Words: Deepanjana Biswas (she/her)
At the crossroads of a goodbye lies a gentle hope; a path leading away from the present, perhaps to an unfamiliar city, or perhaps to the comfort of your own bed.
Goodbyes often feel too light for the weight they carry. I’ll offer one out of courtesy, perhaps even love, but it seems superficial in the silence that follows. ‘Bye’ might be the word I use most often, as I part from my university friends after class, as I hang up the call with my mother, or as I leave home and say goodbye to my bunny, who will never fully comprehend what this parting means. A word too heavy, yet too trivial, carrying the weight of love across distant lands and familiar roads. At the crossroads of a goodbye lies a gentle hope; a path leading away from the present, perhaps to an unfamiliar city, or perhaps to the comfort of your own bed. ‘Goodbye’: a promise which leads away as much as it leads towards.
In Bangla, there is no specific word for ‘goodbye’ (or at least none used in polite company). There’s only ‘aashi’ (আসি), or ‘aaschi’ (আসছি), which literally translates to ‘coming’, but contextually means ‘I’ll be back’, leaving with a promise of return rather than the news of departure. This is not isolated to Bangla: the Arabic ‘Ila al-liqā’ (إِلَى اللِّقَاءِ) and the French ‘au revoir’ both carry this hope, roughly translating to ‘until we meet each other again’. Yet, the word carries more than grammatical function. ‘Aashi’ (আসি ) speaks in the present imperative tense, and ‘aaschi’ (আসছি) unfolds in the present continuous, each stemming from the verbal root ‘aasha’ (আসা), meaning ‘to come’. Here, ‘to come’ holds much historicity. This promise of coming back can also be extended from personal partings to the cultural and literary history of the language. For instance, ‘aashibo’ (আসিব), or ‘I will come’, functions as a formal future imperative conjugation of the word, and also anchors one of the most beautiful and haunting poems to ever be written in Bengali:
‘আবার আসিব ফিরে ধানসিঁড়িটির তীরে- এই বাংলায়
হয়তো মানুষ নয়- হয়তো বা শংখচিল শালিখের বেশে,
…রাঙ্গা মেঘ সাঁতরায়ে অন্ধকারে আসিতেছে নীড়ে
দেখিবে ধবল বক; আমারেই পাবে তুমি ইহাদের ভীড়ে।’ (আবার আসিব ফিরে, জীবনানন্দ দাশ)
Translation (by Clinton B. Seeley):
‘When I return to the banks of the Dhansiri, to this Bengal,
Not as a man, perhaps, but as a salik bird or white hawk,
…Reddish clouds scud by, and in the darkness, coming
To their nest, I shall see white herons. Among them all is where you’ll find me.’
Above are the first and last two lines of the poem Abar Ashibo Phire (আবার আসিব ফিরে), written by Jibananda Das in the context of the Bengal Partition. Nestling in its pastoral imagery is a heavy longing for a home one can not return to. The common man is exiled from his home not by storm or sea, but by the invisible lines that tear through the earth, splitting neighbourhoods into silence. In the poem, this forced goodbye turns into a lingering love which haunts rice paddies and finds melody in the birdsong of those who fly freely, untethered by the political divisions of land.
It’s also worth noting that the ‘when’ in the translation is not necessary, as it’s not included literally or semantically in the Bengali text. Perhaps this was an attempt by the translator to maintain the literary flow in English, or a contemplation on the probability of the poet’s claims. But, the poet himself is linguistically resolute that he will return to his motherland. Even if this lifetime bars him from it, his mortal flesh will morph into the landscape itself in the next: a reunion promised in death and sealed in soil. A goodbye that is never linear, but rather a circular journey towards reunion. A journey of migration, an honouring of absence, and hope for presence – all folded into a single farewell.
Like the white herons of Das’ imagination, we move across the wavering sky, weaving through darkening streets and sunlit roads. Expectation for what’s to come, and the hope of reuniting with those who make such expectations meaningful, close and open with a goodbye as much as they do with a greeting. Like a gateway to presence, both form rituals of connection, woven into everyday speech and stitching the memories of an entire lifetime into a singular point in time.
In a world where displacement continues, like a thread stretched across time into distant lands, the individual is consistently extracted from the environment like a resource to be utilised or discarded. Community is made to seem extricable; its power redirected to those who solitarily occupy the top. However, language itself resists this departure. Within its body, it holds such continuity where speech itself voices the promise of return. Finality is not written in political documents, but carried on the tongue.
So, I’ll end with ‘aaschi’, or till we meet again.
