Something yet not much

Small-town America

2010-11-17T02:44:00.000-08:00

When I lived in New Brunswick a couple of years back, I thought I was living in small town America. I lived 45 minutes away from New York City, which made everything seem small, bland, and in need of accelaration. In my mind, New Brunswick badly needed all of those-- every thing was within walking distance. How much smaller can a town get? I was sure that an American small town anywhere couldn’t be very different than New Brunswick. After all, our perspectives are greatly determined, among other factors, by our current location and also by our ignorance of other locations.

Life in New Brunswick was hard for me. I lived in an absolutely run-down house with two crazy roommates. One of whom would walk around in his underwear and yell at other people for pleasure. He was an undergraduate student from Croatia, a soccer player with a criminal charge by the New Jersey State Police for beating a man to near-pulp on a bar brawl. I lived in perpetual fear that I was his next victim. My other roommate was a Chinese undergraduate student. He was quiet, nice and all that. But soon I realized that he was very non-assertive and therefore followed the other guy’s directions about almost everything; it was unpleasant. I was traumatized for a while but then I began to look for my own ways to deal with the “men in the house”. I was the true subaltern—a woman, a woman of color (to be accurate), better yet, an international student who was a woman of color. To be marginalized was my fate. I always wanted to tell them how I felt. Could I do it? Could the subaltern finally speak? Well, that’s another story.

My location changed after my one year stint at Rutgers University and so did my perspective.

I moved to Stillwater, Oklahoma in the fall of 2009. I decided to go to graduate school in order to stay close to the man I was then in love with. The love did not prosper but my knowledge about America in general broadened. After almost three years here in Stillwater, and fifteen more pounds, I am convinced that I have a better knowledge of what smalltown America is all about. Knowledge shared is knowledge squared. As an academic, I am all for that.

Small-town America is where every American has a truck. The bigger the truck is the higher the prestige of the owner. One Oklahoman friend of mine recently told me that the truck makes him feel macho! Size does matter here. And I used to think trucks were only good for farming needs. But nope, it is just a great way to show off your masculinity! If you happen to be a poor international graduate student with a bicycle, chances are that you will be pushed around by the monstrous trucks until you finally decide to get rid of the hazards of having a bicycle in the truck-town and walk the miles. But then again, Stillwater doesn’t have sidewalks on all the roads. So get ready to be pushed around, or just join the club, buy a truck.

I am from a big city is not saying much, because the populatin of my country is so huge that any city is a big one. And it is public knowledge that big cities are all about, name-calling, screaming, and half-neurotic cranky people. No one smiles at you for nothing. We get suspicious when someone is nice to us. Be it London or New York, New Delhi or Dhaka, it is unlikely that you will cross the street without being shouted at several times. And we are comfortable with that. Small town America, on the other hand is all about smiling. You walk on the street, the passer-by smiles at you. You go to a store, the attendant smiles at you. You go wherever, whoever you see smiles at you. You keep on wondering why the hell everyone smiles at you and then you encounter the smiliest people of all-- the proselytizers. They will feed you for free, take you to field-trips for free, praise your culture and food for free and then hand you a bible. And while doing all that, they will keep up their smiling face.

I remember once I went to a place to eat free lunch. I was stuffing my face with hot-dogs when a good looking couple appeared and smiled at me. As I tried to curve my face in a faint shape of a smile, they started a metaphysical conversation about, life and after-life, being and nothingness, sin and its predicament and so on. I slowly started chewing on my free food as the conversation turned to Jesus and his love. I looked at the woman with curiosity. She had bright eyes and a very convincing style of talking. She seemed so sure that I was going to hell unless I followed her prescription. I looked away and started contemplating about free food and its predicament. Just before I finished my third chili-dog, I received a revelation. I was convinced that whoever came up with the wise saying “there is nothing called a free lunch” must have been an international graduate student in an American smalltown who once had hot-dogs on a churchyard.

And then there are the Q&A sessions. A lot of them. A whole lot.

For example, Gentleman #1 asked me “Where are you from?” (Oh, how I dread this question!)

I say softly, “Bangladesh”.

-“Where?” he asked again.

-“I am from Bangladesh.” I said it out loud this time.

-“Oh alright.” (as if he knew where it was).

-“So what part of India is that?”

-“It’s not in India”, I say.

-“But you totally look Indian. There is no difference”

-“Oh I do, Thanks! Where are you from?”

- “I am from Jay”

- “What?

-“Jay”

-“What part of world is that?”

-“It’s Oklahoma. I am from Jay, Oklahoma.”

Thank goodness for the world of mutual ignorance, I thought, none of us had any idea where we were from.

And then there is Lady#2. She came up to me in a party and said excitedly,

-“I love your dress!”

-“Thanks, your shirt is pretty, too”

-“I love your accent!” she got more excited now.

- “Your accent is not too bad either” I said grumpily.

-“And your English is very good”.

- “So is yours”, I said.

This was a classic case of pragmatic failure. There was a pause-- about 30 seconds of awkward silence-- soon after which she ran towards a Chinese friend of mine. I evesdropped, she was saying the same things.

When I went back to Dhaka last summer, I realized that the smalltown ghosts could not be so easily shrugged off. I went to one random Aunty’s place with my mother. Now it was my turn to defend my smalltown existence. Aunty asked me,

- “Where do you live?”

- “Stillwater”, I said.

- “Where is that?”

- “It’s in Oklahoma”

- “Where is that?”

- “It’s in America”

- “No it’s not, you think I don’t know anything, ha?”

- “No, aunty, seriously, it is in the midwest”

- “Midwest? How far from New York is it?”

The conversation went on for 20 minutes and my mind went all north-north-west. At this point, from the interior of the house, appeared aunty’s handsome son whom my parents were secretly yet quite obviously trying to set me up with. “Come, come, beta, meet Sharmee”, aunty said to him, “she lives in Toronto”. I said hurriedly “no no, I live in Stillwater”. Aunty looked annoyed this time, “You live there, right? It’s your home. Toronto or Stillwater, what is the difference? All of those are in America only!”

Really, what was the difference?

I kept on thinking.

I have met some amazing people here, yet nothing about Stillwater feels like home. Nothing about nowhere feels like home. I am still homesick. However, when you don’t know where home is, there is really no difference.

Great Poetry Series 6

2010-08-07T16:59:00.000-07:00

A Child's Christmas in Wales

Dylan Thomas (Swansea, South Wales 1914 - New York, United States1953)

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or, if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.

And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.

Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and smacking at the smoke with a slipper.

