Her hunch told a story of pots of chicken, soy sauce, disgruntled children, greedy siblings

There was a rush in her saga

That would not tolerate the embarrassment of her name being called out on a public speaker system at the airport

While six of her grandchildren, her son and a daughter in law

Moved forward the queue without her

She moved proudly behind them,

She seemed to have cooked, and had not been cooked for

She seemed to have listened and had not been listened to

She seemed to have made space where her own had shrunk every day

Will drawn up, lands given, silverware gifted,

She only had a gold chain to hold on to…

She died when the bird took off

Generously breathing her last offer

To the skies and God…

Nov 11,2009

This was a summit organized by Standard Chartered in collaboration with Group Women Council in Singapore.  Three of us had made it to the place to simply listen and to brainstorm about womanhood and potential. That she is a good debtor is no news; that she braves her personal storms is not unusual; that she lives in a world crossed by chauvinistic challenges is no surprise.

Yet she needs to be discussed and addressed.

The first evening at a dinner date at the Marina Mandarin, in a restaurant that hosted almost 125 beautiful women and hardly three men, we all looked at each other, networked and enjoyed our moment. The reality came sooner than expected next morning when Lehmann Moment became the key issue of the opening phase. The part to discuss was the recovery phase. The Q3 GDP Growth in China, the land of the Impossibly Capably Aggressive had stood at a 9% while the Q4 growth had dipped to a 7. UK, alas, had reported a -1.4% and USA at this point was riding on a 3.5.  Apparently, the conservative stimulus pattern had led to the frustration in the UK and therefore the country was working on an extended stimulus now. Discussion centred on the reality of the recession not yet having reached the V stage and the world probably not seeing a V curve in a long time to come. Voices concluded that we would all be looking like an incomplete V, rather a square root and would simply have to pat each other at the back and smile through the semi-yet-tried the hardest phase.

At a time like this, what were the women doing, especially in Korea and Japan, where profession becomes a zero right after marriage? Well, the story does not end there as most of these women trade in the funding currencies like Yen, US Dollar and British Pounds from home and are busy. Japan, the country that had 2.2% negative growth and Korea, the country which had ironically 2.2% positive growth definitely had women who were not to be labelled as passive. As far as the world of women could stretch from Far East to the Extreme West,starting from one having a house husband down to another having an extra supportive husband to single mothers, starting from ones having begun their careers after fifty down to some who had always had to work, starting from ones who have grown their own business initiatives down to the ones who had grown their family businesses…all that morning had one voice and one conviction: they all had a choice and they had all pursued their passion. Whether it was to have raised half a dozen kids and then having stumbled upon a neighbourhood bank next door pitching a business, or whether it was all about slogging twenty hours a day at a store, all had one vision and one mission to cater to: Growth.

Well, how will the Bangladeshi women respond to this creed of Growth which meant sustained progress?

By 2014, the world is going to be poised to salute the better half as the earning power of the women will reach US Dollar 18 trillion, which is more than twice the GDP of India and China put together. In a country like Bangladesh, since gender banking has indeed become a focus with the Central Bank announcing a single digit commercial lending rate for women entrepreneurs, all commercial banks should share the spirit. After all, lending to women has always been beneficial; after all, women have always been responsible clients; after all, businesses need to move from micro finance and unofficial enterprise credit to institutionalized platform, don’t they?

Though the world in 2008 witnessed the Falling-off-the Cliff feeling, Bangladeshi women have perpetually lived there, prepared to take the fall in the form of a divorce mantra recited thrice in the village or an elite insult or bias. While most of the Western world has been recovering with currency adjustments, more aggressive policy responses and increased confidence, and through exiting the stimulus bubble, the East has been watching the role reversal. To put it simply, the west saves while the east spends more today. On one hand, the world has been oscillating between multiple shifting gears, on the other the steering wheel has rested safely with the women. Why though? It’s simply because women define Smart Economics the best while negotiating a fine Work-Life balance.

Strangely a Woman Anywhere has, at any point, a unique tale to offer. She is a silent partner to the growing family business, a quiet mentor for her children, a partner for her ambitious better half, a symbol of aesthetics for her home and workplace, a friend to many like her, an aspiring academic having to put away her laptop or her worksheet the minute her husband comes home…yet she has never been waited upon, and yet, she does not complain.

Time to track back to Here and Now:

 In Singapore, Standard Chartered shared a success story with the participants in the summit. It was the story of Kaniz Almas.

