Images of matured coconut
and bitter gourd soup

Maswood Alam Khan

We respect and love both our mother and father; but our bond with mother cannot be compared to any other attachment, a bond that begins with our status as a foetus inside her womb and stays on not only till our death but also in the other world when, according to Islamic belief, our names would be roll-called with our mothers' names, not fathers'.
   A father in our society traditionally tills cultivable land, sells his labour or does his business to earn breads for his family and a mother nurtures her babies and takes care of household chores. Fathers do the labour-intensive jobs as they are stronger than mothers. Sadly in many families yet to be illuminated by proper teachings, a husband takes his wife as his possession the way he looks at his bullocks and doesn't hesitate even to beat his wife the way he prods his tilling oxen with a stick tipped with a sharp nail. Wife-bashing is brushed away as normal in some dark areas of our society and so are other types of violence against women like acid burns by jilted lovers, dowry deaths, rape in police custody etc. Many of our children mostly in rural areas are helpless, traumatised and silent onlookers at the brutal masculinity of their fathers ruthlessly beating their mothers. Brought up in an unhealthy environment with her parents at perpetual wrangle, an innocuous child, if asked to draw pictures of her father and mother, may portray her father like a demon with his canine teeth abnormally bared and his eyes unusually red and protruded like an evil's; but the mother she would draw in the canvas may be like Mother Teresa or Mona Lisa radiating kindness and serenity.
   When I was a kid I used to envy a neighbouring friend of mine who lost his father; I wished I could enjoy his fatherless freedom. My father was synonymous with a tiger, a tetchy person who was a terror even to our relations and neighbours. Nobody dared even to smile before him fearing his sermons, let alone chat with him freely. Our home time with father away was heavenly and hellish when he was with us. We were a big family of 10 siblings; our day started with fears and hatred.
   Our first regimen in the morning was to take a full glass of bitter drink (extracts made of chirata, a medicinal herb and dried jute leaves immersed all-night in water), then breakfast of bread and butter with a serving of karala bitter gourd soup. After all these bitter openings in the morning started our two-hour tough drill on homework given by father. I still vividly remember two hard lashes by his polished cane as I failed for the third time to pronounce the word 'immediately' correctly -- double m of the word forced me every time to stammer. If there were only one enemy I truly wished to kill it was my father.
   Fathers are basically centrifugal in character and mothers centripetal. Men are warriors and risk takers; they don't visit doctors even when they feel pain in their chests the way they move forward in a war ignoring their festering wounds. They drink and drive; they don't wear seat-belts. Masculinity is a genetic quality fathers have been bearing for thousands of years; most fathers feel pressured to act masculine showing their strength and fitness and any weakness manifested in their deeds or behaviour is a threat to their self-esteem.
   Let alone a woman, he clenches his teeth when he is cowed down by a male compatriot; and if he is defeated or made submissive by a woman--his wife or any other females--he may perhaps find suicide as the only peaceful exit. These men must feel that they are decisive and self-assured. Like an addicted smoker incapable of quitting smoking he finds himself powerless to change his masculine traits genetically riveted into his body and mind.
   For ages men guarded their wives and children from predators and developed muscles, bones and minds much stronger than females' and women bore and gave birth to offspring and developed resilience to withstand birth-pains and also patience much more powerful than males'--both as evolutionary requirements.
   Society as well as time has of late changed, even in Bangladesh. Nowadays, not all mothers are beaten everyday and not all fathers force their children to gulp bitter drinks every morning. Any oppression on a woman would be legally lashed out by a severe punishment and an acid throwing with a capital one. Fathers are now friendly with their children and caning is legally prohibited. Examples of fathers babysitting children and mothers working in heavy-duty jobs in factories are galore.
   
