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A Sad Week that Ends with Good Talks from Friends

MY WORLD

S. M. Ali
WITH so much sadness and grief touching our lives — a great deal of it affecting me personally — even the thought of writing another nostalgic piece about the 1960s seems irrelevant, out of place, insensitive and almost Irreverent.
"It is alright." says a colleague encouragingly, "to provide some relief to our readers by writing about other times and other places ' I respond to his comment with a nod. but remain undecided.
My mind is focussed on Faiz Ahmed Faiz, the last of the three outstanding editors I am due to write about. But Instead of remembering our happier times together, like during the shooting of the movie. 'Jago Hua Savera,' I think of some of hfs sad poems, especially on Africa and Palestine, finally the one he Mtrote on the suffering of the people In Bangladesh during 1971. which had the refrain. "How can 1 wipe your blood with my tears?" The pocl had read It out to me during our surprise meeting In Bangkok in the early seventies.
Suddenly, the chain of my thoughts is snapped and my recollections of Faiz arc drowned in the flood water breaking over the banks of Monu, Surma and Kushlara. the three rivers which. Judging by the devastation they have caused in greater Sylhet. can now be dubbed as great killers.
Yet. ail the three rivers had their places In my childhood, and later In my adolescence — we even named a sister after Surma — and the only Images they have in my recollections' are of gentleness and tranquillity (Recollections can Indeed be almost ridiculously selective. I remember when the three rivers were full after the rains, but there are no clear memories of floods.)
Growing up as children at Maulvi Bazar, we learnt lo swim, among other things that we all learn as kids, first tn a pond and then In Monu It was like graduating from the cle-mentary class to the advanced course In swimming, another difference being between lathing In the stagnant water of a pond and having a real proper wash In the running water of the river
Now. after all these years. it to Md to cal Monu a killer
Maybe these rivers — Monu.
killers They are just angry angry lor what we have been doing to the nature, within the country and outside, for upsetting what we say tn the news paper language, the ecological balance or. to put in plalnler term, for messing things up.
Maybe these rivers are angry because, over the decades, we have done so little In l«K>ktng after them, for we have done nothing — or perhaps very little — by way of dredging up the silt forming on their beds, which has made It more and more difficult for them — and for other rivers In the country — to carry all the rain water even before the advent of the monsoon. What has now become Inevitable is still being described euphemistically as "flush floods." What a decep tion.
* * *
ON Monday. wc Joined several hun deeds of people, men and women, at a milad lo pray for the departed soul of Enayet Rasul Chowdhuty. an official of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) who had been the co ordinator of the UN agency's relief operation in Chittagong. He had been working almost round the clock for weeks In reaching relief goods to devastated areas. Last Friday, he returned to his temporary rest dence at Chittagong thoroughly exhausted, complained of sc vere shoulder pain and passed away a few hours later of heart attack. Chowdhury died In harness. He was only 52
Judging by the kind of people who had packed the hall of what looked like a community centre, people who ranged from ambassadors and diplomats to young students and UN/NGO workers — one came on a wheel chair — tlie milad was more than just a prayer. It was a moving tribute to a dedicated relief official, just the kind which brings credit and distinction to the entire UN system. Whet Iter people like Enayet constitute a sizable minority or a marginal majority tn the United Nations is beside the point. What is important, they are there, not always particularly visible, taking up one challenge after another. giving their best — sometimes their Ilves, as it turned out In the case of Enayet — to "the job in hand." (The expression comes from an internationai civil servant who is fighting'his own battle against the use of UN jargon. To him. "the Job" sounds better than an "assignment" or a "mission.")
Among those who attended the milad on Monday, people from greater Sylfiet probably constituted the largest single group, if not the majority, and within thi's group, the rpost visible ones came from the village Bhadeswar. the ancestral home of Enayet. and with whii h this writer is linked through his maternal side.
If I have to pick up one single village from my childhood recollections that I loved most, I would say, without any hesitation, Bhadeswar. There ts hardly much | jx member about ihc villagr t)laI we visited a <-ouple of times during our school ho' < (days There were no road? , then connecting the vilUig , e with Sylhet and we r eached Bhadeswar by boat, ’ll ,cn. hills, plenty of fruit t ■ .res, ftsh ponds and rfluddy p < ^t|ls running through go< > d pucca houses
Hbwevcr. there wa„ W1IIW.-thing else I rcm« : niber a bit more vividly' — peopl ,e. Whether there was someth* ,ng In their genes or their an< xs-lors descended on the vll |agc from somewhere we ca nnot even speculate about, pen p|e o( Bhadeswar always seen ted tr . be the best looking p< -ople [ had known in my chi' ,dhood t.
All men were handsc ,nc. wi th good features and f air co m-plcxion. and all won* ^en. es, je-< ially the young one.- were ■ ,ust gorgeous. Even, o |dcr m en with their flowing white b< ;ard and dressed in sp offess w hite, moved around wt. th grace and beauty that 1 car inot remc mbcr to haVe seen in any othe r vj|. lage. (Again, nr y recollect ion Is being highly selective. ax tf there were n o ugfy faeces in Bhadeswar!)
In Dfiaka , । ran into my relatives ar jd Mends, from Bhadeswar from time to time. Some of those gorgeous girls I knew once are now grandmothers. but good-looking grandmo thers. And men? No. I have not looked at them all that closely
* * *
IF you know -what that the expression, "recharging one's batteries' really reans. you would appreciate what it was like for me and a few of my colleagues to spend a couple of hours with two of our noted experts one morning last week. It was an unscheduled unstructured free-wheeling and largely off-the-record discussion that covered a whole range of issues, from problems In economic planning to the debate over the form of government in Bangladesh.
It was one of the most stimulating discussions on Bangladesh, and that too. with our own experts, we have had for a long time. At the end of the discussion which we had continued over an Unscheduled lunch, we realised, a little to my dismay, how little we have promoted the interaction between the media and’our intellectuals.
This was one of the cogent points brought up by the noted Indian columnist.' Chanchai Sarkar when, on our invitation, he addressed the editorial staff •ft thia paper one afternoon last week. As he put It. the issues that wc write about or comment on have become far more complex than they were even a few years ago. Wc can deal with these issues with necessary expertise, first, if journalists reach out to intellectuals to jearn through interaction.- secondly. develop their own ref ere nee libraries; and thirdly promote the concept of specialisation, even on a modest scale, among reporters and features.
While my colleagues re sponded to the talk by Sarkar by asking him several gobd positive questions, my mind was focussed on things we must do in carrying out the ideas pOt forward by my friend from New Delhi.
At the end of the discus sion. we could draw only one conclusion: The Dally Star Will be a good paper to read every day when it becomes a good paper for Journalists to wort for There is a challenge tliat Hrs 1n the Invisible linkage. 7