Be Positive!

“Introspectively and in retrospect, this nation began its journey with nil..zero capital, baffled identities, ill political maneuvering, death of intellectuals, plight that came from natural disasters..the list goes on! Some would say 42 years should have been long enough for the wounds to heal but what about the ones that strike us down continually on a daily basis in the guise of corruption, treason, derailed govt regulations? And despite all that it is being said that Bangladesh "is one of the fastest growing developing countries", "has made remarkable progress in declining child and maternal mortality", "8 million Bangladeshi overseas workers in more than 155 countries, who remitted over $14 billion in 2012", "is one of the world's leading exporters of ready-made garments, ranking second in the world after China". Let's take a moment to contemplate the positive progress we have made so far, because to be honest, we could do with a bit of positivity right now! "

This pronounced statement above was the result of my positive-ranting (yes there is such a thing, only in my books though, I too often wonder if I do not have a biological defect!) resulting in a facebook status back at that time, at the end of February, when an apparent positive affair called the ‘Projonmo Chottor’ made me witness things I had neither heard nor expected in the history of this nation - Bangladesh! These two simple words, together, produced a platform that put forward a belief, resurrected an emotion in every single Bangladeshi, which at least our generation, the millennium, who had grown up only been regaled with tales of heroism from 1971, was suddenly awarded with an extraordinary opportunity to be a part of! All those hundreds of movies(when one thinks about a Bangladeshi movie or drama serial, you can only see visuals of 71!) that we had been watching ever since we were born, all the brilliant anecdotes recounted by our mothers and grandmothers so often that they came alive in front of our eyes and suddenly all those pent-up emotions revealed like a bare wound, in public, to be critically assessed, by those two really simple words! Those, couple of months, were tough I must admit.

I must also admit that I did not expect any specific outcome out of the movement from the beginning. Yes, even an overly emphatic optimist as myself! It was not like I did not want our lives, or the lives of the citizens living in Bangladesh at the time, to experience something as brilliant as the stories depicted so often on celluloid: a raging war, arrival of a messiah and a happy ending. As much as I enjoy an unhealthy dose of a Bollywood flick every now and then, even I am more realistic than that! Sometimes I blame these unrealistic portrayals in cinema for raising our expectation bars so high that real life cannot cope with it!

What did we expect? Suddenly a hero was going to descend from the seventh heaven, okay, let’s say from amongst this bunch that founded the chottor, fight our battles, awaken us from this nightmare that we call life here and basically rescue us while we stand on the sideline, all safe and secure, under the protection of our family names and inherited power and only contribute to the war cry? Sorry but I just smiled out of grief and I believe all the thousands of heroes that once made our blood boil, from celluloid to real life, from William Wallace to Bhagat Singh, all just ganged up on me and smiled the most derogatory smile I have ever seen! Battles are not won that way, fights are not fought that way and life, my friend is not that easy, they say. Some things can only be achieved the good old-fashioned way!

It would be fair to say I did not mind the effect that Projonmo Chottor was able to create – a reason to unite, stand together – and I would risk sounding like a broken record if I repeat all that I had said back in early February 2013. I did absolutely jump on the bandwagon, locally and overseas, virtually and in real life, I debated in my sleep over sweat and blood! But it was not in the hope of seeing sunshine, no, because I believe the only place capable of producing sunshine is not somewhere we can spot outwardly, but lies within the deepest wells of our soul, in each of us. It lies with our core belief. And that belief had moved mountains centuries before us and is still capable of doing so! Then why does the human form this energy takes distract us? Why do we doubt in our own individual power to change this world?

In a matter of a few months I witnessed families drifting apart, friends turn foes, couples breaking up – I must admit these were astounding feats! Never before had I seen this country or its countrymen displaying such deep-rooted, brash emotion towards anything other than that, which concerned their bread and butter. It was impressive. We can argue through our teeth over why and hows and also who was behind the ‘show’ but the motion was a success from the go!

The sad part, personally though for me, lies in the fact how a dark eerie shadow seem to lurk behind every Bangladeshi citizen in the form of this negative energy. If it was the Treta Yug or epoch, when Lord Rama lived, I would have vouched it was the work of the evil Asuras! Because it is not just in matters related to this nation that we are negative about – it is anything and everything! Say you pay a compliment to someone within the earshot of another, within seconds the eavesdropper would feel the need to make up some story to make the person spoken about sound horrible! The Asuras may have lost in the Tetra Yug but alas, the presence of the evil still lives and will only be defeated once and for all when each of us, individually and intrinsically, delve into that well of power and declare war! A war against everything that is wrong in our backyard, in our vicinity and a war against everything big and small we have been silent about for so long!

A messiah has arrived – can you see? It is YOU. 

P.S. For the umpteenth time, NO I am not under the influence of anything when I talk dirty-positive! Ask my friends and family - they shall vouch for it!

MUSE

To Dhaka,

My muse, my mistress, my beloved.

(Quote abridged; original unfit for publication.)

My words are beginning to define me. I have realised lately, like a crinkly old man, I too have a twinkle in my eyes, and have grown quite fond of reminiscing and invariably my muse metamorphose into my words. Ah the sweet smell of nostalgia! It starts with a rumble in my belly and flows through my veins as though glow-in-the-dark and touches the finish line by settling as the twinkle in my eyes! I have already played so many different roles in my life so far, swallowed and regurgitated so many others that often when I get nostalgic, I have to pinch to remind myself - I am only 27 after all!

The particular aspect of my musings that bring me to address you in this monologue today is very vague. I have come to realise one thing that though all the posts and stands I have made in this blog so far had been controversial one way or the other, they were never entirely taboo in nature.  They are everyday issues that we all think about but they tend to get buried in our subconscious for so long that we cease to question them and accept them as a way of life. I have made it my personal business to prod those very crevices of discomfiture and draw a reaction. Today, however, I shall refrain from stating the obvious and rather locate the lesser-known, subtle issues that float around our brains but does not quite surrender.

