Ushashi in reality

When Ushashi was first born; barely did I know, between her second and third birthdays, I shall not be seeing her for nine long months. After completing the immigration and customs of the Dulles IAD, when finally the mother and daughter reached the spot of waiting greeters on a December 2011 afternoon I initially had to struggle for making an eye contact with my daughter. That was due to the imposing ‘made in Bangladesh’ that her mother put on her in anticipation of a chilly DC exterior. In a lot of issues the afternoon marked a set of ‘for the first times’ for me. It was a negotiation with a circumstance to which I was, indeed, probably not even familiar.
Because Ushashi’s stay in Bangladesh got extended to an unexpected spell of nine months and because seasons have changed in the meantime meaning a lot of adjustments for this innocent baby, all the clothes her skinny body could accommodate for the Dhaka DC flight were “Bangladesh made”. I saw her in clothes I just never saw her putting on before: in terms of size particularly. Cyber technology unfortunately did not connect the father’s end to the daughter’s. Except for the couple of still photographs that my cousin sent to me on Ushashi’s birthday all those nine months she was only in my imagination, off and on assisted by her voices over telephone. When I called her mother the mid-night of 11th December, she fortunately took the phone set and ‘accepted’ my wish.
All nine months what I would do whenever I would bump into any parents with kids of Ushashi’s age was asking the baby’s date of birth. Dulles IAD was the venue of a tough negotiation for a father connecting the daughter in imagination to the one in reality.
I wish Rabindranath had authored a sequel to his Kabuliwala based on the famous protagonist’s reunion with his own Mini! I know there are many fathers in modern Asia, Africa and the Middle East looking for such a script.

Gene Weingarten writes to Ushashi

I might have met four Pulitzer Prize winning authors earlier than my Ushashi; however my daughter outpaced her Papa today when her name was written by Gene Weingarten at Georgetown campus. The humour columnist and writer has signed an autograph for Ushashi in his book the fiddler in the subway. Weingarten thanked me for helping out in penning Ushashi's name correctly on his book. The day-long workshop dedicated to writing excellence also took a test of my passion for meeting creative minds as it was a rainy and sluggish weekend, difficult for a comfort loving late rising holidaymaker. Thankfully the rains and uncertainty over finding a suitable parking in DC could not spoil my month long plan.

Alongside Weingarten other Pulitzer winning writers conducting the workshop were: Anne Hull, Eugene Robinson, Kathleen Parker, all from the Washington Post. The participants found Roy Peter Clark's session " Writing Tools: 50 Strategies for Every Writer" inspiring. Noted authors such as Thomas French and Diana Sugg-also Pulitzer winners- were in fact nurtured by him. I was lucky to have his autographed book "Help for Writers: 210 Solutions to the Problems Every Writer faces"[Long retired from newspaper writings, hope, I would be able to nurture myself through his masterpiece notwithstanding the disconnection from purpose]. " To Jabed, enjoy"-wrote the writing guru. His teaching on sentence construction from Shakespeare's Macbeth -how" The Queen, My Lord, is dead!" is the best sounding expression compared to all other alternatives-was truly educative.This bunch of great writers read out from their own works that the audience enjoyed in a pin drop silence.

Irrespective of whatever skill I have learnt from the workshop Write Your Heart Out, Washington or whether I would be able to apply that in my government service career, certainly I would cherish the day for their witty conversations and not least because one Pulitzer winner has written to my daughter.

Reading,death and loneliness

When getting my nose in a book

Cured most things short of school,
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size.

Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my coat and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark.
The women I clubbed with sex!
I broke them up like meringues.

Don't read much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the chap
Who's yellow and keeps the store
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.

(Phillip Larkin: A Study of Reading Habits)

***************************************************************************

Since the death of my mother in law, I have had moments unsure of what exactly would offer my family members and myself the needed solace and help us heal an unexpected wound. Also I remained unsure if the responsibilities at my work place, that I certainly can't escape as long as I depend on that for my living, serve as a helpful detraction while tiding over the depression. At those difficult times I had to stay long hours at office. At home, the pain of loneliness was compounded by some heart wrenching questions from my wife and her sisters who lost their dearest mother to an untimely death. They were just inconsolable!

