"Midlifescope"

In recent times a lot of people around me have transcended to the next level  - or shall I say conformed? They have given in to the social norm, exited from the luxury/misery of being a singleton and ushered themselves into adulthood and parenthood.  When I was younger and quite single myself, I would hear a lot of married couple say that you never know what life and responsibility is really about before you get married or settle down. Now quite married and settled myself, I would yet again hear a different group of people with a parenthood status making similar, well-informed claims. I picked up a quote long time ago that said “Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit” and I could not agree more. It is indeed an avenue that I am completely clueless about at this point but wish to venture into with my imagination. Needless to say it would be quite interesting to revisit this piece in a few years time.

A bloody cigarette was all I craved for in that claustrophobic, cramped and absolutely New Age kitchen that my wife and I had so fondly built three years ago. My wife was a firm believer in this concept and would rather be caught dead than miss her “spiritual enhancement” class or what a common layman like myself would refer to as bloody yoga! Okay, I have casually thrown around the word ‘bloody” twice in a row now, not something my wife was likely to approve, especially around children and I could imagine her pursed lips ready to admonish any minute and the preachy tone taking over when she would say “Children do as you do and not as you say”. Sigh! I hung my head as I walked out of the kitchen grabbing my two year old under the armpits and swinging her out of the chair and far away from the mess she had created on the dining table. We needed to rid the table of all evidence before mummy got back home. This was going to be a really long day!

Three years ago, before the birth of our first child, this very same house looked astonishingly different. It was so different that it is quite hard to accept now that it is but the very same dwelling place. I believe the last three years had made a mockery out of the word “dwelling”, but that was a different place, in a different time when our lives used to be an endless string of cocktail parties and lavish dinners. I do not know whether I can ever go back to being that same person again and I think it has a lot to do with my current energy levels. As I started to delve more into this analysis and comparison of my life then and now, I could feel the craving for the cancer stick reach its peak.

With the two year old tucked in bed for the afternoon nap and the three year old watching ‘Toy Story 2” for the umpteenth time, I finally planned my escape. Cigarettes were banned in this house just like a lot of other things like getting drunk and rowdy, staying up after a certain hour of the night, swearing, rude jokes and sometimes depending on the mood of the day, even laughter. Everything was required to be crisp and clean and children-friendly. I had given up smoking for a year in that honeymoon period after we got married but you know what they say about things forbidden – they creep up and become your most prized possession when prohibited. Well at least I was truthful and did not blame the habit on stress or any other imaginary concept.

Life on the wrong side of 30 can be quite interesting I have realised. At 29 or like in my case even at 33, I was rocking the dance floors and still indulging in all nighters but as you keep crawling towards 35(and bear in mind I said ‘crawl’ and not ‘trot’ or even ‘ scamper’. Those are words strictly associated with the 20s) the days seem to get longer and nights shorter. Somehow the pace in life takes a holiday and comes to a standstill close to 40.  The irony of it all is that even though life tends to slow down itself your heart grows as restless as ever. It constantly looks behind at the years gone in an energetic flash and forward to the upcoming years beckoning with endless uncertainties and outcomes all depending on the direction you choose at present. Somehow both directions seem a lot simpler and happier than your present crisis since in the younger trough of the 30s you make all the terrible errors, cater to all your whims and from the older trough you beam back at yourself at having made all the right decisions and comfortably ageing. It is this irksome crest in between that is so critical.

Coming out of the theoretical world and back to reality, my wife and I had lived our lives to the fullest before committing to the next phase, or so we thought. We had dated for almost 4 years before being engaged and had spent another year before finally tying the knot. The honeymoon lasted for a whole one year and we did not even let our married status interfere with the time spent with our individual family and friends either. We had felt that we made all the right decisions and were fully equipped. And yet, when you are actually faced with months of sleeplessness and two mortgages and a constant necessity to be right not just for yourself – that would be laughably simple – but for three other people in addition, you realise that nothing in the world can actually prepare you to take on this role.  And I swear somehow the word ‘sleep’ keeps cropping up in my mind and takes priority in my mental list of complaints.

As I scrubbed my hands thoroughly first with an antibacterial hand wash and later with a sanitiser, I kept thinking how easily this routine comes to me compared to the first year of parenthood. It was the single most horrible period of my life that I can distinguish and also my most treasured year that I would protect with my life if I have to. I am not too sure how feelings can co-exist in such crude contrast but like all other extremely complicated issues I attempted at addressing previously, this crest is a very rickety spot indeed. Anyway, going back to that first year, I remember my days were as long as 14-15 hours work wise, meaning work that paid you, and another 10 hours voluntary unpaid work wise. I know, it does not add up does it but that is exactly how my days rolled into another and I constantly felt like I was running an hour, if not more, behind in my life till it became a routine and a lifestyle. That drive and passion that I felt in the first year of my newfound role as a father, was unparallel to any other drive I have ever felt so far. I still think it was the residual after-effect of holding and feeling your first born in your arms and that powerful effect can make you do wonders and basically turn you into superman!

