Dear creativeBangladesh readers,

I had written this article a couple of months ago as a reflection on my interpretation of the modern life. Although the article has little bearing on art, history or culture – creativeBangladesh’s three main premise – it nevertheless touches on some aspects of life that concerns all of us. In this month of birthdays and new beginnings, I thought it would be an apt topic of discussion. Hope you will enjoy this diversion from our usual topics! (please be aware that the article is written in a slight satirical style)

Best Wishes,  Labiba / creativeBangladesh

 

Accompanying illustrations are the immaginations of  USA SERAJ (age 12).

Thanks to Sayeed Aziz  for his valuable comments on the draft version and to        Sarah McLachlan for writing such a powerful song (see below).

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On Turning 30 : experiences & observations

As I bid farewell to my third decade, I thought it was high time to indulge in some retrospection of the world around me.  After living on this planet for 30 years and witnessing its many adventures and misadventures, I have come to the conclusion that our modern way of living is in somewhat of a precarious position. Some of you may have already come to the same hypothesis and I applaud you for a fine analysis and deduction! Most of us hate our jobs, don’t have enough time to spend with our families, are missing out on our children’s growing up years, cannot take three months off to go backpacking in South America (the latter is my own personal dilemma), etc , etc and etc. Meanwhile, climate change is knocking on the door (no more leaving the AC on full speed, all summer!), corporate greed is eating up all our resources, while the ‘mighty’ rich leave the ‘destitute’ poor way behind. 

I am avidly looking forward to my next 30 years on Earth: will there be a revolution in the way we live or will we continue with the same old grind of working nine to five (more like nine to midnight), overstressed, and with little time for creative thinking or self-contemplation. Let’s take a closer look at my version of ‘The Top 5 Crises of the Decade’. (disclaimer: this list is purely a reflection of my opinions;  the readers may or may not agree – that’s the readers’ prerogative!)

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Crisis #1 : Time is ticking for the modern slave

I sometimes wonder if investment bankers and ER doctors have the delight of feeling the touch of the midmorning sun on their backs as they stroll through Central Park or, even have the pleasure of having a blackberry-less day. When did this culture of over work, constant pressure and competition become a normal part of our lives? And why haven’t we revolted sooner, taken back our lives and set our own tune to it? 

I get my dose of Dhaka news from my mother, who religiously updates me every Sunday during our weekly satellite-aided phone conversations. Recently she was feeling nostalgic about the good old days when most people worked until 2pm, then went home, took a nap, had cha-naasta, and then took the family out to visit friends or go to a shiter pita mela at Dhanmondi shaat-nombor maat. How quickly things change – nowadays most Dhakaites work till 7pm and get home only after traversing a very long sweaty two hour commute. Sadly, Dhaka has also entered the western rat race. 

After all  this khata-khatni at the workplace we now have less time for leisure and creativity.  Unfortunately, for creative thinking it is absolutely essential to have a good amount of leisure time (trust me, writing this article took up some of that meager vacation time we get in the US). Rabindranath would not have been so prolific if he didn’t have sufficient leisure time (of course he got a little help from feudalism and his daddy’s zamindari but that’s another story).  One theory explains that Bengal has been culturally so fruitful because we were blessed with good soil where food production was easy and we didn’t have to spend ogles of time to grow our food. So we had ample time left over to devote to the arts and culture which resulted in our rich Bangali Shongskriti. 

The Jews struck a brilliant idea with regard to the Sabbath. One day every week to rest and do absolutely nothing can do wonders for the body and mind – it’s like spending a day at Deepak Chopra’s Spa! No matter how ardently we’d like this to be true, our bodies are not biologically built to work 100 hours a week. How can we have doctors working on 36 hours shift? I mean do I really want a doctor, who has been on his feet for 36 hours and his brain is more or less dead from lack of sleep, operating on me? I tell you I would rather run the other way! If it is not too much to ask, may I have a doctor with a fresh alert mind, who will not cut my liver instead of my pancreas, and which only happens after a good night’s sleep? (on the flip side, imagine the affect on unemployment if instead of one doctor working a 36 hours shift, there were three doctors splitting the 36 hours into 12 hours shifts – we’ll leave the details of this proposal to the economists to hash out.)

