In our society, “desher bari” is a term to which we lay quite a bit of emotional attachment. It remains an inseparable part of our individual and family identity. Wherever we settle, people around tend to ask, “apnar desher bari kothay?”
It comes with all our sweet memories and nostalgia. Even if it is in a remote corner, we don't mind. Those of us who have spent our childhood and were raised in the ambience of that coveted ancestral home, can hardly ignore its appeal at a later stage of our life.
But with time and development taking place everywhere, changes are inevitable.
At some stage in our life, its prominence starts fading away, its relevance waning, its lustre getting lost to the greying exposure and battering of rain, sun, and dust before it is rendered to a mere relic of times bygone.
Children grow up, get educated, take up jobs, travel abroad, study, get married, get settled. But there are always occasions for people to come back and get closer to their roots once in a while. That old uncle or grandpa taking care of whatever remains at the village home gets busy cleaning for the members of the extended family to come and spend a day or two.
All of a sudden, the house and its surrounding get noisy with children running around, aged people chatting under the shade of the old mango tree, an amateur musician playing his guitar, a young couple sitting at a quiet corner on the grass away from the crowd, some tech-savvy young souls indulge in drone photography, while some onlookers from the village gather with curious eyes to find what fun goes on. After a couple of days, everything gets quiet again and people go back to their workplace -- the “present address.”
Over the last few generations a lot of transitions and visible changes have taken place leading to our current social landscape. To many middle-class families who have a dual address as a usual phenomenon in the country, the permanent address is getting increasingly irrelevant despite the emotional ties and nostalgic gloss.
Maintaining the desher bari has become costlier to keep it liveable. There are other problems of encroachment and ownership disputes among descendants. Maybe the family head in his heyday managed to buy a piece of land in the early 50s in a quiet corner of the old part of the city. Within the seven decades his successors have spread in all directions to more charming and liveable parts of the city or have set foot onto foreign soil. But the attachments linger on.
It reminds me of a drama where a family still lives in their ancestral abode with the old father while the young son tries very hard to convince his uncompromising father to let the property go to the builders.
These are emotional and serious issues we need to come to terms with. How can we best deal with such issues to dispose of our ancestral property is a matter of serious contemplation that deserves considerable efforts in the family decision making process. If it is in some part of the city, the best way may be to allow a multistorey to be built to be profitably shared among all the stakeholders.
I have come across families who have built nice resorts at their village home meant for exclusive members of the family and their guests. Small but tidy resorts with well-maintained lawns and manicured gardens, a pond with waterlilies and a nice walkway, children's play places with a lot of greenery around -- this is something everybody enjoys and looks forward to visiting.
As you decide to go for a project in your ancestral homestead, the hurdles could be many. It may not be easy to contact all stakeholders spread over the continents by now. But if you start, you may find people gathering around after the initial groundbreaking is done.
There are other noble ways to get the best of such property lying idle. I have come across successful organizers who helped build a sizable hospital on their ancestral property. A remote village thus turned into a bustling communication centre with a 50 bed government hospital built on the donated land, residential building for doctors and staff, medicine shops, groceries, restaurant, well maintained mosque with a sprawling lawn, orchards, ponds with nice walkways, and a school around.
What impressed me the most was that they had done the least amount of publicity by not putting in even a single plaque anywhere.
I had been invited recently to attend a family occasion where an old house close to Gandaria High School at Satis Sarkar Road would be given to a builder to demolish the existing structure and build a multistorey.
It was nice to sit around people while they reminisced their early schooling in this prestigious school in Old Dhaka, family football matches organized between Haqs and Khans, plucking of water lilies from the waterbody on the way back from school, jackfruit trees in the backyard, a group of monkeys relishing ripe jackfruits with occasional fights -- these were some stories being shared.
I could understand the feeling of the senior citizens who were at this site for the last time to see their dear house standing, before it was taken down and smashed to the ground to make room for a modern structure to come up.
There are ways to go about this difficult business depending on the location, value, and size of the asset, and of course the mindset of the stakeholders. One could rebuild it to cater to the needs of all stakeholders while it also could be part of a philanthropic project. Third, fourth, and fifth generation will go down the memory lane and eventually, things will be forgotten.
But this could be a way to further the longevity and enhance value addition to such assets.
Brig Gen Qazi Abidus Samad, ndc, psc (Retd) is a freelance contributor. Email: [email protected]