"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his slipper as though he were conducting.
"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and ran out of the house to the telephone box.

"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires."

But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt, Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?"

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our fence."

"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow. They knocked on the doors with blue knuckles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on fishmonger's slabs. "He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's hump, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was gone."

"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why."

"Go on the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches, cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who, if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall. And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And then it was breakfast under the balloons."

"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas morning, with dog-disturbing whistle and sugar fags, I would scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers."

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing, no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite, to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.

I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high, so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr. Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"

The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills, and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly; and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with rum, because it was only once a year.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them? Hark the Herald?"
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small, dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

Great Poetry Series 5

2010-08-07T15:21:00.000-07:00

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). Prufrock and Other Observations. 1917

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats 5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go 35
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare 45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress 65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while, 90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— 95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while, 100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . .

110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use, 115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old … 120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

125

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

------------------------------------------

Translation of the Epigraph:

"If I thought that my reply would be to someone who would ever return to earth,
this flame would remain without further movement; but as no one has ever returned
alive from this gulf, if what I hear is true, I can answer you with no fear of infamy."

These lines are quoted from Dante's "Inferno", and are spoken by the character of
Count Guido da Montefelltro. Dante meets the punished Guido in the Eighth chasm
of Hell. Guido explains that he is speaking freely to Dante only because he believes
Dante is one of the dead who could never return to earth to report what he says.

An Elegy for the Grass Flowers

2009-02-04T23:45:00.000-08:00

How could I burn those letters that were fused with fragrance?
How could I burn those letters that were cleansed with love?
I have drowned those letters in the Ganges today.
I have set fire to the flowing waters today.

-- Rajendranath Rahbar

I was talking to my sister on the 13 th of January about things that are happening in our lives. We always do that-- tell each other about what we are doing or planning to do. I was telling her how infinitely fatigued I was after a Ulysses-like journey through the east coast and the south. I was in Oklahoma, warm and comfortable in the company of a wonderful host. My sister told me she saw a picture of Rupok in the newspaper. In remembrance of his memories, his family puts up a little ad twice every year – on his birthday and on the day he died.

It has been seven years!

Memories work in strange ways. I remember so many little things he told me, or places that we have been to together. What I cannot recall is his face. Closing my eyes, I try hard to conjure a mental image of him sometimes. My memories fail me. I have pictures of him elsewhere that I can look at, but I don’t have a picture of him in my head. May be that is God’s revenge on me for not answering so many desperate calls he made to my house when he was alive. I was angry. I was angry and he was gone.

I remember he wanted to be a grass-flower—one always within your reach but one you don’t always notice, one that blooms for its own pleasure and dies under your feet. I wanted to be a grass-flower too. He said everyone was a different flower. I, for example, was a flower of the moonlight. It is the flower that moonlight makes on your floor coming through the carved ventilators of the room. Why, I asked, did I have be that? Because no matter how many times he wanted to hold it, the flower always escaped. It is something you spend all your life trying to conquer. It gets you going.

I remember I went crazy after he died. I didn’t talk to anyone for months. I would freak out every time I heard the siren of an ambulance (If you know me, you know I still have the siren phobia). I had dreams almost every night where Rupok told me everybody was lying and he was not dead. I spent my days curled up in my bed beside the window looking at the cruel sky. I was skipping classes for months. I don’t remember at what point I started going back to school; but what I do remember is that I couldn’t write anything. I spent the entire class hour staring at the blank sheets. At times my sister couldn’t handle it. She couldn’t help crying and telling me “live for me, I love you too”. Probably it is for her that I slowly managed to recover some façade of normalcy.

(to be continued)

Country Roads, Take me Home

2008-10-13T23:10:00.000-07:00

One crosses four stages when s/he comes to a new country, said the facilitator at the orientation for the Fulbright FLTAs at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The four Hs. First it is the Honeymoon stage where everything about the new country seems great and fun. Everyone seems so friendly and the place appears to teem with excitement. Then comes the Hostility stage when the dreams are deceived and you are faced with all the shocks and hazards of a foreign territory. The Humor stage comes after that where you laugh at all your naiveties – “ha ha ha! I didn’t know how to use the vending machine” or “hi hi hi! I was lost at the New York Penn station for 2 hours until my friend came and rescued me”—and so on. The last stage is the Home stage where you come full circle and feel confident and comfortable and at home in the new country. With all its pros and cons you love to stay in the country which was once so foreign to you. She sincerely hoped that we all would experience the Home stage in the US at least by the end of our 10 months stay, if not before.

Laws and rules never work smoothly with me. If there is a law book that stands high in my estimation, it will be the Murphy’s Law. For me, if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. Things have been going wrong from the very first day I arrived here, or even before that. I almost missed the flight from Dubai to London. I was sitting in the airport lounge and reading an all time favorite book of mine (Chobirr Deshe Kobitar Deshe by Sunil) when I heard they were announcing someone’s name and telling it was the last call to board. It was some poor Mash-kat Khassen and I genuinely felt bad about him/her and went back to my book. It was almost time for my flight so I sluggishly went to the airline counter and they told me to run to the aircraft because the gate was closing. They were actually announcing for me! Things that went wrong after coming to the states would require me to write the length of two novels. I plan to write about them sometime later.

I don’t have much work to do here. I live in a fairly nice apartment with two other people. I go to class, come back, cook, eat, read, write or listen to music. It sounds like the perfect little life that any Bangladeshi girl would want. But if you ask me, I wanna go home.

Let me share with you what happened today when I was waiting for my shuttle to go my university. I was standing in the corner of the street and I heard some noise and shouts in the apartment right by the road. Then suddenly the window glass from the first floor broke and fell on the road in thousand of pieces. I don’t know what happened there. But I could be severely injured in a matter of minutes. I was standing right there half a minute ago! That was scary.

I had one of my best experiences in that particular corner of the road as well. Some weeks back I was standing there waiting for the shuttle. It was raining quite heavily. I didn’t have an umbrella so I was trying to cover my head with my jacket. A car stopped in front of me and a man gave me his umbrella. He saw that I was hesitant, but he insisted that I took it. He later gave me a ride to my university. I figured out he owns a bar at the corner of the street where I lived. He told me giving me the umbrella was his good deed of the day.