I have had quite a strange childhood. Even though I clearly belong to the apparent ‘upper-class’, egotistic and self-engrossed section of the society, I have been raised to think differently. Believe me, my parents did me no favour by trying to establish these morals at such an early stage because at 12, when you want to buy a perfume because all your girlfriends own one – you just want to buy a perfume! And a serious reprimand as a result with vicious connotations such as ‘can you justify spending that amount of money on a bottle of fragrance? What about the opportunity cost?’ and the conversation taking a more emotional turn next ‘do you realise how hard you need to work in life to earn every single penny?’ fell into deaf ears. However, almost a decade later when the sweet smell of nostalgia wafted its way through my nose, it bore those solid messages home and helped me understand that those long ago sessions of admonishment, surreptitiously fuelled a perception revolution and gave oxygen to my musings.

A part of me always detested money and what it inspired. I liked to fondle with the idea of power but something about the riches made me uncomfortable and I did not wish to be associated with. One of my father’s and later my own favourite movies was a black and white, Indian one from the 50s called ‘Shree 420’. Here, the young protagonist was a simple village-boy who comes to Mumbai in search of work and a better life. He befriends a group of slum-dwellers who embrace him as their own and one of them - a schoolteacher that he later falls in love with. Through all the twist in the tale, he eventually comes in contact with the elite part of the society and transforms into this smug pseudo gentleman, ashamed of his roots and affiliation with the poverty-stricken part of the society. He takes to drinking and gambling and even ditches his old girlfriend in rags for a richer, sophisticated, cigarette-smoking female. Like all other overly optimistic Indian movies, this too ends in the hero seeing the error in his ways, asking for forgiveness and being reunited with both his old friends and lover in a well-coordinated song and dance sequence! It was a laughably simple script but emphasising a lot of old and forgotten values that we used to once hold dear.

Upon returning to Bangladesh with an intention to settle for the foreseeable future, I realised how differently I viewed this part of the world in comparison to my earlier cynical perception. I blame it solely on my tired eyes from before as opposed to the newly travelled ones. Sometimes, it becomes vital to step away from the matter at hand to be able to objectively look at it and I have come to realise only travel can open that little window in your mind for you. The exposure I have had in the past few years has opened my eyes to how every society has their own evils to thwart and the difference is just in the seriousness of the issue and the closest, most comparable scenario perhaps is the financial instability that we individually face in our lives: I do not believe anyone would be able to claim they are cruising without any financial restraints, the difference is just that for some it is survival at stake and for others, a better standard of living! But a struggle remains, be it a first-world or a third-world nation and this struggle should not be able to deny us the right to take pride in our existing achievements.  It would be rather unjust to forget that the history of this Indian civilization began almost 500,000 years ago and that the Indian subcontinent (present day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) where the Indus Valley civilisation flourished made it one of the major civilisations, the most sophisticated and technologically urban culture between the 2600 and 1900 BCE! It is sad if we choose to be ignorant about our history and not acknowledge the fact that we are sitting on a goldmine of an ever-evolving culture! Let us scour through the negativities, in an attempt to progress, without loosing sight of our achievements in our contemplation and pay credit where credit is due.

Last time I saw the back of Bangladesh, it was with a lot of negative and frustrated emotions. I felt there was no room in this country and the particular money-driven society that we nurture, for an idealist like myself and I had to trot halfway across the globe and get acquainted with several other dreamers caught up in the same struggle - only smarter and more successful in the broader sense of the word – to finally convince myself that I did not loose my marbles and to restore faith in my values and more importantly my dreams. Dreams do not necessarily imply impractical, unachievable or a fool’s vision of life. And everything old is not redundant either. Be it the black and white movies like Shree 420 or the words of wisdom imparted by our parents/grandparents almost threatening to cause semantic satiation, the implicit and explicit message respectively is still valid in today’s world. In an attempt to globalise, while it is crucial to gain a worldly vision, let us not loose the very core values and traditions our ancestors have fought so hard to preserve.  Let the perfect marriage of old and new rather define our identity. 

Come let's discuss Men!

Chivalry is a concept I have often struggled with. While the vast majority of times, I see women eyeing the ‘gentlemen’ qualities in a man admirably, a notion creep up at the back of my head to contaminate the hunky dory features of an otherwise commendable phenomena. Fast disappearing in certain parts of the world, you still manage to glimpse men volunteering to vacate their seats for their women counterparts, either refrain from or immediately apologise, if apprehended at expressing profanities in a lady’s presence, unwilling to share certain kind of jokes, only considered appropriate out of the ranges of a lady’s earshot. This is an act widely in practice, without the interference of any other disparity such as age or physical location, solely based on gender differences. It is avoidance in fear of ruffling a fragile female façade. It is an epidemic.

It all goes back to the medieval times, a more chivalrous era so to speak, where this code of conduct evolved partly from knighthood and partly from the trend and ideals of courtly love and based on my readings so far had been established with the noblest of intentions – to respect the honour of women! But just like all other ancient customs, the viability of such a tradition in today’s world and perspective is debatable. It poses an important question of whether or not an idea of this nature should be entertained by a group of modern women striving for sexual equality.

In my last post, I have hinted slightly about my sardonic sense of humour being quite un-ladylike and hence widely unpopular. While most often it draws a chuckle or an entertained gasp from the male sector, it almost always draws a frown of annoyance from my women audience. This is solely because it is considered to pertain certain crudeness, unexpected and unsolicited from females. This takes me back to the 3 F’s – fragile female façade – and how the emotional status of a woman is often confused with her physical abilities and there seems to be a need to protect the women psyche as well. Does it remind anyone about any other scenario, where often we resort to using euphemism so not to offend a particular group? Yes, you are right, the only other group is children!