The front door of my humble abode crashed open just then and crashed right into my reverie as my gorgeous wife with a glowing tan and perfectly trimmed hair walked in and ran straight into my arms. Her first instinct – was of course to sniff around my clothes and I was guilty as charged! But please do not let the brooding drone of a middle-aged man ruin your beautiful afternoon because even after the six whole paragraphs of concessant whining, my life is still every bit worth living for! 

Actions speak louder than Prayers

Before I even begin to make my point, I just want to clarify that this issue is extremely debatable and personal and is supposed to serve as an eye opener as opposed to being offensive and I have no intention to attack any particular race, culture or religion; rather my focus is on the bigger picture.

This is such a taboo topic that I must say it made me wince at the audacity of my own thoughts and logic. Why is it that everyone around us would give anything to glimpse past reality? They find the newspaper insanely mundane because it depicts death, rape, murder- “reality” in other words that is constantly taking place around us. We do not wish to take part in the prevention of any of it and God forbid, be a part of it, so we do not even wish to think about it. What we do seem to enjoy however (which I find quite depressing) is to seek solace and loose ourselves in the realms of unknown and to a certain degree are prepared to do anything for a world full of promises that we, in all honesty, do not even understand.

My attempt is to provide a satirical account of what happens around us in the name of religion rather than ridicule the religion itself. No, religion I have no grudge against, in fact if I am not entirely mistaken, religions spawned all over the world due to a crisis in human nature and in times when all signs of humanity was disappearing from this world. It was a lack of accountability that needed to be addressed and in a nutshell different religions subsequently must have followed depending on the structure of the society, culture, climate and belief with the help of an extremely powerful person being the harbinger of the world unknown. If you come to think of it, it was an ingenuous concept to mould people into acting more responsibly (since all humanly constrictions failed) but the most notable achievement was perhaps the fear that every religion successfully managed to infiltrate into people’s mind. This fear is what we carry in our hearts till to this date.

I personally believe that in this day and age when all major discoveries and inventions have already been conducted there is almost nothing unattainable left for the human brain to perform. Thus, it must only be a guilty conscience that would make people desperate enough to resort to the consolation of a religion! If you know in your heart that you have done nothing wrong, if you have a clear conscience, there would be no need to delve into an unknown future and even if the thought of an afterlife does occur to you, why would you change your current lifestyle in fear of what your actions might result to in the future far away when most of us do not even think about karma in this current life? So the common rationale has become that if I commit a murder today, I go sit in a church/temple/mosque for the rest of the week in hope of being forgiven whereas I would have thought the most common reaction to remorse would be to try and help the dear ones of the person I have killed or if that is too far-fetched, to ensure that no other person does what I did.

There are so many issues that are palpable; we see it happening around us all the time. If good deed is our only objective, we could help improve the standard of living around us, help build a conscience in people to be more accountable, help people in need or maybe just smile at a person to make them feel better! I do not know if it occurs to anyone that it is really selfish that while people are dying around us and needs all the help we can give, all we are concerned about is what would help us go to heaven! My point is, why waste time obsessing over something we know nothing about when there are so many issues around us that could really use a bit of our attention and interest?

Is not the most humane part of being human the fact that we can love? It is such an irrational quality and yet our first and foremost identity that separate us from all other beings. Religions are there to make us accountable but what about our own mind and essentially our feelings – should not that be enough to let us justify our action as adults? If we do something out of fear of ending up in hell, is the intention really right? You cannot stretch a day longer than 24 hours and if out of the 24 hours we spend most of our time preparing for the life after, what is our purpose of being in “this” world? What about “now”?

If our conscience is clear, if we actually believe in ourselves and know in our heart we do not intend to do anything that would harm others, I do not believe there should be any need to conform or succumb to act in the name of religion. There is a fine line between reverence and fear and most of us are on the wrong side of that line. If there is love and not fear in our heart, being religious ought to mean we radiate love all around us, wherever we go we only spread happiness and not brood over our own fate.

Labour Crisis in the household: truth or myth?

Honufa was only nine and a half when she took her first steps into our new home. She was a tiny little figure with more bones in her body than flesh. Within a month or so, she flourished into a full-bodied beautiful young girl, who could capture anyone’s affection by just pouting her lips in a disarming smile. There was such longing in her melancholy eyes that it still haunts me and reminds me of the carefree soul of a child trapped in a mindless labyrinth unable to find her way out. 

