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Essay

Gain and loss... on a different note

Nazma Yeasmeen Haque
In the continuity of life, the pendulum keeps on moving from side to side to keep its balance. Nevertheless, at some point it tends to tilt toward one end or the other, awakening one to the reality all around. Time changes, circumstances change, attitudes, beliefs, all change. In other words, a new and rather different atmosphere is created, one that demands if not adjustment but at least a recognition of those changes. To some it is a social upheaval, to others it in a normal phase of transition that takes place in any society. Perception varies from person to person. So do our fascination, preferences, acceptance and rejection of the same. Under the circumstances, two determinants that run across our whole life play their roles oftentimes to our liking, oftentimes to our disapproval. These we can reasonably label as losses and gains in our life. An enormous number of them can very easily be put down on a list, evoking a number of reactions like surprise, laughter, anger, sorrow, wistfiilness, etc., in the process raising innumerable questions.
Life is not a matter of measurement only; and Tagore also sings that his mind does not give consent to a taking stock of the losses that he has incurred in his life - "Ki pai ni tari hishab milate mono mor nohe raji". Nevertheless, we ordinary human beings cannot exactly do that. Therefore, we may take up a number of losses, eliciting both hilarity and serious contemplation, for observation. For instance, the phenomenon of, if not loss, the disappearance of natural gray hair altogether from where it normally should belong and transforming it all into black as seen on an infant's head. Curiously enough, three generations in a direct line of descent wear black hair these days, which is biologically impossible. The case of differently coloured hair is another story. Here the motive is more of aesthetics than hiding one’s age. Since the long flowing hair of women has gradually — -or is it overnight? — disappeared, Nazrul's outpouring of the heart to his beloved through the song, Mor priya hobe esho rani debo khonpae tarar phool becomes an anachronism in these postmodern times. Short, trimmed hair among older women has met with an inverse correlation of long hair among younger men, oftentimes giving rise to perplexity in identifying their gender when seen from behind. Wearing trinkets, particularly earrings, makes the case all the more complicated. However, it is quite a happy situation of give and take, undoubtedly.
There are many other examples of such odd if not abnormal behaviour amongst us. Children these days are being raised in a way hitherto unknown to us. Their efficiency in learning Hindustani as a language is awesome, something that indicates an immense potential regarding their ability to learn that either intentionally or unintentionally has been shed by educational institutions, to be taken over by the most popular audio-visual medium. Television is their constant teacher and the Internet acts as their private tutor. Therefore, it is not far-fetched to suggest that they will sooner rather than later outgrow the need for their parents and guardians as these days children are actually bringing themselves up. The growth of townships comprising all kinds of vendors around or in front of schools is not so new, a spectacle quite akin to organized clubs but for their infrastructure as they are housed in the streets. Women even have reportedly been seen to have peeled and chopped their vegetables sitting on mats spread there. Just imagine! Women carrying knives along with their lipsticks and combs! Yet they will not go back home, however near that may perhaps be.
The concept of socialization thus breaks all its barriers. The growth of bazaars anywhere and everywhere these days by not sparing patches of grass is a big leap towards economic development, thanks to the schools and their clientele. This is to be taken as one of our 'gains', just as black hair across the broad spectrum of age is, indicative of a population that is young.
Another area where we have not only made a gain but also been inventive in is murdering languages, both Bangla and English. The impurity in using such languages is another glaring example of an attitude of 'Who bothers about the correct form?' as long as they are voluble enough about their inventions. The motto here is simple: Keep on uttering something wrong and that is how it becomes accepted as being correct. Thus the latest addition to their patterns of sentence construction is the favourite word 'like', used indiscriminately except for the time when it is needed. It says something about our creativity that as non-native speakers of English we are able to debase the use of English. Again we are not far behind in doing the same to our mother tongue. The peculiar use of the verb form 'bollo, korlo’, etc., in their agreement with the pronoun 'ooni' as the subject is most loathsome to hear. It has devastated the Bangla language syntactically. These days no one, be it a teacher or a learner, has any awareness of the condition. Even if they are aware, I am afraid they would not feel any qualms about it. Such is the margin of tolerance.