   Reverse turn
   Darwin's march of evolution seems to have taken a pause and is poised to take even a reverse turn. Females are now vociferous in politics and trot the globe attending seminars and their male counterparts while away time inside homes doing needlework or reading travelogues as armchair travellers.
   A number of powerful politicians and functionaries are heard to have shut their husbands' mouths up and imprisoned them inside apartments hatch-bolted from outside with big padlocks and husbands look for a chance to flee away from their suffocating marital incarceration. Some unfortunate husbands dare not utter a word after learning that all these years they reared their children as cuckolded fathers and some wealthy women are often found trigger-happy to divorce their husbands on flimsy excuses with a view to eloping with boys couple of years their junior.
   Human intervention in nature is more dangerous than detonating atom bombs. A hill takes ages to perfect her shape and protects her footings with trees and vegetation as an evolutionary process; animals are invited to graze on grass and fruits at her every nook and cranny; but any attempt to grab her foundation soils and trees may be returned by an apocalyptic wrath as has been shown in Chittagong the other day. By nature's own right swapping genetic traits between males and females or too much tinkering with genes and embryos may also be returned by an unthinkable apocalypse.
   Father is not mere a father; he is a mother too; his heart also bleeds silently, sometimes more profusely than mother's. Have we ever sincerely asked ourselves why father was so stoic and silent and did not allow a single drop of tear to roll down his cheek when mother was weeping continuously as a tragedy stuck our home? Was his heart a cold stone? Why was he restlessly walking the whole day on which his married daughter was due to come home? Why did father lock his room from inside and didn't come out to dine with us? What benefit did he derive by caning his son while tutoring mathematics?
   Ideas about 'motherhood' and 'fatherhood' were changed by 180 degrees as cinema viewers saw in the 1979 film 'Kramer vs. Kramer' Dustin Hoffman (as Ted) rushing to emergency defying speeding vehicles while crossing a busy road cuddling his bleeding son (as Billy). Academy Award winner for Best Picture in 1980 ' Kramer vs. Kramer' reflected a C which occurred during the 1970s when Father's rights movement gathered momentum in Western countries. Sociologists raised voices of warning as waves of feminism were making fathers victims of paternity frauds and laws discriminating against males. The fathers' rights movement as a result of issues regarding custody of children in association with increased rates of separation and divorce was linked to the decline in the power of religious belief to support marriage, the increase in the financial independence of women, changes to child support laws and increased societal problems afflicting males who found themselves discriminated against in areas they commanded for ages.
   A mother can't help tears from trickling down her cheeks when her baby is torn away from her bosom, but the baby's father remains stoic and silent while suffering excruciating pains inwardly without showing what he is feeling. It would be an arithmetical blunder if someone attempts to measure the quantum of human misery by the quantity of tears, or what is called 'lacrimal fluid' in medical parlance, spilled out. Compared to a female a male is more capable of suppressing his lachrymal gland from producing tears as he has been taught to consider crying publicly as undignified and infantile.
   In fact a father is like a matured and seasoned coconut, very hard when pressed on its hairy shell and nobody would have known about the sweet juice and soft meat it contains unless someone cracked it open. If mother is compared with the Ganges giving us water for our living, father is the Himalayan--not only a sky-high wall guarding us from chilling winds from the north but also a heavenly repository refilling the Ganges to mother our life.
   The best way to honour our fathers who passed away is to recite the Quranic excerpt, perhaps the only and the most daring and demanding prayer in any divine scripture God has allowed orphans to pronounce: Rabbir haam humaa kamaa raabbayani sagiraa (Oh Allah, you must take care of my parents who are now at your custody exactly the same way they used to take care of me when I was a delicate baby on their laps).

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Special Correspondent

Many present inmates in different prisons of Bangladesh lived their lives with the best creature comforts before entering the jails. On the eve of New Year none of them could imagine that 2007 would befall them such stark miseries-a steep fall from a mountaintop palace way down to rocks at the bottom. It's a jump from heaven direct to hell of a fire, a jump far worse than that 'from a frying pan to fire'. A live fish burnt to ashes in fire dies an instant death, perhaps a lesser pain than being fried on a pan into a slower and certain death.
   Jail to a jailbird may be a heaven but worse than a hell to one who never had a shower without a geyser. Walking in bare feet on a paved footpath may be a pleasure stroll for a rural peasant but must be hellish for a shopkeeper who never was exposed to air unconditioned. So if a judge sentences "walking a road in bare feet" for a crime the sentence would be a reward to the peasant and a punishment to the shopkeeper though both as humans of the same age entitled to the same privileges by the codes of law may have committed the same crime.
   Similarly, granting bail to the accused of the same crime is a relief not equal to all humans-a beggar moves from a sheltered building to an unsheltered road and a lawyer from a frying pan to an air-conditioned home. Entitled to the same privileges in the eyes of the law a beggar not granted any privilege like 'division' in a jail still remains sheltered and a lawyer granted an extra privilege like that of a division is still exposed to unconditioned air.
   Living in comforts as an accountant or as a son of a prime minister or living a homeless life as a beggar is neither a crime nor a punishment unless we are subjects of a communist government. Of course, a powerful minister, for example, with his athletic background should be entitled to lesser healthcare than that to a beggar with her frail health during their incarceration.
   Like an anaesthetist carefully dosing the measure of sedative drugs in terms of age, health and other conditions of a human patient, a judge also has to award privileges and punishment in terms of crime, health, age, accustomed lifestyle and background of the accused irrespective of articles of law-emergency or otherwise or codes of penology-first or sixth division or warrant of precedence-a secretary or a clerk or weight of profession-beggar or barrister or colour of blood-red or blue.

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