Stuck

There are way too many things happening at the same time, and yet none of them are getting done - not really. I have a distinct feeling of being spread too thin (no pun intended regarding my girth), and yet, the results elude me. Day in and day out, I put in the hours, and somehow, I do not feel the jubilation that comes from having completed something. And I muse over the idea that I am not putting in the effort in the proper places. I am not utilizing my time in a smart manner.

It has been exactly an year since I joined NSU - almost to the hour. A year has flown by. My list of accomplishments for the last year would read something like this:

• Have become a father - My son is the apple of my eye. And yet, does this count as an achievement?
• Survived an year as a Lecturer - well, I survived. More like scraped by. It is not the glorious sort of thing that I can brag about.
• And?

So it is a pretty short list. And a dubious one at best. I miss my school days, when each year, you would get promoted to a new class. It was plenty clear what you were out to do - it was spelled out nicely in front of  you. However, now that I am done with those years, there is an ocean of choices that lie in front of me, with nobody to hold me back. They call it freedom, right? So I drifted, from a shipping company to a soap making company, to an ad firm, to a sweater factory, to a university. What does that make me? To the rest of the world, I would say that I have been in training, throughout my career, so I could one day become a great teacher. But at night, with my head on the pillow, it is a very different scenario. I have a hard time selling myself the story I tell others. I beg myself to believe, and yet, my mind begs to disagree. I have spent half my life, and I still do not know what I want to be doing 2 years from now. When I juxtapose myself against my friends from undergrad years, I see myself as a lost soul.

Pulling oneself together is proving to be a very difficult stance. I have been telling myself that "This is it!" for the last 2 semesters - I am going to be a teacher. But in this, I am a newbie. It is not only teaching students in a class - there is a lot more to this profession. I need to pen some articles (read tons more before I can even begin), start attending seminars and symposia, etc. I feel like a misfit among my peers, who are all so much more well-read and versed. I feel like a trickster who is out of depth in their debates.

I need that push. I know that nobody is holding me back - but that is not the issue here. I need somebody to push in headlong into this thing, so I know there is no turning back. I need to grow that conviction, that teaching is not just another fad that will cease to define my job in a few months or years.

Mindless

At the end of the day, when I finally put my head to rest on a pillow and close my eyes, funny little notions come up, seemingly out of the woodworks, and irritate me to no ends. These seemingly innocuous questions have recently started to bother me. They’re not the type that makes you wake up with a sweat, or the type that gets you up in frenzy. Rather, they’re the gnawing kind, one that persists and makes you sad.

I realized that I do not even take an hour off each day for myself. That I do not remember the last time I went somewhere that I had truly wanted to go to. I seriously cannot imagine when it was that I crossed over to the side where everything has to be “socially acceptable”. Being myself is a struggle that I gave up on. Doesn’t that mean I gave up on myself? Extrapolating that, am I not lying to myself? Am I not just cajoling myself along a path that I do not wish to be on?

Then the question arises – why then would I do it? Social pressure? I sincerely cannot say so, because in my lifestyle, I do not consciously make decisions based on “what others may say”. That makes the problem worse. The social pressure factor now has been sewn into my DNA. I guess then the little thoughts are my subconscious’ way of letting me in on the struggle.

Am I even making any sense anymore?

Late to work

The morning started unlike most others – I could barely move my neck. The incessant screams from my cellphones tried in vain to wake me up earlier, and I finally I came to just past nine in the morning. The breakfast remained on the table as I trudged into my comfy hush-puppies and went to the lift door at 9:57 am. Stepping into the lift, I was still dozing, and so it took me all of 20 seconds to realize that I had not moved. Thanking God that the elevator would at least let me out, I made it to the car, and started off for work without much further ado.

God is a comedian, I keep saying. I realized that I didn’t have cash on me, and that my car needed to be fed. So another detour and 20 minutes later, I was back on track, praying to God that I don’t get stuck in the horrid traffic while low on fuel. Think I must’ve made it to the pump on fume alone.

Interestingly, I was in a sprightly mood, and nothing could ebb that. The tension of shipments getting delayed, worker crisis, frequent power-cuts, drops in gas pressure feeding the boilers – all these were there, registering, but not having the regular effect. I got the impression that today was meant for something grander. I was going through the day waiting for that “something” to materialize. Buoyant on the good vibes, I got to work at a comfortable pace, with uncharacteristically low traffic on the way.

I guess being happy is just a mindset. You can be happy despite a zillion problems buzzing around, or you can decide to be morose while riding the crest of a wave. There is so many things that I am thankful for – it is easy to be happy if I just acknowledge them.

online fokir

Living in Dhaka, it is impossible to ignore the beggars out on the streets, at your door, on your door window in the car, in the buses, trains, steamers... on the way to work, on the way from work, on the way to the restaurant, in front of a snacks joint... they are omnipresent.

For me, they invoke range of emotions, based on the milieu. From sympathy, to empathy, to utter disgust and disappointment on the other extreme. For most, it is a way of life, this is what they do for a living. From looking at them, you know that they have adapted it as their permanent means of livelihood. And what is alarming is that they start off early. The horrid stories you hear about parents leaving their kids with the "bua", only to find the child being "rented out" to beggars who would use her as a ploy to get more. There is a steady demand for young children among the beggars. Then there's the group with the missing limbs - I keep thinking that Slumdog Millionaire did not portray is correctly. People cannot be that cruel. But the more I think, the more plausible it sounds. Why is it that all of them now a days sing the same songs?

I had gone to Cox's Bazar a few months ago - all the kids by the beach asking for handouts guised it well. They would walk up to you and ask - in their most serious voice - "Gaan shunben?" And before you can react, they would start with a track from the popular movie Monpura. Each and every one of them would sing the same songs. Did they attend a school somewhere? What would the curriculum be like?

It is unsettling that so many would flock to Dhaka each day (as per yesterday's newspaper, more than 2000 new people flock to Dhaka everyday!), only to resort to such means. And I don't know how to react when I find it is not only in third world countries like ours where such things happen. Maybe it is not that obvious in other countries, but now that we are blessed with the digital revolution, it has taken on a different form. Now we have online beggars!

I read an article that came out in the discovery website (http://news.discovery.com/tech/panhandling-hits-the-internet.html) and was amused, to say the least. The predominantly streetwise business has taken off, into the cyberspace!