I haven’t gone out much in the lockdown, and the few times I have gone out, it was after dark. So when I stepped outside today at ten a.m., it was the first time in two years I have seen the sun from outside the building I eat, shit, and sleep in.

I did not miss the constant stink of spilled garbage in this city, but the perfect temperature and pleasant breeze more than made up for it. I wanted so much to pull off my shirt and just stand naked like a deranged hermit! But of course I couldn’t do that. (Or could I?) And when in the main road the buildings let go of their grasp of the sky, it opened up like a Van Gogh painting (except without any of his signature yellow). Normally when I go to Kazipara from Shewrapara, I walk. But the weather compelled me to crave for the breeze you feel in an open-hooded rickshaw. So I called one and got in.

The road was empty and the vehicles sparse. The sun was out and the breeze brisk. However much my mind had enjoyed being cooped up in my room reading novels and watching movies, my body hadn’t. It asked, “Isn’t it nice?” I had to agree.

Then a red streak of cloth swept into my vision, and because of the attention-grabbing nature of that color, my eyes followed it as it moved up and swiped the face of the rickshaw puller. Then it came down and the hand holding it gripped the smoothed-out handle. Sweat dribbled down the arm and slid off. The white shirt with narrow brown stripes was soaked to the skin. It clung to his body as shirts do after being in a pouring rain. The shoulder blades danced up and down in alternating cycle. Paddle, paddle, paddle; sit and glide; paddle, paddle, paddle . . .

This was the first time I looked at the puller after getting on the rickshaw. I was so involved with myself that I didn’t notice the person two feet in front of me. Here I was basking in the brightness of the sun, while right before me by the same sun was being scorched a man virtually the same as me, and a hell of a lot more hardworking, except he wasn’t born in a family of social and economic stature as mine.

The sun was not bright for him. It was boiling.