I'm indebted to Somerset Maugham for touching upon this issue in a novel dedicated to the pursuit of "truth" and "meaning" where the protagonist says:

"I want to make up my mind whether God is or God is not. I want to find out why evil exists. I want to know whether I have an 'immortal soul' or whether when I die 'it is the end'"...."if men have been asking them for thousands of years it proves that they can't help asking them and have to go on asking them"

Philip Larkin's above piece (who often wrote about death and loneliness) helped me somehow reinforce the reading habit.

Nanu Moni's revenge

Today I am writing for my little Ushashi. Too early for her to follow this diary; however, lest the oblivious mind of her dad should completely deny her this tale at a later time!

In this worldly life we lose a lot of dear things for some of which the loss even predates the phase when adequate sense of what significance these hold to our respective lives could actually develop.

Yesterday was one such day for Ushashi.

She saw her Mamoni crying for her Nanu Moni the lady who was one of the very first to see her face and keep her into two trusted loving arms on December 12, 2008 the day the kid first set her feet (!) in this planet. Both of her parents had the fortune to see respective grandma calling it a day in a fashion that allowed decent time for their grandchildren to grow up and carry along at least some random memories for rest of the life.

This is not going to be the case with Ushashi as far has her Nanu's love for her is concerned. Without any possibility that the two and half years old would be able to carry along Nanu Moni’s memories, her grandma has left her for eternity . Since birth she stayed at her Nanu's home off and on except for one year when she was in the USA. The late grandma's acquaintance with her infant granddaughter was obviously short because of their short overlapping lifespan. I feel whatever level of consciousness the short-lived lady had at her dying days, her two grand daughters- Ushashi and Arnova- must have occupied her mind! A very calm and quiet lady, in case she had a failed bargaining with the Almighty pleading extension to a prematurely ending life-her three daughters and two grand kids must be the reason. This I can say based on the substance of my conversation with her, face to face or over phone, since Ushashi’s birth.

Last few weeks, I am hardly in a mental state to chronicle for Ushashi some anecdotes centering on Nanu Moni's presence in her life. The two nights separated by the day Ushashi was born I stayed at my father-in-law's home. At that time one of the sweet sounding “re-assurances” I had from my mother in law was when she said to me, “Baba, tomar meye dekhte onek pretty hobe.” When I told her, in reply to her query if I expected a baby girl or boy, that Allah has given me what I wanted, she only smiled. At the same conversation, she shared with me in a gleaming face her memories of becoming mother of three daughters and bringing them up.

One night we together (Ammu, Swarna, Lona, Ushashi, myself and other family members) had been going to a relative’s home to attend a party. It was difficult for both Swarna and I to make out how on earth could it happen that we completely forgot to bring the baby's feeder to drink water at a hot summer night in Dhaka! Even if we bought one from a nearby store, it might not be wise to put it in the baby’s mouth before sinking it in hot water for a proper length of time which might be too late for a thirsty baby! I noticed, she all of a sudden changed her smiling face into a serious look in a bid to tackle the circumstance, “Baba, amra thakte tomar meyer pani khete kono shomoshsha hobe na!” Indeed, whenever Swarna had to come out of home, Nanu Moni was a source of reliance with whom the kid could be left without any form of mental stress.

I heard from Swarna she would off and on sound helpless that both of her granddaughters are “cruel” to her in that they engage Nanu Moni and her service from before their births to zero baby stages to early infancies. These 'heartless kids' take all the love and affection from her only to one day abandon her in an empty house as they set for respective father's home!

Barely did the two innocent girls know how mindlessly their Nanu Moni had just been counting days to take a disproportionate revenge on them!

Ammur kachhe jabo

My mother- in- law whom I would fondly address “Ammu”, along with other relatives, bade us bye at the departure lounge of Dhaka International Airport as we set for the USA. I certainly heard other people in Foreign Service telling about a common agony in this particular profession which is that a lot of near and dear ones are lost forever when they were in a painful geographical distance because of overseas postings. In my case, I barely knew Ammu would be leaving us forever in this fashion and when I am on my maiden foreign mission.

An extraordinarily caring and amicable lady, she was like ready to give her everything for the sake of the near and dear ones which included not just her immediate family members but also the people who came in contact with her, some just by chance. From the subordinate members of her husband’s office staff to a luckier chap such as me who happened to be married off to her daughter –all have found her almost the same.

