Thought: Six Hundred Nineteen
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Every man possesses masculinity. If he cannot express it, he suffers from unease. A man displays his masculinity through his socioeconomic and intellectual circumstances and position. Displaying masculinity and putting on airs are two entirely different things—just as pride differs from arrogance. Due to the intellectual poverty of certain men, unhealthy displays of masculinity persist in families and society. Let us examine this phenomenon through a few instances.
First. When we look around us, we notice something curious. We see that two people of the same rank behave in completely opposite ways socially. One is so full of self-importance that his feet barely touch the ground, while the other has no such pretensions. Why does this happen? Let us consider when a person puts on airs. Only when he has traveled as far as is possible for him—when he has done all he can do, and showing anything more is beyond his capacity. His reach, his capability extends only that far. This is what happens with the first type. But if someone has walked only a portion of the path he could potentially travel much further, then he will regard that distance as merely a part of his entire journey. His journey is not yet over, the time to stop has not come, and his preoccupation with covering the remaining path leaves him no leisure for putting on airs. Generally, the greater one’s pretensions, the lesser one’s abilities. He uses his airs to cleverly hide his incompetence. As the saying goes, “When a small person rises high, he makes his friends weep.” Very true words indeed.
Second. We see certain people who mistreat their family members. They display all their unhealthy masculinity toward their wives at home. Who behaves this way? The rickshaw puller who gets beaten and humiliated outside the home and then goes home to beat his wife differs from the gentleman who mistreats his wife at home only by a few certificates. Both share essentially the same psychological characteristics. Men with shaky social positions exhibit sick and primitive masculinity. Big certificates can never make a small person truly big.
Third. An assistant secretary responds to an acquaintance’s greeting with a cheerful “Walaikum assalam” and even inquires about that person and their family members. When that same officer, upon receiving a greeting, asks only about the greeter’s well-being, one must understand that he has become a senior assistant secretary. After becoming a deputy secretary, he will only say “Walaikum assalam.” Upon promotion to joint secretary, this will shrink to just “Walaikum.” When the response to a greeting becomes a silent, smiling nod of the head, one must understand that the additional secretary has graciously bestowed what amounts to a great blessing! If, after greeting that same officer, he looks at you in a way that suggests his very act of looking is more than enough, then he has surely reached the final stage of degradation (read: the bureaucratic ladder)—meaning he is a secretary! One day, that very same person calls out greetings to both acquaintances and strangers, inquiring about everyone’s family welfare. Look into it and you’ll find he is then a retired government officer! One feels such pity seeing these people! However, happily, the number of such officers in the bureaucracy is now much lower than at any previous time. I often think we should establish a system by law making book-buying and reading mandatory for civil servants. The more books bureaucrats read, the more humane they will become.
Four. Office bosses won’t be good—this is only natural. A good boss is far more important than a good posting. It is the very nature of bosses to undervalue their subordinates’ positions and to prefer surrounding themselves with flatterers at all times. Many bosses almost forget that officers and clerks cannot be made to work in the same manner. The culture of our country is this: keeping the boss happy, not office work, is your primary duty. If it ever happens that your personality and social acceptability are superior to your boss’s, then he will feel a kind of sickly insecurity and will want to habitually regard you as a rival to his very identity. Those whose recognition and social standing depend solely on their job are generally not good as bosses or as friends. They remain constantly absorbed in thinking about how they can harm their subordinates. The petty-minded take perverse pleasure in giving severe punishments for minor offenses. The attachment to one’s job is a great attachment indeed. In this attachment, subordinates show false respect to their boss while behind his back they curse him in every audible and inaudible language of the world. Working under a boss who thinks he is the wisest of all due to his position is extremely difficult. All their arrogance and theatrics remain confined within the limited sphere of their job. When the job ends, everything ends. In my experience, I have seen that after retirement, such harmful autocratic bosses are ignored not only by their former junior colleagues but even the street dogs don’t acknowledge them.
Five. You went to a restaurant with your boyfriend, and because the tea cup was a bit late in coming, the boyfriend cursed the waiter to his heart’s content. Taking advantage of the opportunity, he even landed a couple of slaps. Why did he do this? When there’s a woman present, the physical prowess of the incompetent increases. He who lacks the strength to hunt lions, once he gets a gun in his hand, hunts donkeys and shamelessly takes pictures standing on the dead donkey’s body to hang in his drawing room. A man who has no backbone places a bamboo stick in place of his spine to stand upright. That might work, perhaps, but that helplessness looks terribly ugly! There’s a class of foolish girls who, lacking brains, mistake men’s muscles for brains. The more hollow a man is inside, the more he depends on physical force.
Six. Small-minded people always have more time to pay attention to small tasks. Big tasks require great qualifications. Those who lack this are somewhat compelled to show their masculinity by taking on grand airs over small tasks. The great accomplish and let it be known; the small accomplish and announce it. The weaker one’s mental strength, the greater one’s arrogant force. Because there’s less sugar in the tea, he scolds the housemaid for half an hour. What else can the poor soul do! Scolding the housemaid doesn’t require any additional qualifications. Let him scold the boss for half a minute when angered by an unjust decision—let me see that! A man who considers himself a ‘real man’ by scolding a sari-clad being has no other qualification for manhood except possessing male genitalia.
Seven. You’ll find another class of Facebook celebrities whom not even dogs would ‘follow’ outside of Facebook. Their air of importance is always inflated in the virtual world. Apart from amassing a huge number of followers, they have no real achievements to speak of in life. When people lift someone on their shoulders and dance around them, that person thinks the sky has descended a little lower, that if they just reach out their hand, they could touch the sky. They believe: the sky is mine! But when people stop dancing, they find themselves back on the ground. Then they no longer dare even to think of touching the sky. To touch the sky from the ground requires some additional position and qualification. Online virility, offline impotence!
