One off

Just an Accidental Custodian!

Aly Zaker

Ihave been going to my village regularly for at least the last one decade. And I am also aware of many naive comments and/or decisions taken by the common villagers without much thought or consideration. I understand that they have not mastered the art of pre-planning or pre-meditating in decision-making. Each new day brings to them yet another unit of time where things will follow almost repetitively. They are afraid of anything that they are not aware of, haven't seen, heard or told, over time. Such things seem out of the world to them. I have also observed one great trait in these people. They do not hesitate to speak their mind if they think that the subject of discourse is within their grasp. I have never contested this style of thinking because it seldom had a conflict with the very 'basic' activities of life. Indeed, I enjoy my morning or evening conversation with my country cousins and look forward to them whenever I am in the village for a short visit. This, I assure you, is not because I want to patronise them but because such dialogues give me newer insights. These insights have been very beneficial for me often in the past.

I must confess that I love my morning sit-outs by the ancestral pond whenever I am home, most of the time all by myself or occasionally in the company of one or two of my relatives. Some of these conversations are of semi-serious nature and some are light-hearted. The last time I was there, a distant cousin was with me. He was talking about various things. And I was kind of half listening to him. That's what I usually do, for there is no end to the variety of subjects that they would speak on assuming that I would be equally interested or knowledgeable in them as they were. But the fact remains that a few of them are either of no interest to me or are such that I do not have any knowledge of. At times, however, there are issues that emerge where I feel that I might contribute and do not hesitate to offer my spontaneous advice.

That day by my ancestral pond, this most light-hearted conversation suddenly veered to the women at our home. These were the women who had just graduated from their adolescence to youth. We all know that even today, much as we may claim that the Deshi society has made a quantum leap intellectually, the scenario in rural Bangladesh has changed very little in terms of their long cherished values, right or wrong. It will perhaps take some time before changes, as we want, happen. This is understandable. One of the main reasons is that those of us who speak with authority about the changing values speak out of assumption and some element of wishful thinking. However, to re-focus on the sit-out, my cousin after some small talks asked me if I had thought about the young niece of mine who had just started to go to the University and was doing brilliantly in her studies. Here a little prelude to the person we are going to talk about might be in order. She is a very 'ordinary' girl from my ordinary village, reminiscent of almost all villages of Bangladesh. I knew her since she was a child but did not know her enough. At one stage, when she had just about managed to pass her SSC examinations, I heard that her elders had started talking about her marriage. She was barely 17 then and I was pained to hear that here was another Bengali girl being sacrificed at the altar of societal dictate. I was of course amazed to find that the tiny girl was not willing to take it lying low. Having failed to draw the attention of her close relatives, she came straight up to me and said that she was not yet ready for matrimony and that she would like to pursue her studies, preferably, in Dhaka and that she thought I was the only one who would be heeded to by her elders in the village. I was taken aback, because seldom did I see such guts in the girls from Bangladeshi villages. I told her that I would try to do my best. She was subsequently brought to Dhaka, put up with her brothers and admitted in to a tutorial centre for HSC examinations. She completed her two-year course in one year and managed to score an A- in the HSC. Then she took the admission test and was found good enough to be admitted in to the National University. Here, in a college, she showed from the very beginning what she was capable of. Eventually, when she went past the first year she became the first girl of her class. In all the term tests in the second year she maintained her clear superiority over her classmates. I was very happy. I thought that “love's labour was not lost”. This time on when I went to the village, in a sit-out by the pond, I was told by my cousin that now that enough studies were had the girl should be given in marriage. They had also found a suitable boy. I asked if the girl had consented. My elderly cousin looked at me coldly and what he said made me shudder. He said, “Look here brother, a girl is given to a family not as a God's gift but His indifference. The family is merely the custodian of the girl until she reaches puberty when it is their duty to find a suitable boy for her. In a way a girl born in the family is a liability. The process of her growing up or her studies is a kind of stop-gap arrangement between the time she arrives in the family and the time she leaves for what is going to be her 'real' family.”

This came to me like a bolt from the blue. I did not know how to respond. The assertion was too strong and almost terminal for me. By this time the girl's other relatives and some of the elders of the village had arrived there. They had almost surrounded me, lest I imposed my will over theirs. When I was trying to figure out what to do, I could see a pair of painful eyes beyond the nearby bush. The eyes suddenly changed expression to assume a defiant look. And the girl emerged from behind the bush. She was now in full public view. She gave her people a scornful look, turned around and started walking away from us through the isles of the paddy field towards the distant horizon, her frail physique wrapped around in a sari, head held high. She became a distant object, a moving dot and a haze and was seen no more.

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