A few times a week in my childhood home, the door bell would ring right when lunch was served. Someone would rush to the door. At the gate there would be a distant relative or a friend of the family with a mid-afternoon hungry sun-drenched smile. They would join us for lunch.
My mother, like many other mothers in this country, would always cook an extra pot of rice for the suprise guest. We would work out the meal somehow, there was always room for a guest and that’s how many of us grew up.
When foreign visitors come to our land, they talk about our hospitability, how nice the people are here, how we always open doors for others – the appayon in our villages, and it doesn’t even have to be your own village home, but a friend’s, a friend of a friend. It doesn’t matter.
There is always a porch to sit on and drink a little water, without formality, without a promise of something in return. The only expected return to that traditional Bengali hospitality is perhaps a big smile, and appreciation towards the host. “Khub bhalo laglo,” “apnara eto apon kore dekhen” “erokom torkari toh kokhono khai ni ageh, eto shaad!” – “It’s been a pleasure,” “you make me feel like one of your own,” and “I have never tried a dish like this in my life, what taste!” And everyone is happy, the host, the guests, and we move on to the next house, the next afternoon, the next bit of happy exchanges.
But what happens when the hospitability becomes more of a tradition and not a matter from the heart? We continue doing what our mothers did, we expect others to do the same. The ones who don’t, we think of as too Westernised or mannerless. We invite each other and eat catered food in our Dhaka concrete jungle. There are parties in response to other parties, the host may not be all smiles, but everything else in the room looks perfect. Because our mothers taught us that.
I wonder now, where this Bengali hospitability came from, towards strangers and known ones. Was it to befriend strangers, to show we are no threat to them in case they were going to invade our lands and take over our homes? Was it because we sought knowledge, and strangers and faraway guests brought news from places beyond ours? Or was it just for the sake of networking? I scratch your back and maybe some day you will scratch mine?
In the land of telecom, more and more Bangladeshis are now hooked on the iPhone and the fascinating apps which smart people are discovering every day. In our city, appayon, true appayon, is slowly becoming a thing of the past, and by no means do I think it’s a bad thing.
In fact, I am all for an app for appayon. I would request the smart people who make this app to design it the colour of the mid-afternoon sun, with a pot of rice as the icon. It would be a customised app according to your personalities, and will calculate how to act with acquaintances, old relatives, family friends, friends, friends of friends.
The app will set your limitations and give us tips on the traditional right thing, and the modern day right thing according to our lives. One would cater to their guests in that respect, some will be fed, some will be given space to stay, and others just a cup of tea. The space between one another is increasing every day. We don’t treat all as equals here anymore anyway. Might as well have an app to justify it.