(To be continued)

photo courtesy: flickr.com/photos/ilovethecolts/2673760915/

All That Glitters

2008-07-08T12:27:00.000-07:00

The book that i am reading now is called 'A Golden Age'; a very aptly named novel that deals withthe 1971 war of independence of Bangladesh. I bought this book about a year back.i had also leafed through it. but as i am reading it closely, i am pretty disappointed. I understand that the war of Bangladesh -- a struggle of epic grandeur-- has somehow been blurred, exoticised and/or sometimes melodramatized in this book. I won't even talk about the culture specific errors.i have so far figured out 33 of them... and i have about hundred more pages to go to finish it.who knows i might just score half a century! I will jot everything down for an academic article that i am planning to write soon.

I was talking to an American professor some weeks back and he told me how his students found this book overwhelming. i said that the book wanted to cater to your taste, so i am not surprised. He didn't understand why i was being so hard on that poor book, especially after it had won this country a reasonable share of international recognition. "You are really being emotional", Said T.S, "after all it is a novel and you cannot deny the creative liberty that the author might take."

Well, Mr. T.S. .. i understand that you and others alike in the US are great advocates of creative freedom even though the artists there still feel huge pressure from the state authorities, censor boards and so on. Don't get me wrong here. I am all for the freedom the artist too. But taking liberty does not mean presenting you with something full of historical errors and trying to pass it off as authentic.

It doesnt matter you said.. well.. what if somebody writes that the American civil war was fought between 11 southern states and one Mister chinese-american... or that during the hot summer afternoon of 911, 2001, two planes attacked the empire states building in New York city and it changed the history of the world? Do you think America will accpet it because one Ms. Whatsoever has to exercise her creative freedom?i don't think so. IF you are writing a historical novel, you better get the history straight. Surely, I wouldn't minda new kind of reality had you been using magic-realism to tell the tale. That was not the case here, right?

For the sake of arguing, you could still say that these distorted facts won't matter to you. But If facts about my country is distorted, It will matter to me. 1971 is not merely a year for me- for us- it is golden past, a time etched into our conscience as the symbol of love, protest and passion. It matters to me when the glitzy western publishers go all ooh-aah about a novel that is so poorly wirtten and more importantly one which deals with an event like the 1971 war of independence with such commercialized yet amaturish manner.

You will not understand it... and it doesnt matterto me.

You can go to hell, because you don't matter at all.

To Celebrate You, My Love

2008-04-23T12:45:00.000-07:00

Fear not, my love
I will make such arrangements that the army
Will march past us with roses on their shoulders
And salute you
Only you, sweetheart.

Fear not, My love
I will make such planning that
Crossing the wilderness, breaking all the wire-fences
And loaded with all the memories of the warfronts
The armed cars will come to play sonata
Only at your door steps, my sweetheart.

Don’t panic, my love.
I will play such tricks that
The B-52s and the MIG-21s will only groan overhead.
I will make them pour chocolates, toffees and candies
Like paratroopers into your backyard, my sweetheart.

Don’t worry, don’t worry
I will maneuver things in such a way that
A poet will give command
And all the fleets in the Bay of Bengal
And all the voters in the next general election
Will unanimously support the lover, my sweetheart.

All possibilities of war, be sure my love, will evaporate
I will engineer the election and the singer
Will become the leader of the opposition.
A group of red-blue-golden fishes
Will look after the trenches in the borders
Smuggling anything but love will be prohibited. My sweetheart.

Don’t agonize now, my love
I will make it possible where
Devaluation of money will stop
And there will be a boom in the number of soulful poetry.
I will make the dagger fall from the assassin’s hands
Not for the fear of public hatred, but for the dread of public kissing.

Don’t be afraid, my love.
Like the sudden attack of spring on the wintry park
I will have all the revolutionaries’ line into the city
To play accordions, only for you.

Don’t be afraid, my love
I will ensure that you will get
At least four lakh taka as soon as you deposit
One rose or one Chandramallika in the State Bank.
Or four cardigans in exchange of a Jasmine.

Fear not, fear not, fear not, my love
I will ascertain that the navy, the air-force and the military
Will keep you safe day and night

And celebrate you… only you
My love.

[This is my translation of Shahid Kadri's "Tomake Ovibadon, Priyotoma"]

Ah Calcutta!

2008-03-01T12:10:00.000-08:00

“You are going to my hometown! Kolkata is great” said Sahana when she heard that I was taking a flight to Kolkata in less than some two hours. Her eyes brightened. Kolkata is home to her, though she now lives in Dhaka. We were not sure of this trip even before 24 hours. One of our group members was rejected the visa making everything uncertain for everyone else. She got it the night before and the tour was on again. Others started by road the next morning; while I was held to witness the historical presence of one of my favorite (and one of the most outstanding) writers writing in English as he lectured at IUB on February the 22 nd . He is originally from the place I was going to. He is from Kolkata.

Amitav Ghosh has the capacity to detonate a grenade inside your mind. I admit that I was absolutely swept off my feet when I first came across The Shadow Lines. The narrative is so intricate yet powerful that for a very long time everything I read seemed utterly bland. For a very long time I was in a trance. I would only think of May who witnessed how the riotous mob cut open her lover’s throat; or, the anonymous narrator who hopelessly loved the girl he could never have. What tormented me most, however, was the longing of the narrator’s grandmother for Dhaka—her home—which had been callously cut off her life by the shadow lines of partition.

Every time I went to India after that, I could not help thinking of the invisible shadow lines of separation and of connection. I thought of it this time too. As I moved around Kolkata, I came across many people with a peculiar sense of longing for Bangladesh. One salesperson started calling me Boin instead of Didi and also started talking in a broken Barisal dialect when she realized that we are from the other side of the border. A friend of my brother kept talking about how much his father misses that part of Bengal and how he himslef doesn’t care a shit about that being born in Kolkata. I met my mother’s brother who has been living in India since 1964 and only has faint memories of Rajshahi. May be he has forgotten how his mother, my grandmother, looked 44 years back. She, now 84 years old and paralyzed from waist down, sometimes sobs “Debu, Debu” but soon her physical ailments overpower her sense of loss and she is pulled back to the reality. My grandma’s brother, a retired government officer, has a longing for Balihar, a remote village in Naogaon and his birthplace. He, nevertheless, understands that the Balihar of his imagination will not match with what he might see. Therefore, he doesn’t also want to puncture his mental picture.

We stayed in Kolkata for 3 days. It was fun for us girls; we did crazy shopping. The guys, however, had to remain satisfied with carrying our bags to the hotel. The steamy street food, the tana-rickshaws, the glitzy shopping malls, the mushrooming cineplexes and the tourists make Kolkata the olla podrida of colors and cultures. The flavor of internationalism is not altogether absent. But yet Kolkata remains different; different than all the other places that we might go to. It is a place with which we all share a love-hate relationship. We get angry why the hell we need visas to go there… it is not REALLY bidesh. . It is dirty like Dhaka yet it is lovable. After all, we share the same language if not the same nationality. There are so many shadow lines to connect us. Let’s not think for a while about the lines that separate. Ah Calcutta!