Without further ado, allow me to make my point: in a world where we are so caught up with empowering women and fighting for their rights (quite rightly so), is not there a part of us that neglect the fact that progress can only actualise when all the relatable wheels are in motion together, i.e. empowerment of women alone would not suffice until or unless we spend time trying to understand the male psyche as well.

See, bluntly put, men are the sperm bearers. They are equipped with the biological responsibility to impregnate and as a result quite naturally their sexual drive would be much more active and rash compared to that of females. Why should we hold it against them? If women are not held responsible for their ability to fall pregnant ‘easily’, why should men be humiliated for their natural need to procreate? A man’s more pressing sexual needs is a fact and finding it offensive or denying it is the same as crying over how, as women, are stuck with the childbearing duties! These are natural phenomena and instead of having a war with nature, we should accept what has been given to us, and look to achieve a mutually beneficial balance.

I am a firm believer in the practicalities of human nature. There are certain traits that make us human and surpass time, age and eras – love is still love, hate is still hate and greed is still greed. Generations have had no effect on these traits and they have outlived all others. So when a person is caught lying, he is only acting on the impulses he was genetically manufactured with – where is the surprise element – he is just being human, with warts and all. We spend all our lives in a dilemma, killing ourselves over thwarting the evil in us – an evil whose presence is as prevalent and tantamount as the goodness. Thus, let us not beat ourselves over a slip and accept that we can never become the perfect person because in truth, each of us are already perfect – it is our flaws that make us perfect human beings.

Beginning of this year, when the Delhi rape created headlines all around the world, I remember having an argument with an older female relative of mine, over the popular meme shared on facebook that showed a woman holding a banner that read ‘Do not teach us what to wear. Teach your sons not to rape.’ Her argument against the meme was that we as women could not shun the responsibility of dressing decently. In fact it was vital to ensure we do not attract the wrong kind of attention and to follow it up she said ‘offering a fresh stack of meat in front of a lion and expecting it to walk away responsibly is an act of foolishness.’ I found this comment, especially coming from a female, extremely derogatory (to say the least) and disillusioned merely because our men are not lions and I would like to think we are more than just a stack of meat. Our men will always be expected to exercise restraint from an act of coerciveness because they are not animals – they are human. I think men are misunderstood here, and given a label through incorrect social messages to appear more like an ape - still stuck in phase 1 of evolution. Through such messages from women, we are not only further deteriorating harmony between the two sexes, but also endorsing something heinous as violence.  This is what I mean when I say there is a need for an increased interest into the male psyche from us females before we can hope to achieve a drastic development in this area.

I mentioned in my last post on women power about never wishing to come back to this world as a male and I meant it for more than one reason. Firstly, because of the lack of romanticism in not being the natural hero but also because of the pressure of expectation every man is born with! From the moment they are conceived expectations are embedded into their system: the immense pressure of displaying physical strength – if you are weak you get bullied in school – followed by an inherited form of responsibility whereby the fathers set a certain standard that the successor is expected to equal, if not exceed, as part of carrying the name forward. The pressure just keeps building on – once they are done proving themselves to their families, then comes the wife and children and the expectation mongers constantly cheering or booing in the background – there is never a moment of peace. Women on the other hand, mostly in the South Asian societies, are completely exempt from these responsibilities. This is a form of male discrimination, whereby they experience a sensation of living inside a pressure cooker, both from family and society to prove themselves in terms of being successful and earning a truckload of money and women in our society to a certain extent contribute towards creating that pressure, by taking the nonchalant or borderline flippant role in their responsibilities toward the earnings of a household. The absence of the peer pressure on females automatically adds to the men’s burden! And consequently contributes toward shaping their perception of women in general.  

Back in my university years, I remember a female friend blatantly putting forward that she could never ever settle for an unsuccessful man. My question to her was simply this- why was it important? Her response was quite simple too – it was disgraceful for a man not to be successful! The memory of that conversation always make me wonder if some of us are not, after all, a little childlike deep down and perhaps mentally disabled too in certain leadership areas which allow us only to accept successful and powerful men into our lives. But men are expected to look at our 3 F’s (fragile female façade) and accept us for better and for worse. It is perhaps not chivalry then that has survived in the form of displaying honour, but this eyelash-batting, helpless dame-in-distress attitude that still make men vacate and offer that seat to us. 

Women Power – zindabaad!

When it is that-time-of-the-year again, you know, that uncomfortable time of the year, heralded by a restless feeling, accentuated by several mood swings and a pang – a pang in my lower abdomen that tends to become a knot of discomfort. It is called the International Women’s Day in my calendar.

For those of you unaware, I have managed to shed off the cloak of disclaimers with my last piece and with this one I intend to take it up a notch, throw a stone at the beehive and risk being stung! All in an attempt to project: the greater good of course.

I have reservations regarding the term feminism - strong, visceral reservations. I may add that I have been branded as an anti-feminist in multiple demographics for my rather crude and often insensitive (guilty!) remarks revolving this school of thought. I did try to be helpful by suggesting an alternative term to those nice ladies out there I had managed to rudely offend in the past, that the term they were perhaps looking for was anti-chauvinist but to no avail. It did not deter them from treating me as their enemy and I am not exactly sure I would be making more friends through this present attempt of mine. My impertinence must be borne one last time here as I unload certain things off my chest and my sardonic sense of humour too would probably not be very ladylike, after all as Oscar Wilde had once blatantly stated ‘Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humour in the woman.’ Based on this quote, there is nothing romantic about this piece I am afraid.