Eight. Money has a certain heat to it. It wants to burn everything around the person who possesses it. The more money someone has, the greater their delusion that “I can buy anything and everything.” If you simply refuse to be bought by someone who flaunts their wealth, you can live quite happily by completely ignoring their existence. Behind the flattery of the rich lies not necessity, but greed. The wealthiest person in this world is one who can move through life without caring a whit about the rich and powerful. Those whose masculinity resides solely in their money are generally people of very weak character. Show such a wealthy person your firmness once; after that, you’ll see them treating you with respect. Financial obligation to someone and slavery—both are the same.
Nine. The less a teacher knows, the harder they make their exam questions to display their authority. A student knows less precisely because they are a student. Otherwise, they would be the teacher. Making questions difficult is an attempt to hide one’s own fragility that only makes it more apparent. I’ve seen many teachers come to class and talk about their own CGPA. Looking at them, it seems they were born solely to achieve a CGPA. They lacked the strength to demonstrate their worth through anything more substantial. Many of them give low marks on exam papers. The intention is to make students study harder. This is the worst possible method for encouraging students to study more. Instead of giving low marks on papers, if they could explain to students why they should study, that would probably be more effective. I know of no university in the world where making more students fail has led to more studying.
Ten. Some men display their masculinity by diminishing others to elevate themselves. Growing large this way is easy, because it only requires knowing how to gossip. Bengalis are the only people on earth who possess infinite, inborn talent for resenting others’ prosperity. Such resentment diminishes one’s own mental strength. I believe that if a knife must be plunged, a true man plunges it into the chest, not the back. Around you are people you perhaps don’t even have time to think about, whose existence or non-existence doesn’t cause you the slightest headache, yet somehow they manage to find endless time to spread nonsense about you and bring you down. Ah! How much time they have on their hands! It truly makes one envious! In every office there are bosses who leave their heads at home when they set out, bringing only their ears to work. From the moment they arrive, they run the office relying solely on their ears. What can the poor fellow do but believe hearsay when he has no head? The masculinity of making decisions based on rumors belongs to the ears, not the mind. The prevailing notion is that women are jealous. From my own experience, I’ve seen that men are far more jealous than women. We live in a society where the hideous display of masculinity by some jealous, sick men makes us gasp for breath constantly. Jealous men have always seemed like eunuchs to me. Someone who has even minimal ability to prove themselves doesn’t need to live a life consumed by envy.
A man with true masculinity has no hypocrisy. He doesn’t strike the weak but learns to increase his own strength by bearing blows from the strong. The kind of forgiveness that wouldn’t corrupt the Mahabharata cannot be granted without masculinity. A man’s masculinity is revealed in how he treats those beneath him. Masculinity is recognized by how much one refrains from corruption when given the opportunity. Masculinity belongs to him whose strength lies in his mind, not his arms. We want a society free from men who wear invisible bangles and ribbons! We want the kind of masculinity whose fire burns not in the haze of cigarette smoke, nor in French-cut beards, but in the fierce determination to build oneself that hides in the corner of one’s eyes!
Thought: Six Hundred Sixty
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The other day I wrote in a comment on a post that women are generally of three types: wicked, mischievous, and vicious.
Many asked, what’s this about?………… Alright, I’ll explain…………..
Wicked women are the wicked type. What do they do?
They scheme, living through deception like Shakespeare’s deceitful women.
They create complications; without complications their food won’t digest.
They sow discord in families, carrying tales from one to another, from another to one.
They give and take malicious advice; their brains are designed in such a way that all their intelligence is packed with mischief.
They isolate husbands from everyone else, unable to tolerate anyone’s happiness.
Won’t let her boyfriend socialize with anyone, not even with other men.
Becomes paranoid,
even if some girl’s name appears
in Facebook’s ‘People You May Know’,
she inevitably asks,
How do you know this girl? Why is Facebook sending you her suggestion?
Puffs up her cheeks in such a way
that you feel like punching them to really make them swell.
Turns the household into a Zee Bangla Star Plus melodrama.
Saves money meant for mother-in-law’s sari to buy expensive ones for herself.
Naughty girls
are the ‘Oh, you naughty thing!’
type.
They chatter and prattle so much that
you want to grab them and plop down in the roadside kash grass fields.
They act a little coy and
make you act half-coy too, and if you can’t tease them properly, it feels like
life itself is meaningless!
They don’t get angry,
they sulk. Looking at their pouting lips turned upside down, you want to kiss them gently and say, I love this rotten thing so much!
They puff their cheeks in such a way that you want to grab and pull them. You want to tap their head, nose, and cheeks with your knuckles.
Suddenly wakes up in the middle of the night and says, You have to feed me ice cream. Come on!
When you’re busy with work and don’t give her attention, she wraps her arms around your neck from behind and stays there, won’t leave even when you say ‘Just a moment, I’m coming.’
What she says with her mouth, her eyes say twice over. The magic of her eyes is such that
you want to reach out and touch them!
Calls her beloved by the names of very cute little animals.
Whether her beloved calls her honey, baby,
darling, magic, rotten, or any other name, if he doesn’t use that name, she understands that she must have done something wrong. She cries so sweetly!
Always remains an innocent young girl to her beloved. (Actually,
women remain innocent young girls all their lives. If they don’t,
it’s not her fault,
it’s her beloved’s fault.)
Wicked girls are like
the ‘Women are the fuel of hell’ type from Abdullah’s novels.
Love less,
romance more. If they don’t get enough romance, they’ll change lovers if necessary.
Upload photos with one person with the caption ‘my darling’ in the morning, then flirt with someone else at night.
Excel particularly in scheming.
Sometimes surpass even men in mischief.
Become carbon copies of Hamlet’s mother Gertrude. Consider every other man as their own. Possess such big hearts that they can embrace everyone.
When they can’t forcibly extract love, they become vindictive,
try to cause harm.
(Is this really love?
How can one who loves
cause harm?)
