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‘Bukan Pasar Malam’ – It’s a book by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, the most celebrated writer in Indonesia. I could not resist the temptation to use his title ‘It’s not an all Night Fair’, which I read recently in English translation. I was completely taken in by the story he told about his returning home to confront the dying and death of his father. The story, although a novel it has been characterized by the translator C.W Watson, is a personal story, written in first person, depicted thoughts and unbending attitude towards value and meaning in his father’s life, at such a time when Indonesia was undergoing during the Dutch colonial rules followed by a brief spell of Japanese occupation during WW II and finally through the struggle for independence in 50’s. The isolating experiences, as Pramoedya structured around the description of various discreet scenes, are again of particular incidents that are significant for the individuals involved in it. The memory of our late father that I have tried to revisit in this write-up might appear incoherent sometimes, but yet I feel, it allows me to draw together some aspects of our day to day struggle in a wider perspective of family life and as well as of the society we are in. As you all know, in one of these days, January the 27th, six years ago, our father had breathed his last to our utter misfortune. With the news of that fateful day, we were caught in a terrible despair; there was no consolation for us. We had no alternative but to give in to situation only, not finding a way where to go, who to approach to in such a difficult time. We all had been undone. He was a year or two above 50; it is never an age for someone to collapse not only in developed world, but even in the battered third world countries like ours. People’s average lifespan has grown tremendously over the recent decades, thanks to tremendous achievements in medical science and overall health consciousness of mankind. But having said that we could not avoid our failure to resist this grave eventuality that he succumbed to his illness, high blood pressure coupled with myocardial infarction. It was a guilt on our part that we could not provide him the necessary and just medical care that was needed to protect his life; we have never forgotten and we shall not forget this guilt in future. But we have an anger and frustration too. We want to make our society to be a part of this failure. I do not want to elaborate on this but one thing needs to be mentioned that our society lacks the infrastructure and logistics, even the bare minimum requirement of availability of medication in such a fatal case. The pain killers (Pathydryne and so on) for immediate relief of severe pain that he had undergone through, had not been available in a place, 20 km from a district town. We were told that the required refrigeration facilities for the medicine were not available in the locality’s government dispensary or in retail pharmacy shops either. He succumbed halfway to the journey while he was being taken to the nearby district town. Although a petty school teacher he was, yet his was a personality of high esteem in his own arena, his surroundings and viz. a viz. his society. He always maintained a low profile personally but his was a voice that had to be heard by the people concerned, by his colleagues and by them who were in the decision making. He always acted a shadow for them, apart from us in the family, who needed him most for their childrens’ education, not only in teaching but as well to find a way out for getting the offsprings through to the journey of education in the very formative years of one’s life. I have heard one of the mourners saying in his cremation days that he would not have minded his old mother’s death rather than this gentleman, the argument he placed was that his old mother could be spared but not this soul; his mother is his only one, but this soul acted guidance for so many people around and so his demise led to deprivation of all who turned to him for anything and everything. I can not help wondering sometimes whenever I think of this soul on personal and family ground. He was teaching in a union level non-government school and as is the case always with this job, it comes only with a nominal compensation package; but yet he cherishes a desire that his children would be given proper attention when it comes to the education. It was really a gigantic hope, I would say, given the environment that he was in ; the social environment in the countrysides in a third world country like Bangladesh has never been a proper one to infuse enthusiasm in any parent in the bringing up of children with high hopes and aspirations. But as I said, he cherished this hope living in a falling house and leading an ordinary life, albeit outwardly, as hundreds of others in a remote village; the village, needless to mention that, is prettily far away from the capital where everything buzzes from education to entertainment and hence discriminates the villages leaving them behind in the complete darkness. But the pace he never stopped to reach his goal, he maintained slow and steady progress. His was an idea of bringing up family members together in education and well being. He had financial difficulties typical for a school teacher in post-independence times where in fact a whole nation was standing in rubbles after the liberation war. He himself became rudderless when he lost his own father immediately after the nation’s victory; the joy of victory had been shattered with his father’s demise in a family, not at all significant to million others who were celebrating the joy, but the family, a world of their own, had been in a total ruin losing their father, our grandfather, the very spirit of the family. This soul, our father, as the eldest of the family, tried to gather strength, out of this tragedy, with his mourning mother and siblings in order to steer the ship again. Gradually and progressively he tried to make the ends meet for everybody in the family but the fate was not to be over yet in the family so soon. As you all could see, the world was not an all night fair for him even after the much aspired victory. When the new born nation was only three years old, famine struck it, the underlying causes were alleged to be political, but for the common people like him, it was not the cause but the effect which mattered. Inevitably, as million others, he and his family got to have suffered from the curse of this famine. I was told, he had been trying to the utmost to save his family from hunger crouching from the famine. He got to have