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Crisis #2 : The (un)Education of youth

These days the competition starts as early as kindergarten, if not from the cradle. ‘Khokha, you have to come first in the year-end exams, otherwise, no Wii-fit for you!’ Poor Khokha has been flooded by a cyclone of homework, textbooks and question papers. No time for playing in the park or flying guddi  from the roof top because he has to memorize four poems tonight (note the emphasis on memorize).  And where is the park or the roof top? Everything has been gobbled up with concrete by the real-estate developers!

Native Americans taught their children civic duty and moral responsibility through story telling. It was the grandfather’s part-time job to narrate these colorful stories of their history and culture to the grandchildren. Today’s children are increasingly brought up in claustrophobic, temperature controlled, high-rise apartments with limited interaction with the extended family. Not only that, but many children have lost their parents to jobs with long stressful hours and may only get to spend time with them during the ‘oh so fleetingly short’ weekends. Then who will teach them the finer points of life, how to respect their elders, how to care for the poor? Add the unnecessary stress of competition and the pressure to excel to this already ‘goja-kichuri’ mix and you can imagine how stressed their little souls must be! 

Recent studies have shown children learn best in nature – it reconfirms what we, Bangalis, have known for generations. Our village paatshala under the banyan tree brought the quest for knowledge right up to nature’s doorstep. The paatshala has survived for thousands of years because it works and is possibly the best way to nurture a young mind.

The Finnish school system begets children who consistently rank higher on evaluation tests than other schoolchildren from around the world. Yet Finnish children do not start school until age seven, much later than the world average, and their first 2 years in preschool are spent in self-reflection classes where they are taught to get to know themselves and their role in the world. These self-reflection classes may well be the most important gift a nation can give its young citizens. Kudos to the Finnish government for being so forward-thinking! Being ‘learned’ is not only about learning the ABCs and topping the exams – it entails so much more than what today’s concrete schools can or is willing to teach.

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Crisis #3 : Material Wealth versus Spiritual Growth

If we were to put a monetary value on spiritual growth, how much do you think it would be worth? Would we publicly trade it at NYSE or Dhaka Stock Exchange? Would the Tibetan monks be ruling Wall Street? I don’t have a witty answer to these questions but an experiment on this might be more entertaining than an episode of Desperate Housewives or Celebrity Big Brother (no insults intended for the fans of these shows!). 

Somewhere along the line we, the modern city dwellers, have lost touch with nature and that spiritual connection with our souls. If you take a look at our traditional Bangla culture, we are very attuned to nature and treasure spiritual experiences. Jibanananda reaffirms this:

‘Smells of moist grass, where Bengalis throng everywhere -

Inhale forever in sravan’s rains the soft soothing rhythms

Of mystic songs and fairy tales, folklores, and open air plays -

These warmed my soul.’

It never ceases to surprise and delight me how philosophical our villagers are considering that most of them do not have a Phd from Harvard; their insight comes from close observations of human emotions, relations and interactions with the environment.

Have you ever wondered why Bangladeshis top LSE’s survey as the happiest people although we are materially one of the poorest? Even accounting for some inaccuracies in the survey methods, it goes to show just how much the beauty of gram bangla, Lalon’s prose, Jasimuddin’s heart-rendering bhatiali, Padma’s tatka ilish, kejur gaacher thanda rosh make our people happy and content, and not the trappings of material wealth. And why do so many Americans regularly visit psychiatrists just to have someone to talk to when in Bangladesh all you have to do when you are feeling a little blue is talk to your nani, khala, chachir bon, cousin-er cousin or, mamar shali? This is the virtue of our extended family support system and the best part is – it comes FREE! 

Guess what? Research has shown that after a certain level of material well-being, we do not derive additional satisfaction. It is called diminishing marginal returns, something I remember reading about in O level economics class at Anjum Miss’ (many of my friends reading this will remember those O level days). In effect, in the US, we are working more hours and earning less than those in the 1950s. Whereas before a household survived on one person’s income, now we need two incomes to attain the same standard of living. So how has all this growth helped us, the common man, who doesn’t have pockets as deep as Bill Gates? 

Being materially poor doesn’t mean it is not a better way to live. An Australian aboriginal’s way of life is not inferior to the western standard of living. A farmer’s eco-friendly mud house in Lalmonirhat is no less grand than an energy consuming Greco-style mansion in Gulshan.