Leave Taking: Some Thoughts

2008-01-14T09:13:00.000-08:00

It has been really interesting to observe how the decision of leaving can tie you up to that paticular place more strongly. As long as you live there, you really do not belong there. It's only when you leave you begin to relive the traces of the left behind zone. It is like childhood; you dont love it when you are a child. You learn to recognize the innocence after the innocence is lost. Or, It is like Youth-- one can only fully appreciate the beauty and the joys of it when s/he is past it-- a friend of mine told me once. It is, i guess, the eternal condition of human mind....a starange voyeurism towards the lost connections... an uneasy yearning for the irrecoverable past.

I'm being almost boringly nostalgic today because i'm taking a leave for good-- from two places that have played crucial parts in my process of growing up. We are shifting to a new house and im giving up my UIU job.

Don't Think Twice, It's All Right

2008-01-11T07:18:00.000-08:00

It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe
It don't matter, anyhow
An' it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe
If you don't know by now
When your rooster crows at the break of dawn
Look out your window and I'll be gone
You're the reason I'm trav'lin' on
Don't think twice, it's all right

It ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe
That light I never knowed
An' it ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe
I'm on the dark side of the road
Still I wish there was somethin' you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay
We never did too much talkin' anyway
So don't think twice, it's all right

It ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal
Like you never did before
It ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal
I can't hear you any more
I'm a-thinkin' and a-wond'rin' all the way down the road
I once loved a woman, a child I'm told
I give her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don't think twice, it's all right

I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road, babe
Where I'm bound, I can't tell
But goodbye's too good a word, gal
So I'll just say fare thee well
I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don't mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don't think twice, it's all right

Coming Soon.............

2007-12-21T10:04:00.000-08:00

BREAKING NEWS!! BREAKING NEWS !!!

Look forward to the lists to be uploaded on December the 31 st 2007

Things I will do in 2008
Things I will quit 2008
Books I will read in 2008
People I will love in 2008
People I will hate in 2008

These and many more…….Coming soon !!!

Don’t miss. So, watch out........

love,

sharmee

Rokeya Hall recollections

2007-12-17T12:06:00.000-08:00

If you ask me what about Dhaka University I have enjoyed the most, I will probably say it is my illegal stays at Rokeya Hall. The hall authority tries their best to prevent illegal aliens (like me) even from entering into that land of gold. There is a three-fold security system; at the main gate, at the road leading to the dormitories and then at the gate of the dormitories. But hey we are bahadur bangalis; tougher than toughest immigration laws couldn’t prevent us from entering into the US and many other countries, what big deal is Rokeya Hall? Our Bengali brethren have set great examples of walking across deserts or swimming across oceans to reach to their coveted places – countries like Poland or Cyprus. Some have even tried to fly clinging onto the tyre or the propeller of the airplane to go to Dubai or Abu Dhabi. When we want to go somewhere, we GO there. It would have been a great disgrace if we failed to enter the hall. It really involved very little effort compared to the enormous travels our brothers have undertaken.

I could talk about the 101-ways-of-sneaking-in, but if that becomes public knowledge, the authorities will try to mend the loopholes and many illegal aliens like me will be deprived of the exquisite pleasure of that life. It is public interest that I am safeguarding. If you really want to know about it, I will give you some tips in private; tips that were given to me by a senior student (in private, of course).

[to be continued]

Death by Water

2007-12-10T10:20:00.000-08:00

Dhaka never was so cruel as it seemed today.

just a few days back (last thursday, to be specific) the soft and loving winter sun enveloped me as i was walking down the posh streets of Baridhara. i did not walk for long, though i wanted to... he thought the destination was too far away to be reached walking. i boarded on a rickshaw with him.
i was enjoying the walk but he seemed more eager in reaching.

we both knew what reaching meant. we both knew reaching would force us into the dark and cold card-board-box i hate to be in. the journey was sweet... the destination-- bitter, bitter... oh life!

i have walked along these roads before...these roads had killed me then. they killed me again this time.

Dhaka was never so bleak as it is today.

In Search of a Hero...

2007-10-30T10:48:00.000-07:00

In search of a Hero

We are in a dire need for a hero. I have been searching one for myself for long. An article some Fridays back in the Star Weekend Magazine has reinforced that search to a great extent. I am firm and resolute. I will not sit still now until I find a hero. Not necessarily tall, dark and handsome; nor essentially bold, young and restless— he will only have to possess the passion/ splendor worth a hero . I am ready to discount heavily for the wanted one. If I can only discover the slightest glint of unadulterated heroism, I am ready to idolize him/ her for the rest of my life. Hence begins my quest for the hero of all seasons. Someone whose greatness will make him rise above the ordinary.

But heroes are extremely scarce; on top of that, you can never be satisfied with one hero these days, commented my best friend. It is the age of diversity, dude! Pluralism is the only mantra. Take the face of Michelangelo’s David, place it over the body of Brad Pitt, add the courage of Achilles and the compassion of Gautam Buddha, dress him in a fashionable summer suit from Armani’s; and for the premium twist, endow him with the wit of Mark Twain and the intelligence of Stephen Hawkins! Shake it well and serve it cool. Priceless, isn’t it? For everything else there is Master Card. Don’t forget to hand him that, too. As long as poverty doesn’t find its way to the museum, a poor hero might just fail to make a heroic impression.

See, what television has done to these people? However, I will not let my cynic friend (or anyone else, for that matter) daunt my determination. My search is still on.

My all time search companion Google has just disappointed me highly. The first item in the result is some Hercules Offshore Inc. Then there is a gateway to UK universities, one film, and a lot of other sites for a hip TV show called Heroes… mind you my reader… it is HEROES …Plural…

Classical heroes will not be a good choice. The out and out un-heroic setting of Bangladesh today won’t be a favorable ground for them to perform heroically. Achilles will have to constantly guard his ornamented shield from muggers. However, protecting it from them won’t be sufficient. The newly aware income tax people won’t let him be at peace. He will be charged for having gold shields without proper license, or riding horses without proper training. The newly alert police department might also get him by his heels and cast him behind bars for failing to show a plausible source of income. “My mother carved it for me” won’t be, as far as I think, a credible explanation. It could be different if it was his mother-in-law. Everybody in this country knows how behind every great riches exist the blessings of (one or more) great and generous parents-in-law. Achilles, adieu….you are not my hero.

