Better not to reignite the old flames
Maswood Alam Khan | Wednesday, 13 August 2008
IN spite of ourselves, many of us always stay reserved and refrain from talking in a manner that may sound childlike. Because of the fear of being ridiculed we resist our temptation to play a game with children. We deny ourselves the innate pleasure of fondling a toy---a toy like a bus, a gun, a teddy bear or a stuffed doll---a toy that so immensely comforted us in our childhood! We are tragically afraid of behaving not like a matured man.
Every man and every woman on the planet at one stage of his/her life, especially in their twilight years, will want to be a kid again. People will do anything to get the feelings of youth back. They will spend money to obtain a trinket, a plaything or any trivial object they were once fond of when they were children: a little empty tin box (with a picture of a dog listening to the sounds of his master's voice on the hinged lid) that used to contain stylus needles for gramophone, for an example. They'll revisit places where they used to play as kids; they will scour through gardens and jungles to find out an old tree they used to climb up.
Deep within every individual lives an innocuous child, in his/her most beautiful form. It is this child's manifestation that we see getting expressed every now and then when we see people around us getting into a euphoric state over seemingly minor issues. We see so many grown-ups acting in a childish or child-like manner. We don't, though, see it happening with everyone; and of course, not all the time. Does this mean it is only in some few rare people that this child-like behaviour prevails? Not at all! It is important to understand that the reason for the lack of child-like behaviour in many is not to be attributed to its absence but to its suppression.
There are elderly people we come across who we see carrying themselves in such a sophisticated and matured way that we are surprised when we see them, at some rare points, getting excited over things so trivial! Totally forgetting their mellow manners they behave just like a child---a beauty they so brutally suppress in their routine life.
Such childlike expression, once in a while, helps each one of us in some unique way. For some, it's a stress reliever; for some, it helps them look at life in a more sunny fashion. People, who display such child-like behaviour frequently, very often tend to display positive vibrations and have a contagious aura and enthusiasm surrounding them!
My mother, who was a very religious lady, used to burst into peals of laughter whenever she would hear my wistful wish to demand a queer prize from God if He, after my death, ever asks me a question on the day of judgment: "Maswood, it looks you did some good jobs in your temporal life. Well, what do you want now?"
If I could remember that day what I am now contemplating I would appeal to God: "Oh God! You can do whatever you fancy. Please recreate Sunamganj in its exact form where my father was posted as a civil servant and where I was there a child seven years old. With the school backpack heavily loaded with books strapped on my shoulders I want to trudge one mile of muddy road from my sweet home to my dreamy school; at the lunch break I along with my classmates want to walk to the bank of the river Shurma just at the rear of our school and find a chance to climb onto the kitchen roof of an idle motor boat tied to the jetty and sit there having our school tiffins of buns and bananas."
"I want to revisit Jhunu Didi's home every day in the afternoon to be tutored mathematics by her as I used to when often in the evening I saw her---a rare paragon of beauty I have ever come across---worshipping with her folded hands after her placing an oil lamp on the concrete altar surrounding a tulshi tree at a shady corner of her house. I want to be photographed by Tota Bhai, our neighbour, and would love again to peer into his dark room to see how he washes photographs and then clip those wet prints on a line to be dried in the sun. Allow me please, God, to play with those my beloved pets who used to nudge my legs with their noses".
I could have waited till the day of judgment for a magical revisit to the wonderland of my boyhood. But, I made a terrible blunder. As a part of my official tour in Sylhet Division I chose to attend a conference of my bank's managers working in Sunamganj, a choice that was more for my secret wish to see Sunamganj of my childhood---only to find later my heart shattered into pieces.
The Sunamganj I saw last Friday is totally different from what Sunamganj my eyes had seen in the early 1960s. My boyhood house I was so eager to see is no more there in its original form and the grassy field in front we played on is now filled with concrete jungles. My soul cried out: "Oh no, God! I didn't want to see my Sunamganj in such modern fashions glittering with electric bulbs and sparkling with neon lights; I wished to see the small town in her pristine condition when a man from the municipality would come every evening to kindle the kerosene-fuelled street lamp in front of our house."
