I’m sharing a conversation with two distinguished secretaries of the Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh.
“Look, if you compare me to Amartya Sen, I’d say that even though I haven’t won a Nobel Prize, I’m ahead of him in certain areas. Because at one point I was a teacher at Dhaka University, and he’s also a university teacher. If I hadn’t left my job to come here, I would have become a professor like him by now. In fact, by joining the civil service, I’ve gained practical knowledge alongside theoretical knowledge—something Amartya Sen doesn’t have. So from this perspective, I’m not inferior to him in any way; rather, I’m superior.”
“Salimullah Khan is a friend of mine. He didn’t join the civil service; I did. The other day I was going to the office in my car when I saw him going somewhere by rickshaw. I saw him and smiled to myself. I thought about calling him over to give him a ride in my car. Then I decided against it—let him ride the rickshaw. He can talk big and write well, but as a successful person, I’m far above him.”
Amartya Sen is someone very dear to me—not because his home is in Bangladesh, not because he’s a Nobel Prize-winning respected economist, a writer and scholar of exceptional caliber, not because as a husband he has always supported Nabaneeta Dev Sen in her literary pursuits, giving us such a wonderful writer in Bengali literature; but because he is so optimistic about our Bangladesh, dreams about Bangladesh, and speaks so many wonderful things about us in various speeches and writings. Surely one word from Amartya Sen carries more weight than a hundred words from a hundred other economics professors.
If we were to list Bangladesh’s living scholars, Salimullah Khan’s name would certainly be among the first five. Reading his works requires exceptional qualifications. If asked to name scholars who write after extensive study and research, only two names come to mind in recent times who are comparable to him: the venerable Muhammad Habibur Rahman and the venerable Golam Murshid. Thinking of their contributions and scholarship, one’s head naturally bows in reverence. It is our great fortune that they were born in this country.
As a nation, we are ungrateful and expert at diminishing great people. We don’t try to grow by humbly bowing our heads and recognizing our position. We think we ourselves are great. When it comes to proving our faults as virtues and living by them, we are more shameless than any developed nation in the world. We don’t know how to honor our country’s accomplished children. Those whose contributions make the entire world respect Bangladesh, whether at home or abroad—we derive a kind of sick satisfaction from bringing them down.
We are a poor nation. Our position in the world, taken as a whole, isn’t particularly strong—this much we can say with certainty. In our daily struggles, even our sources of joy are gradually diminishing. The slightest cause for happiness makes us burst into wild celebration, practically dancing with glee. Among the few sources of such joy we have, one is our cricket. Our cricketers have given us much to be proud of. They are our national heroes. We find so many things to lift our spirits from them. The happy thing is, these occasions for cheer have been coming quite often lately. Yet what do we do? I’m writing about some painful things.
Bangladesh’s Jonty Rhodes, Nasir Hossain, posted a photo with his little sister on Facebook. That even looking at such an innocent-faced girl could bring perverted thoughts to anyone’s mind—we ourselves have proven this. We are perverts, sick, shameless. Given the slightest opportunity, we strip off our masks completely naked. Disgusting!
Shakib Al Hasan is the world’s number one all-rounder. Among the few reasons the cricket world envies Bangladesh, Shakib’s presence in our team is undoubtedly one of them. Yet the comments we make about his beautiful wife—if someone said even a tenth of such things about our wives, we’d probably kill them outright. As a nation, we are envious of others’ success and lustful after others’ wives. Let me share an interesting fact: there’s no English equivalent for the word “parashrikatar” (envy of others’ success). Why not? It’s entirely our own word, a symbol of our national character.
When Sabbir Rahman uploads photos of eating at restaurants, we comment: “What’s this? Don’t you have work? Why are you wandering from restaurant to restaurant?” Yet we forget that they’re human too. Like us, they need entertainment to relieve the fatigue of work. The good reputation that comes to our country from one of his shots—that comes in a matter of seconds. Could we bring even half that much honor to our country in several lifetimes? Or has anyone in our entire extended family ever managed to do so?
Soumya Sarkar
We know very well, we understand, the heights to which he has taken our country with his performance. Having such an opener is a matter of pride for any team. Yet we mock him during the game and ask whether he’s keeping the fast. Where in Islam is it prescribed for non-Muslims to observe Ramadan? If our sick taunts make him lose his temper, if he drops a catch, and we lose the match, don’t we deserve punishment for depriving millions of people of joy and glory? Have a hundred thousand such twisted-minded taunters ever brought even one percent of the honor that a single Soumya Sarkar has brought to this unfortunate nation? When he sits with others for iftar, even then we don’t stop our mockery. Is this the teaching we have learned from the life and ideals of the greatest human being, our beloved Prophet? Read “The Philosophy of the Teachings of Islam,” the favorite book of the writer of writers, Leo Tolstoy, which he always carried in his coat pocket. After writing Anna Karenina, he fell into tremendous mental anguish. To overcome this, he tried to illuminate himself through Islam and the words and ideals of the great Prophet. His realization: such peace he had never found in his life. He also wrote a small biography of our beloved Prophet, where he described the great Prophet as an ideal human being who had the highest respect for people of all religions and beliefs. The great Prophet himself instructed that it is the sacred duty of a Muslim to give priority to people of other faiths over Muslims in all matters. Then why are we moving away from the liberal path of Islam shown by the great Prophet, inspired by what ideology?
I have rarely seen a gentleman as humble as Mashrafe Bin Mortaza. Due to my job at the airport, I have met him a couple of times and each time I have been charmed by his modesty. A completely simple, cool-tempered person. Even he has had to angrily close his Facebook page to Bangladeshi users! Disgusted by our excessive rudeness, one of Bangladesh’s most successful captains has had to make such a sad decision! If we had even a fraction of his patriotism, we could never have behaved so shamelessly.