Let’s now see, ladies and gentleman, if a screen hero can salvage us. I have quite a few choices. Let’s weigh them one by one. I hate spiders ... so spider-man is out. Don’t even ask me to consider Super-man; see, he cannot even hide his obnoxious underwear. Batman is not smart enough and X-men are not good enough. I was thinking of considering Mr. Harry Potter, but a friend told me how thinking about an underaged hero can really get me the label of a pedophile. Bourne has forgotten his identity, Neo has lost his world, Don is dead and Bond is out of circulation. Screen heroes are no good. So, Out! Out! you brief candle…

Now, as I turn to pick a hero out of the political leaders, the disappointment is even more intense. There cannot be any debate about the incompetence of our own Hasina-Khaleda. They are corrupt, selfish, phony and merely self-serving leaders. But these adjectives can be used unequivocally about other political leaders. Take for example George Bush or John Howard or Than Shew or Osama Bin Laden. Kofi Anan failed to maintain world-peace, so did Ghali, so will Ban Ki- moon. They cannot be my hero. They are not good enough. Or is it that I am too hard to please? I don’t think so. I just don't want to settle for less. After allI I am in search of a true hero.

It is an impossible search. I cannot idolize anybody. I don’t have any great footsteps to follow. Is true heroism really impossible in our times?

I was losing my mind. But quite unexpectedly, just a while ago, I found my hero. It has everything I was looking for. It is the perfect combination of power and speed. It promises of longevity and good service. The new range of Hero Honda bikes has Splendor, Glamour, Karizma, Dawn, Pleasure and Passion. They have Front Brakes and Rear Brakes, for safety; and high-quality front tyre and rear tyre for smooth suspension. The fuel tank is reasonably big and they come in a variety of colors. Wow! That’s all I wanted. I have finally found my real hero. Let me go and quickly get my Mastercard. This Hero seems worth my cash.

The Hero is DEAD. Long live the Hero.

Thoughts of a Jealous Lover

2007-10-20T06:33:00.000-07:00

You must know that you can turn around
And find that objects are in love with each other:
Toothbrushes kissing while another looks on.
(You don''t know what this existence is like.
Strangers fear my sunken eyes, blisteringly narrowed.)
At work one Nalgene bottle watches over a smaller one,
A doting mother and a little one at sport.
Even donuts nuzzle and caress each other, the jam-filled ones--
The cruller is lonely.

It gets my hackles up.

I force pencils on my desk to lean away from each other in their jar
I look for sympathetic lamps and curtains, but they're all cold
And tell me snootily to get over it.
Books turn away from me, hiding their faces
Icily from me, coquettishly from one another.

I want them to not touch
I wish I could control gravity
I'd make them float apart, alone, each object isolated and helpless,

Alone.

At home I open the cutlery drawer to see one spoon lying atop another: silver foreplay,
And I shriek, "I've caught you!"
"Now, now." says the top spoon in its plastic organizer, "yes, we are in bed together, but
truly, we were just talking."
So he says--yet I slam the drawer shut and I seethe.

-Miriam Breslow

The Laughing Stock

2007-10-11T06:24:00.000-07:00

I am not yet back into the right frame of mind to write...
if i open my mouth, i will be sarcastic, if i write i will be critical...
i'm not sure what might hurt the fragile feelings of the people in power....
therefore, it is better for me to crack some jokes today.... well, not in public..
we cannot shout at the government. let us just laugh.

-Laugh??? At WHOM????

- At ourselves mister. We will not laugh at the cartoon. We will not laugh at the corrupt politicians.
There is no question about laughing at the Truth Commission.
we will only laugh at ourselves.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ....
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Birthday Banter

2007-08-30T02:54:00.000-07:00

another year passed me by two-days back...
another birthday... with gifts and celebration..
another night of being smashed...
another chill reminder of time's winged chariot...

happy birthday to me [?]

Dog Day Afternoon.... Aug 24, 2007

2007-08-23T14:21:00.000-07:00

today is the third day of curfew here in dhaka...
we are all stranded at home...

who thought that a brawl between a university student and a non-commissioned army official would trigger such a storm throughout the country?

as far as i understand .. it was ok the first day... the protest was right and spontaneous.. but yesterday's events were politically driven... the government DID withdraw the army camps from the university. didnt they? then what was the point of terrorizing the ordinary people in the streets. i went to the university early in the morning. i had a class at 10.40... as i went there i heard that the classes were canceled. then i saw a procession coming down the mirpur road... if you ask me, most of them didn't look like students. suddenly the mob went wild and the people started throwing stones at the buildings. i could come home somehow...but my TA told me later that The United University building doesn't even have one window glass left unbroken.

you may not agree with me, but we have invited this... we have created a situation for an army-backed government first... and now we couldn't just wait to have them shoving bamboos up our asses. we are thoroughly rotten.

now sit back, you brave bangalees, and suck you thumb.

[not in a mood to finish my previous blog... please pardon my inconsistency ]

These Learning Experiences

2007-08-08T12:21:00.000-07:00

There is a Bengali saying that goes something like this: “Buddhiman shikhe dekhe… Boka shikhe theke”. Which roughly translates into English as “smart peoplegetthe lesson from others experiences, the stupid ones don’t until they suffer themselves” I have no doubts that I am a “boka”... because I never learnt from others; I always learnt a lesson only when I had to drag myself through fire… and I forgot them [both about the lesson and the fire] as soon as they were over. And then…those "ooops-I-did-it-again" events were soon resurrected to my misery. The fire must be really tempting and I must be the most stupidest ass walking the face of the earth…

When we were preparing for Australasian Intervarsity Debating Championships [or Australs, for short] back in July 2004, I was quite confident in my abilities. I told our teacher, Meher Nigar June, like a self-confident pompous jerk “Ma'am don’t worry; I am a fast learner.”
She was not happy. the conversation that followed was something like this--

MNJ: fast-learner? I see. But you should rather say you are a hard-worker.
Me: Yes Ma’am. I am that too. [just imagine whatta pompous lying jerk I was]
MNJ: oh, well…

I haven't learnt a great deal from life. But the things I did manage to learn came a little too late. so late, that they were of little significance. It is like the NTV people learning to use the Oxygen cylinder after the entire building had been burnt down and all the films and documents were totally destroyed. An opportunity to apply the skill ofcontrolling fire is of little value now. But there could be a “next time”... who knows? Had they learnt it earlier from numerous garment-factory- fiery-tragedies, the price could have been less. NTV folks must be real “boka” too.