A woman from Bangladesh, Kaniz is known to be one of the most resourceful women in the country. Her investments were all in the beauty sector. She ran salons and spas. We watched her story during dinner. Kaniz had no capital to start with. Her funds came from Standard Chartered, Bangladesh. At a time, when most of us were complaining about our interest rates still not coming down to a single digit (for women, finally it has) Kaniz had borrowed at 17% and has grown her business all over the city with 1200 employees. When she began, she had less than 7 to assist her and today when she looks around she sees her colleagues, her family, her customers and her love.

By her side, her husband, an ex banker, beams with pride and photographing our moment. Kaniz, ever polite and ever humble stands for a simple statement of confidence. She took a leap of Faith when she couldn’t see the bottom and landed on a higher plain. Kaniz is a simple story that teaches the women in Bangladesh never to despair and never to settle for plateaus. Surely mountains were made for women and plains for men?

The Skies, on board SQ 436

Nov 01, 2009

I am bad with prepositions.
 
I always try and eat my on’s, in’s, at’s etc. I do it in quite a convincing manner so that none can suspect the grammar fraud in me and till date, so late in life, I still do a full circle of mmms, ooofs, ugghs when it comes to those silly two lettered life destroyers. Let me try it this time…

I was at Au Bon Pain, happily looking at my platter, which had an Arizona chicken wrap sitting on it, and on the table, by its side laid an odd crumpled receipt. There you go. I made it. The reason why I could make my way through this simple sentence is probably because I want to desperately want to share my American experience with you, without or without any approval of the grammar gurus.

In a nation that has written rules for everything, starting from the railway track to the White House, in a nation that has taxable tags on anything, starting from pet food down to caviar, in a nation that has a time for everything , starting from the kids’ soccer games down to your own 8:00 am desk date, how on earth would ever a Bangali like me fit?  Let me take you back to the table where I started…

It was my last day in New York, all rainy, soggy and dirty. Yet, I had to leave the apartment and venture out in the traffic of umbrellas, one battling the other, one cramping the space of the next  and deliberately claiming the additional one and a half feet of earth. There was a French girl at home, who was a friend of my daughter’s friend (getting complicated, I know), who had this very plump French girlfriend of his staying with him, who looked at my jeans and happened to comment:

Ahhh Mrs Hook…you are weearing jheans…i weeare pyjhamas whin i traaavel

Somehow I had an odd nagging feeling that I would not be able to take too much of her French accent especially when they were inspired by the American Gossip Girl soap scenes. (I had later learned that that is all she watched throughout the day). So I went out. My greedy stomach was making noises, prodding me to have the wrap along with 500 grams of Perrier.

This is where Au Bon Pain comes in to my blot (blog+plot). After receiving my order, the cashier gave me the receipt which I habitually, instantly trash. It was at that point I remembered that I had not taken my bottle to the counter. Apparently they have these strange bar code systems in America where everything has to be scanned, matched and passed. This 2 dollar water bottle had missed making the cash counter connection and all because of me! By the time I realized my mistake, a huge queue of doctors, senior citizens, students, etc had built up. There was no way for me to push through the crowd and resort to confession.  The only thing that I could do was to settle down with my tray and the bottle and quietly place the receipt beside the tray. That’s what I did and yet the worst was yet to come.

Let me tell you, I am absolutely averse to alarms and screaming exits. Therefore, if there were any chances of the door talking while I would be on my way out of my favourite eatery, I would rather hide under the table and wait for everyone to disappear and then finally make it to the cashier with the crushed receipt and apologize for sitting on it for hours.

The moment of truth arrived after 20 minutes. It was time for me to leave. While I quietly made my way to the exit door, I waited for an elderly woman to go in first and then I stepped in to the last invisible check point.

Suddenly silence had become my dearest ally.

Suddenly I was only listening to the pitter-patter and suddenly the door showed no signs of anger and suddenly I felt free.

And all this while, little did I realize that I had finished drinking my sparkling water with my meal and there was no evidence to nail me with…

Oh America! Thou art the emblem of systemic boredom and fear.

I would never live in you.

Exactly.
A bad marriage is a bad concept.
Live with a rotten apendix and smell like a bad apple.