My friend burns with rage whenever she feels a little better about herself. She couldn’t afford to buy a smartphone, but her roommate could; so at night, when her roommate falls asleep, she takes the phone and drops it in a glass of water.
She feels secretly dejected because she can’t write “My favorite hobby is playing love games” on her exam papers. Like men, she believes in loveless physical romance.
She changes boyfriends like tissue paper, even after marriage. Just as all men are polygamous by nature, so are wayward women.
Beyond this, there are many other types of women, such as…………
Tree-women: They’re the plant-like type. You feel good when they’re near, and even better when they’re not. Even touching them doesn’t lead to ‘anything.’
Scholar-women: Looking at them doesn’t inspire love, only respect and the urge to touch their feet in reverence.
Elephant-women: Looking at them makes you want to say, “Auntie, assalamu alaikum.”
Fairy-women: Looking at them makes you wish you could become a genie and fly away into the sky.
Pretentious-women: Looking at them makes you want to pick them up and slam them down.
Boring-women: It seems that swatting cockroaches with foam slippers is far better than talking to them.
Whining-women: The entire time you’re with them, one question will keep battering your mind repeatedly: Why is life so long??
Shameless-women: Looking at them will make you want to die of embarrassment.
Snobbish-women: Talking to them will make you want to punch their noses flat.
Flour-dough-semolina-women: Just looking at them will make you want to sing: Oh rain, don’t fall on her face!
Cat-women: They have a perpetual rubbing-against-things tendency. While romancing them, you’ll think it would be better to raise chickens than keep such cats.
Missed-call-women: Their missed-call torment will often force you to board airplanes.
Chatter-women: When they call, if you hold the phone away from your ear for a few minutes and then bring it back, you’ll find them saying the same thing over and over again.
(Good heavens………how much more nonsense can one carry on! Even nonsense has its limits!
Here I am on the infamous Satkhira to Dhaka utterly dreadful road;
on a bus. Even the roads of remote villages don’t have such potholes! The bus doesn’t really move on this road, it rocks. The road itself offers a real boat journey adventure! The single seat in front is completely tilted over my legs. Twisting the laptop screen awkwardly to cast light on the keyboard while craning my neck forward and typing with great difficulty—I’ve been carrying on with all this nonsense, madness,
and foolishness for so long. Writing like this is terribly annoying and painful!
My neck and back ache,
and there’s considerable strain on my eyes.
……………. However, one thing is certain: if the mischievous girl doesn’t come home, life will become as bland as the life in that story of Molla Nasiruddin. Let me tell the story
: After his wedding, on the wedding night, Molla Nasiruddin lifted his new bride’s veil for the first time to see her face. He was tremendously disappointed by what he saw. When the bride asked Molla Nasiruddin, “Well,
from whom should I
observe purdah in this house?”
He replied,
“You don’t need to observe it from anyone else,
just from me will do!” ………….. So, I have no objection to mischief!)
Reflection: Six Hundred and Sixty-One
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When I come to Dhaka, I usually stay at Mahbub’s house. He
is one of my very, very dear people,
one of my closest younger brothers. Among the few extraordinary good people I’ve encountered in life,
he is one of them. Auntie also sees me as her eldest son,
and even scolds me from time to time. I generally don’t accept gifts from anyone. But last Eid when Auntie gave me a new panjabi and said,
“How can my eldest son celebrate Eid without a new panjabi?” I couldn’t say anything more. Today too I came up to his house. This morning while having breakfast with him I shared some thoughts
that I feel like writing down. (I made a slight error—
they no longer live in a house that I can call
‘his house’
given my relationship with this family. Sometimes intimacy gives birth to rights. The house is now ‘my house.’
How easily a home is built with love!)
There were no other channels then; in my childhood, dramas would air on BTV at nine in the evening. Naturally, worrying it would harm my studies, mother wouldn’t let me watch them. She would shut the doors and windows of my study room and watch television in the next room at low volume. It was terribly difficult for mother to watch dramas that way—
she could barely hear anything!
Not much sound reached my room,
but what I would do
was this:
I would peek through the window crack
to see what Tawkir was saying, how he said it, why Bipasha laughed,
how much she curved her lips. (Girls just laugh like that—
twelve or thirteen isn’t the age to understand this.)
I would wait to spend that one hour this way. If mother ever noticed, she would scold me terribly. Then I would study a little bit again. That was the age
when I believed that if I didn’t study, it was father and mother’s loss, I had nothing to lose.
For that one hour, neither studying happened
nor drama-watching.
Once that hour passed, I was free. Since I hadn’t been allowed to watch television, after ten o’clock it was up to me whether to study or not. In those days, not watching television was a tremendous sacrifice. Sometimes what would happen was that father would come up from behind and, seeing my nose pressed against the window gap, place his hand on my shoulder and say, “Want to watch TV? Go on,
go watch!”
I was overjoyed! When mother saw me in the TV room, she would get very angry,
and then father would say,
“Let him watch a little drama! After dinner he’ll
study an extra two hours.” “Right?
You’ll study, won’t you?”
I agreed to that too!
At the time, it felt like the drama I wasn’t being allowed to watch
was the most beautiful drama of all. There were certain rules for watching dramas. For instance,
you could watch serial dramas,
but not package or weekly dramas. Because if you weren’t allowed to watch serial dramas, there was no point in watching any episode at all. Of course, when the power went out, there was nothing to be done about it. We would leave that to fate. For us two brothers, nights when the power went out were nights for sitting on the veranda, watching and
understanding the night. My father was the teacher.
(I’ve written about this in another piece,
so I won’t write about it here.)
If I was allowed to watch dramas, I could always study some extra time. In those days we didn’t have a dining table at home;
after the dramas ended, we would all sit together downstairs on a mat spread on the floor to eat. Then father would say,
“Mom, let him watch television sometimes. Otherwise he doesn’t study at all. One hour of neither studying
nor watching TV.” (My mother’s name is Momota, nickname Mom.)