Ma says I took a very long time to learn to read. When my siblings could spell considerably long and complex polysyllabic words like “[e for] elephant” or “[t for television]”, I was stuck at the first letter of the alphabet; all I could do was to modestly spell a-p-p-l-e = apple. After I went to school, my parents found to their dismay that I was fast at learning to swear, fight and do all other kinds of evil deeds but still slow with studies.

It was probably the time when I had emerged as an accomplished popstar. During the Tiffin break, I would go running to different senior students [mostly girls], give a smile and ask them to buy me a Jhalmuri or Amra worth 1 taka. I was considerate enough not to put my 10-11 year old patrons through too much financial hurdles by asking for a 2 taka candy-floss or a 5 taka ice-cream. As time went by and my fame grew, I started to sing half-correct songs in absolutely incorrect melody or recite a newly learnt nursery rhyme with vigorous body movements to a larger audience. Many more patrons were now eager to see me dancing and singing; and then pay for my Jhalmuri. My brother, who was then in class 1, discovered my performance-spree at some point and reported to Ma about it. My artistic endeavors were banned.

The two lessons learnt were: 1. [from the secondary source: Ma] It was not respectable for a singer-dancer to perform everywhere. 2. [from the primary source] My smile had the potential to get me some of the things I wanted.

Photo Courtesy: http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/earlycareer/teaching/learningstyles.html

Where Have All the Lovers Gone??

2007-07-16T01:03:00.000-07:00

If you want to know the truth, we are a shameless nation.
with some exceptions, we, the Bangladeshis, in general never use “sorry”, “thank you” “excuse me” or any other polite words when they are needed, let alone..."could you please tell me" or "may I sit here" or "may ask you a personal..." etc etc. we never stand in lines for elevators. We never open doors for ladies. We are bahadur bangalees; we are discourteous, so? What’s the big deal?

On many occasions, I have wondered that if there was an international spitting competition, nobody could stop the Bengal tigers from being the permanent champions... and guess what, we don't even need stadiums, coaches, trainings and other paraphernalia of some other sports that our brave boys are currently trying their hands on and sometimes shitting in their pants when faced with stronger opponents (remember the recent BD-Srilanka test series??). We could easily use our wide roads as spittoons everyday. look at us now....we spit here and there; now and then; when we are angry or when we are sad; from buses or from rickshaws; leisurely or copiously. we spit, whenever wherever ...this is our national pastime.

Then, there is the peeing extravaganza. By public demand, it can also be titled as the national pastime activity jointly with the previous one. I will not elaborate it any further. But if you are a Bangladeshi, you know what I am talking about. It will be infinitely difficult to find a wall in Dhaka that has not been adequately showered by the natural springs. For us, “All the world’s a lavatory… And all menmerely pee-ers." This is how Dhaka works. We are bahadur bangalees; we are crude, so? What’s the big deal?

We are shameless in these aforementioned (and some more) cases… but don’t you think that we lack shame altogether. We get absolutely tongue-tied with shame and embarrassment whenever it is “Love” that we are dealing with.

Love. Yes... whenever we see people in love, we, the bangalees are disturbed. We say this and that... we criticize and comment. Lovers are a forbidden race here in this pseudo conservative Islamic state. But still young men and women all over Bangladesh fall in love. Like everywhere else, they make promises and break them; they share moments of delight or pangs of separation. But public display of affection is an absolute no-no.

So where do the lovers go?

Ten years back, lovers used to go to the Chinese restaurants and chat over a bowl of chicken corn soup for 3 hours. It was cost-effective for the lovers… a table for two in the corner… half-dark with dim blue bulbs… faint background music and a steaming bowl soup. Who doesn’t know that darkness and soup always have had positive effects on the lovers’ health? The restaurant owners, however, soon realized that their profit in business was inversely proportionate with those 3 hours of love-talks. The good restaurants stopped serving chicken corn soup only. They would only take orders for a full meal … soup, appetizer, main dish, side dishes, beverage and desert. Lovers, as we know, universally run short of cash. Chinese restaurants were soon crossed out of their lists.

Next came the fast food places with fancy and ambitious names like Pizza Corner, Pizza Place, Pizza Palace and Pizza Howdy. Lovers went there and found out that they sold everything but pizzas . They sell small kababs inside small buns and call them Burgers; they also sell big kababs inside a big buns; and call them Hotdogs. . The prices were high but privacy was low. Moreover, those places were heavily lighted. Some places with dim lights like Big Bite (no pun intended) and some with affordable price like Arabian Fast Food managed to retain their places in the lovers’ lists; others were soon closed down.

Then came many lounges and many cafes. The lounge sofas would always be occupied by snooty teenage wanna-bees and the cafes were all appropriated by all those arty pretentious bores. Lovers would always feel out-of-place in their company. We, the bangalees (both snooty and arty), frowned at them… got irritated at their small signs of affection. You know, We don’t like to see public display of affection. Pissing in public is acceptable to us but kissing in public is absolutely intolerable. We are bahadur Bangalees; we are hypocrites. so? whats the big deal?

The lovers soon found their haunts. Lovers from the southern part of the city now go to the good old Dhaka University Campus. Rumor has it that Fuller Road and TSC are the two hottest spots. The place is green and open.; in addition to that, for hungry lovers (no pun again), there are innumerable Badam, Chanachur and Jhalmuri vendors; and all at an affordable price. Lovers have realized that the most other men and women who populate these places belong to the universal brotherhood of lovers themselves.

Rich lovers from the northern part of the town are still suffering from lack of dating places. How long one can browse through the mushrooming fast food stores and restaurants, they have complained. They have demanded for an affordable place for lovers in this locality. The price of loving in this area is high just as the price of any other thing. Rumor also has it that they are planning to hold a procession demanding a lover’s lane. After the emergency is over, that is.

Not-so-rich lovers from the northern part of the city, however, have come up with a unique solution. Garments workers, motor mechanics, domestic helps and rickshaw pullers are now redefining the dating culture. They take a bus up to the Mohakhali fly-over and meet their beloved there. Then, together, they walk up to the middle of the bridge holding each others hands. Then standing by the railing, they do their small love-talks. Buses carrying bahadur bangalees discharge diesel smoke at them; Speeding cars of unsatisfied rich lovers whoosh past them. They remain oblivious to the surrounding....the traffic, dust and smoke. From the temporarily elevated level, the dirty old Dhaka resonates of love and hope for them. We the Bahadur Bangalees curse them from our caves. Chi Chi, What has the desh become?? No lojja… No shorom…. All these people holding hands on the flyover. It is prohibited to even walk on a flyover abroad. Chi chi… There is no niyom in this desh.

