The gate of the Chairman's Complex was wide open. A lion statue made of bronze on the left side of the gate was hanging from its altar upside down. Its twin on the right side was still in its right place but its head was long gone. Algae made their advances in the statues after engulfing the gate. Motlu Mia's grave on the right side of the gate, however, was neatly clean and seamlessly whitewashed as a caretaker appointed by the daughter of the late union council chairman used to look after the graveyard.
One afternoon in 1989, Abdul Munnaf entered the deserted complex out of curiosity. He was a newcomer in this locality. He joined a private college in the upazila town and married a girl called Noor Jahan from village Shimultoli of the union where the Chairman's Complex was located. An orphan since his childhood, Munnaf put up with his father-in-law's family. Villagers often called him Bideshi, Bengali term for foreigner, and also used in villages to refer to a person from another district. Noor was his student at the college he was a teacher of history.
In the Chairman's Complex, there were five buildings - four of them were one-storied, but the middle one was two-storied. All the one-storied buildings had already been reduced to rubbles. The two-storied one lost its upper floor to times but its ground floor still remained standing. Munnaf stepped into the building and looked round. There were algae all around. The floors of the rooms had numerous cracks.
In the cracks, different types of small plants were grown. A banyan tree was spreading its roots in a wall of the hall room. The air in the room smelt sticky. He looked up and saw a bat hanging from the ceiling of the room. Munnaf looked at the creature intensely and then he heard a squeaky voice:
"I'm the Chairman!"
Munnaf was puzzled. If there was anybody to speak, it could not be the Chairman as the man died 15 years ago. He looked at every corner of the room and found none. When he became certain there was nobody in the room except him, he heard the voice again. This time the sound was louder and clearer.
"I am the Chairman!"
Munnaf looked at the bat as by then he became certain that the bat was speaking. The situation was odd and unbelievable, but he dealt with it in his own fashion. He entered into a conversation with the bat which looked old and worn out.
"What did you say? You're the Chairman!"
"Yes. I'm the Chairman! After my clinical death, I took over the bat."
"You're the Chairman who was killed by his bodyguard?"
"I fled to a hideout during the fag end of the war in 1971 to avoid the freedom fighters' revenge. I returned to my house a couple of years after the war ended. Then that happened."
"What happened?"
"My assassination, I reared the boy and appointed him as my bodyguard. But that 'Behenchod' repaid me with a bullet in my heart for my generosity."
"O! I see!"
"His mother was the most beautiful woman in the locality. I kidnapped her. I then was the elected chairman of the union council and General Auyub Khan introduced the basic democracy. How much power we exercised then you can't fathom!"
The bat stopped and Munnaf heard it heaving a sigh of anguish.
"No the 'Behenchod' dared to talk looking at my eyes then. I kidnapped her with the support of my accomplices. Her husband tried to arrange arbitration against me. I killed him and her wife took her life. But I raised their only son."
"My method was clear-cut. I used to do what the Pakistani junta did to Kazi Abdul Bari in Mymensingh. The bastard brought out a procession against Ayub Khan's Martial Law. What a scoundrel!"
"Take the case of your mother-in-law's first husband. He was my elephant keeper. Like your wife, your mother-in-law was a beauty. I became attracted to her and on one occasion I tried to rape her. She informed the matter to her husband. The bloody fool!"
Munnaf was listening to the Chairman speechless.
"One day my men harassed my elephant to drive it mad and then pushed the elephant keeper into the enclosure. The giant animal trampled him to death. You know the male elephant shows highly aggressive behaviour during musth."
"Your mother-in-law was one-and-a-half-month pregnant when I married her off to one of my poor relatives. But I had given them a lot of money."
The bat gave Munnaf a conspiratorial wink.
"Now, you see, I'm your actual father-in-law!"
In the evening, villagers recovered Munnaf from the Chairman's Complex in unconscious state. He regained his consciousness after a few hours, but by then his consciousness diverted its usual course. He always gazed at her wife and his sleep initially decreased and later became absent. He started skipping classes at the college he taught. One or two days, his wife mistook it for an increased love for her.
Soon she detected that it was no love in her husband's eyes rather a mysterious curiosity. Munnaf abandoned shaving and cutting his nails.
All night he stayed sleepless and the only job he did in the whole night was to gaze at his sleeping wife. In the daytime, he yawned and felt drowsy.
Within a fortnight, things became complicated and Munnaf started muttering to himself. Gradually, other villagers knew Abdul Munnaf had become mentally ill. The situation was ignominious for Noor Jahan's family as they were very proud of Munnaf despite being an introvert person. His colleagues also got the news.
"What's the matter with you, Munnaf?" asked his father-in-law in a kind tone after hearing all the details of his son-in-law's nocturnal behaviour.
His son-in-law gave him a blank look.
A shaman was invited, but naturally he failed to bring any change to the situation. A colleague of Munnaf told Noor Jahan to consult a doctor.
So, they consulted the local doctor. He suggested sleeping pills for Munnaf for one month. If Munnaf's sleep became normal, everything would be fine again, the doctor said. In fact, Munnaf's sleep did improve due to the medication. He slept more and ate more. But his muttering continued and he was unwilling to go to the college to resume taking his classes. He said he lost his knowledge about history and his mind was vacant. The college committee decided to sack him.
The situation turned unstable again within one week of finishing the one-month course of sleeping pills. Munnaf started to remain sleepless. Without consulting the doctor, this time family members administered sleeping pills, but he remained sleepless. Then the local doctor advised his father-in-law to consult a psychiatrist.