I would be so happy hearing this that I’d start dancing with joy. I would sit even closer, snuggled against father’s side. Then father would tell me, “Son,
don’t do two things at once
when both need to be done well by you. Do dil banda,
kale-machor, na paye behesht, na paye gor.”
“Father, what does this mean?” “It means
if you keep other work on your mind while praying, the prayer won’t be done properly. Studying is like prayer. When you’re doing it, if thoughts of other work come to mind, finish that first. Then study for some extra time afterwards. Prayer is the same way. If you don’t do it at the right time, you’ll have to make extra effort later. Otherwise it won’t be complete.” I didn’t understand much then. Only
‘Do dil banda, kale-machor,
na paye behesht, na paye gor.’
This phrase worked as motivation. Father would say it quite often.
Today I understand,
as long as we remain committed to a mission,
that entire duration is our time of worship. If any other thought enters the mind during worship, it becomes impossible to receive the complete fruits of that worship. Those who, while working to accomplish a particular purpose, give priority to all other tasks as well—none of their work is done well. Just as worship requires accepting tremendous hardship to move forward, similarly, while committed to a mission, it’s impossible to reach that goal through comfort and ease. Any kind of study is like worship itself. Without immense patience,
sincerity and willpower, no worship in this world would have succeeded. Throughout the ages, prophets
and great souls have proven this very thing. During worship, one must endure much suffering and continue worshipping alone. No other matter can be brought to mind during worship. This certainly diminishes the blessings of worship, I believe. During worship, one must maintain the highest reverence for intention. The weaker one’s intention, the lesser the measure of what is received. The hadith states, “Innama al-a’malu binniyyat”—
meaning, every action depends upon a person’s intention. If the intention remains pure and one stays devoted to that intention, success in any endeavor becomes possible.
Intuition is much more important
than logic. When you’re in doubt about a decision, unsure what should be done,
at that moment ask the ‘self’ within you. See what it says. That is intuition. Even if logic suggests something else, still listen to the voice of your inner ‘self’. Why?
For two reasons.
One. You will often find
that what your intuition tells you
proves right in some way or another. Sometimes answers to certain matters in the world that remain temporarily inexplicable (for the time being) lie hidden in some most mysterious part of our enigmatic brain, traces of which we perhaps never discover. Suddenly, without any conscious effort, such answers emerge as signals. The greater one’s capacity to quickly grasp these,
the faster one can make the right decision at the right moment.
Two. Even if you make a wrong decision because of your intuition, the capacity to accept the damage that results and the ability to bounce back develops unconsciously within you. Say you didn’t follow your intuition and went with logic instead, making a correct decision. If that decision takes you to level 5, let’s assume it would take you 10-12 years to reach level 10 from there. In my experience, I’ve seen that even if you follow your intuition and make an apparently wrong decision, and you drop down to level 0—at that moment a tremendous regret works within you, intertwined with the love of making mistakes for the sake of what you cherish, and infinite responsibility. The drive that this love creates within you, its emotionally charged power (impulse) propels you forward with such speed that you reach that same level 10 with a force that is completely novel and miraculous by the standards of everyone else’s past experience. This work might take you at most 3-4 years. Meaning, by properly harnessing the power of intuition, an apparently failed person can reach the same height, even greater heights, in much less time than a successful person.
“Brother, as soon as you arrived, you said that yesterday on the bus they didn’t give you a blanket, so you couldn’t sleep all night in the AC cold, and the road was terribly bumpy too. You said you’d have breakfast and then sleep for 2-3 hours, then get up and go out for a walk. But instead, you came and sat down to write. Where do you get this energy, brother?”
“It’s not about energy, Mahbub, it’s about passion. Not everyone can do everything. The work you love, you feel such affection or fascination for it—something that might have no value to many others. But you remain sincere and faithful to your own passion. This is very necessary. You must love your passion, not give it room to grow artificially, otherwise you won’t get anything extra from your passion. Sincerity toward it also removes the fatigue of your labor. People become tired not so much from physical causes as from mental ones—far more so.”
Thought: Six hundred sixty-two
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One.
Everything hasn’t ended yet.
Some love still remains. Annoyed by her indifference, you keep saying you’ll think of something new. You keep saying it, but you’re not thinking.
Only you would know all this. No one else. Even hesitation gets covered by skillful acting……….
No! This won’t do! I’ve endured enough. Enough is enough!
Knowing all this, someone had come close. For nothing else but loving you.
The new boy knows the chemistry inside your mind a little bit. But not so much that if he knew more, he wouldn’t think about you in his own way.
She doesn’t know that if the indifferent boy suddenly blurts out ‘I love you,’ you’ll abandon her and return to that same old relationship. She knows you’ve moved away; you told her yourself.
For you this may be a waiting room for some uncertain love, but what about her, who has made this her entire life’s dwelling? Did you come close only to hopelessly confuse her understanding of life’s scope?
There’s no such thing as ‘thinking of letting go.’ What exists is: I have let go, or I haven’t let go. There’s nothing in between.
You think about the one who neglected you, but instantly forget the one who, encouraged by you, reached out toward you? Why did you encourage someone you could never shelter, hoping for what happiness? Does everyone reach out just for a moment’s joy? The same you who said you were leaving someone forever, never to return—how could you so easily say, I’m going back, please forgive me if you can!……… Alas! This too happens!!
Which love do women value more, who knows! The old one? Or the new one? Or do they keep both as options while waiting for something newer, more novel, more experimental? Their hearts change, and love changes with them. Do they themselves know what they actually want, how they want it, how much they want? ……………. One could write heaps of postdoctoral theses on this!
Women, you certainly can! Break toys in childhood, break lives in adulthood! Why, tell me? Can’t you find any toy cheaper than life itself?
Two.
29 October 2015
I try to follow certain practices. Among these, some came to mind while writing this piece, and I’m sharing a few:
One. Sleep at most 6 hours daily on average. It’s not about duration, but sleeping well that matters. When sleeping, definitely silence your mobile and keep the laptop away.
Two. In your mobile’s drafts or in a notebook, write down the good thoughts and ideas that come to your mind at various moments. Usually, beautiful thoughts don’t come twice.
Three. Every day, read a motivational book or listen to a lecture for exactly 30 minutes. During this time, keep your ego aside.
Four. If your mind ever becomes very restless and nothing can calm it, walk for 10 minutes and count your steps as you walk. You can do another thing: empty your mind of all thoughts, make it completely blank, and quietly look up at the sky for 10 minutes. You can read Vivekananda’s letters or Rabindranath’s Chinnapatrabali, listen to Rabindra Sangeet. Your mind will become peaceful.
Five. Every morning, take 10 minutes to write down on paper what you plan to accomplish that day. Keep the paper with you. Write at least one more task than the previous day. Before going to sleep at night, check whether you’ve completed everything.
Six. Avoid the company of fools, or encourage those around you to do something worthwhile. The work habits and success patterns of friends around you can influence you. The more foolish your husband is, the greater the likelihood that your future generation will be foolish. A foolish husband is more dangerous to a family than a foolish wife. Since childhood, I’ve watched my father—as long as he remained engaged in work, he stayed cheerful. From then, this idea took root in me: staying engaged in work brings happiness. It’s not easy to break free from what you’ve learned from your family. So don’t do anything in your family that will teach your next generation to think that way.
Seven. Be stubborn about work that needs to be done. Don’t give up until you see it through to the end.
Eight. Stop the bad habit of considering someone indispensable in your life when they don’t consider you indispensable in theirs. There’s no point in suffocating yourself for someone who’s breathing freely without you. The more you feel for them, the more they’ll enjoy a kind of sick triumph. Knowing how to forget the wrong person is a great art. It doesn’t matter how long you were with them; what matters is how completely you can delete them from your life going forward.
Nine. Develop the habit of reading very quickly. Learn how to skim over unnecessary parts while reading. Mark and reread essential parts repeatedly, keeping a photocopy of them in your mind. This will reduce the time it takes to complete your reading tasks.
Ten. Look at your current situation. You’ll see that by the Creator’s grace, you’ve escaped many dangers or misfortunes in certain matters and are doing well. Don’t go to sleep each night without expressing gratitude. Gratitude brings respect, mental strength, and peace.
Eleven. Read various motivational books including The Secret, Outliers, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, The Power of Now, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, You Can Win. Read many biographies of great people. Read The Prophet, Gitabitan, and various religious texts with feeling. When reading these books, you must read with belief. If you judge everything in the world through logic alone, surviving in this world might become difficult for you. However, from all that these books contain, accept only what you need.
Twelve. Fast at least two days a month. Fasting increases mental strength and teaches patience and humility.
Thirteen. Keep at least one good book in your bag and read whenever you get the chance. You can also keep books as PDFs on your mobile phone.
Fourteen. Help at least one person every day, or forgive someone. This will increase your self-respect. Respect yourself above all else.
Fifteen. Once a week, stand on your balcony and watch the dawn break. This will help make your thoughts beautiful.
Sixteen. Here’s simple wisdom: avoid the company of those who don’t respect others. There’s little to learn from arrogant people.
Seventeen. Build a wall around yourself. In that walled room, give yourself plenty of time to do your work in your own way. This will enable you to accomplish more in the same time than others. If you give time to everyone, you won’t be able to do your own work properly.
Eighteen. Don’t go to sleep without reading at least 30 pages of a good book every day. Save time from Facebooking and read books instead. Associate with people who read books. There’s no point in loving someone who doesn’t read books. And if you do fall in love, teach them to read.
Nineteen. Spend less time with people who have less intelligence and wisdom than you. But never hurt them with your words. One conversation with an intelligent person equals reading twenty books. It’s better to be alone than to spend time with the wrong people.
Twenty. Every day, do a bit more work than you’re capable of. If you can do that extra work properly, buy yourself some gifts, or do something you enjoy.
Twenty-one. Once a week, turn off your watch and mobile phone and spend time exactly as you wish. That day, disconnect yourself completely from the outside world and do all those things you enjoy but can’t do because of busyness.
Twenty-two. If any confused or negative thoughts enter your mind, don’t try to push them out; instead, step away from them yourself.
Twenty-three. Your mobile phone was bought for you, not for others. Sometimes be selective about which calls you answer. Most of our calls aren’t important and waste time too. If you know or sense beforehand that a call will upset your mind or mood, don’t answer it unless absolutely necessary.
Twenty-four. Write down ten good qualities of someone you respect or admire. Then believe that these qualities exist within you too, and no matter how difficult it may be, keep practicing those qualities. Pretend to be like them. Work in the same style as they do. Try this for two weeks—you’ll see a change in yourself.
Twenty-five. Listen occasionally to soft melodic Oriental or Western instrumental music; through headphones or sitting alone in your room. Watch some good movies. Look at some masterpiece paintings. And on a piece of paper, write down how you felt after listening to good music or watching movies and paintings. Share this with friends on Facebook.
Twenty-six. Before others do, make fun of your own bad sides publicly from time to time. This will increase your control over yourself.
Twenty-seven. Every day, do two things you don’t like to do. Even if you feel annoyed while doing them, don’t stop. For example, start reading a book that you should read but don’t want to. Or call someone you need to call but haven’t gotten around to calling. Or clean the toilet at home. This will increase your ability to work quickly. If you can persist for at least 22 minutes with something that makes others think of quitting within 30 seconds out of annoyance, you will definitely stay ahead of others.
Twenty-eight. Associate more with people you want to become like. You can’t lose weight by hanging around with people who love to eat.
Twenty-nine. Stay silent for 30 minutes straight once a day. Don’t speak to anyone during that time. It’s even better if you can close your eyes and ruminate on some old success or happy memory. This helps increase mental strength.
