Listening to Children who had grown up

I love it. Or, perhaps, the child in me who never quite grew up loves listening to other grown up children.

“See sir? What a nice body! Isuzu autobuses are simply gorgeous!” Selim bhai, my driver on this round perked up in a moment when he saw the bus ahead of us. “It’s from Chittagong. Ruled the Chittagong lines once. I know it very well. Actually I used to drive one.” He went on.

I used to talk a lot until I learned to listen to people. Nowadays a listen more intenly to the faintest nuances. Selim bhai did sound like a child to my listening mind.

He caught up with the bus, ogling it fir some moments, and stiffled a sigh. And he decided to speed past it, though not leaving the eye from the rear view mirror. “Hadn’t even changed the bumpers! Just the same old staff. Yey! What a machine! Superb.”

Minutes later he discovered another one in the vista. “Look sir! Another one! I’m telling you sir, it has an old Chittagong licence plate. Just check it when we catch her up!”

And within minutes we did. Selim bhai is a good driver, he simply snaked past the magestic buffalow carts overladen with straw and the scared farmer women who were walking down the road, a hundred kilometer per hour is indeed something scary.

I checked the plate. It was a Chittagong number alright. Selim bhai was exhilarated. “See sir? Isuzu buses, best of them all. I wonder who bought these babies to run in these roads.”

Selim bhai did know a lot about buses, and roads, and vehicles. He was a tacit man, but I indulged his sporadic chatterboxhood. I travel a lot, and when I get tired of reading, or listening to Radio Today, I listen to my drivers. They have intriguing stories to tell.

Selim bhai spent a lot of years on the roads, but suddenly he started talking about his childhood. It sounded like he went on board on that Isuzu and started cruising along his long lost days. He asked me to guess out his age, and I missed it by 7 years. No, he wasn’t 35, he said, he was actually moving fast to 43. I figured out, the days he were talking about was around ‘73-’75. He kept talking about his fishing adventures with his cousin, both of them shared a long stay at their maternal grandparents. He was telling a story how they once sold fishes in the bazaar and earned 10 big bucks! Each of them was proud owner of 5 bucks … richest kids around the village. Then he switched to the story of his grandpa’s pet rams, how they charged and smashed the kneecaps of brats who dared to pester them, then how much his grandpa loved his pet rams, goats and cows, and came to the interesting stories of drinking milks. Ah, what days have gone by! He described how he spreaded his palm on the plate and demanded that his wrists must be drowbed under milk, and grandma should not stop until that delicious deluge. He used to steal milk when he carried it to the clientele. His grandpa fired him when the customers complained about the increasing sea level in the milk. Ah, what days! And fish? Oh, yes, his grandpa once met a monster down the road when he was coming from the bazaar with a pair of juicy Hilsas. Poor grandpa, had to surrender. But later he avenged his fishes and ensnared the bloody monster in a bottle. Grandpa was a man of old days and knew “systems”, Selim bhai duely informed me. I agreed with him. People from old days did know systems. What happened to the bottle? Oh, he didn’t care. Who cares about monsters when you can bunk school, go fishing with your best friend come cousin, play football with the boys and suck fruits from the trees like bats? Have you ever tried that sir, eating jackfruits with the shell intact, right from the tree, Selim bhai enquired. I was too ashamed to come up with a negative, so I switched topics. But Selim bhai kept talking about his childhood. Ah, what days have gone by.

I was a bit nostalgic, but never lost attention to the fainter and fainter nuances. I saw a little Selim sitting beside me, almost crying out, missing a big world full of mudfishes to catch, some long lost bazaars with mughal grandiose where fishes could be sold for 10 bucks to share with your fishing pal, where bats returned home unfed because pesky brats sucked the pellets from the jackfruits and left the skin only, where lost bottles imprisoning fishloving monsters were never searched for again. Ah, what days gone by!

Selim bhai suddenly shut up. I looked away. I knew he was trying to conceal some oozing tears.

Then he asked me in his usual reticent manner, “Where do those Days go to sir?”

I sighed. I never hesitate to sigh. Children do need sighing relief after a long talk.

Selim bhai kept mum. We sped along the roads under big, cloudy, everchanging, neverquitechanging sky.