engaged in manual labour pushing cart to plough land, (a teacher turned farmer in the dark of the night), the remnant that was still with his family after all the cultivable family lands were all but gone as the local collaborators grabbed those lands during the turbulence of war. After years of struggle with dire poverty, his family had managed to see the slivers of light out of a dark tunnel ; his siblings shone in in their respective profession; it had taken nearly two long decades for the family to stand upright on its own feet. I have a personal debt which I owe to him and I have no way that I could be able to pay back in my life time. He is far too away from me now; I am totally undone to reach out to him. He has brought me up in the early days in a very different and unique manner, when I was still in my boyhood growing from my childhood, till I moved out to a city for my college education. In those days, we all used to take our food together in the so called kitchen, as there was no proper kitchenette, no dining table whatsoever. It was almost like a ritual for us to dine at the same time, all in one go. I observed now after so many years, that whenever he had a story to tell, it was mostly on liberation war, the word he used to was ‘Sangram’ as it was the colloquial with the people in general. His story was not of one of others, it had ritualistically been one of the struggle and sufferings of his own, of his own family, of his own enclave of people. His deliberation was very gentle in nature unlike our politicians where they need to shout to make them heard. He used to tell the story of their taking refuge in Mongdu, a border town in Burma, now known as Myanmar, while his in-laws had taken refuge in Agartala, also a border town in India. His wife, our mother and we the then tiny tots, were caught in a situation where there was no alternative for us but to follow with our maternal family and so our mother was away from her husband and we, from our father. And it was during the full blown war. So it is not hard to imagine the mental situation of these two families where wife and children were far apart from their husband and father in two different countries where tens of thousands of people took refuge to save their lives from the massacre of the enemies, sometimes the occupation forces and if not, by the home grown butchers. As I said, I owe to him not only my life as a son, but as well, my upbringing which I think is very vital in one’s life. I have inherited all the interests that he had all about a lifestyle; he infused in me to judge the difference between both the values, right and wrong, prevalent in our society. He had a very clear understanding of our social fabrics on which our society was rooted and so it was very easy for him to guide me what to read, who to listen. Being a teacher in the science stream, he had tremendous mental tilt towards rationality and literature, which is inseparable from one’s life, which makes human beings superb among other creatures in the earth. And now that I have grown a habit to listen to others is basically from one of the sayings that he used to utter to me like hymn. The saying, as it goes – ‘give thy ears, not thy voice’. I am not sure whether I quoted correctly after so many years. As I said earlier, he maintained a very low profile, never imposed anything on us. The crucial decision about our choice of stream in education he categorically left it to us. He never felt tired of patience hearing from his childs, from his siblings, from his colleagues whoever had a story to tell, obviously not the ones about materialistic importance, rather the ones that were of achievements and glory. I can not help citing an incident of a letter that once he wrote to Mr. Kasem, one of his muslim family friends in Dhaka. The gentleman, a senior to him was a high profile official in CMH. I was studying in BUET then. He sent a letter to him after nearly a fifteen years or so, the last time they met was in the period of the war or just after war, I can not recall the timing correctly. The letter was sent by airmail with one to me as well and asked me to hand deliver to him. I opened up the envelop and could not resist to read the letter which I found to my surprise written in English and believe me, every sentence that he wrote appeared very enthusiastic and heart rendering. I still can remember a line, ‘the glorious and steady progress in your career is really pleasing to me’, he wrote to his senior friend and brother who he affectionately called at times. I had read the letter several times before I passed it to him. He had no complexity of being a school teacher and writing to a friend who had climbed the ladder of success over the period. And the time he, along with our mother, met him and his family in Dhaka cantonment after another few more months of this letter, still reverberates in my mind. I witnessed how both of them reacted so heartily when they embraced each other as if brothers got to see together after years of exile. Now that both of them have left this world, whom we are to go if we want to listen furthermore of their stories and of our ancestors. Here I must need to mention about our grandmother who was also closely linked with this relationship. If I am not wrong, Mr. Kasem used to call her Ma too. At this point of time, when our very existence is severely challenged by the state machineries, by the govt, it is the olden times and the history of it that can provide us strength to sustain the present injustice. This whole episode I wrote is from my memory, learnt bits and pieces from our father, from our grandmother and from our elders. So if you all feel anything needs rejoinder, please feel free to bring it to my notice. I have no material with me in written form which I could rely on, so it is very usual that there might be slippages in sequence and as well, omission in writing. This whole memoir is very personal and to share with you all. It is important that we take visits sometimes, how trivial or insignificant it is, to relive the history of our ancestors, our forefathers. It will help us to trace our root where we are from, where our standing is and how we have fared so far. So let us spare some time from our busy urban life and also from our urbane attitude to commemorate our great souls, our father and forefathers, not necessarily in any formalities, who have opened up this world for us; this is the same way that we can pass over our struggle and survival with the torch of hope to our successors in the days to come. (This memoir was written on 20th January in private correspondences to family members on the occasion of the deceased 6th anniversary.) |
