; an incident that had left his grandfather shaken to the core. He had immersed himself in creating remedies to ease the pain of childbirth. When stories spread through the village of how his medicines had eased labor for many women, he gained a reputation as a trusted healer. But when one more woman died during delivery, despite his medicine, he gave up the pursuit entirely.
Years later, Shubhro discovered how his grandfather had made a grave mistake trying to cure him. Once, after taking a de-worming medicine from a nomadic Bedeni tribe, Shubhro fell severely ill. In desperation, his grandfather returned to his herbal ways, concocting a remedy from white magnolia and lotus petals. Though meant to heal, it darkened Shubhro’s skin and caused a tumor in his stomach. The entry in his manuscript read, “I shall never forgive myself. My remedy has hindered his physical growth with its side effects.”
Some time later, on an April day, Nawfel fulfilled Shoshi’s final wish. He called her brother, Shubro’s maternal uncle, and asked him to take guardianship of the boy. The uncle, childless himself, gladly agreed.
“If I can raise him as my own,” he said, “it will bring me joy, for we are unlikely to have children of our own.”
To this, Nawfel replied with deep contentment, “Then I shall bequeath this house to you. If you raise Shubhro as your son, the soul of my Shoshi Maa will be at peace.”
Then, after a brief silence, he told Shubhro’s uncle, “I have only six months left. Come next September, I shall be gone.”
That summer, he took out his only favourite shawl and began wearing it, even in the heat. “This winter,” he said, “I shall no longer need its warmth.” Villagers thought he had gone mad, laughing behind his back. He even dug his own grave, preparing bamboo rails to its exact size. The laughter eventually gave way to whispers; his eerie calm unnerved them.
One evening, while watching a breathtaking twilight, he said to Shubhro, “Such a magical dusk… I may not see many more of these.”
And then, exactly as foretold, he passed away, on the early morning of Monday, September 8th, 1958, six months after his prophecy. On his deathbed, just before the winds began to howl with a strange urgency, Shubhro’s grandfather, Nawfel, called him close and said gently, “My child, I have left you title to my land and property. Though I’ve given a portion to your uncle, it is on the condition that he will ensure your care and education with utmost sincerity.”
Then, taking Shubhro’s small hands into his own trembling palms, he asked, “Do you know what death is?”
When Shubhro looked at him, wide-eyed and trembling, he smiled with tender affection and said, “Death is a bald-headed woman. Look there, she’s standing quietly in the corner of the ceiling, watching me. Behind her, as though reflected through a thousand mirrors, stretch endless depictions of her through the ages, extending for hundreds of miles. This is how they come, generation after generation, to carry us away. The one I see now standing in front of me has come for me. The one meant for your age—her reflection—will come for your generation.”
His voice trembled slightly as he added, “But it pains me to see my entire childhood reflected in the mirrors she holds. It feels so wrong, so strange… I still feel like that little boy of yesteryear, yet it is time for me to go.
But do you know what the Creator’s greatest gift to humankind is?
It’s this: He allows our thoughts to live on through generations. Even if they take my soul, my thoughts will remain—with you. Don’t go anywhere Monday morning, son. I will leave that day.”
Before dawn broke on Monday, in the hush of darkness, Shubhro awoke suddenly. Rushing to his grandfather’s bedside, he sat beside him. In a barely audible whisper, Nawfel said, “I was waiting for you, my child. I forced myself to perform the Fajr prayer through gestures. Now, recite the Kalema and blow gently onto my chest.”
Grief and helplessness welled up inside Shubhro. He did not want to lose the only true guardian he had in this world. Clinging tightly to his grandfather, he broke into sobs. But Nawfel no longer had the strength to cry. Instead, a quiet sweat gathered across his forehead, glistening—thick and sticky. That sacred sweat, the final sign on the brow of a wise man whom the Creator deeply cherished. And then, calling him with the most intimate form of address, his grandfather whispered his last words, “I will live within you, my child… in the landscapes of your memory.”
In the years that followed, Shubhro often felt that his very birth was intertwined with his grandfather’s, back in the Bengali month of Asharh, in English calendar year 1892. It was as if, through his grandfather, he had witnessed the First World War, the devastating floods of 1929, the Second World War, the Partition of India, and finally the Language Movement, all unfolding before his eyes.
In truth, Nawfel had planted the visions of these events so vividly within Shubhro’s imagination that they became part of his lived experience, shaping his worldview and the very rhythm of his thoughts. After the passing of his mother and grandfather, every time the thought of life’s emptiness crept in, his heart sank into a heavy void. But somewhere in the silence, his grandfather’s voice would return—whispering,
“Fading away is not the same as being lost. Aging is not about detachment or lovelessness. Things truly disappear only in self-forgetting. And one grows old only when one forgets how to be immersed. My son, I’m still here, your soul’s companion.”
The rains of September had begun. Shubhro understood—on this day, a great soul had been laid to rest. The sky seemed to sing a celestial hymn, as if the spirits of the dead had gathered above to chant in his honor. Nature wept for him with a relentless downpour, and that desperate deluge carried the echo of his grandfather’s spirit into every corner of Shubhro’s being, soaking the very foundation of his soul.
Author’s biography
Kazi Rafi a post graduate in English literature is a prominent fiction and dexterous short story writer in Bangladesh (B-1975). He has eleven novels and six volumes of stories to his credit. His first novel Blurred Dream of Sassandra was awarded with HSBC-Kali O Kolom Award-2010 which is one of the most prestigious awards in Bangladesh and Bangla literature. He received three more awards including ‘Nirnay Gold Medal-2013’ for the outstanding performance in the era of Novel and Short Stories.
Translator’s biography
Nadira Bhabna, from Kuliarchar, Kishoreganj, is a passionate literary enthusiast, translator, and cultural connoisseur with Honours and a Master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Dhaka. Deeply attuned to the subtleties of language, she brings original texts to life with fidelity to the author’s voice, preserving the humor, rhythm, and spirit while adding cultural nuance for readers to savor. She has knowledge of French and is a member of the English Translation and Review Committee at the Kabi Nazrul Institute. Nadira has several published translations to her credit and is also an accomplished orator and experienced anchor, lending her an intuitive sense of rhythm, tone, and storytelling that enriches her translation work.
