life? where??

Lives Not Lived

I was a bad student in school... in fact ( if I avoid the euphemisms),I was an awful student. Inever reached to the top ten.. no, not even top twenty... not even top thirty!!I made my highest achievement in school whenI was in class VII; I was 58th. Iused tobe proud thatI had at least made it to the top sixties. My childhood friend Tilat never made it this high after class III... and it is a truth universally acknowledged that it is much tougher to be 58th in class VII than to be 1st or 2nd in class III.

The first timeI flunked my math and science courses whenI was in class V... Maa couldn’t believe it (her daughter?! her daughter?! ). She was so embarrassed that she decided to go to Rajshahi to bury her shame... she did that. My mama went to get my report card and my teachers severely complained to him about my misdeeds, mishaps and missed classes!I prayed hard to mother earth to open up and swallow me in.... but alas... she was indifferent; she didn't understand the emergency! Too busy to hear the prayers of a 10-year-old. however her decision wasn't that bad; after all, where would this 25 year old blogger come from if mother earth had embraced her that day... life has her strange ways to dictate us.

I have suddenly rediscovered my SSC mark-sheet today. That’s the reason whyI am writing this drivel about school today.I remembered that i got 4 letters (more than 80%)in SSC but couldn’t think which subjectsI achieved those distinctions in.I discovered thatI got letters in Science (!), Maths (!!), Agricultural Science (!!!) and Religion (!!!!).... can you belive it?I cannott make even tiny calculations without calculators (thank god Samsung mobile phones have them), cant stand reading even science-fiction; and i got letters in maths and science! if you know me even for a week, you would know that the only muslim thing about me is my last name... and i got distinctions in Islamiat... ah selukas! what a strange world!

Some more feathers were added to my distinction glories after my HSC. From standing 58th out of a class of 200 students, I stood 16th in the Dhaka Board out of almost two hundred thousand students. So many doors of possibilities werewide open. I could have been a mathematician or a woman moulana or a shrimp-specialist or at least an entomologist…. I could not be any of those. Instead I ended up eventually as a student of English literature (where I topped the class, imagine that); and now I am a university teacher, something I never dreamt of becoming.

There is a famous “road” poem by Robert Frost where you always get to choose from two roads “diverged in a yellow wood”… the traveler stands “and look[s] down one as far as [one] could / To where it bent in the undergrowth”. He thinks and ponders; evaluates and reevaluates... and then takes the “different” one, the one he claims to be “less traveled by”.

But if you ask me… it all bullshit!

You never have any choice. Life chains you .. punches you on the face... handcuffs you and takes you to gallows. when (the hell) do you have time to ponder and choose between roads? Robert Frost had time. ... you dont. all you have is a drab and colorless one way. you cant even look back. there are crashes and bangs; speeding faces and fading music. your memory blots out every time you try recollect whether there was any other way or not. there was no other way...there is none!

enjoy your r.i.d.e.