And it goes on....

A friend recently told me, "you are just as vulnerable as you seem". We are bahadur bangalees; we are love-haters, so what? no big deal. As long as we don't proclaim our vulnerabilities to others, we live happily ever after in our glasshouses.

5+5 reasons why I am a teacher

2007-06-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

new faces always remind me of old times...
i wont lie to you about it; but sometimes in the faces of my students, I see faces of my friends... companions... acquaintances ... it is weird. but anybody who is in the teaching profession will probably agree with me.

university never changes... there's always one or two nerds asking pertinent but sharp questions about this or that...trying to trap the teacher....only the smarter teachers can keep their 'superiority platform' intact (yes, yes i am one of them) at the face of those arrowing queries. Still you can never dislike these kids who make you feel the need for self-improvement every day. And of course, there are the beauty queens ... whenever they open their mouth to speak (which happens rarely) there is a pin-drop silence in the class.. everybody looks at them (or at their mouths to be specific...lipstick and all that).. many hearts palpitate fast as they slowly ask a very ordinary question in an epic fashion. “didn’t I just explain it?” the teacher smiles, while the nerds frown. The class goes on. Then there are the rock-stars; boys and girls -- smart and witty, cool and in-control -- without whom the class is never a fun. And there is the rest of the student populace... who shine dimly and half-dimly in the class. However, it’s not altogether unusual when a rather dim one flashes out like the Halley’s Comet and outshines everyone else.

the first class of a new semester usually begins with “getting-to-know-each-other” type questions… I ask them about their schools, colleges, hobbies and so on… and then I ask them to ask me questions some of the first questions I get are something like this:

madam, are you married?
“No.”, I say, “happy?”
“Yes”, they say, with a chuckle spreading from ear to ear. (didn’t I just sound Eliotic?)

Another FAQ is why did you choose to take up teaching? Now that’s what makes me think. In my very brief three-semester teaching career, I had to answer it several times. Half-heartedly speaking, I gave them half- witty or rather half-honest answers. After all, who wants to engage into a “why” discourse in an Eng-101 class? As I am digging deep into the question today, I wouldn’t mind finding the answer to the big WHY?

My friends in the university are a great influence. Tuhi and some other girls always thought I would be terrific teacher. Once in a summer afternoon I taught them poetry (adrienne rich) basking in the lavish Rokeya Hall lawn … now I realize that they read so little themselves that it was extremely difficult for me not to have sounded intellectual. My friend Moushum also thought I could be a good teacher; but in addition to that, she also knew about my infinite indolence and of course, my near-zero time sense. Moushum never thought I could fit into a 9 to 5 work schedule. cheers dosto! I also think alike… great minds do so.

[to be continued....]

My "bonu" is going away for a week

2007-06-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

my best friend is going away for a week...
i am wondering who is going to wake me up before classes..
who is going to think about my lunch and pack some food for me..
i am wondering who is going to make sure that my dresses are starched or ironed...
who will jharify me as i mess up all the rooms... but only to set them right again...so that i can mess them up again...

hmm... i will miss you bonu... i love you.

Great Poetry Series-3 [To His Coy Mistress]

2007-06-21T00:14:00.000-07:00

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state;
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity;
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now, therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped pow'r.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Illustration: Ophelia Redpath

A Letter to Rain

2007-06-12T11:55:00.000-07:00

[ You have come again with your majestic insouciance…
You have come with all your charms and pleasures ...
and for some near-pessimists like me, you have come with all your gloom and melancholia, knocking off the box that was so carefully built through out the year to keep us covered in a “forgetful” warmth. You make me sick, you put me off. You only leave me blue and bereft.
Here I’m writing an open letter to you…]

Dear Rain:

Stop whining…. there is no use of it anymore.
Yes I know how I loved you for a long time… yes I remember how I have run out of my house again and again to feel your touch on my face…yes, I admit that I felt drums beating in my veins when I came close to you… yes, I confess that you have poured in so much happiness into my soul that I no longer sought it anywhere else. I remember how you have loved me softly in many occasions and how sometimes you have grown wild and came whip-lashing on me…. yes, you have given me those rare moments of magic when sheer physical pains metamorphosed into frenzied ecstasies…

When you came to me, I always held you close… I had you all over me…I drowned myself into your passionate embrace… but I could never hold you back. I have agreed to all your playfulness, didn’t I? But I could never make you stay.

Baby, I need you but I won’t want you anymore. I will never ask you to stay or to make a promise of returning to me... There is always someone who loves you more…there is always someone who needs you more. Do I not know that? I am closing my windows on you. Yes, my love, I disown you tonight. I am liberating you from me, your unbearably possessive lover. I will only be a voyeur (and not a victim anymore) of your spectacle. I will be watching you from a distance, but only with an artistic detachment.

Yours,
Sharmee

Great Poetry Series-2

2007-05-27T21:56:00.000-07:00

I know you know
And yet you show
You do not know
And you ask
What is it I say
And what is it I mean
When all the while
I know you know
What i say
And what i mean.

Mirza Ghalib

(Translated by O. P. Kejariwal)

Great Poetry Series -1

2007-05-26T05:51:00.000-07:00

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
"Love has no ending.

"I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

"I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

"The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world."

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
"O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

"In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

"In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

"Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

"O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

"Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

"O look, look in the mirror?
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

"O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart."

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

By W. H. Auden

life? where??

2007-05-16T10:51:00.000-07:00

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.

Convocation Blues

2007-04-25T10:49:00.000-07:00

As Things Fell Apart

something i really liked has broken today....it is a key ring that i got in the convocation goody bag this year. i didnt go to the convocation though... didnt quite like the idea of iazuddin-faiz-yunus trio speaking and honoring each other. the key ring was dear to me. you dont know what pain i went through to get those goodies... i requested a senior apu, ordered a junior bhaiya, bribed a mama at the registrar's office, wasted a considerable amount of money on phone calls and rickshaw/ cng fair for subsequent visits to the campus. nothing paid off! i was at a brink of a depression when i relayed it to professor shawkat hussain. he, quite graciously, decided to give me his goody bag. ("i get one like this every year", he said, "dont worry. i will give you the one i get this year") i was hesitant at the first place while he was insistent... than i took it after some "no sir- no sir" whinings.

for somedays i felt quite good holding the key ring in one hand and the coffee mug in the other. our floor attendant broke my coffee mug some weeks back...the only consolation for me was the key ring. my TA broke it today. should i ask some other sir to get me one more goody bag ...again? i am hesitant, again..

