Sufferings that go unnoticed

Leaving Dhaka with all family members and whatever belonging one possesses is a tiny example of the joblessness woes. Hundreds of Dhaka residents have fallen victim to this ordeal of the loss of livelihood --- one which is forcing them to leave the capital. Almost all of them are headed for their ancestral villages. Some are destined to live onthe remote city outskirts, where the cost of living is lower than that in Dhaka. Their absence from the capital is for an indefinite period. They apparently won't return to Dhaka until the petty job-holding family head gets back his employment. For many, this prospect is feared to remain illusory.

These exoduses from Dhaka have lately become common in the post-shutdown Dhaka. If one moves around some major parts of the capital, he will encounter at least a dozen of these spectacles every day. There are no reasons, however, to believe that only these temporarily uprooted people represent Dhaka's corona-time joblessness and its miseries. Many do not have even the humblest of the means to move into a tolerably affordable area. Nor do they have village homes. These families are made to go through their typical hardship in silence. The only change in their lives comes in the form of continued deterioration in lifestyles. Many of them are found shifting into virtual shanty dwellings from the lower middle-class areas. The head of the family sees no signs of getting his job back. Few of those do who lost their employment to the abyss formed after the corona closure. Their employing entities are also stuck in a similar impasse. With their enterprises still under a few government restrictions, and not in a position to pay the employees' salaries and arrears, these disillusioned souls continue to sink in the chasms of an eerie twilight.

The problem is, despite their dreary survival with little signs of light at the tunnel's end, they still remain fully conscious of their dignity. For instance, the family head may have been on the payroll of an event management company or a large theatre-based multiplex as an executive. As per requirements for his managerial post, he applied for the job in his capacity as a graduate. With the Bachelor's degree, he should have gone for a more prestigious job. He had failed to avail that employment. Yet while working as the manager of a private company, the young man could never think of compromising his prestige. His sense of dignity remained as sharp as before, i.e. like during the time when he was on his job. The only relief he could discover was in the long closure of his children's kindergartens. He felt relieved that he did not have yet to start counting hefty amounts in tuition fees. But despite its paltry amount, he had to clear the house rent by the first week of the new month.

Local or foreign funded social research groups or voluntary projects --- in fact few around us, are found interested in shedding focus on this particular class. They stand out with their own insidious sufferings. They don't cry blaming their fate. They just suffer in silence. They cannot stop bleeding.

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