Our camaraderie was circumstantial and inevitable being of the same age and in the same house for most part of our lives but it was not always right for me to express my feelings for her. Individual seating arrangement in the house had early on defined our differences: while I sat on the couch, she would be on the floor by my side and while I slept in my own bedroom, she would make a bed on the kitchen floor! Such was the magnitude of the invisible difference, that it held me back from reaching out to her out of a need to conform to our social norms and customs. 

Honufa was a hired help in our house: one of the millions working in a family home for a living in Bangladesh, a large number of who have become a part of our culture over the years. They are all around us leading their meaningless, non-existent lives and represent the non-entities of the society. The educated section of the society, on the other hand, who can afford them turn a blind eye to any responsibility they might have towards their condition apart from providing a salary, food and shelter. Most young people working for these families are aged between 7 to 16 years and every second family in the vicinity of Dhaka city are subconsciously supporting child labour without ever admitting the concept to themselves.

On my last trip to Bangladesh, I remember asking my mother how she justified the need of having two extra helping hands in the house besides being a housewife herself. Her defence included some atrocious remarks about people living abroad failing to understand how things are run in Bangladesh and another new angle that woke me up. This new angle shed light to a perspective that all families who have hired help seemed to share. They have this self-satisfying perception that they positively contribute towards the society by employing the impoverished and their salaries give them a better quality life. They also tend to believe that without this financial help they would either perish or be forced to beg on the streets. That all sounds very encouraging but my point is being trapped in a house with no security, doing ungodly hours with no idea about fair pay, no education- is all this really improving the quality of their lives? Is it not crippling another whole generation of people to suffer from illiteracy and lack of self respect? If some people are really that fond of charitable activity, they should donate those hefty amounts to charitable organisations and NGO-who have professional methods to undertake such responsibilities-and not take matters into their own hands. It is a poor excuse used by us for so long that we have actually started to believe in it but it is nothing but a camouflage over the fact that we choose comfort of our bodies over what is right or wrong. Especially the underprivileged children, growing up side by side with the more fortunate ones, will essentially have the same magnitude of differences in the future that Honufa and I had to grow up with and the legacy of this invisible chasm between the two classes will continue forever. 

We, as Bangladeshis, have a general habit of blaming everything on the incompetence of the government without stopping to ponder if there is anything each of us can contribute in our daily lives to make life better. In a recent discussion over this issue, a friend commented saying there is no basic framework to control anything in Bangladesh let alone deciding fairness of pay and working conditions of hired help, which is why you just have to work around it or live with it. She pointed out the traffic conditions which is probably at its worst and asked me the simple question whether I would stop driving in Bangladesh and sit at home just because the traffic cannot be regulated by the government efficiently. In my opinion, traffic and the human beings concerned in this issue are very different subjects. If traffic conditions are bad on the streets, I agree there is little we can personally do about it but to let a tradition of locking young people up in our houses and expect children not to act like children continue, is inexcusable. If the government cannot maintain a framework to monitor this condition, it does not mean we can persist with this inhuman behaviour and make poor excuses for it. If the undergraduate, postgraduate and doctorate degrees combined cannot teach us the simple lesson of how to treat people with respect, then I have to admit we spend all that money after education in vain! 

The main question to ask ourselves, I believe, is whether we can really justify the need for this sort of labour; the same question I asked my mother on my last visit. Is it really that difficult to wash your dishes after you eat or mop the floor that “you” dirty yourself? Everyone seems to be constantly whining about how impossible it has become to get a “good” maid in the house. Is it really necessary to have three different people do the household chores in the house which you can probably manage yourself and all because of cheap labour? I wonder if we ever stop to think about how we take advantage of people, who are in need and not in a position to decide what is right for themselves, forgetting the fact that they cannot think right but “we” can-we are capable of thinking for ourselves and also for them! 

Honufa and millions of other children like her are incapable of making a decision on their own. If a family decides to invite a person to come into their home and work for them, they need to realize what an extremely serious responsibility it is. This decision needs to be looked upon as exactly the same as adopting that child and ensure that the minimum basic need of that person is looked into, of which the primary three would be food, living condition and education.  

There is a serious need for a wake up call to raise social concerns in our surroundings and to discard old norms and customs that only make people suffer. We need to raise the minimum amount of awareness so we can at least meet our own eyes in the reflection. We need to wake up to the simple truth that only because there is nobody to watch over what we do in privacy, how we treat the ones who only stay in our kitchen, it does not give us the right to mistreat another human being. We have to learn to be accountable to ourselves since there is no system looking over us. If we make a mess, is it not easier to clean it ourselves rather than adopting a system with no regulations whatsoever? If we still decide to take up this practice with humanitarian reason and the like, we need to realize the seriousness of the responsibility, we cannot leave any stones unturned because the children should not have to bear the brunt under any circumstances. We need to take it upon ourselves to return the youth to the likes of Honufa and join the cause in our daily lives to free their souls.