"i didnt go to the convocation" is perhaps not the right way to put it. it will be a self-consolating lie. the fact is that i wanted to go. i went to the registrar's office and did all the formalities there... i went to Rokeya Hall and did all the formalities there too. i was about to go to the TSC bank to finish my last set of formalities when i realized that it was a thursday and the bank transaction was not possible after 12.00 PM. Those were the crazy AL blockade days.... only a rickshaw could be my pegasus to the Agrani Bank in the follwing days. i couldnt go. the deadline expired soon after.

it was not my fault; it is the politicians who are to be blame. they have not only wiped out years of our (innocent students) lives by numerous strikes and blockades but also prevented us from joining the convocation ceremony. ..a day that is much coveted... a day that we dream of from the very commencement of our studies at the university.

my friend, however, thinks it is my unshakable procrastination... my sister thinks i couldn't go because i am just lazy bones. i dont subscribe to these thoughts... neither should you....

whatever it is... i will still blame the politicians....

oh! my coffee mug... ah! my key ring...
let me be silent for a while in the memory of my convocation goodies!!

Remembering Dhaka University

2007-03-22T23:47:00.000-07:00

Days of Laughter and Forgetting

I am used to seeing my teachers in our classrooms or in their offices conducting tutorials. I have sometimes seen them walking slow in silent processions from the Arts Building to the Shaheed Minar and sometimes running fast across the Mall greens in order to achieve cardiovascular excellence. I remember how a friend at Rokeya Hall took quite a considerable number of days to recover from the deep shock of seeing one of the most popular teachers buying “Fauji Atta” at a Fuller Road grocery. She presided over a mourning session in the overpopulated TV room of the hall till late in that night and we all kept vigil. How could that person, who brought Shakespeare alive for us, buy something as insignificant as “Fauji Atta”? "His wife should be beaten up", suggested one agressive action-oriented friend of mine. To us, they were always too extraordinary to fit into an ordinary and mundane reality.

My mind was crammed with these thoughts and other memory bubbles when I spotted out one of my teachers in cyberspace. A mail from a young and hyperactive teacher was waiting in my Yahoo mailbox with an earnest call to submit memoirs, reminiscences or reflections for the next issue of the Alumni News. I, not yet fully an alumnus and never a writer (not in the most liberal terms), immediately decided to answer his call. I decided to write about my very fresh memories from the English Department. Teachers, said my best friend, have strange ways to make you work. I could not fully agree because the person who made us work the most in the department was Shushilda, our office assistant.

Let’s suppose you don’t know the location of the English Department. You climb up the stairs to the first floor of the Arts building; you look right and left and then take the less crowded corridor. You wonder why the corridor is so empty until you come to a department office. If you see that the students are all lined up (no overtaking please!) in front of the secretary’s table waiting to get their jobs done while listening to great secrets of physical fitness, Bingo! You have come to the right place. Meet Shushilda (popularly abbreviated from Shushil Dada); anybody who has studied in the English department after 80’s has at least one story about him. Most of us have more!

During the last six years, I had to line up several times in the department office for Shushilda’s mercy. I too, who is universally regarded as an impatient listener, had to listen to his “fitness” monologues or stories about his unrequited puppy loves. I was at the end of a long trail the first day I went for my BA admission when some smart-alecky fresher asked him “Who is the new chairman, Mama?” if only Shushilda was the mythological Medusa, we all would end up as stone-sculptures decorating various corners of the campus. “Am I your Mama?” Pause 20 seconds. “Why did you call me Mama?” Another 20 seconds. “Here, give me a tight thappor but don’t call me Mama.” Angry and disappointed, Shushilda left keeping the long trail of would-be English students plunged into deep perplexity. When he came back after some twenty minutes, we already knew that keeping the queue straight was highly important, calling Mama was a great offence and the current chairman was Professor Niaz Zaman. Some of the peace-loving students actually started calling Shushilda “Sir” to avoid further problems. The queue this time was much longer and incredibly straight.

My first year was quite dull and uneventful. Some of our friends quickly coupled. They would hang around the Arts Building dripped with the delight of new-found love, while we would watch them from the windows of our late afternoon foundation-course classes with envious helplessness. On one such carefree strolling occasions, one of our friends got into trouble. She and her new-found love were probably appreciating the beauty of the graffiti-laden walls of the Arts Building, when two rival groups of JCD staged a pre-clash display of power with hockey-sticks and cocktail bursts. Nobody was hurt, only our newly in-love friend ended up with a splinter scar in her cheek. The scar vanished quite quickly with the aid of Band-Aids but her name changed to “Boma Mitu” or just “Boma”. Some chicken-hearted cynics in the class expressed their renewed faith in poetic justice; after all, bunking classes was never free of charge! However, Boma, a fledgling journalist at the moment, always remained my good friend; she is now all set to start a lifelong companionship with her university love in some months.

It was not long before I started being seen sauntering across the corridors of the Arts Building or singing passionately in the lush green lawns of TSC or simply enjoying the breathtaking view of Krishnachura from the top-floor of the International Hall. This was the time when I became friendly with a rather mediocre girl; all my other friends were highly disappointed. I enjoyed with her the mornings of the Probhat-feri and the evenings of Lalon songs at the famous Bokultola of the Charukola Institute. She introduced me to the exciting world of university debating, which later became my prime passion. Together with her, I represented Rokeya Hall for the first time in an inter-hall debating championship. My debating career took off from there which eventually took me to various national and international tournaments across the globe.

I will forgive her today for a callous betrayal which at that time had affected me greatly. My unforgettable association with debating today can, in every sense, discount that truly inconsequential episode. I will also forget how after rehearsing for months I was out of a theatre production I always wanted to be a part of. I will erase from my memory how the man I had loved most left me in the pouring rains to meet someone he considered to be more important.

Our days of laughter and forgetting will come to an official end in some days. The old familiar faces of the corridors have already been silently distributed amongst different private universities or in various telephone companies across Dhaka. I am all ready to go to the next alumni get-together: no, not to sing “Yesterday Once More” as a miming member of a 25-member chorus or as a volunteering flower-girl, but for the first time as a true alumnus. Meanwhile, I must thank my hyperactive teacher for getting me into the shoes of an almost-writer.

[This piece was published in the English Department Alumni News 2007]