A school teacher, housewife, loving mother and grandmother all these identities did apply to her when she calls it a day. Her patience, an extremely down to earth approach as well as unoffending personality made her dear to almost everybody who met her. Consequently her sudden disappearance has created a catastrophe and, more precisely, a form of insecurity to the family members whom she left “disproportionately” dependent on her.

Yesterday, I found my wife at the other end of the telephone in a condition which could not be more shocking or confusing. “The only thing I know is that I go must go to Ammu as I can’t imagine a single moment without her”-she had been inconsolable. A child’s dependence on mother is constant and universal. It is just something that can’t be less or excessive. Wise people say the Divinity never created a need without a means to fulfill.

For my wife, for myself, for my daughter, probably for anybody else there is hardly a need more immediate to this. Who can precisely guide us the “needed means”?

June 5, 2011

Rabindranath Tagore’s 150^th birth anniversary celebrations at the Embassy

We celebrated Tagore’s birth anniversary today. Noted Tagore Singer Kaderi Kibria enthralled the audience with his sublime singing of Tagore songs that I am sure made a good portion of the audience nostalgic. Incidentally this is the first that I came to personally meet him as well as welcome him to the embassy. [In fact in Bangladesh there was little scope of me attending any live concert of Kibria’s; he permanently settled in the USA in 1990 couple of years before I started permanently living in Dhaka.] I think I became relatively familiar with Tagore songs the two years when I was an intermediate student at Science College in Dhaka. Aside from the popular Tagore songs that Kaderi Kibria sang, his reminiscences of the singer days in Bangladesh dating around three decades back kept the senior segment of the audience relatively captivated. As he flew home early morning from outside DC he hardly had enough rest before coming to the programme; it was noticeably difficult for him to keep requests that kept coming from the listeners one after another. He, however, promised to compensate at a later time. Hope the love of the non-resident Bangladeshies for Tagore would never fade and they would succeed in spreading the poet’s great works and those of other Bengali writers to the next generations.

My wife and daughter missed out on 150^th birthday of Rabindranath; hope both of them can make it to the 200^th and 250^th anniversary. Till then, not only the legendary singer of Kaderi Kibria; let also the very man physically remain with us!

My good friend Andrew whom I met at an Embassy Orientation programme at the Near East South Asia Center of the National Defence University, Washington DC showed up and attended the musical soirée. While my off and on side talk to him was much less adequate than a working sub-title for an American ;next time I see him around, I would like to convey to him the meaning of at least one particular Tagore song which featured in Kibria’s renditions , Ami chini go chini tomare ogo bideshini (O dear foreigner, I do know you). You see the insurmountable barrier relating to language remains even while trying a one sentence sub-title for reaching Tagore song to an American listener. Who can help me with a feminine form of “foreigner”?

Embassy Open House 2011: Guests are our Gods

For the fourth consecutive year, our Embassy has taken part in the Embassy Open House in collaboration with the Passport DC, a renowned cultural organization based in this part of the USA. I find it a very fascinating idea which brings in a great opportunity to the otherwise preoccupied DC dwellers to be acquainted with the diverse cultural treasures of the world in a relatively short time. Virtually, this is ‘round several countries in just a few hours’! People in their thousands ignored the weather’s betrayal and thronged in the embassies located in and around the International Drive and Mass Ave. The food court and other stalls selling various merchandises took me to Sorojini Naidu :

What do you sell O ye merchants?/Richly your wares are displayed/Turbans of crimson and silver/Tunics of purple brocade/Mirrors with panels of amber/Daggers with handles of jade...What do you weigh, O ye vendors?/Saffron and lentil and rice/What do you grind, O ye maidens?Sandalwood, henna, and spice.. (In the Bazaars of Hyderabad)

In the late hours I had a glance of the arrangements in Ethiopian, Egyptian, Nigerian and Pakistani embassies. For most of the Embassies this is beyond the routine business of the month but thanks to the dedication of the embassy staffs and their families, it very much finds the grandeur of an annual festival!

A great number of the foreign visitors were appreciative of our decorations, not a gaudy display, and foods. The appreciation was not essentially the hallmark of a typically sober DC-ite. I had the occasion to overhear foreigners praising our efforts while they had been in the territories of other participating embassies . Certainly we become elated at such an honest endorsement of our ‘soft power’ by a genuinely international jury!

Hope our future Open Houses would come with more festivities for us. Rather than an extra routine burden let it be our much awaited yearly festival!

