Rhythm
تال
ताल

The edge of the roof seemed to have forgotten that the rain had already stopped. The lingering rhythm of droplets falling, the steady hum of crickets, the croaking of frogs—and in the room, four eyes opening and closing, unable to settle into sleep.

After twelve years of holding each other up, tonight—for the first time—they had spoken of parting. But where would they go? That, they had not thought through.
“Will you have some tea?”
“No.”
“Why? You always did at this hour.”
Silence.
“Look—if we don’t talk, we won’t be able to decide.”
“May I ask something… why are we separating?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps that’s what the passage of time is. People can walk together only up to a shared destination. Then, somewhere, their paths diverge. Everything changes—you, me, our destinations. And then perhaps… instead of a companionship drained of feeling… perhaps… I’m not sure.”
“Yes… perhaps time has done the same to us. But haven’t there been crossroads all along our lives? We were together in high school. In our first degrees, we studied the same subjects, somehow came to like each other. It could have been mere coincidence. Or perhaps our shared love for books. Or the rowing club. But there were so many others around us too. Then what was it that happened between us? I don’t know either. Why did we raise such a vast structure on so fragile a foundation?”
“Yes… and later our choices parted. My music, your neuroscience. Yet we kept meeting. We tried to stay together, even worked in the same city. We spent years under this same roof. But it feels as if the fierce pull to advance in our own crafts slowly, quietly gripped our minds and drew them apart. What enchantment is this? Around me—a crowd of sounds, of instruments, from which I cannot escape. And you—with a physical explanation for every human feeling… an electric current passing through nerves. Neuroscience… it has taken you over. I sometimes think there must be many others in the world caught in the same confusion. Perhaps we have bought the intoxication of narrow specialization at the cost of the comfort of shared being… I don’t know.”
“The intoxication of a crowd of sounds… what a beautiful thought. That is neuroscience, my dear—neuroscience. The human mind is shaped to love rhythm. Even before we are born, the beat of a mother’s heart reaches our neural cells—perhaps that is why. We think in patterns. That is why poetry moves us. We learned to sing long before we learned to write. Thousands of years before this orchestra of instruments, people like us must have played flutes carved from hollow bones. The sun, the moon, the stars—they must have listened. I mean it. You can ask them.”
“So rhythm and nerves… inseparable companions?”
“Yes… rhythm and nerves.”

They both fell into a deep sleep.
Outside, the edge of the roof kept conversing with the courtyard.
Tap… tap… tap

Riaz Akber