Let me cut through the rhetoric and jump straight into phase 1 of my assertion: Why are we still changing last names? Actually, let me rephrase. Why are respectable, college-educated, progressive women still fiddling around with their identities? It was in the 1800s that Lucy Stone decided to stand against it as part of her battle for women rights in the U.S. and what had happened to her legacy? We have stoned the living daylights out of it (pun very much intended), that’s what, and this has happened at the hands of the so-called advanced, capable and privileged section of the population, with United kingdom pioneering this motion under their umbrella of common law and the rest of the educated world following suit. The clear evidence that this ridiculous arrangement had been peacefully accepted by majority of women across the world lies in the fact that it is still the norm today and anyone breaking the mould has to rather justify herself.

Women only very recently in most countries have learnt to understand that physical abuse is unacceptable, reportable if possible. Domestic violence or a forceful intercourse (despite being lawfully married) is unacceptable. Only just. Yet women across almost all demography do not seem to see a lack of reasoning behind changing their last names. Why you ask – perhaps because it is all too complicated - even if it is at the expense of their self-respect, at the expense of their individuality and what of the sexist inequality it encourages? Nothing.

Is it really that complicated to imagine a world where a person exists solely as herself and not through her aliases of a mother, sister or wife? The argument or contemplation over the fact that you inherit your patrilineal surname or whether or not your children will be able to adopt it and bear the torch of it in the future comes at a much later stage and is totally irrelevant when it comes to your own identity. Let us focus on one thing at a time. Let us grasp the true implication of the fact that if after all the progress we have made in this world, we still voluntarily change the very first thing about us people reckon with – our name, the truth unfortunately is that we choose this existence and should be willing to accept the associated complexities that come with this choice.

                                        ~~End of Rebuke: Phase 1 ~~

While I leave you to ruminate over the issue addressed in phase 1, I will allow a little break and like to engage you into an interesting story: -

When I hear women today being extremely vocal about the power struggle with their male counterparts or simply speak about a revolution, it always remind me of Digamvari Debi and how she had managed to successfully achieve nothing short of a revolution some odd 189 years ago!

See the Tagore clan’s history spans over more than 300 years. It was one of the most imminent families from Calcutta in colonial India, a key influence in the Bengal Renaissance and produced both men and women who were way ahead of their time. This story is about Dwarkanath Tagore, born in 1794 and more importantly about the woman he married – Digamvari Debi – paternal grandmother of the great poet Rabindranath Tagore.

Digamvari Debi, married at the age of 6, represents a milieu when child marriage, polygamy and ‘sati’ were as real as the fact that women were completely shunned from the outside world and forbidden from even a glimpse at the sun. Their days were spent within the closed private chambers of the house and their sole identity being that associated with their husband or father. In a time and age, governed by a social structure as such, Digamvari Debi accomplished a feat that changed the course of women’s lives in India thereafter.

Anguished with her husband’s philandering ways with meat and liquor, one night she had decided to out-step the social boundaries and witness her husband’s activities at a social gathering first-hand. Her young daughter and a few other female relatives of the house accompanied her to the garden house that her husband had built to entertain guests, where she witnessed, dumbfounded, her wayward husband, sharing a seat with foreigners, male and female – both sahibs and memsahibs – drinking and submerged in an act of debauchery. Upon failing on an attempt to revoke her husband’s waywardness, Digamvari Debi declared her own personal form of mutiny from that day onwards: she refused to share her bed with her husband! Till her last breath, Digamvari Debi fulfilled all other wifely duties except cohabit with her husband. [1]

And this is how, almost 200 years ago; a woman with a fearless mind had silently given voice to her inner rebellion. Moral of this story for me lies in the chunk of her sacrifice, of how easily she could have forgiven her husband and proceeded with a normal conjugal life, that was and normally is still expected of a woman, regardless of the era. How easy it would have been.

All massive upheavals, changes in the course of history have come at a great price, often at the expense of human lives or in the least, a comfortable life. I have not heard of a revolution yet that was simply accepted and given away – a right to one’s existence, identity and self-respect is something that needs to be earned, often with great sacrifices.

                                    ~~Rebuke: Phase 2~~

Since we are on the topic of South-Asian history and heroes, before I delve into phase 2, I would like to discuss an issue that is quite Indian-subcontinent focused.

Why are we still living with our spouse’s parents? Is it tradition or convenience or stroking the male ego that we have a massive talent for? Because if it is only a question of affordability and ensuing reasons about saving money through rent-free means, why is it that I see so many stranded widowed parents of the female, leading a lonesome existence despite having more than one child and their only plausible flaw I can find is the gender of these children! On a scale of fairness and humanity, what kind of a daughter or a person does that make you if you are actually willing to abandon your own parents at their old and ailing age, only because you or your husband are not strong enough to stand against the flow of social norm?

This matter, in a lot of cases, is actually direr than we think. First of all, there is a similar ‘dilemma’ applicable as is with the surname in phase 1 – my family or his family? I say neither. The whole objective that the institution of marriage ratifies is cohabitation between two individuals with the intention of constructing a home together, not to revamp or re-build someone else’s. Then comes the most common flimsy defence of how it is difficult for a couple to afford to live or have a house on their own. Sounds quite realistic, excusable and pragmatic even, as opposed to my own idealistic argument, does it not? No, not really, I call five aces on that too because where the average budget of a South-Asian wedding ceremony is anywhere between $50,000 to $150,000, a person able to afford that but unwilling to invest the same amount into long-term wellbeing, for me, has already made the choice between a rational lifestyle and one driven by social custom; and the only education her college degree had perhaps bought her is the ability to thwart questions that trouble her conscience and design falsified reasons that would convince herself to believe in something the most instinctive part of her recognises to be completely untrue. If you cannot afford to lead a married life then you should not be married in the first place and least of all be able to afford a luxurious wedding ceremony – I am sorry, it is a two-way street!