And the lesson? Wrong is beautiful. After all, to invent something is not an easy job. Innumerable examples can be cited at this point of things lost alone. We fear that in this age of speed, we have lost letter-writing by hand even to our near ones. However inconceivable it may be, letters were once the mainstay of all historical events all over the world. History thus was created, documentation of precious and violent periods of history was made and preserved for human civilisation to study and interpret. An archive of knowledge took shape through correspondence with a human touch. Since machine-produced impersonal kinds of letters have been overtaken by circumstances, one will no longer hear or see the mailman at one's door. Then again, will e-mails find their places in books in future? Will there be books in the printed form, as we see them now, in future? If the answer to the latter question is in the negative, then that would add one more item to the inventory of the museum that future generations will look at awestruck. Since these days almost everything has an 'e' as a prefix, there lies the fear. Concomitantly, reading from pages may as well become obsolete or at least regarded as a wrong habit if not a bad one compared with the preferred mode of reading from the screen. With the complete disappearance of fountain pens and ink, one wonders if this is the reason for naming a literary magazine of repute 'Kali O Kolom’ as a requiem to a heritage that is lost.
Another instance of anachronism. A long time ago there was a literary magazine called 'Kali Kolom' in West Bengal. It was meaningful for its time. Since we have not been doing much work that is handwritten, there is every possibility that our own handwriting may look alien to us after a lapse of time. God forbid, if worse comes to worst, we may lose the skill of handwriting on account of having been out of practice. The question is: Would we care even if we lose it? Will it not be completely in sync with our achievement of other losses - -- like losing time, principle, morality, sense of humour, aesthetics, sense of history and many more? A great loss and this is a real loss that has dealt a heavy blow to our society. Observe our present-day education. It is most amusing to see winners gaining golden, diamond or platinum A's that put them into a dervish-like spiritual dance.
Can the competent and veteran educationists not examine these examinations and draw up a combination of a specified syllabus and a mechanism for testing knowledge at the same time? T\vo other gains of gigantic nature are our very special ability of turning every work into business. Concrete examples of this are the sectors of education and medical care. The rate at which educational institutions and clinics are sprouting up is amazing. The other gain that is relatively recent but has become unstoppable is our newfound love for festivals of book launches. It is a sorry state in which renowned people are made to stand like school students facing the cameras, each holding the same book that also are to face the same visual box.
Last but not least is the cult of cell phones that have turned everybody too mobile. It is the need of the hour, it is the fashion of the hour. With this indispensable object, it seems as if everybody in Bangladesh has got too busy all of a sudden for no apparent reason. It is as if the world stood still till the cell phone was invented. Therefore, mobile phones are a huge gain. It is everywhere with everybody every minute. At long last, at least one electronic gadget has brought about a semblance of socialism, enabling everyone to have an equal share of the wealth. Not only is it linked to a political ideology but it also has a physical and emotional aspects in terms of its being attached to the person the way his own heart and lungs are. The greatest contribution of ceil phones has been in transforming our society into a load of fairy tales where almost everyone is dreamy-eyed and has found a partner, however ephemeral that maybe. In every nook and corner of a neighborhood or a street, one spots a quiet talker on the phone. The opposite is also true. There are some mobile phone users who instantly make one feel that they not need to use it. The voice in its scale is loud enough for public consumption, to say nothing of the person at the receiving end. We pray that mobile phones live till eternity in their ubiquity. Unfortunately, we cannot say the same about their users.
On a serious note, the burden of our real losses numb us as we get more and more conditioned to the situation existing around us. Not all gains attained so far are gains for all. They are gains to some only. But that is the order of the day. You either join the bandwagon or become a recluse. Now we can echo what Tagore has said. The line between our losses and gains is so blurred that we fail to tell one from the other. It is unprecedented and a pathetically messy situation. It is an endless story.
Do I sound like a maverick?
NAZMA YEASMEEN HAQUE IS AN EDUCATIONIST, CRITIC AND MUSIC ENTHUSIAST.