My heart elated when a colleague of mine rushed to me to declare that he found out my Tota Bhai, the photographer, and Jhunu Didi, my mathematics tutor! "Both are eager to see me", he said. I could not wait to meet them at their places. But, my heart abysmally shrank as I saw Tota Bhai and Jhunu Didi---both bent down under weight of age, their faces creased by wrinkles, their hands shrivelled and their hairs took on a pale and greyish hue. I wished I had not seen them---I didn't want to maim their serene portraits I had been treasuring since my childhood. The pictures of Tota Bhai and Jhunu Didi I so adoringly had painted on a canvas, then so securely framed those in my memory album and so discreetly hid the images deep inside my mind is now evaporated into smoke!
Nazrul Islam, the most romantic poet in the realm of Bangla literature, said: "Woman as created by God is a human being"---"such a description gives only half of her image; because man's fancy and imagination about women which he has been weaving since his childhood conjure up the other half".
Everybody, you and I, who has a soul to appreciate beauties of life, did at least once fall in love with someone before his/her marriage. In most cases, tragically, a pair of lovers cannot really translate their love into marriage. Jilted they are compelled to embark upon their journeys of life with their fated life partners on two different ways in two diverse directions and gradually fade away from each other.
After several years of no communication one of those lovers, whose poetic soul has now turned elegiac, feels tempted to re-establish contact with his/her lost love. Reuniting with a bygone love is a great fantasy, no doubt. But we make blunders by becoming too childish to control our emotional impulses when we bump into our old loves---our old flames!
The moment our eyes contact those of our past loves our throats get dry and our lips tight; but our enthralled eyes start beaming volumes of words in an ethereal induction from both sides. Absolute silence, in such a situation, could be the wisest way to reflect from a distance on the beauty of our old romance. But, we break the golden silence only to hear what we least want to hear! We forget a simple truth that 'reality is often different from what we're fed in romance novels and movies'. We forget that 'love is divine and when love is satisfied or translated into marriage all charms are gone away.'
In 'Shesher Kabita', the epoch novel Rabindranath Tagore wrote at his old age, the hero was Amit who was in passionate love with Labannya. Their love could not be translated into marriage. Later, married with Ketoki, Amit was enjoying a happy marital life in love with his wife. At one stage Amit was asked to describe his love with Labannya, his past fianc
Every man and every woman on the planet at one stage of his/her life, especially in their twilight years, will want to be a kid again. People will do anything to get the feelings of youth back. They will spend money to obtain a trinket, a plaything or any trivial object they were once fond of when they were children: a little empty tin box (with a picture of a dog listening to the sounds of his master's voice on the hinged lid) that used to contain stylus needles for gramophone, for an example. They'll revisit places where they used to play as kids; they will scour through gardens and jungles to find out an old tree they used to climb up.
Deep within every individual lives an innocuous child, in his/her most beautiful form. It is this child's manifestation that we see getting expressed every now and then when we see people around us getting into a euphoric state over seemingly minor issues. We see so many grown-ups acting in a childish or child-like manner. We don't, though, see it happening with everyone; and of course, not all the time. Does this mean it is only in some few rare people that this child-like behaviour prevails? Not at all! It is important to understand that the reason for the lack of child-like behaviour in many is not to be attributed to its absence but to its suppression.
There are elderly people we come across who we see carrying themselves in such a sophisticated and matured way that we are surprised when we see them, at some rare points, getting excited over things so trivial! Totally forgetting their mellow manners they behave just like a child---a beauty they so brutally suppress in their routine life.
Such childlike expression, once in a while, helps each one of us in some unique way. For some, it's a stress reliever; for some, it helps them look at life in a more sunny fashion. People, who display such child-like behaviour frequently, very often tend to display positive vibrations and have a contagious aura and enthusiasm surrounding them!
My mother, who was a very religious lady, used to burst into peals of laughter whenever she would hear my wistful wish to demand a queer prize from God if He, after my death, ever asks me a question on the day of judgment: "Maswood, it looks you did some good jobs in your temporal life. Well, what do you want now?"