The only instance where I perhaps would not hold it against a couple deciding to reside with the male’s parents/family is where the converse is true and one or more of the male’s family members are ailing and in need of constant attention, i.e. a classic dependent situation. In these circumstances it is only human to have those family members closer to you, who are actually in need but it is also essential that if circumstances reverse, the male should be more than willing to accompany his spouse to live with her family and look after them as well! If a man is truly a man, in all the masculine glory of the word, then I really do hope before the end of time he remembers that the root the word has been derived from is: hu-man.

This brings me to address phase 2 of my assertion, which is a little more universal and refers to the general psyche of womanhood and the part of us that wants to be rescued. Yes, this phrase does always remind me of an episode from the pathetic show Sex and the city, which probably stands out as a prolific example of a program that struts out all the deepest and darkest of female vulnerabilities on a plate and the only statement that it does make is that of fashion – I would have to give them credit for that!

Yes we are physically disadvantaged; the doubts that cloud our mind range from our monthly cramps in the abdominal region to being at the disadvantaged end of having to bear the consequences of a sexual experience gone wrong to our child-bearing agonies but then again where is the fun being a hero who does not rise against all odds and has not tasted the bitter sense of suffering, and where is the sense of achievement in a battle that is not often punctuated with small defeats and disappointments? At least being the ‘weaker’ sex has clearly defined our goals for generations! Coming back to the incessant need for being rescued, I cannot deny this myself that there is an embodied feeling of glee being manned by a man, which often become the initial reason for attraction between men and women but that feeling of romanticism should perhaps be strictly held within the proximities of the bedroom - where you should feel free to be thrashed around by your male counterpart and feel completely aroused by it but when it comes to the more serious, decision-making aspect of life, doubts that you are incapable of surviving or upholding a set of belief without it being endorsed by your male counterpart is a complete loss of individuality. So very often I see women in interactions falling completely silent when their male counterparts speak up and what is worse, often echoing their voices because somewhere deep down they actually consider them to be superior. This attitude tends to surpass age, qualification or individual accomplishments in life, for e.g. it could be a couple where both practices medicine, had gone to the same college, had similar grades but the woman still feels the need to consult her partner before voicing out an opinion. Just because you decide to spend your life with a person does not justify you leaving behind your old values, beliefs, orientations and opinions that make you who you are. Thus, from what I have seen, when a woman decides to spend her life with the man of her dreams, she invariably tends to leave behind a lot more than just her maiden name.

It would be completely unfair not to mention a recent social campaign, while I am still on the topic, called MARD[2](Men Against Rape and Discrimination), which had taken a contemporary approach towards upholding women rights, through educating men and encouraging them to raise their voice to drive home the message that women need to be respected. A similar and more implemental campaign in Bangladesh is called ‘The Brave Men’ [3] which looks into targeting boys aged between 12-15 to motivate them to break their silence on violence against women in the community. These are exemplary initiatives and perhaps the only kind of ‘rescue’ and support we should welcome from our men!

I do realise that most of the topics broached here today talk about issues that are quite urbane in nature and the connotations contained is not relevant to the section of the society whose survival is endangered, such as women battling against infant mortality rate, maternal survival ratio, for whom changing their last names is not the option to ponder upon but rather life is. But then again this piece is not aimed at that underprivileged section to comprehend, rather at that particular sector of women who has taken the responsibility and decided to engage themselves in representing these women in crisis. I strongly believe we need to intrinsically become the change we want to see around us before becoming an advocate for it and realise it is a 3-step process: we need to have enough conviction to show we a) want it, b) are willing to fight for it and make sacrifices along the way and c) are willing to work hard enough to earn it.

My feminism is extended as far as the disadvantaged people out there are concerned..and you would notice I say people, not women. Grouping women and children together is offensive to say the least, however, grouping women together, clearly distinguishing them from men, is perhaps even worse. There already exists way too much segregation in terms of race, colour, and geographical boundaries – where is the need to expand the list any further? The only exception here is perhaps sports or anything associated with physical strength where I would take a backseat but that is also where I draw the line. For everything else concerned, our sole identity should be as people, with a common goal of wellbeing. I speak to the group of women out there who engage in the empowerment of others - whose voices cannot be heard - but from where I can see things, it is particularly this group that need to be rescued first! Honestly, how many of you out there are involved in women empowerment as a side project under your husband’s elite umbrella that allow the privilege, and how many are actually there because you have freed yourself already and wish to extend the same favour to the rest of the world? So my endnote to all fellow women out there is simply this – rescue yourself first – you are best equipped for the job and give all those silent heroes watching something real to fight for.

---

[1] Blair B. King, ‘Partner in Empire – Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in Eastern India’, University of California Press 1946.

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8XnSKLHQPY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Against_Rape_and_Discrimination

[3] http://www.undp.org.bd/info/events.php?newsid=1368&t=In%20News

Counterdiction

Yes you have read it right. I did just invent the word in the title. Hence please refrain from consulting the thesaurus or alternatively look away from the more popular google search-bar and let me explain myself a little better! I believe this is the second occasion where I have been guilty of taking the liberty to create portmanteau terms and I only have the excess of creative energy flowing through my veins currently to blame for it. This characteristic reckless display of boldness this time around though has been triggered by a phase, that I am constantly finding myself in, where opposing thoughts collide, creating ample sparks to invite a reactive response to mitigate matters, only resulting in more fervour! I hope to have made quite an impression by this incomplete vague explanation in my first paragraph and to prove the extent to which my audacity has grown, over the past couple of months, I am proud to present my first piece without a disclaimer! (Applause)

Upon returning to Bangladesh and settling comfortably back into the privileged, bourgeois standard of living in Dhaka, I have had the opportunity to reflect on how this city is the perfect paradise for an adrenaline junkie. I mean it - who needs to rely on drugs or invest into an adrenaline pumping recreation when the constant life-and-death reality that surrounds you is more than capable of throwing you into the deepest pits of illusion, consecutively make you disillusioned while providing you with the accompanying sensation of jumping out of an aeroplane without a parachute the whole time. The reason I have successfully managed to offend both the city and my particular class, all in the same breath, is because it is not the first instance when I have bitterly noticed the positioning of my own class in this society and the views and opinions it seems to represent and I must say they are not, as one might describe as ‘kosher’ or more relevant in this society’s context as – ‘halal’.   