In the upazila town, no psychiatrist was available. There were patients though. But most of the rural people considered any mental disease as falling prey to ghosts or genies or evil spirits. For example, the people of Shimultoli told Munnaf had fallen prey to a cruel devi as Chairman Motlu's father bought the complex from a Hindu family. The family had sold the complex at a throwaway price before leaving the country to settle in Kolkata after the partition in 1947.
So, they had to go to the district town to consult a psychiatrist. At the doctor's chamber, Munnaf requested the doctor to vacate the room. The doctor, without showing any reaction, instructed others to do so.
"Now, you see, there's nobody between us! Tell me what is disturbing you."
"Aye, doctor, I'll tell you," Munnaf whispered.
"Speak up, young man!" the doctor said in an amusing tone.
"This room, yes, this very room, was used to torture Kazi AbdulBari!"
"Who's Kazi Abdul Bari?"
"He brought out a procession against Ayub Khan's Martial Law."
"O! I see! You're a lecturer of history! Your father-in-law has already told me."
The doctor removed his glasses and looked at Munnaf with a pleasant smile.
"My chamber has never been used for torturing people! We here talk to people like you."
"A torture chamber could be set up anywhere in the world, evenin the elephant shed at Chairman's Complex."
"Elephant shed! Chairman's Complex!" the doctor goggled.
"It's a secret. Top secret! Promise me that you never pass it onto anybody."
"I'm a doctor. My job is to treat people, not to break news. Your secrecy is guaranteed!"
Munnaf set his gaze on the doctor. The doctor saw the eyes were sleep-deprived and almost lifeless.
"My wife is going to be a bat soon," he said, changing abruptly the course of the conversation.
"How do you know?"
"The bat of Chairman's Complex told me."
The doctor had fifteen years of practice under his belt and he dealt numerous patients with numerous symptoms.
He quickly said: "What did the bat tell you?"
"It told me he is the biological father of my wife."
"How could a bat father a human being?"
"The late chairman Motlu Mia got into the bat after his death. As he turned into a bat after his death, his daughter would transform into a bat too. She would be a bat sooner - not after her death but much before that, I'm sure. Sir, I beg you to take action to prevent that from happening."
"Of course, I'll! I assure you no such things happen to your beloved wife."
The doctor asked his assistant to bring Munnaf's father-in-law and wife.
They entered with anxious faces. But the doctor gave them anassuring look as if nothing serious happened. He told them it was a phobia - a bit complex though. But their patient wouldbe fine within a few months.
They followed the doctor's prescription and maintained his instructions and there was a sign of improvement in Munnaf's attitude within one and a half months. His sleep duration increased and appetite for food improved. He regained some weight. Gradually, he became almost normal despite feeling sometimes emptiness in his stomach.
As Munnaf regained his normal composure, the villagers asked him about the bat of Chairman's Complex. The doctor had passed the bat-related information on to Noor Jahan. So Munnaf stepped into new complexities as he narrated the whole story to a person he thought sensible and made the person promise that he would not leak it to anybody. But the story started spreading like a wildfire. Now his father-in-law began trying to prove his son-in-law as a person out of his head. He attributed the mental illness to Munnaf's excessive reading in the past.
So, the situation forced Munnaf to leave his dwelling place for the second time. But he did not return to his home district. Acting on an advertisement in a newspaper, he reached Dhaka and applied for a job. The position was office secretary. The salary was meagre. But he had no option but to find a job in the capital.
The very day he went to the office for joining, the police raided the office and detained three officials of the company. Munnaf was among the arrestees. As the police officials were detaining him, he tried to inform them that he had just arrived to join the office and he even did not know what crimes the company committed and so they should let him go.
"Once you land into the police station, you automatically know what crimes you men are doing here! Human trafficking! Once eggs are inserted into your anus, you bastard will spill out the secret! Banchod!"
The three persons were taken to the police station and the next morning they were sent to jail.
Noor Jahan heard the news after one week of the arrest of her husband. Her father declined to accompany her. She took her uncle with her to visit Munnaf and make preparations for his bail petition.
In the visiting hours, they were waiting in a small room at the Dhaka Central Jail in Old Dhaka. The lighting in the room was poor. They were standing behind an iron net curtain. The curtain acted as a fence between inmates and visitors. Other visitors present there were actually shouting at inmates and the inmates concerned were doing so to make their words audible to each other as the room was highly overcrowded and they all were talking. The shouting was so loud that it put an unbearable pressure on Noor Jahan's eardrums. At one stage she felt she would lose her consciousness if she stayed in the room any more time. At that stage, Munnaf arrived from his ward in the jail.
"Please, give me some money!" Munnaf shouted. "You have to pay even for an allotted blanket here! If you do not pay, they will force you to sleep in front of the toilets in the ward!"
"Who are they?" Noor Jahan shouted.
"The bat of Chairman's Complex!" Noor Jahan looked helplessly at her husband. Munnaf was released on bail after a few days and returned to his father-in-law's house. The case filed by the police against him and the other company officials, however, preceded at court and Munnaf had to go to Dhaka to appear for court hearings. One day he went to the Chairman's Complex. There were no changes; everything remained the same in the two-storey building. But there was no bat hanging from the ceiling of the hall room. He saw a carcass of a bat lying on the floor. The chairman didn't spare even the bat, Munnaf thought. "Scoundrel!" he shouted. The ancient building returned it with an echo. 'The Bat of Chairman's Complex' was longlisted for the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize
