(Some reflections on the duties of a presiding officer at a polling center one day)
How do the police and Ansar forces manage to do so much duty?! The amount of suffering I endured in these two days, I kept thinking,
they do this day after day! You can’t become a good police officer or Ansar without infinite patience and tolerance. How is it possible to bear that level of pain! Hats off to them!!
The polling center was a high school in Chittagong. The entire operation began at 11:30 AM the day before and ended at 9:00 AM the next day. I slept on the school benches at night. The damned mosquitoes don’t feel the cold either.
The most merciless species in the world is the female mosquito. They bite to the tune of music. The entire responsibility of the center was on my shoulders. If there was even a small mistake, there would be serious consequences! At times I felt like climbing to the top of a coconut tree and crying. (There really was a coconut tree at the center I was responsible for.
Hehehe…….)
The police officer who was leading the team with me, poor fellow, was a completely innocent, shy, simpleton type of person. He had a poetic face, spoke with a sweet smile. Just looking at him, you’d think if you put paper and pen in his hands, he’d throw away his weapon right away and start writing poetry. A timid, amusing man, constantly chewing betel leaf. “Sir,
I think they won’t set off any bombs here. What do you think?” I kept reassuring him, brother, nothing will happen, I’m here! The other members of his team were quite wonderful too. Every little while they’d come and give long salutes saying, “Sir, the center is peaceful. No problems.”
There was one simple-minded Ansar sepoy, he was the original fool of the type of foolish-foolish character you see in comedies. A bit too straightforward! Doesn’t even understand that one should be afraid! Poor fellow tells me, “Sir,
I heard somewhere they beat up and killed a presiding officer. I felt very sad, sir. Don’t worry about anything, sir, they can’t do anything to you, we’re here.”
During these two days I just studied people. People work for various strange reasons. You can’t make everyone work the same way. Some can be made to work with flowers, others have to be made to work with sticks. Whatever method works for someone, encouraging or compelling them to work through that method is called motivation.
Some people work when scolded, some work when treated nicely. Those who don’t work without being scolded, if you speak sweetly to them and give them work, they assume the work isn’t that important
No, this can be done slowly and steadily,
and even if not done, nothing terrible will happen. Due to the negligence of such people in their responsibilities
one has to go through many problems, endure scolding, face embarrassment, and sometimes
even punishment. Then again, those who become upset when scolded,
who listen when spoken to nicely,
there’s no point in assigning them work in a scolding tone. Just because one holds a high position
doesn’t mean one must speak in a scolding tone. It’s not as if giving unnecessary reprimands leads to quick
promotion. Many people vent anger caused by personal troubles onto others.
I’ve seen people who, angry with their wives, treat everyone else as their wife
and vent their rage.
Every officer should read Nikolai Gogol’s story “The Overcoat” at least once.
The less one’s competence, the louder one’s voice becomes for no reason. Can the lack of competence be hidden by
shouting in the name of position? The more incompetent or barely competent people raise their voices without cause,
the less their desire to acquire competence becomes. This is why officers are never remembered,
nor is there much possibility of their being so. The right to knowledge lies not in position, but in understanding.
Anyway, everything ends well. Everyone is happy, and I am happy too. Who won the election, who lost—
I have neither headache nor enthusiasm about it. I can do my work properly, and I am
immensely happy with that! It feels like the joy of being released from prison. …… Feeling relieved!
Thought: One hundred.
……………………..
Spending hours upon hours with books in a bookstore is one of the most joyful activities
in the world. Can anything else touch us the way books do? How much love,
emotion, pain, joy, and anguish the writer’s book companions! A writer’s own book is like their own child. The infinite
tenderness that mingles in each book, the time and sacrifice that goes behind a book, the
pain of writing—how many people can endure such torment?
The realm of writing is a deeply mysterious
realm. The ability to write is like a kind of magic. This magic comes from within. Once
this magic possesses someone, they become quite helpless. How this magic enters oneself, why it comes, from where
No one knows where it comes from. But when it arrives, and into whomever it enters, that person becomes a slave to wonder’s strange
enchantment. They can no longer escape from that magical realm. How to walk in that kingdom,
what its laws are, what may be done, what may not—they know none of these ways. They know only
that they must walk. They must find their own path by themselves. In building this road, some
dig their own graves, while others construct their own immortal monuments. Writing is intensely joyful, and simultaneously
infinitely torturous. When I take a book in hand and turn its pages, pure love and supreme
tenderness work within me for the writer. What anguish goes into writing a single book!
The other day I was at the lighthouse, browsing through books. An old habit. Suddenly I saw, just two arms’ length away, a celestial nymph
standing. Impossibly beautiful. Calling her a nymph wasn’t quite right. It fell short. Why is there no other fitting, more intense
Bengali word in the dictionary? The girl’s serene, gentle, soft countenance. Looking at this girl for even a few moments
makes a kind of yearning gather in one’s chest, makes the whole world seem trivial. Books—what are they
worth! Such a girl who creates the feeling of separation even before union! I was lost. I felt
no shame in staring at her shamelessly. Looking at such a girl, even stone would be compelled to become
senseless! Girls of this type are sent into the world with a great assignment
in hand. That is: to drive many boys mad and then go off to the home of another truly mad boy.
What girl who doesn’t prefer mad boys would bother becoming beautiful? Beautiful
girls’ preferences are both mysterious and bizarre. I saw that this girl too was the same. From somewhere a boy came
and put his arm around her waist and walked away with her. That humans descended from apes—you can tell just by looking
at that fellow. You don’t need to struggle through Darwin’s books for that. I felt a tremendous urge to give him a mighty
kick in the backside. I couldn’t. Perhaps the world is so beautiful precisely because most of our desires
remain unfulfilled. Any beauty that isn’t mine—that beauty’s beloved is invariably hideous, unbearable. Whoever walks with a beauty,
looking at him makes me feel irritated. There’s no competition between us, yet I want to think of him as a rival.
Again and again it occurs to me that I am more deserving than him in every way. Worthiness
Love doesn’t awaken; love itself creates the illusion of worthiness. Still, it occurred to me that I am the
only person worthy to stand beside that beautiful woman. No one else in the world suits her company
even slightly. The sight of a beautiful woman gives birth to coveting another’s wife. The mind keeps
thinking, she is not mine, she is not mine! Why isn’t she mine? Why didn’t she fall in love with me?
Why didn’t I meet her much earlier? (The thought being that if I had met her, we would have fallen
in love!) Why isn’t she looking at me and smiling sweetly? Why isn’t she falling in love with me? Why
don’t I look lovable to her at this moment? What harm would it do if she glanced at me? Am I
unworthy even of a look? Why didn’t she become mine? If I went and stood near her, would she mind?
What could be done so that I catch her eye? Why are all other men’s women beautiful? Why isn’t the
one who loves me as beautiful as her? Many more such thoughts bring handfuls of pain, and keep
bringing them.
Thought: One hundred and one.
……………………..
We never know how many people in the world love us so much more than we imagine. If we knew,
we’d find ourselves in quite a predicament. Love is desperately needed to live beautifully. The less love
someone receives, the greater their tendency to commit crimes. Investigate and see—whoever frequently
does wrong, harms others, how sorrowful their personal life is! When life gives someone nothing, they
think taking everything from others is their right. Unfortunate people blame the entire world for their
misfortune. He who doesn’t own a car takes pleasure in throwing stones at others’ car windows. He
who has no wealth sighs at the sight of others’ prosperity. When someone unemployed hears that the
job he couldn’t get was obtained by someone through corruption, he experiences a kind of self-satisfaction.
Robin Hood has been tremendously popular through the ages; the reason being that this tale imagines
a hero who robs the rich and distributes their wealth among the poor. Everyone praises the person who
has built their fortune through hard work, yet they themselves want to build their fortune through plunder.
Many want others to change their fate through hard work, while they themselves change their fate
through plunder. Not only that, people develop a greater sense of entitlement to plundered wealth. One who
A person rises to a high position through their own efforts, and everyone secretly wishes to be like them, yet publicly says
something different—those without wealth turn all the wealthy into their sworn enemies. In truth, money
seems distasteful only as long as someone else is earning it. Such inclinations are innate to human nature.
But some can escape this vicious cycle of thinking and truly contemplate. They are the genuinely happy ones.
The more easily one can accept another’s good fortune, the greater their happiness. When someone’s joy
pains us, it does them no harm, yet our own suffering increases without any visible cause.
Those who cannot bear another’s happiness assume that what they have is insufficient
for their own contentment. Imagining suffering causes more pain than suffering itself. Such anguish is entirely self-imposed. When
someone joyfully accepts our good deeds and binds themselves to our love, a certain commitment to ourselves
is born within us. Bad thoughts don’t randomly enter our minds, we can’t efficiently execute
wicked deeds. A kind of restraint envelops us. We can’t even gossip properly.
“I am good”—this consciousness of conscience, born from deep conviction, is a supreme court. People can be bound
through discipline to some extent, but love creates far greater accountability
than that. The great inconvenience of love is that it enslaves people. To good thoughts, good deeds,
and good intentions—people become chained in the bondage of dependence. One doesn’t feel like dying
on a whim. For the sake of remaining good, for living a good life, one wants to live. Even misbehavior can’t be done
at will. What a deeply uncomfortable affair! The intoxication of insulting others or debasing oneself is a powerful
intoxication. There’s great comfort, great pleasure in descending. Yet even that becomes impossible. Love awkwardly shackles
everything.
Thought: One Hundred and Two.
……………………..
Women are not satisfied with little. They want many things. They fall in love with someone whose hand they can hold
while strolling, but whom they cannot marry, or who themselves don’t want marriage. Love and marriage are not the same,
a lover and a husband are not the same—believing this, they continue their romance until the breakup, while deciding to marry
some good-natured type of boy they’ve set aside. And again, most good-natured types of boys
Good men do not make lovers. And vice versa—
that is, skilled professional boyfriends are usually not good men
at all. Women can go without food,
but they cannot go without love. That’s why
many women have
two lovers. One lover is open, the other secret. Sometimes even more. How many boys
sit waiting with open mouths to become lovers! Those who don’t understand love, who don’t know love—they become love’s most successful
peddlers. The funny thing is, even those who don’t have a single lover still want their lover to have just
one beloved. The more loving someone is, the more faithful they are—they try to remain faithful in each and every
relationship! They can convince everyone that they belong only to them. That they would give their life
for their happiness. That nothing else occupies their mind but them. The power of belief is far greater
than the power of love. Where belief is weak, love can never become manifest. Of course, not everyone is like
this—some are. The rest are somewhat tree-like. They neither flutter about, nor make others
flutter. They neither enchant nor are enchanted. With them, one can live more in peace
than in love. The more they are discovered, the more they inspire enthusiasm for other loves. When someone becomes involved in another relationship while already
in one, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are unhappy in the first relationship, or that their
love for the first person has diminished. A person can love multiple people with equal intensity
at the same time. Living with trees,
loving with birds—this is what life is. Feeling lonely has
little to do with actually being alone. Whether someone is bound in a relationship with another or not,
when they feel alone, they want to dispel that loneliness. If they find someone like the person they seek
in their heart,
or if someone appears before them and can make them understand that they are exactly the kind of person
they’re looking for, then they fall in love with that person. Every love in a person’s life is their first love.
When a person falls in love anew with someone, surely such a loving feeling is born
within them that this feeling is novel in their life. Yes, if someone falls in love with the same person multiple times, then
the subsequent loves are no longer first loves. Such love gives birth to enchantment; this continuous state of being enchanted
is what we call love. Falling in love repeatedly with the same person—that is love. Between love and loving, there is
That’s the difference. What are men like? Whatever
women think they are. How a woman accepts a man
doesn’t depend on what the man is actually like.
What matters is how the woman
sees him. What do women think about a man?
Whatever they want to think. But they can
sometimes think quite correctly! Saints beware!
A man is bad,
but the woman thinks he’s
good; therefore, the man is good in her eyes. A man is good, but the woman thinks he’s bad;
therefore, the man is bad in her eyes. Even if the whole world came to explain the truth to her,
she would never listen to anyone else. Whatever she has decided to believe, that alone is truth for her!
It’s easy to make them forget.
Because they want to forget.
But the opposite happens too. Happily, it happens more often.
Thought: One hundred and three.
……………………..
What are you doing?
Did you eat lunch?
Do you still keep your hair loose, hmm?
When talking, do you still suddenly lower your eyes, blinking rapidly?
When you’re about to laugh,
do you still get a dimple, even in front of him?
Let it show!
Whatever else you do, don’t let anyone else call you by the name I gave you, okay? That’s mine alone.
I know, you won’t reply, you’ll just mark it as seen and leave it. Go ahead! What do I care?
Actually, why don’t you block me? You don’t love me, yet you won’t let me believe that either.
What does all this mean??
Hilsa fish is being fried,
I can smell it. An impossibly beautiful, delicious aroma!
I’m thinking of eating several pieces
before it’s even finished cooking. Actually,
exactly how many pieces of fried hilsa would I need to eat in a row to feel better?
Seven and a half
wouldn’t do? I’ll give that remaining half to the cat. She’s much better than you.
I think of her less now, see her less,
bother her less, remember her less………yet, I still can’t forget her.
After reading something by Samaresh, I want to disappear somewhere far away with a complete stranger.
So badly!!!
Which Samaresh?
Basu? Or Majumdar?
Won’t tell.
Which piece of writing?
Won’t tell.
If anyone can guess, I’m ready to give three books of your choice as a gift. Or
something else.
To make love with a stranger is the best.
There is no riddle and there is no test. —
To lie and love, not aching to make sense
Of this night in the mesh of reference.
To touch, unclaimed by fear of imminent day,
And understand, as only strangers may.
To feel the beat of foreign heart to heart
Preferring neither to prolong nor part.
To rest within the unknown arms and know
That this is all there is; that this is so.
The poem came to mind. These lines above are my favorites. Whose poem, tell me?
Reflection: One hundred four.
……………………..
When a project supervisor tortures you excessively, there is one advantage. One’s sense of shame diminishes before entering the workforce. When shame is reduced, there are tremendous benefits in professional life! Benefits in getting jobs, benefits in doing them. The less shame one has, the better an employee one becomes! While completing the project, standing outside the sir’s room all day in front of the junior students, my sense of shame approached zero. The little ones are first-rate rascals. Whenever they saw me, they would greet “As-salamu alaykum, bhai” and giggle. What pleasure there would be in catching those little ones and giving them a beating.
During that time, even if sir simply asked at noon “Have you eaten?”, I would feel the joy of eating biryani. How often I thought I would complain to the VC sir, would go crying and say that sir keeps changing the project topic, “Sir, I can’t take it anymore, my mother cries, my father cries, please let me go now. Don’t you have family in your house?”
Even if relatives can’t give good advice, they are masters at rubbing salt in wounds. They deliver long lectures; not always because they wish well, but because there’s such peace in hitting people at their weak points. Parents couldn’t show their faces in shame, though I personally had no problem showing my face with teeth bared in great happiness and laughter. Still, sometimes out of fear of my parents and for the sake of propriety, I would put on a sour face and act shameful.
When sir would make me do his project papers and keep changing the project topic repeatedly, I felt like saying, “Sir, I will wash all the dishes in your house, I’ll sweep and mop, I’ll wash clothes. If necessary, dismiss your household help, sir, you don’t need to worry about anything,
“I exist, why would you need proof of my presence;
still, please don’t change the project anymore. I’m in great distress, sir,
something must be done.” When he pleads like this, did we ask for this kind of engineer? Holy cow!
All day
assuming a beggar-like demeanor, wringing his hands before the sir—wringing until the very lines on his palms have ‘disappeared’,
even my appearance had begun to take on a beggarly flavor. I lived in fear that someone might
slip eight annas into my palm!
But this much is true: sir has made me human. He’s reduced my official pride and resentment; the amount of
stubbornness that had accumulated within me—with that I had temporarily stopped playing games with life.
Those of you in honors fourth year, swallowing your shame however you must, make firm arrangements to divorce
the university. It’s only through this one divorce that love and affection paradoxically increase even more.
Thought: One hundred and five.
……………………..
Those who understand too much, I understand them less. I don’t even try to understand them. No time. He who can, does;
he who cannot, teaches. A TV ad I’m very fond of comes to mind. A chocolate
ad. Various people are making various comments about a chocolate. Someone says the chocolate is good, someone says
it’s bad, some are confused. One person says nothing at all. Mouth closed. Everyone asks, what brother,
why aren’t you saying anything?
He barely opens his mouth to reply: Brother, how can I speak?
I’m
eating! . . . . . . This is one of the best ads I’ve ever seen. You either eat the apple, or
you keep your mouth open. It’s impossible to enjoy the taste of an apple with your mouth open. Those who shout belong to one
camp; those who move forward belong to another. The intelligent debate, the talented move ahead. This is
always true. Look at Bill Gates,
look at Zuckerberg, look at Steve Jobs. How many more there are!
We get so absorbed discussing them,
while they have no time to think about us;
they’re terribly
busy with work!
All the awards in the world are given for work,
not for criticism. One group works silently,
another group criticizes loudly. Those who can write, keep writing. Those who cannot write
keep talking. Both groups are essentially passing time. Whatever way one passes time and feels happy
doing it! Whatever we do, we’re actually spending the time
allocated to us on this earth—according to our preferences, according to our opportunities, according to our abilities, according to our gains
accordingly. The way someone spends their time reveals just how far they can reach!
Writers become honored, acknowledged, revered—
critics do not. For critics, consolation prizes are merely quiet self-satisfaction. May God grant them
good sense.