There is no easy way to state the truth surrounding the conformity of this upper-middle-class or as I like to refer to as the ‘unfortunately privileged’ part of the society and the fact to the matter is that the invisible caste system, unassigned by any racial or religious discrimination (as we might observe in the neighbouring countries) which exist amidst the people of the same colour, features and profile in this country is a puzzle. It is a puzzle I have neither been able to unravel nor understand ever since I can remember and it started right from within my own household, where as a child myself and the hired help had never been allowed to occupy the same space at the same time, without clearly defining our individual domains.* The very first encounter with an exception to this rule was when I visited a friend’s house from school and discovered her exceptionally liberal-minded parents allowing their young hired maid to sit at the same table as us and I remember how all the other kids, including myself reacted to it - not with negativity thankfully but with sheer incredulity at such a leap of a break from tradition! The ratio of rational forward thinking people in this particular class - with similar financial means when I was growing up - against the bourgeois was 1:100 and sadly it has not changed much since.

What have we really got against the hordes of the black, brown and yellow that walk the same road as us every day and why can we not for once accept that they are our majority, the driving force of this nation and not the ruling minority that speeds past in their air-conditioned BMWs? When the RMG sector in this country first started gaining momentum and a lot of this apparent ‘lower’ class joined this contemporary stream of workforce, I did not have to venture far to hear comments like ‘look how this boom in the garment industry has affected this lower class! Suddenly their attitudes have changed, their backs straightened, they are looking us straight in the eye!’. This was a clear indication of the fear that I noticed in my surroundings where the supposed upper-class suddenly started to feel threatened as their subconscious stoked their growing concern over the repercussions of an empowered underclass which might ultimately grow powerful enough to compete at the same level as us, even, God-forbid intermingle with our own children and contaminate future generations! I must pause here to take off the figurative cloak that I had draped myself in thus far (to better explain my inherited personal positioning in this class struggle) and would refrain from using the term ‘us’ when speaking of the upper-middle-class from here on, as in the context of this piece, I mentally do not sit within that arena.

In wake of the current Savar crisis in Bangladesh, which by the way had even raised the alarm at the Vatican I hear, I am once again disappointed to discover that this country has been divided into two by even a tragedy of this magnitude. The segregation now lies between the capitalist vs. the idealist, the patrician vs. the egalitarian, the former in both cases presenting success stories based on monetary facts and figures and the latter obviously highlighting the failure in the form of a retreat from human development. What we collectively fail to realise is the number of years and a catastrophe serving as an eye-opener that took us to reflect on the lawless manner in which the upper-class has been conducting all employment transactions with the underclass. The complete lack of regulations and regard in relation to working condition, fair pay, discrimination and foul play exceeds far beyond the realms of the RMG sector alone. It seeps into our homes, in the driving seats of the most chauffeur-driven cars, in our kitchens, on the stools guarding our forts and into the very bane of our everyday existence! The desensitised negligence from the educated section of the society and the vanity from the ‘elite’ is reminiscent of a struggle in a different part of the world long ago – the American civil war and the African-American civil rights movements respectively. Under the current circumstances, we either give rise to an Abraham Lincoln from amongst us or wait for another Martin Luther King to be born out of oppression. Either way, we need to be rescued from this attitude where we see only to make it unseen and feel only to make it unfelt.

Collectively, as a society beyond class and creed, and individually let us exorcise the demons within ourselves and eradicate this gap between the different classes that still exist today before we can hope to achieve anything else and perhaps tilt the scale towards the more rational, progressive and forward thinkers of this country. This can be achieved first and foremost - by growing a conscience. The oxford dictionary describes education as ‘an enlightening experience’ and while you would find many a certified educated person around you, how many do you believe have actually acquired their sensibilities in the true essence of the definition? Let us be enlightened and grow a little more courage and show it by taking some baby steps - like I have by shedding the cloak of disclaimers today just because I did not feel the need to justify my actions publicly just this once - and as a nation develop unabashedly, both monetarily and conscientiously, hand in hand. In a hurry to get to work, let us not forget our morals back home.

*please refer to “labour crisis in the household: truth or myth?” for a related story. 

It was a dark and stormy night...

I wrote the central gist of this little piece many years ago, given the title above as the topic of the essay, for a school assignment in year 8 or 9. I was made to stand up in front of the class and read it out loud. It was momentous, especially at that age when the creative part in me sought after any acknowledgement and revelled in applause, while withdrew into seclusion and took a million steps backward at the mere mention of criticism. It was a delicate time and my feelings and opinions raw – fresh out of the oven! I have attempted to the best of my ability to recapture and rewrite the basic story, staying true to the formidable, crude and unadulterated thoughts that occupied my mind at fourteen/fifteen, once upon a time. However, the treatment had undergone unforgivable reparation and wear and tear of age. I have also added a few parts taking recent events into consideration that made me remember this story in the first place. I feel the need for it to be retold. The time is right. 

