Australia and New Zealand

To attend the Pacific Environmental Security Forum I was in Wellington, New Zealand from 20-25 May 2019. The participants stayed in two hotels in Wellington: Bolton and Rydges. The venue of the Forum was Harbourside. It was a 15 minute walk from the Hotel to the conference venue. However I was too lazy to miss out the beautiful walkway of Wellington except for one morning when I missed the bus for a faction of a minute. It was a great discovery that unlike us in Dhaka, most of the working New Zealanders reach office in the morning and return home in the evening walking!
The opening ceremony of the Forum was graced by Honourable Ron Mark, Minister of Defence, New Zealand and Honourable Scott P. Brown, US Ambassador to New Zealand. There was a presentation on Bangladesh-India Sundarban Region Cooperation Initiative: A Vision of Joint Platform by Dr. Uttam Kumar Sinha, Fellow and Managing Editor, Strategic Analysis, Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses, India. Mr. Sanjeev Pandey, Programme Management Specialist, Office of Defense Cooperation, US Embassy, Kathmandu shared his networking experiences as a US Embassy official. There was a group exercise for the all the South Asian participants together. I was nominated to present the findings of the group exercise. I was feeling a bit nervous to address a gathering of around 200 people with mostly defense and environment exposure.  At the Icebreaker Reception of the Evening I had an opportunity to briefly interact with the Honourable Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, New Zealand. The Reception took place at The Grand Hall at Parliament.
On my way back to Bangladesh I spend two days in Sydney. I had an opportunity to spend nights at the make-shift Consulate office in a rented hotel room. Though I heard stories from different colleagues about the challenges of opening up new missions in any new place; this time I observed it first hand.I saw the Australian Maritime Museum at the Darling Harbour and the World famous Sydney Opera. My foreign service batchmate Masud Bhai and his family were generous to give me a nice Pizza treat at a Darling Harbour restaurant. I had an Uber ride in Sydney. The taxi driver appeared to be well-conversant about Bangladesh's cricket team.
The morning I left the make-shift Bangladesh Consulate for the airport, I had an opportunity to avail the Consulate's brand new Staff Car. I came to know this was the first ever protocol duty of the Consulate with their brand new BMW. The Consul General himself saw me off at the airport. How lucky I am!

With New Zealand Foreign Minister Honourable Winston Peters 

EMBASSY OPEN HOUSE 2012

5 May 2012

EMBASSY OPEN HOUSE

My third open house at this Embassy. I remember last year I quoted Sorojini Naido to describe the festive mood that prevails at the Embassy premise during the  open house. After a hiatus of several months I am trying to return to my blog by writing something on the Open House.

For my daughter (now three and a quarter years old) Ushashi today is the day to have henna tattoo on her hands and wrists. For my wife Swarna, this is an opportunity to have a glance on the food and fancy ornaments from other countries that she has not visited yet. For myself, it was a good meeting some foreigners who somehow nurture interests in unknown place and people.  I had a chat with William Francis, an Associate Deputy Administrator of US Department of Agriculture. He showed a keen interest in our garment and jute sectors.   

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”?