When you were born, you were given a nice family-friendly name and endowed with a nationality which you would grow up to be proud of by the time you considered yourself a full-grown adult.
Your father, the ever-present patriarch, with values derived from his experiences of having survived the Liberation War, and of having actually struggled to get to where he is, and of knowing what it is like to live without everything he had wanted, bestowed upon you a freedom that had, until then, been unprecedented in the generations leading up to your eventual existence.
His initial nine-to-five, then nine-to-six, then nine-to-seven, as he climbed rung after rung up the financial ladder of pseudo-liberty, eventually became a nine to godknowswhen which would, by the time you’re in your teens, come to you as a sort of blessing.
You notice him as he sits at the head of the dinner table, your mom to his right, you to her right, says the ilish has too much salt, talks about Mamun at the office who starts work at five because he wants to show the bosses he works late, tells the bua to get him a cup of tea, occasionally slams his hand on the table when he’s displeased, either at you, your mom, or the world in general.
Sometimes, he smokes.
Your mom is much the same. Before finding love across the balcony of your nana’s Mohammedpur house, she had an integral role to play in her family as a massager of your nana’s feet and making a stellar ruti, as thin as hair, soft as silk.
Before she had eyed your dad’s stellar moustache and baggy jeans on that friendly neighbourhood tik-tik-tiking Enfield motorbike, she had been in class 12, an arts student, with a penchant for Rabindra Sangeet and an innate ability to draw a perfect circle while doodling in class.
It was some time in her early 20s that she had fallen to her dad’s feet and said that she can’t live without the mullet-ridden boy across the street.
Can you even imagine romance like that now?
By the time you’re in your teens, you’ve seen her be one thing: The best mom in the world. A few other things too, but they don’t cross your mind much.
Sometimes you’ve seen her be the Queen of the Help, yelling at them for not having washed the grime off of your dad’s shirt collar, sometimes actually beating the little girl whose name you have a hard time pronouncing with a “j” instead of a “z” because of your English medium education (“Ramiza,” you want to say, but she only responds to “Romija”).
When you meet your first girlfriend or boyfriend, and you start getting distracted from your O Levels (smooth operator) or your A Levels (if you’re not), without realising, you have become part of the “Yo” Generation, smoking weed on rooftops and making out in the backseats of friends’ cars.
Some go abroad, but you’re not one of them. Your parents don’t trust you or they don’t have enough money or wouldn’t it be better to just do your Master’s?
Your parents aren’t too pleased when they find out. If you’re a boy, your father’s chill. You’re used to sitting around awkwardly with him by now, not having anything to say that doesn’t involve a grunt or a nod.
Your mother sends daggers across the living room table if you are bold enough to bring her home as a “friend.”
If you’re a girl, hell breaks loose. “Who is this boy?” they demand. “Where did you meet him? What does he do? His family? You won’t see him! I forbid it!”
A few years later, you can’t even remember their face. You occasionally remember the thrill of the first kiss. With your A Levels done, all of your friends, from the same school, decide to go to the same private university.
Some go abroad, but you’re not one of them. Your parents don’t trust you or they don’t have enough money or wouldn’t it be better to just do your Master’s?
Your group of friends, each of them goes on about the different majors they will do: Accounting, finance, human resources, international relations. Such diversity under the name of BBA. You choose marketing because it’s creative and you think you’re good at selling things to people. Should you do a minor? Maybe later.
Four and a half years later (you wasted two semesters retaking courses you had flunked because you got hooked to another beau who took up too much time and money), you throw your graduation hat up in the air, having just finished your internship, dreaming of dollar signs and all-expensive-paid travel from MNCs.
After a few months of “networking” and applications, you land your dream job. By the end of the first month, you hate yourself and wish you could go back to your school days. When you see your school friends you tell them: “Those were best times, man. Why were we in such a hurry to get out?”
You love Thursdays and hate Saturdays. Every weekend, you sleep over at a friend’s and go to sleep too quickly. You’re 28 and there’s this girl you’ve been talking to and she’s kind of nice and she seems to be a safe bet.
She wants to do a Master’s in Canada because she can’t wait to leave this godforsaken hellhole.
Or there’s this guy who’s been sort of flirting and has this nice bank job, senior manager or something you can’t recall in some field you don’t quite fully understand, and you heart feels broken so you think might as well.
Before you know it, your families are talking and you’re married. At the holud, your friends dance to Hindi songs your fiancé selects. You have a single event because your families are well off but not that well off and it’s uncool to have too many events now anyway. You honeymoon in Bali because you don’t need a visa and when you come back, go to work, and come home to the same routine, you’re 32 somehow and have a kid who needs school fees.
Your days seem longer than usual. You sit at the head of the table. You eat your wife’s chicken curry but there’s not enough gravy. Your husband talks about the news while your son or daughter, though doing well in school, spends too much time looking at their iPad because it had been a good baby-sitter once.
You gave them a nice family-friendly name but it’s been shortened and played around with, with “U”s and “O”s at the end. They’re very proud of the Bangladeshi cricket team and they’re already dreaming of doing their undergrad in the States with this new girl or boy they’ve been “talking” to because you don’t really mind.
You want them to have everything you never had. And when it gets too much, when Abdul at work is not listening to you, or your spouse’s cooking is just not cutting it for the third night in a row, sometimes, you go out to the balcony, and have a smoke recalling your childhood.
Funny, no, how your life has changed?
SN Rasul is an Editorial Assistant at the Dhaka Tribune. Follow him @snrasul.