Live your life with remote controls being thrown at the nirvanic
(haha) position that you have carved for yourself, year after year,
creating deep impressions on the cheap, local foam used on your family
couch and this is what you get. You develop a bad-applelitis.
With developments in the free trade angles, you are forced to compete
with green ones with stickers pasted on them, screaming: Not desi, but
Aussie.
Now, now…how do you beat the fresh, the young, the green and the
reds? After all, you are a bad apple.
You hike to the doctor’s and all he offers you is a knife.
Remedy: chop your flesh, grate it, mince it, mix it with Pran and
there you go…you are a pie made with a little bit of rotting yeast
and the ever harmful dash of the baking powder that qualifies to grace
the carom boards.
That’s right. You eat what you play with.
You play powder, you swallow it too.
Fake flesh, form and flavour
And become the cranapple of the season.
Cranberries always fancied your tradition.
No harm in bedding an old flame, after all, right?
Woman…what are we doing after all?
Are we all not covering footprints of our own slaves?
Are we not all flames,
Dodged by mistletoes,
Duped by vendors
Promising fair trade
Flaunting the Sale
Of a precious item
And yet, why do you have that smile,
You indexable, sale worthy woman?

My lids get heavier with a seven year old haze. I find it difficult to stay awake to listen to some new story, to read a new page or to follow a new line. It’s difficult to reckon with late hours, with Clifford memories of a child dying of cancer or a failing heart.

Shadows moving across the house are no more trespassers. They are often a five feet two or even a four eleven. They seem to lurk all around the house with a defined character: here to haunt, here to chase, here to die. The window created out of a slated wall in his room hasn’t changed much. The light barely comes in; the ventilation has hardly improved; and I for one, don’t have the heart to change the starry sky. Every year I play around with that space thinking one change would steer me away from my nightmare. Every year I think that that little hundred and fifty odd square feet will somehow wake me up to a more positioned life.

But it really hasn’t happened.

The room has remained the way it was seven years ago. The ceiling still wears the blue. The walls still have his old shelves hosting my books along with his. The bathroom still has the silly old Garfield tiles that I made when he was two. The silly dressing room still is the same old store. The only difference has been the windows. Last year I carved one out of a blocked wall, this year another. Since, windows don’t wash away sediments of loss, maybe I should plan on changing the floor next fall.

Some were returning from their morning walks, some were finishing breakfast, and some were simply reading the print posts. And suddenly there was a lot of noise.

Gun shots don’t make news in Southasia. Absence of it does. Bangladesh has been happy without armed forces rolling their tanks on the streets for quite some time now. In spite of the two years of apparent army backed rule, we have returned to democracy. There’s a new cabinet and there’s certainly a new consciousness. Let me also not rule out pride. When we say: Bangladesh is not Pakistan; most Bangladeshis take pride in that statement. Neither do we use religion in our defence nor have we allowed anyone to trample our own people in the name of war against terror. But yes, we too have had disappointments. We have had corrupt politicians raping our possibilities; we have had greedy elites hogging on to all that they could lay their hands on; we have had rhetoric of ridicule. Yes, we have suffered misrule, dishonesty and abuse. But people still want to make choices. Tonight, when most of the BDR jawans surrender, when more dead bodies surface, when one bulletin after another reports disasters, we all need to make a choice tonight. Who do we choose tonight: sons or sinners?

On the 25^th of Feb, 2009 the Border Forces of Bangladesh revolted against the Armed Forces, killed more than fifty, wrecked the homes of the many army personnel and did what they wanted to do. They complain of discrimination. Their voices were apparently never heard; apparently they were unsung heroes; apparently they were tortured; apparently they were treated like the children of a lesser God. Therefore they decided to overthrow the God of their own conscience and they issued themselves licences to kill, loot and rape.

Elachi, a maid who has been with the family for long 18 years, made the most profound statement of all. While I was ready to leave for the office this morning, she said: “They are acting like the Pakistani army, khalamma. They are repeating ’71.”I agreed…

Thanks to the political wisdom of the Prime Minister the situation has been so far politically handled. But while I blog now, the army still stands positioned on the streets of Dhanmandi, ready to move into the BDR headquarters. Will they make a move? If they do, will the cycle of violence re begin?

The prime minister’s passionate speech provided a few rebels with a quick exit. Few have laid their arms down. Few have escaped. And only about a hundred and fifty are inside, still swearing vengeance. The home minister pacified them; addressed them as our sons.

A few sons of ours have played dirty with blood. A few have given in to greed, lust and power. Many are sinners. Let us not forget that there are mothers in this land who sent their sons to fight the enemy in 1971; there are mothers in this soil who handed their own sons over to law when they strayed; there are mothers who still shun fear and sing freedom.

There are indeed choices to be made tonight. Therefore, let the trial begin…

10:04 pm,
Feb 26^th, 2009