Thirty. Often think: if you died right now, who besides your family would cry for you? Think about what you could do to increase the number of such people, and do it.
Thirty-one. You have only two options: either go to bed late at night, or wake up before dawn. If you truly can’t be alone at night, the second option is better, because most people stay up at night chatting and wasting time. If you can wake up before dawn, no one will be around to disturb you, so you’ll have little else to do but study.
Thirty-two. Whatever we do, if it’s something truly noteworthy, it’s surely the result of at least 10,000 hours of effort over 10 years. No one in this world can achieve anything overnight.
Thirty-three. Don’t suddenly start working hard on some task. First understand what you need to do and what you don’t need to do. Then engage not just in effort, but in truly hard work.
Thirty-four. No one in this world goes from zero to hero. You must decide what you want to be a hero in. Spending time on something you’re not interested in, or something you don’t consider important, is simply wasting time. What you’re spending time on is what will one day distinguish you from others.
Thirty-five. The relationship between intelligence and achievement is not very strong. The more intelligent someone is, the more successful they become—this may not always hold true. Only twenty percent of the students who achieved the best results in schools, colleges, and universities manage to make it onto the list of the great. The remaining eighty percent come from those about whom no one ever dreamed. So keep fighting with yourself, even if it costs you your last drop of blood.
Happy Living!!
Thought: Six Hundred Sixty-Three
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Please don’t torment me by saying the following things in my inbox:
# How can I prepare for the BCS examination?
(I’ve written everything I had to write. I have nothing more to say beyond that. I stopped discussing BCS exam preparation in my inbox before I was even born!)
# Thousands of troubles and inquiries related to the BCS examination
(I’m not a BCS specialist. Under the pressure of my studies, I haven’t had time to research BCS matters.)
# NSI / Registration exams and millions of other PSC exam preparations, bank jobs, studying abroad, millions and millions of questions about employment (I’ve taken only one job exam in my life, and that was the 30th BCS examination. Apart from this one BCS exam, I know nothing about any other examination in the world.)
# What style did you use to study? How many hours did you study?
Did you come on Facebook during that time?
How long did you sleep at night? Did you keep books on the table while eating?
How long did it take to shower?
……..blah blah blah!! (Lest someone asks, “Brother, did you wear pink underwear when you went to take the BCS viva exam?” Out of this fear, I’ve stopped talking about viva attire!! Figure out the rest!)
# How can one increase concentration in studies?
(Obviously by staying a hundred million hands away from Facebook, saying “to hell with Facebook’s mother”!)
# A thousand and one kinds of career-related questions
(May your career go to hell!
What’s it to me!
My inbox is not dedicated to your career.)
# Making study routines (If you were in front of me, I’d just pick you up and slam you down!)
# I’m studying in such-and-such year. How can I start preparing for the BCS exam from now? (Take the trouble to go to my notes and read the notes I’ve written spending hundreds of hours. If you don’t have time to read them, soak some puffed rice in Sprite and eat it.)
# I’m weak in math/English. How can I overcome my weakness, please advise. (You’re weak because you’ve been fooling around instead of studying. What can I do about it?)
# Starting with ‘Brother, how are you’ and then asking for BCS guide names
(This annoyance has made me stop exchanging pleasantries in my inbox out of fear these days.)
# Seeking advice for solutions to boyfriend-related problems (When you have trouble with your BF, there’s only one path open to you: come dancing to me. I don’t know anything beyond that.)
# Give me the link to your such-and-such piece, send me a PDF of your such-and-such writing to this email address (If you had even 10% of the notes I have, and someone asked you to do this kind of work, what would you tell them?)
# How can I write like you? How can I achieve results like yours?
(Mujtaba Ali was once asked,
“How do you write so well?
Could you share a little?” “At most, I can show you my child. But if you ask me to demonstrate the process of giving birth, that’s a problem!”… This was his answer!!)
# Give me some good movie and book recommendations.
(I’ve made many posts about this, written notes. Please take the trouble to search and look through them. If you don’t have time, ask Google uncle.)
# Why are you silent about such-and-such issues?
Why aren’t you writing anything?
(When and where did I sign a bond stating that I’ve taken responsibility for saving this world?)
# The extreme level of annoyance regarding ‘Add me as your Facebook friend’!! (Why should I add you? Who are you? Why do I need to be your friend for you to see my posts? All my posts are public anyway. Who are you that I must add you as a friend? Are you some wise person with an ugly appearance? Or a beautiful fool? Who exactly are you? Or are you someone I know?)
# Give me your phone number. (I won’t. I don’t sit around waiting to engage in career-related chatter with you over the phone. Don’t bother me about this.)
And thousands of other kinds of questions, personal/family/social/state problems, demands, complaints, reproaches, and my head becomes their umbrella!!
Sometimes I feel like marrying out of heartbreak and becoming a renunciate, singing songs, “My beloved gourd has made me…”
Kidding apart, I really don’t enjoy writing about careers, BCS/IBA preparation, motivational stuff. I love writing about the tensions of human relationships, thinking about various social responsibilities, telling tales of love and affection. If you asked me to name my five most favorite pieces of writing, perhaps only one would be about career/preparation strategies/motivation. Yet I write about these things, don’t I?
For whom do I take such trouble to find time and write? For you all!
Why must you torment me beyond this?
It’s impossible for any sane human being to reply to this volume of inbox messages. I humbly ask you to forgive me. If you can’t forgive me, I will block you. I really do it and will continue to do so—I do mean it! I can’t even see the necessary messages anymore these days. Everyone just misunderstands…
I am extremely annoyed!!
I don’t Facebook with the noble responsibility of giving you online tutoring or counseling. Enough is enough. Just stop it in my inbox!!
Thought: Six hundred sixty-four
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(I shared some personal thoughts on my thought-wall. If anyone doesn’t like it, please skip it.)
