If you don’t mind, let me quietly confess something rather improper. In my childhood, Eid-ul-Adha never felt to me like Eid-ul-Fitr. I used to think that, in terms of joy, Eid-ul-Adha could never come close to Eid-ul-Fitr.
There were three reasons for this.
First, unlike Eid-ul-Fitr, Eid-ul-Adha had no “chaand raat” -- no excitement of sighting the moon or not sighting it, and none of that immortal song: “O mon romjaner oi rojar sheshe elo khushir eid.”
Second, I don’t know about other families, but during Eid-ul-Adha we did not get new clothes the way we did during Eid-ul-Fitr. And so, there was no competition among friends to show off new outfits on Eid day.
Third, every year before Eid-ul-Adha, the speechless animal brought to our home for sacrifice filled my eyes and heart with a stream of sorrow and pain.
The greatest excitement of our childhood regarding Eid-ul-Adha was buying the sacrificial animal. Two weeks before Eid, we would torment our father to go to the cattle market. He would smile and say: “Let the market settle first.”
At the time, I didn’t understand the reason for his delay; now I do.
In our middle-class family, he had to wait for the extra Eid bonus from work. And then, on the day we finally went, my excitement knew no bounds.
Although I was eager to go buy the cow, I never really liked the market itself. The crowds, the shouting, the pushing, the mud and water, the unbearable smell, the cries of animals -- all of it felt unpleasant.
Yet worse than all that was looking into the animals’ eyes. Somehow, in their large deep black eyes, I saw sadness, fear, and the pain of separation.
I remember one time a cow that had already been sold simply refused to go with its buyer. It stood stubbornly in place. Everyone tried pulling and dragging it; even the rope snapped. But the cow would not move.
Then the elderly farmer who had sold it said, “I raised this cow from when it was a calf. It is very attached to me. But because of poverty, I have to sell it.”
As he spoke, his eyes filled with tears. In a voice choked with emotion, he told the buyer: “As long as I remain here, it won’t go with you. As long as it sees me, it won’t move. Let me disappear from its sight for a little while -- then you can take it home.”
I no longer remember what happened afterward. But I still remember the old farmer’s tears and the cow’s anguished cries. Thinking of it now reminds me of Sarat Chandra’s Mahesh.
After buying the cow, we would return home and immediately arrange a place for it in the backyard with grass and water. I would break branches from the jackfruit tree to feed it, but my father would laugh and say: “Goats eat jackfruit leaves, cows don’t.”
Then we siblings would stand at the front gate like members of a reception committee, waiting to welcome the cow. Eventually the animal would settle into its designated place. Then we would begin the questions: Did the cow misbehave on the way? Did it stop walking? Did it try to butt him? Did it try to break free and run away?
The quiet-spoken Kanchan Bhai, my father’s college assistant, rarely answered much. He would only say that many people on the road had asked the price of the cow, and he had answered every one of them, because answering the price of a sacrificial animal was considered a virtuous act.
When everything calmed down, my mother would come to see the cow. She would stroke its back and gently caress the folds beneath its neck. The cow would look at her with wide eyes and chew calmly while receiving her affection. Mother would then say: “You all bought a very good one.”
A deep satisfaction would glow across my father’s face, as though he had been waiting all this time just to hear those words. My younger brother would insist on giving the cow a name. But mother would quietly say: “No, we’ll grow attached. There’s no use increasing affection.”
At the time she seemed very cruel to me. Today I understand how deeply sensitive she really was.
Meanwhile, my friend Nawshad from the neighbouring house would arrive to inspect our cow and his first words would always be: “Your cow is small in size! Come see ours -- it’s much bigger.
His words hurt me terribly. Ignoring my gloomy face, he would drag me to their yard. And there I would stand astonished before a gigantic animal. “Didn’t I tell you ours is much bigger? Guess how much it cost?”
Hearing the price, I would be stunned. Nawshad would glance sideways at my expression, a particular smile flickering in his eyes.
My first lesson in inequality and disparity came during those Eid-ul-Adha days. Whenever I remember it, I think of that line from the poem Keu Kotha Rakheni:“Father touched my shoulder and said, ‘You’ll see, one day we too…’”
Over the next few days, we siblings competed over who could care more for the animal. Most of our efforts centred around feeding it.
Then came the evening before Eid. In the gray shadows of dusk, I would stand before the animal. I could barely look at it. A strange sorrow and guilt filled me. My young mind wondered: Does it know this is the last night of its life? What is it thinking right now? My eyes would fill with tears.
As evening deepened, mother would come and stand beside it. She would feed it with her own hands. Sometimes it seemed to me that her eyes glistened with tears too.
The next morning, when the animal was taken away for slaughter, I would go sit far away beside a pond. No matter how much people called me, I would not answer. Holding a stick, I would beat the bushes beside the ghat -- the reasons unknown.
Much later, when I returned home, my younger brother would tell me, “You know, brother, when they took it away, tears were falling from its eyes.” I said nothing. I simply lifted my tear-filled eyes toward the sky.
Dr Selim Jahan is Former Director, Human Development Report Office and Poverty Division, United Nations Development Program, New York, USA.