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Crisis #4 : Doing business for the sake of profits

Bengal wasn’t always poor and Europe wasn’t always rich. In the sixteenth century, Bengal’s farmers lived better and had a higher standard of living than the average Europeans. A European visitor during this period commented, “Money is so plentiful in Dhaka that it is seldom counted, but always weighed. There is a profusion of food and other articles in the numerous bazaars of the city. The vastness of the wealth is stupefying.” Then the East India Company came, saw, conquered, and successfully killed our textile industry. And ever since then we have been living in ‘abject poverty’ (thanks also goes out to the ‘Permanent Land Settlement’ of 1790 for gifting Bengal’s peasants with zero land rights). 

How many of us know that we once had a thriving economy? That our merchants traded with Ancient Greece and dominated the maritime trade with South-east Asia? Or that Gaur of Medieval Bengal had a democratically elected King called Gopala? We grow up reading about the cyclones, the floods, the durniti, the poverty, and the lack of gonotontro. But so many of our problems were created by colonialism and to this day perpetuates in the form of ‘development aid’ or other such varieties of neo-colonialism. We weren’t always an ‘international basket case’. 

So now our dear Bangladeshi companies are busy generating economic activity to allow us to get out of poverty and to reduce our dependence on foreign aid. But while we become more ‘developed’ it is equally important for our companies to operate with a social conscience where the bottom line is not only about generating monetary profits but also about being honorable and ethical. We do not want to turn on NTV and see garment workers burned to death because they were locked in and could not get out, or that they can only go on bathroom breaks every few hours. 

Natural capitalism and creative capitalism are innovative systems designed to bring a more holistic approach to doing business. But they will remain decorative words if we don’t take the necessary actions to implement them. The best change is from within. Those of us working in a corporate setting and will someday occupy that ‘elusive corner office’ have the power to shake things up. Why continue to do business the same old conservative capitalist way – that’s so twentieth century!

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Crisis #5 :  Hurry, the sea is rising!

Climate change is only one part of the story. It is not only a crisis of melting icebergs but also the advent of new mountains of greed and consumerism. The world doesn’t have the resources to sustain the current western standard of living for everyone. And the western standard of living should not be the yardstick to measure success with or the standard that we should aspire to. As Bangladeshis we also have an important part to play in this crisis because we are all members of the human race and we equally share in our responsibility to humanity and to Mother Earth.

Though it may come as a great inconvenience to many of us, comfortable as we are with the amenities of modern life, for us to save the planet we have to start consuming less and conserving more. So why not become fashionably Japanese or Bauhaus, who popularized the concept of ‘less is more’? To tell you the scientific truth – even with renewable energy, we will not have enough solar and wind power to sustain the current levels of industrial activity. Nuclear energy is not a viable option because where do we safely store the nuclear waste – in space? Our collective conscience cannot allow another Chernobyl or even a Bhopal (though not a nuclear accident it still holds a prominent place in the list of man-made disasters).

Do we seriously need 50 pairs of Jimmy Choos, one in every color, or 20 gold jewelry sets at our mammoth Dhaka weddings? Is it not a disrespect to nature with its finite resources as well as to all those who, primarily by accident of birth, do not even have two meals a day? Creating a more equitable and just society is the mantra for today, tomorrow and the day after. If we put our hearts into it and are less greedy and share more, we can have a just society. As that little bald man with the weird looking glasses aka Gandhi said, ‘The world has enough to satisfy everyone’s need, but not the greed of some.’ And with those wise words from a wise man, I leave you to ponder on how you can shake up and rattle the existing status quo.  

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The above is in no way a negative criticism of what the world has achieved in the last 100 years or so. There are innumerable benefits (hot showers included) that make yours and my life easier. But we also have to take into account the cost at which these benefits have been attained and try to see if there isn’t a more sustainable way to live our lives. There are many great traditions that our age-old cultures have preserved over the years just as there are many wonderful new concepts of this modern era that have benefited humankind positively. It is up to us to incorporate the best of both into our lives and to take living beings, including all our co-inhabitants on Earth (even those crawling red ants), forward to a more meaningful and enlightened existence. Amen.

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