One. Make a list of all those past actions that brought suffering into your life, keep it beside your pillow, and read through it once before going to sleep, or spend five minutes reflecting on them. Plan how to stay away from those patterns. The next time you’re about to do the same thing, your subconscious will automatically recall the memory of previous failure. If you haven’t planned how to distance yourself from it, the memory of past failure might affect the quality of your next endeavor.
Two. Instead of thinking about what you need to do in the next ten days, focus on what you need to do today, and start working on those tasks. This will make the work feel manageable.
Three. Write a love letter once a week to someone of the opposite sex whom you might never actually meet — a different person each week. Write about their various qualities. You can share it on Facebook if you wish. This brings pure mental joy. (For instance, I often go for bike rides with Suchitra Sen from Saptapadi… I keep exchanging mischievous glances with Madhabi Mukherjee from Charulata… or I gaze at Audrey Hepburn and wonder if she’s about to flash that million-dollar look from Roman Holiday!)
Four. What would you want written on your gravestone after you die? Imagine it and keep striving toward that. Here’s mine: Here lies a person who lived before they died.
Five. Discover a technique to complete tasks that are your responsibility but which you don’t enjoy doing — in half the usual time. This way, you’ll have time for the things you love to do.
Six. Write down fifteen negative points about yourself. Next to each, note how many days it will take you to overcome that trait. Occasionally look at that paper and cross out the points you’ve conquered. Celebrate your small victories by doing something you enjoy.
Seven. Make a list of all the things you’re afraid to do but should do. Make the list comprehensive. However tedious it feels, start doing one task each day, and after a few weeks, measure how far you’ve progressed.
Eight. Knowing what we truly love to do is enormously important. Once we discover this, and learn to bring genuine dedication and tremendous effort to it, there’s no reason to lag behind. Our biggest problem is that we don’t even know what we actually enjoy.
Nine. Before beginning work on any subject, take sufficient time to think about how you’ll do it, how much you’ll do, and why you’ll do it. The capacity for patient reflection can take a person very far. Trust your intuition.
Ten. Never follow anything blindly. Don’t get trapped in someone else’s predetermined framework—create your own. Customize any advice to suit your own needs and circumstances.
Eleven. When you’re very angry, lower your head and look at the ground while counting backwards from 100 to 1, or fix your gaze on a corner of the wall or ceiling and think ten good thoughts about yourself. This will help reduce your anger.
Twelve. Don’t criticize great people, and don’t listen to criticism of them. Doing so only breeds arrogance. Believe deeply that you have no right to speak ill of someone who is not your equal—someone whose level you haven’t reached.
Thirteen. In all areas of life, avoid the excessively learned and the overly clever. They will typically either harm you for their own gain or shatter your self-confidence.
Fourteen. Save the time you’d spend watching television and use it to pray, read books, listen to music, or watch a good movie instead.
Fifteen. Use the kaizen method to surpass yourself. Kaizen means continuously moving toward a better state, little by little, without stopping. Progress slowly but steadily, bit by bit—just don’t stop.
Sixteen. Every day, spend two minutes staring at a clock’s hands with complete, undivided attention. Don’t allow any other thoughts to enter your mind during this time. Do this for twenty-one consecutive days. This will enhance your capacity for focused thinking.
Seventeen. Every day, write in a notebook with the date how you’ve progressed beyond the previous day in various areas. Don’t reduce today’s work to complete yesterday’s unfinished tasks—instead, extend your working hours.
Eighteen. Every day you can sing a favorite song at the top of your voice, or recite a beloved poem. Whatever anyone says, celebrate your own desires. You sing for yourself. If something brings you joy and doesn’t harm anyone, don’t let anyone speak badly of it, and don’t care about anyone’s negative comments.
Nineteen. Most of the time, fatigue is an illusion. When you don’t want to do something at a particular moment, your brain repeatedly sends the signal: “You’re tired! You’re tired!” When fatigue strikes during study, you don’t feel like reading, but if a friend suggests going out at that same moment, fatigue doesn’t interfere. When boredom brings fatigue to unpleasant tasks, use that time properly by doing something enjoyable at double the intensity.
Twenty. You can follow a technique to increase concentration. Look at small things in your room that you’ve never noticed before. Think about them. Consider what things could be removed from your room right now, think about it, and then actually move them away! Free yourself from what you don’t need. It often happens that one unnecessary thing diverts our attention from a thousand necessary things.
Twenty-one. Never tell someone they cannot do something if you cannot help them with it. Never allow someone who cannot help you with a task to tell you that you cannot do it.
Twenty-two. Those who think, “I’m from National University, what can I possibly accomplish?” are actually creating pathways to deceive themselves. Such thinking breeds a tendency toward self-forgiveness and develops a mindset that avoids accepting challenges. Through daily practice of this notion, you gradually weaken yourself—the quality of your work and enthusiasm for it begin to diminish. Spend less time with those whose company awakens these thoughts and attitudes in you. If you are given the opportunity to try what you wish to accomplish in life, you are surely worthy of it. Otherwise, you would never have been given the chance to attempt it.
Twenty-three. Whatever work you absolutely need to do, do it for at least four hours straight every day for twenty-one consecutive days—whether you enjoy doing it or not.
Twenty-four. Do not continue doing something you know you must stop. Focus your attention on something else instead.
Twenty-five. Eat whatever you feel like eating when you feel like eating it. Don’t save your most beautiful outfit for some special day—today is that special day. When you feel like traveling somewhere, go as soon as you get the chance. Don’t hoard excess money. The day you’re saving all that money for may never come in your life. If you feel like dancing, dance a little. This is life!
Twenty-six. If the cooking is good, call whoever prepared it and praise their cooking. Practice speaking cheerfully with those who are junior to you in rank or position. Generously thank those who serve you from time to time. Give the person closest to you, the one you love, a bouquet of gladioli before their death and say, “I love you!” Otherwise, you’ll have to leave those flowers at a corner of their grave after they die. What’s the point? Dead people can no longer smell the beautiful fragrance of flowers! The great inconvenience of being dead is that the deceased are deprived of all the beauty of the world.