It was a dark and stormy night. The occasional pitter-patter of rain on the corrugated rooftop was making me jump out of my skin and the constant slamming of the window, two feet away, was a rude intruder on my first brief respite of the day.  Lately any little sound or smoke or glare was enough to terrorise me. The foreboding ominous silence in the air bore down on all of us and crept up like a poltergeist at any opportunistic moment.  It was as though God had lifted a Hand and conjured up an eclipse to make the sun disappear in this otherwise sunny country of mine. The once lush-green, picturesque landscape was smeared with a splurge of dark paint that disseminated with unbelievable speed and strength. 

I eavesdropped on my father and father-in-law’s after-dinner conversation last night and realised my hypothetical assumption of a prejudiced solar eclipse was probably not too far from the truth. Apparently the international media had shunned all coverage of this neglected, trivial part of Pakistan.  We were cloaked in utter darkness, the mysterious Hand in play again, efficiently blocking the sun in East Pakistan.  The brooding anticipation was a silent scream and the fate of our people rested in the frail hands of a few. 

I remember when I was younger my father often said how there was much more than just a linguistic gulf that separated us from our mother ship.  There was much more to it. The prevailing ghosts of the past would never leave us at peace.  The struggle for an identity that began with the language movement in 1952 was only the initiation of a chain of awakening that would ultimately either end in segregation or absolute silence.  Voices of those young martyrs had been omnipresent these last nineteen years, resonated in the air, sojourned here with our innermost thoughts to evoke the pain of suppression that would someday translate into resistance.  Alas, the fire that had erupted then was spasmodic. There was a lot of smoke since then, but no reignition of that fire. 

The recent development or lack of it (certainly no pun intended), in the past few months had hardened our resolve and our backs were up against the wall. The pulse had suddenly quickened here and everyone everywhere felt as though they were waiting for a bomb to go off any moment! The atmosphere in my husband’s old family home was no different. My days lately have been packed to the brim with household chores; not something inflicted upon me by my in-laws but more of a self-help pertinence program. I was making my physical strength count for something, if not my brain in anything. Under the current circumstances, my brain or particularly my views and opinions were of no significance to anyone. It was interesting to remember though, how this one night had changed the direction of my life, my story forever. Following a political deadlock, when on March 7^th Mujib beckoned people to launch a major campaign against the precedented onslaught from the Pakistani Army, I silently watched my father pack me up along with my belongings and set me off to marry his best friend’s son. While I knew the entire family well and cannot say I disliked my husband previously, far from it, I barely knew him. At nineteen, my knowledge or expertise in most matters was not consulted, needless to mention.   

The twist in my tale though was not the raging war in the backdrop or merely the fact that I was married off in a day’s notice but the night of the wedding when things took a more complicated turn. There were talks of the Muktibahini forming an alliance of resistance that I had grasped from scraps of my father’s conversations previously but what I did not realise then was how my husband played a centric role in this movement and moreover was due to leave for training on our wedding night! Things had a tendency to come crashing down on me one after another and my clutter of emotions reminded me of my late mother’s knitting hank with the needle inserted right through the centre. I looked immaculate, impeccable on the outside but the knot inside just kept getting tighter. For the first time in my life, I could empathise with my father’s sentiments in regards to this region’s predicament: spinning out of control, at the mercy of others and heading in the deep gutters of unknown. 

Looking back, outwardly, I had known my husband all my life. He was present on all my birthdays, common weddings we attended, other family functions etc. However, he was eleven years older and belonged to another generation altogether. I still remember how his voice commanded attention in any gathering and his views and intellect, though contemporary, was well respected even amongst the older orthodox family members. He was a mystery to me. I was in awe of him then and he had given me all the more reason to be in awe of him now. The hurried ceremony of our wedding night, the one pensive steal of a glance in my direction, the million untold unsaid conversations, the firm press on my left shoulder and the brisk walk out the doors without looking back were the only legacy of our marriage he had left behind. When I paused from cramming my days with frivolous tasks, pouring over those handful scenes was the sole companion of my respite. 

If there was one lesson these times of desperation had taught me, it was how quickly you adapted to change. While I was busy fighting my own battles, my father on the other hand was left to fight loneliness. Post my departure from the long-standing habituated surroundings, I watched him grow older and paler in a matter of weeks and would find him make his way to the doors of my new home on a daily basis. I would look forward to those moments he was under the same roof; not to be able to share our feelings, we had never really done that since my mother passed away, but to adhere to that non-communicable stance of unabated reassurance that we had grown so used to over the years. It was funny how the ominous silence pursued us everywhere, seeping through the walls and pouring into our hearts. My father had lost his child and only companion; lost the hurriedly appointed new son-in-law and this house had lost the apple of their eyes – their only son, all in the same night. So much loss had shrouded an ever-prevailing doom over the household. 

At that point of time, I had grown to accept the long days of impending disaster as a way of life and hence was totally unprepared for what was to happen next. That night, my father had dined with us as per normal and resumed to the living area for tea when the shrilly ring of the phone that had not rang in the past few days, woke every one of us out of our reveries. Clutching myself I intently watched my father-in-law’s face for any sign of emotion that would confirm or challenge my worst fears. When his expression interestingly shifted to one I had only witnessed back in the times forgotten, I slowly let my breath out. The colours that his face displayed though, were still unusual and I was intrigued. I hid myself out of sight, afraid to reveal my edginess but peeked from behind the curtain that divided the living area from the dining in sheer anticipation. The conversation lasted for the briefest of minutes but my heartbeat doubled in that time. Not being able to hold myself for long, I hopped out of my hiding place as soon as my father-in-law replaced the receiver. The piece of news he had to deliver, however, sent us all reeling back in reaction at first, and then slowly engulfed us in relief and the most exhilarating form of happiness each of us had experienced in a long time. The son, the husband, the son-in-law was being returned to us that very night for a mere few hours!