A free lance journalist

During my student days at Dhaka University, the only extra-curricular thing in which I was engaged was working for a few English language daily newspapers published from Dhaka as a contributing writer. The concerned editor in some instances introduced me to the readers as a free lance journalist which probably renders some degree of injustice to my more dedicated colleagues in that universallly revered profession. I came across the news of The Bangladesh Observer's (the newspaper I mostly worked for) closure while at the London School of Economics (LSE) last summer and could not control my agony. I put my a brief comment on a news item in one Bengali newspaper covering Observer's death as one of its former part-time employee to express the hope that somehow 'my Observer would make a glorious resurrection' soon. One lady responded to my comment narrating how difficult it is to find her brother a suitable bride with the fault nothing other than the prospective groom's profession (journalism) !

Anyways, I left the business of writing for newspapers when my student days were not yet over. The position I landed in was that of a Research Associate at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), a noted civil society think-tank in Bangladesh. I remember during my interviews, two separate occasions in a span of a year, first recruitment and then confirmation as a permanent research staff, I was asked about my aim in life: journalism or research! [Indeed, on my very first day as an office attending employee, it was slightly difficult for me to respond to a just-become-colleague as to what is the exact reason behind my shift of loyalty across professions! The thing I had a little struggle to hide was that my old office is unfortunately not in a pecuniary condition to pay dues to existing staffs let alone recruiting new hands! Can someone end up becoming a researcher in pursuit of cash?]

As a full-time civil servant now, it is difficult for me to answer an apparently intellecturally demanding question of how related or unrelated these two career paths are. While Paule Krugman would be the most illustrious example to cite, the mediocrities such as me must remain careful before responding to an employer that this issue is pretty personal unless, as an employer it is noticed that the concerned employee is not taking due interest in the assigned tasks!

Admittedly, minimum degree of interest is required to handle a profession even for the mere livelihood sake. HR nerds sum it up as a job satisfaction. While interest for specific jobs is essential to enjoy the profession, ironically on the flip side, too much of that may invite decisively life thereatening moments.

Years ago, I read a few classic pieces and quotes from the Pulitzer winning US journalist Ernie Pyle who, until his death in combat during the World War II wrote as a roving correspondent. The Indiana University, which Pyle left just one semester before graduating, houses the School of Journalism at the Ernie Pyle Hall, pays tribute to Pyle's passion for his profession, "his reporting humanized the war for many of his readers."

Three days ago, the fighting in Libya took the lives of two journalists Tim Hetherington, director of the Oscar-nominated documentary "Restrepo" and Chris Hondros, a Pulitzer Prize nominated photographer. The two journalists who had been covering the Libyan crisis accompanied the rebels fighting against Moammar Gaddafi's forces and succumbed to fatal injuries when mortars were fired targeting the rebels. The photo that I have attached Honros took few minutes before his death showing a rebel figther running up a burning stairwell during a house-to-house fighting on a Tripoli street .

I don't know what impresion Pyle could leave for his colleagues covering conflicts around the world today, however, if I had any chance to meet Tim or Chris before they took up the Libya assignment, I would surely draw their attention to at least one Pyle quote:

" There is nothing nice about the prospect of going back to war again. Anybody who has been in war and want to go back is a plain damn fool in my book." [Back Again, Feb 6, 1945]

To Ushashi, "Armstrong needed no escalator to catch the Moon!"

Courtesy of Mohua Apu and Babu Bhai, we had a fun visit to the National Air and Space Museum. The world's largest museum and research complex, the Smithsonian Institute possesses 19 museums and galleries as well as the National Zoo. Because of time constraint and largely thanks to Ushashi's obsession for just one single living object, the passenger escalator, over the museum's all ill fated artifacts, for rest of us (myself, Swarna, Amma, Mohua Apu, Babu Bhai and their loving daughter Sophie), the Museum remained greatly unexplored! None of the Museum objects-ranging from the original 1903 Wright flyer to Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia that marked the first manned lunar landing in 1969 carrying Neil Armstrong and his colleagues- could impress my complacent daughter as much as one single escalator could! A stubborn Ushashi could hardly convince herself that there were funnier stuffs to do around that place than the escalator ride even though the latter is not unavailable at the malls across the street from our homes in both Mirpur and Maryland!