Gynocentricity in Bangladeshi Democracy

No wonder, had Copernicus failed to describe the heliocentric motion of our planet, political zealots would have claimed Khaleda Zia or Sheikh Hasina to be the center of the universe. Planets might not revolve around them, but satellites are never scarce around them. It is a common experience that sycophants would wrestle to show their faces on the Media surrounding the graceful(?!) Prima Donnas of our Politics. Some months ago we have also seen some radical islamist leaders engaged in the same sweaty task to get in the frame along with Patricia Butenis. Satellites might switch centers, but they remain.

Two major political parties managed to express their loyalty to the Ladies, and to the gynocentric nature of their politics as well. I have nothing to say against our politics led by ladies, but these two particular specimen really poses questions. Why do the politicians stick to Khaleda Zia, who had dragged the political practice to almost feudal vendettas to satisfy her own vindictive whims; and to Sheikh Hasina, who miserably failed to exhibit any oratory diplomacy that would pass the test of politics? Why are they so important as leaders?

Perhaps the politicians do benefit from these practices. Two aggressive ladies, sharing a past of mutual enmity, always taking diametrically opposite stands on any issue (exceptions are rare and reported to occur every 17 years or so) can establish a very rich “War Economy” for the politicians. While they go on ranting on the Maydan, literally wages battles against each other, spews out magmatic truth about each other in the parliament, we see the smug politicians clapping, applauding with Jodles, sneering like cheshire cat. They need two myopic, brawlmonger leaders, who would go extra miles to see the other one suffer. Who gives a fig for what happens to the country? They had not only been the leaders, but also the scapegoats.

Would politicians allow two smart, intelligent, farsighted and bold female leaders? I don’t think so. When imbeciles are politically patronized, democracy is stripped off its decency.

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Conflict of Approaches: A Story of Two Tunnels

Imagine a tunnel to be dug through a massive mountain. You could start digging from this side, and end up to that side, or the other way round; and you could and usually you do start digging from both side and meet somewhere in between. Champagne bottles are popped open if you could meet within inches with your counterdigger, and bottles might get cracked open (against some skulls) if you two never meet and just dig out your own smug tunnels all the way through.

Well, one might argue that two tunnels are better than one, but assuming a worm’s eye view, it’s a lossy endeavor, also incubating conflicts. These half-tunnels are dug to meet each other.

We could use this analogy to present the picture of conflict existing between two popular approaches a system could be run by, that between Top-Down Approach (TDA henceforth) and Bottom-Up Approach (BUA).

Both approaches weigh a lot in their advantages and disadvantages, but there has to be a healthy mixture of these two approaches to instill optimum efficiency in a system. Might there be an inherent ratio of one approach to the other that makes a system most efficient? Perhaps. But total absence of one approach leaves the system in a very vulnerable position.

I gingerly take Bangladesh as an exemplifying system. Our country has been run by absolute TDA for a long period, and for much shorter period by absolute BUA, and with a heterogenous distribution of ratios in different space in different time for a long time. No wonder, Politics is the tool that makes this mixture smooth and the gradient tolerable, but unfortunately Politics is being blamed to misguide these approaches away from one another. Recalling the tunnel analogy, TDA and BUA tunnels were not only digressed from one another, but also to a wrong direction. As a digger you might end up far beneath a pile of earth if you don’t check your bearings from time to time. Politics led both these approach tunnels, away from one another, and dug a labyrinth under the mass. To get out of this never ending dungeons, one or both of the tunnels must rush forward, without giving a fig to the early, neat plan to meet each other.

And that is what practically happening to Bangladesh. Time and again ambitious generals have grasped the scepter and espoused the idea of iron-feasted tyranny, a super TDA ignoring any necessity of the existence of any BUA. It’s not very surprising that every time we find some uniformed fellows doing such things, as the armed forces are trained to uphold and be run by a system commanding firm TDA.

A short skim through the history of the people of Bangladesh suggests that it’s against the grain of the people to be steered by TDA. Ever since the invasions by the Senas centuries ago, the delta dwellers exhibited a peculiar, paradoxical attribute, they can’t manage a lingering BUA, and they don’t like any enduring TDA.

Some system should very strongly be designed to mediate between these two approaches. Conventional systems like Democracy has somehow suffered a great loss while acting as a negotiator (or we could call it the lanternman if we like digging tunnels). A graded mixture of TDA and BUA should be devised up, without digging astray anymore. A labyrinth might cause the whole bulk to collapse. Besides, you might invite a lot of rats if you just keep digging around.

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