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.