We were certainly lucky to have the company of Mohua Apu and Babu Bhai, the brilliant physicians couple, extremely informed about the modern day developments in aviation sciences. I am sure they have far excelled any of the professional guides operating around us.

It should not go unrecorded that the doctor couple's generousity to us stretched up to a very sumptuous treat at an Italian restuarant in the Montgomery Mall!

Hope, Ushashi's physics would soon transcend our conflicts for a united space mission from Smithsonian next time!

Bengal Cafe, DC

It is a week now I am beyond the protective wings of my family-disproportionately female dominated as it is manned by just three ladies of three generations: Ushashi, her mother and her mother's mother (in law).

I can't exactly remember the title of a Boston Globe article published in praise of the lone Bangladeshi restaurant "Bengal Cafe"in greater Boston region. As far as I can recollect, in an exclamatory tone the article's title read, If Mom had come all the way from Bangladesh! The reporter sort of vouched that for those of us, the Bangladeshi students and other fellows who were scattered across the Charles River far off the touch of mothers, the delicious foods served at the Bengal would fill the void! Ali Bhai and Bhabi's (the couple who, thankfully opened and have still been running the Bengal Cafe) personal care turned the restaurant into more than an eating place for us.

My wife's general rating of myself as a social being is that I am a boring person since it's unkind of any family man to get cordoned off by stuffy readings at weekends that again are systematically depleted and only to come after painstakingly extended weekdays!" Your daughter will just be pissed off someday"-one of her parting warnings before catching the flight to Bangladesh.

As time and again I re-assure my reasonably anxious family that thanks to the generosity of my colleagues and their families in DC, Maryland and Virginia I am taken a great care everyday: at home, at office and honestly, wherever I am! Because of my batch-mate colleague Nazmul and his wife, Rawnak Bhabi , I even have the opportunity to overeat! They together have endured to attempt Amma's cooking style and take care of my calorie-intake around times they saw me taking meals last one year; (as if the mother's part in perpetuating her kid's inability to independently handle own life is not enough!) All I can say, never can I repay the debt they have encumbered me in! That's at home.

On the office front, I don't know, how exactly could I narrate the mental support I've received from my senior colleague, Jashim Sir, who unfailingly asks me how I am in absence of the family before entrusting me to every single task! So kind of him.

When I was first employed at the Foreign Office, my family and I myself were not just in the dark in respect of such job placements in this particular livelihood. We were mentored to remain mentally prepared for a life as a stranger both socially and institutionally (at the Foreign Service Academy, for instance, we had mandatory cooking sessions ! I might have had a passing grade at Rahmat's magnanimity.).

In case I appear partly pulverized today, would just like to refrain from any aggressive marketing for my foreign life/service which came either by fate or choice as I see past the first week away from family. Should I disqualify someday!

My mother leaves Washington

Just one week shy of one year since we arrived in Washington, DC, my mother along with my wife and the baby has left for Bangladesh. Though my memory is not that vivid, I think the last time it such happened was at my infancy when my mother left me at her mother's (my grandma's) place-in Kapasia, Gazipur- in order for her to attend a primary Teachers' Training Programme. During my mother's long and extra-ordinary ordeal- which predates my birth and was very much the same till her last moments at our Apartment on the Willard Ave-a number of occasions only she saw me off. Barely did I notice before Amma's departure that- an ever so industrious lady as she is-not only cooked foods for me as much as was possible to ensure I do not go unfed at the family's absence; Amma just could not be careless enough to forget about putting on the dining table one jug full of purified water.[ I apologize to Bayezid Bostami if had insulted the great Saint with an anecdot on life saving water in a riverse direction between mother and son! ]

My colleague Nazmul and his wife (Rawnak Bhabi) accompanied me to the Dulles Airport when I for the first time saw off my mother in a foreign land. Last one year Amma found them very much as the same family members.

As the summer harbingers, I found Amma praising the Montgomery County people for keeping the county park near our Apartment so clean . This year's winter is not yet over and I suppose, the Park's regular summer time visitors have not yet started returning. To the annoyance of Swarna, last year Amma took Ushashi to the Park lake and Dolna a number of occasions making it the one year old's most favourite outing.

When Ushashi is back in mid-June, she is most likely to miss out adventures on another summer unless her mother is convinced that the one year older baby's health is at reasonably less risk in the bushy corners than last year which was braved by an indulging grandma.