Twenty-seven. In this intense heat, enduring the unbearable heat of blazing stoves while fasting, I offer my respectful salute to all the mothers, wives, sisters, and female relatives who are preparing iftar for their families.
Let us thank them with smiling faces every day at iftar time. During this month, both our official working hours and labor decrease, while theirs increase significantly. If they were paid for their work, their salary would increase by at least seventy-five percent this month. They are the true heroes of this sacred month of Ramadan!
Twenty-eight. Whenever you get the chance, interact with children exactly as they do—play with them, tell them stories. Give them various gifts. Become their favorite person. This will give you remarkably pure joy.
Live, and let live!!
Reflection: Six hundred sixty-five
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The year was probably 2009.
Some December evening. The Cheragi Pahar intersection at Jamal Khan in Chittagong. The warmth of pithas and pulis, chatpati,
fuchka and liquor tea had settled into every layer of that corner in the winter evening’s embrace. In that colorful twilight, the torrent of words was flowing, flowing indeed!
The boy was smoking cigarettes as usual and chatting away in a haze, standing in front of BRAC Bank. An unemployed bright graduate from Dhaka University; after getting knocked about, he had simply accepted that
jobs don’t come without uncles and relatives. Getting up at noon, taking a leisurely hour to brush his teeth,
finishing brunch, his morning would end at 2:30 amid his retired father’s curses and his mother’s tears in their everyday domestic ritual. Then he’d turn on messenger, roll around in bed a bit, freshen up and head out, watching the evening prayers in his girlfriend’s eyes in the fading afternoon. Those who have nothing
still have a girlfriend. He dreams that
one day he too will land a job and bring his girlfriend permanently to his own home before she goes to someone else’s. He tells the girl this too. Like ten other old foolish girlfriends in the world, this beauty also believes that such a day will truly come. The evening pauses right there, at that dream-seeing. Free dreams feel good to dream!
But work toward fulfilling dreams never progresses. Dreams simply die as dreams and lie there face-down. Talk of the girlfriend’s marriage is in the air. What to do at such times,
the unemployed boy doesn’t know,
or doesn’t have the courage to want to know. He only knows that one day everything will work out. In the weaving of false dreams, the glittering yellow evening lamp announces
it’s 7:30, he has to drop her home. The girl returns home, the boy goes to his daily gathering. His friends are there. All like him;
unemployed people,
terribly busy!
As unemployed as they are,
that’s how busy they are!
No jobs,
but at least each has a girlfriend. Time passes wonderfully!
Less desire to work hard,
more passion for dreaming. Swallowing rice with father’s hard-earned money and having romantic affairs with his own tutoring money. Instead of shouldering the family’s burden, he himself has been a burden for a long time. There’s a God-given father’s hotel, free room and board. The neighborhood people curse,
that’s become tolerable, doesn’t sting anymore. They sleep,
wake up just to fall asleep again. Occasionally takes job exams. Doesn’t study properly; takes exams, that’s the consolation. Doesn’t get jobs,
curses the system’s fourteen generations,
goes around saying,
“Do jobs happen without bribes? No uncles or relatives, who’ll speak for me? All these bastards are corrupted!”
At some point, to fulfill his father’s dreams, he takes to the streets in movements, stirs up Facebook walls. That’s much easier than studying. The girlfriend also thinks, he’s
at least trying!
One day we too will become wish-kites like those paper lanterns. ………… Returning home at 11, he spends the night virtually. On Facebook, he announces in grand words that he’s
certainly not small. Whether he has anything or not, he has status! In the storm of phone calls, the night’s emotions float like cotton. Night turns to dawn in the addiction of chatting and dating. Mother knows
the boy is studying with his room door closed. She reassures father,
“You see,
our Nitu will arrange his own marriage!”
A job is needed, a job!
The middle class can survive without a soul, but a job is essential!
Days pass,
nights end in waiting to sign the contract that sells away freedom. The age-old ritual of embracing servitude with open arms continues in every household.
That winter evening changed everything!
The unemployed young man saw
a boy in blue jeans and yellow t-shirt step down from a jeep. With him, a bodyguard in police uniform,
constantly busy serving his master. The boy entered a bookstore. Many people there knew him. Many greeted him with smiling handshakes,
exchanging pleasantries. It was learned that the boy worked in the police;
an ASP. An officer from the 24th batch. A completely self-made man who had risen from utter poverty. His achievements since joining the police were three:
One. He had installed a new tin roof on his village home. His old mother no longer had to move pots around to catch rainwater dripping through rusted holes in the roof. Two. He had taken his rural, uneducated old parents on a tour of Chittagong city in his government car. In amazement, his parents discovered
that even the station’s OC called their son
‘Sir’! Three. He no longer had to go out wearing shirts mended a hundred times over. No one could tease him anymore by poking fingers through the hole near the knee of his pants. ………… Before getting the job, he lived on the floor of an elder brother’s room in the city,
paying only half the mess rent as his share. With the money saved, he covered his younger sister’s college expenses back in the village and his own food costs. He had to do four tutoring jobs. The money from all of them combined equaled what some people earned from a single tutoring session. Degree college students don’t get tutoring jobs that pay better than this.
That one extraordinary evening changed everything. Filled with intense self-disgust, anger, determination, and wounded pride, the boy transformed completely. Suddenly awakened to time’s demands, he moved away from the habit of complaining and developed a mindset for hard work. He
became an entirely different person!
After three consecutive attempts, he is now an officer in the 31st batch of BCS Administration. His father no longer has to hide his face. Everyone calls his mother
‘the Magistrate Saheb’s mother.’
When his name comes up, friends say with pride, there was a time when we used to chat together.
Where life takes us and when,
none of us can ever anticipate beforehand!