If I could remember that day what I am now contemplating I would appeal to God: "Oh God! You can do whatever you fancy. Please recreate Sunamganj in its exact form where my father was posted as a civil servant and where I was there a child seven years old. With the school backpack heavily loaded with books strapped on my shoulders I want to trudge one mile of muddy road from my sweet home to my dreamy school; at the lunch break I along with my classmates want to walk to the bank of the river Shurma just at the rear of our school and find a chance to climb onto the kitchen roof of an idle motor boat tied to the jetty and sit there having our school tiffins of buns and bananas."
"I want to revisit Jhunu Didi's home every day in the afternoon to be tutored mathematics by her as I used to when often in the evening I saw her---a rare paragon of beauty I have ever come across---worshipping with her folded hands after her placing an oil lamp on the concrete altar surrounding a tulshi tree at a shady corner of her house. I want to be photographed by Tota Bhai, our neighbour, and would love again to peer into his dark room to see how he washes photographs and then clip those wet prints on a line to be dried in the sun. Allow me please, God, to play with those my beloved pets who used to nudge my legs with their noses".
I could have waited till the day of judgment for a magical revisit to the wonderland of my boyhood. But, I made a terrible blunder. As a part of my official tour in Sylhet Division I chose to attend a conference of my bank's managers working in Sunamganj, a choice that was more for my secret wish to see Sunamganj of my childhood---only to find later my heart shattered into pieces.
The Sunamganj I saw last Friday is totally different from what Sunamganj my eyes had seen in the early 1960s. My boyhood house I was so eager to see is no more there in its original form and the grassy field in front we played on is now filled with concrete jungles. My soul cried out: "Oh no, God! I didn't want to see my Sunamganj in such modern fashions glittering with electric bulbs and sparkling with neon lights; I wished to see the small town in her pristine condition when a man from the municipality would come every evening to kindle the kerosene-fuelled street lamp in front of our house."
My heart elated when a colleague of mine rushed to me to declare that he found out my Tota Bhai, the photographer, and Jhunu Didi, my mathematics tutor! "Both are eager to see me", he said. I could not wait to meet them at their places. But, my heart abysmally shrank as I saw Tota Bhai and Jhunu Didi---both bent down under weight of age, their faces creased by wrinkles, their hands shrivelled and their hairs took on a pale and greyish hue. I wished I had not seen them---I didn't want to maim their serene portraits I had been treasuring since my childhood. The pictures of Tota Bhai and Jhunu Didi I so adoringly had painted on a canvas, then so securely framed those in my memory album and so discreetly hid the images deep inside my mind is now evaporated into smoke!
Nazrul Islam, the most romantic poet in the realm of Bangla literature, said: "Woman as created by God is a human being"---"such a description gives only half of her image; because man's fancy and imagination about women which he has been weaving since his childhood conjure up the other half".
Everybody, you and I, who has a soul to appreciate beauties of life, did at least once fall in love with someone before his/her marriage. In most cases, tragically, a pair of lovers cannot really translate their love into marriage. Jilted they are compelled to embark upon their journeys of life with their fated life partners on two different ways in two diverse directions and gradually fade away from each other.
After several years of no communication one of those lovers, whose poetic soul has now turned elegiac, feels tempted to re-establish contact with his/her lost love. Reuniting with a bygone love is a great fantasy, no doubt. But we make blunders by becoming too childish to control our emotional impulses when we bump into our old loves---our old flames!
The moment our eyes contact those of our past loves our throats get dry and our lips tight; but our enthralled eyes start beaming volumes of words in an ethereal induction from both sides. Absolute silence, in such a situation, could be the wisest way to reflect from a distance on the beauty of our old romance. But, we break the golden silence only to hear what we least want to hear! We forget a simple truth that 'reality is often different from what we're fed in romance novels and movies'. We forget that 'love is divine and when love is satisfied or translated into marriage all charms are gone away.'
In 'Shesher Kabita', the epoch novel Rabindranath Tagore wrote at his old age, the hero was Amit who was in passionate love with Labannya. Their love could not be translated into marriage. Later, married with Ketoki, Amit was enjoying a happy marital life in love with his wife. At one stage Amit was asked to describe his love with Labannya, his past fianc