What pleasure do we get from bringing down our national heroes? One’s elevated character is revealed through respecting others. Let’s think for a moment: those whom we drag down to satisfy our sick, twisted self-gratification—their achievements for our country, could a hundred thousand rude people like us, even with all our fourteen generations combined, bring even one percent of such achievement for the country? Even if a hundred boar-piglets like us died on the streets, nothing would happen to the country, but if even one Shakib Al Hasan gets injured, our country suffers greatly. A nation that doesn’t know how to respect its finest children never achieves anything great. Because those who are dishonored may eventually lose interest in working for the country; and those who dishonor are of no real use to the country. They live only for themselves and their families. Great people also live that way, but through their living, the nation benefits. Everyone lives, but some live that life in a slightly different way.
Read the world-renowned book ‘Glimpses of World History’—the collection of letters Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to his daughter Indira while in prison. A girl who was barely more than a child, who spent her teenage years receiving lessons not only in the history of the world and India from such a noble father, but also in the cultivation of an elevated mind and deeply feeling human character—if that girl didn’t grow up to become Indira Gandhi, then who would? We live our ordinary lives with conventional thinking, living only for ourselves, and we diminish those who serve others, thinking: “Who are you anyway? You’re just as ordinary as I am.” This comfort with mediocre thinking is the greatest reason we fail to grow into anything greater.
I revere deeply and unquestioningly those few people who, when they come to mind, make my head bow in respect of its own accord. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is one of them. Among the few books that have profoundly influenced me, his autobiography ‘Wings of Fire’ stands out. I read this book again and again, drawing fuel for living. Reading it, one understands why I remain ordinary while people like him become extraordinary. “One who has faith in their heart never bows before anyone, never whines, never says ‘I can’t do that much’; never says no one is helping them, that they’re being treated unfairly. Instead, when such a person faces problems, they deal with them directly, then say: I am God’s child, whatever happens to me, I am greater than that event.” Just keeping this one thought in mind, one can move forward in life. Such a person is greater than any good university. His death felt as sorrowful to us as losing someone dear.
There are many others like this. We don’t learn from them. How would we learn? We consider ourselves greater than them! Ingratitude is so deeply embedded in our character that when someone’s magnanimity or helpful work becomes easily available to us, we begin to think of it as our right. Not because that person has harmed us, but simply if they can’t help us for a while, or if some of their thoughts don’t align with ours, we don’t hesitate to abuse them, drag them into the streets and reduce them to the level of pigs and dogs. We instantly forget everything we’ve received from them before. It doesn’t occur to us that this person didn’t come into the world with a divine mission to do good for others—they too could have spent their life selfishly eating, sitting, sleeping, following the philosophy of “eat, drink and be merry” just like me. We go to them hoping to get something useful for ourselves. We don’t even have time to care about how that person manages to live while doing so much for others. We have only one purpose: to serve our own interests. And once we’ve gained what we wanted, we throw that person away like used tissue paper. We’ve been living off a cow’s milk for years, but the moment that cow gets a little agitated and raises its horn, we immediately become busy trying to slaughter it. What kind of mentality is this? With such a wretched mindset, it’s never possible to become great. It’s impossible to do anything that would make people remember you distinctly among millions.
I began with the story of two distinguished secretaries. Because of such pompous, hollow individuals, we as a nation must hang our heads in shame at every turn. They don’t know what they truly are. They don’t even know how to honor great people. No one actually respects such people from the heart; when others bow their heads before them, they bow to the chair, not to their character. The very notion that “he is greater than me” is the first step toward becoming great in life. Those in whom this doesn’t work never even try to transcend themselves. If one cannot grasp that I am smaller than a great person, then self-satisfaction sets in with one’s own petty position. My beloved writer Sunil Gangopadhyay once said in an interview, “Self-satisfaction is like death.” He was asked whether he felt such satisfaction with his vast body of work that he thought, “All my work is done!”
Fortunately, in our bureaucracy and beyond, in positions of responsibility, there are more people who are not afflicted by such foolish arrogance. They work from a sense of duty, and this naturally benefits the country. Every intelligent person is aware of their own position and that of others. One who thinks their journey is over—how far can they really go? Only one who thinks “I have merely crossed a portion of the path” can move forward. When does ego take birth in a person? When they can accomplish everything that’s within their capability to do. Such people generally have limited capacity. Their strength cannot take them further or enable them to do more. They are weak people. Because you can see another person in the same position who remains humble. Because they have faith in their ability. They believe they can go as far as their capability will take them, and they haven’t yet reached their final destination. Since they will journey much further, they don’t indulge in the false satisfaction of having arrived. For an arrogant person in the same position, a point that marks the end of the road is merely one-fourth of the entire journey for the humble person!
August 1, 2015.
Dhaka.
দাদা,অগনিত ধন্যবাদ। অনেকদিন পর এমন একটি লেখা লিখবার জন্য যে লিখায় অনুপ্রেরণা এবং একটি বইয়ের নাম তুলে ধরবার জন্য যে বইটি নিজস্ব জ্ঞানের ভান্ডারে উন্নয়ন ঘটাবে।
একটা সংশয়ে ভুগছি যে আমার করা ভবিষ্যৎ ক্যারিয়ার পরিকল্পনা টি সঠিক না বেঠিক। পরিকল্পনাটি ইমেইলে মেইল করে দিচ্ছি। অবসরে দেখে জানাবেন এবং সাথে কিছু পরামর্শ কামনা করছি এগিয়ে যাবার জন্য।