The atmosphere that descended on the house, followed by this announcement, was most extraordinary. It was Eid, it was Durga Pooja and it was Christmas all at once! My mother-in-law fled to the kitchen and started gathering ingredients to whip up all her son’s favourite delicacies while the two fathers pranced about shouting unnecessary instructions to each other in preparation. I quickly slipped out of the scene to escape to my bedroom that never really had a chance to become ours and shutting the door, slumped against it. I was trembling and I thought my heart might burst out any second. I ran to the standing mirror next to the bed and stared at my own reflection. What I saw there took me by surprise. I realised that I have not once looked at myself properly since the night I was married and the metamorphosis my features had undergone, had totally passed unnoticed. I was much leaner than I remember myself; cheeks had hollowed, overall drawn in. There was an air of melancholy about my appearance and a belying calmness that had never existed before. Unconsciously I picked the simple blue saree I had donned during the hurried wedding ceremony and proceeded to the kitchen.

In the next few hours, I had broken exactly 2 glasses, 1 plate and a small bowl. But that was not the most embarrassing part. I had actually caught my mother-in-law try to suppress a grin as I took to cleaning up the broken pieces, muttering half-composed ineligible apologies under my breath. 

By the time we had finished, the dining table was laden with innumerable delectable items and the feast was fit for a king. The scene had miraculously switched from that of an impending doom to an impending celebration. And then it was just a matter of unnerving anticipation. Initially we sat around the living area and exchanged for the first time all the fears we had held back and did not speak of earlier, regarding the Muktibahini and the country in general, fates of both now irreversibly intertwined. The conversations soon lost steam and fizzled into silence. Within a few moments an unmistakable knock on the door ripped that silence apart, exactly like the ring of the phone prior and sent us all flying in different directions! Something really strange happened to me just then. While I was by no standard a shy person, and even fantasised a few times about the possibility of throwing myself in his arms at the first sight, I did quite the opposite. I bolted inside and hid in the bedroom unable to control my breathing that had by then surpassed all extent of preposterousness. 

I felt more than heard his footsteps and the exhaustion in his cracked voice. I had no recollection afterwards of when I had stepped out of the room and taken the few decisive steps inside the adjoining area to finally find myself facing up to him. I could not be sure whether it was the sheer incredulity on my face that shot his head in my direction and to be quite honest I could not care in that moment! As I stood there defenceless, studying his face in utter concentration, his features creased into the most beautiful crooked smile. I felt an electrifying connection with him and was besotted by this being, a man, who was willing to stand up for what he believed in and go any length to protect it, a man who was fearless, a hero. It was a moment of all-consuming bliss and one, I would learn later in life, I was destined to experience for the first and last time. Before I could open my mouth and utter a single syllable, my hero was whisked away unceremoniously by the family! It had not occurred to me until then that he had not only returned to me, but to us. 

The rest of the night was spent in meaningless chatter, unabashed display of love and most importantly in feasting gluttony. Tears of joy, pangs of fear, clinging physical love - no stones were left unturned. The sudden sound of laughter seemed indecent somehow to the invisible ears of the cold, sterile walls. I suddenly became a bystander to this joyful scene of reunion and yearned for just one more opportunity to translate into words what my eyes were trying to communicate the whole time. Suddenly it hit me that the two of us had never really uttered anything meaningful to each other since we became man and wife! 

To my horror, the night scurried past in a wink of an eye. Soon it came to the dreaded moment of bidding farewell to our hero: a rare species perhaps sent with a purpose unlike the rest of us who arrive in tears, stumble along, make do and leave this God’s green earth with no particular imprint whatsoever. But my husband was not destined to be one of us. God must have had bigger plans for him and all I ever wanted from that God at that very moment was to return him to my arms for our first embrace and not deny us the life together I had only dreamt of until then. The sense of happiness, I learnt, was treasured so because it was short-lived. It ended as suddenly as it had begun and our lives were in the throes of gloom once more. 

The consequent nine months of my life was spent in a harrowing nightmare, the details of which cannot be done justice to, even if I recount it a thousand times, in thousand different ways. The magnitude of the catastrophe that befell on all of us and the goriness of the events often made us question the existence of the same God, at least within the realms of our boundary. It was a bloodbath, the aftermath of which would leave generations gaping in pain. The tears dried, emotions choked, we were thrown back in time to a primeval survival-of-the-fittest contest. The end result? The bloody birth of Bangladesh – a free nation.  

As for my husband, I never saw him again after that night. My hero went onto join the league of countless other martyrs who disappeared into oblivion without a trace. Our only consolation lay in the accounts of his fellow surviving compatriots who persistently repeated how he had valiantly fought till the end. We could only hope that he was in a much better place somewhere, away from the rest of us survivors who were as good as dead. And to this day, he remains an unsung hero, like many others. 

The old family home where we married was not there anymore, neither were his nor my parents alive. The past had shut its doors, leaving only a window of memory for me to look through from time to time. Life had followed its own path thereafter.  

I survived. 

The nation had won the war and I had lost my battle. 

                                                    ❉

I have spent a good part of my life being a dissenter; and the better part of my life in love with a ghost from my past and in all honesty I cannot say I could have led it any differently! It has been forty-two years since and it was all water under the bridge, until now. The recent movement in Shahbagh has opened up a Pandora’s box for many and I am one of them who have been propelled, as a result, into opening my own dusty chest of memories and muse. I did not want to dig up old wounds anymore that would only cause more pain. I wanted to bury the past. While you can bury the past, I have come to realise, you cannot really bury the wounds. Wounds need to be healed in order to move on in life. The events that unfolded after 1971, in the later part of my life and in the life-span of this nation, is a part of history I shall have to disclose on another occasion; some facts are well-known and others that will never come to be known. And with that I must take your leave and hope you have had an enjoyable journey thus far, through the diminishing sight of my shrunken old eyes!