Archive on Anupol

The second letter

Thu, 14 Jul 2005 15:29:00 +0000

Dear Little Princess,

We usually pray silently. In a peaceful quite environment we feel comfortably connected to the Almighty. We express our submission to Him in silence and it is sacred. So is the expression “I love you” - we should treat this sacredly! Our insipid use has made us callous about it. But the authenticity and emotions that are associated with this expression can and should only be felt by heart. Our hearts somehow figure out a lot of things where the logical part of the brain fails and it is odd not to feel ecstatic when we experience love. I wish when you are reading my letters, you would feel the warmth resonance of my love for you.

The religious books that I read or browse always talk about big palace, lush green meadows, clear fountains that runs beneath the feet, alcohol free wine, etc. to describe paradise. I guess these are common things that many people want in order to be happy and heaven is the ultimate place for happiness. An important item is missing from this description, it is a place where time and decay does not affect a dad child relationship. They stay the same for each other for the eternity!

You got to know something else. Not all parents are as fortunate as we are. No amount of gratitude is enough towards the Almighty for granting us such blessings! We are blessed with numerous hours, evenings, afternoons and mornings just to see you play, walk, stumble, jump, laugh, make faces, give hugs, eat grapes and so many other things! We are blessed to have Shaffat Cha-cha as your youngest uncle. He took many great pictures of yours and created a superb web site for all of us to share. We are blessed that all your grand parents at least had a chance to see you. I hope you treasure their love when you grow up.

July is upon us once again - you will turn 2 this year. I am not gifted enough to spell out how much of your love-aura encircled me for the past year. Your mom and I have been through a lot of rough time during this period - you are too young to remember all these. But your gaudy spirit of essence stayed with me at all times. No matter where I am physically when you are reading this, just believe that I am wraped around in your being. You know we can see very little because of the limitation of our retina but we are able to feel the infinity with our heart. My spirit will always stay connected with you because I outpaced the change by freezing moments in photographs, sculpting words to express affections and creating timbre of love that will last for eons.

One last word (a dad always preaches), you will have about 20 thousand or more opportunities in your lifetime to see the sun rise on the eastern sky. Make an effort to watch one of these heavenly events while sipping a hot cup of Masala tea. Drape your life with these simple and inexpensive things. Don’t chase happiness - it’s like your shadow. The more you want to get close to it, the more it runs away. Bath in the sea of silence; feel connected to the infinity. You will be surprised!

Baba (July, 05)

Prelude to the second letter

Mon, 06 Jun 2005 01:32:00 +0000

Babu (Dear Baby):

Yesterday was July 15, 2004. Your mom asked me to write letters to you starting from your first birthday. I immediately liked the idea – it is rather simple for me yet elegant. However, I am not sure at what age you are going to read this! Age makes a whole lot of difference in everything of our life. What appears to be vibrant at one stage can easily turn out to be dull in another part of our life. But I came to realize that life feels a tad more enjoyable when it is simple. I wish that I get to spend a lot of time to tell you about this simplicity when you are grown up!

We all rushed to grow old and to become an individual adult. But it is always heartbreaking for the parents to see their offspring break away from their arm and love! I think heaven is a place where you can have your little baby for the eternity. When you grow as old as I have, you would know exactly what I mean.

It has been about a week since I started this letter and tomorrow is the July 22, 2004. There is a school of thought that we impose an emotion to a particular day – say first or the last day of the year. However, birthday is different from those days and celebrating this day is quite OK – even in my opinion. How you would be celebrating this day is unknown to me and I do not want to hope for something when I will have very little control over a moment. Let it be your choice.

At the end, I do want to say that we have taken an ambitious plan to write to you on your birthdays till you are sixteen. My anxiety is with what I write! It could turn out that my values (which I often refer as simplicity) do not fascinate you (like most around me) in any way. After all, you will have your own perspectives in life. I do hope that somehow I will find enough charisma to ride the tide that awaits me - I will be travelling with you! A simple hope is certainly a graceful part of any celebration.

Signed: Happy Birthday – Abbu (Dad).

Paint, Chisel and Grind

Sat, 21 May 2005 06:49:00 +0000

In my head, I have this tiny bead like rudiments that constitute what I believe in. I don’t know how did they melted inside me and created an elaborate pile of blocks. I can feel they have been there for eons and some of them have been even neglected!

When I need to justify my act or intention, I use them to make a garland that wraps around me and define my existence. At times some of them appear rusty and their tarnished facade confronts me. When it happens, I hurriedly grab a brush made with my current reasoning about life and self then start painting them. I may choose a bright shining color of vogue contemplation or a somewhat cool tone down verdict of my self-realization. I start a mental dance with my minute me, exchange some dialogue silently and keep painting until I am happy to use them. It all depends what I want at that moment!

Sometime I feel these beads are accumulating, like fat cells a lot of unwanted, unfounded theories or ideas around them. I might have tossed at them what ever I thought prudent at one point during my hyper charged life. They start to grow bulky and I suddenly find them a bit tiring to carry with me. I then start to use dissent or my new experiences as a chisel and curve out a new shape out of them. I keep hammering them until I am pleased with the sexier contemporary look.

Sometime I grind, tint and reshape them with impulses to make a skull full of mush. By the time I am done, very little of the original structure remains intact.

It boils down to this; I believe what I want to believe. And the ‘want’ part of this equation evolves as I live a life. I always carry my heart to paint, reshape, and dismantle my minute me - and I am having lot of fun doing just that.

For a great man

Sun, 15 May 2005 17:35:00 +0000

I met my father-in-law first time in March 13 1995. I was in Dhaka for about 15 days to get married with my lovely wife. Within that brief stay in Dhaka, I probably saw him less than ten times. He cooked one delicious meal just for me on the night I got married. My stomach is awfully sensitive to rich “Mogul Food” that is a customary menu for the weddings. So, my wedding dinner was home made meal - an unforgettable taste of master chef. I came back to the US at the end of March and kept our communication via telephone and snail mails. Nevertheless, we built a strong mental and emotional connection that was truly heavenly - it is rare, I know it for sure.

I never got the opportunity to go back – even when he was in his deathbed. I had a legal matter to attend! In March 15 2005, ten years after I had met him in person - I came to know that he has Liver cirrhosis. A twisted shock undid our serenity and derailed us completely. Somehow I had to prepare my wife and eighteen months old daughter to go back to see him, to be with him. While my family was preparing to leave for Dhaka, I started to pen a letter to him. He adored my letters.

At the end, I kept the letter to myself. Deep in my heart, I was scared – fear of the inevitable and confusion about the unknown paralyzed my consciousness. I read it several times while he was alive and struggled alone in a hospital far away from me. Then one day suddenly he had to throw the white towel – surely not by his own choice. An immense pain rattled our hearts and there was no comfort in sight from anywhere. Truly, we did not want any comfort – we just wanted to be with him, to lessen his pain somehow!

Now I hope to go to Dhaka someday, see his house at least from outside (I heard it’s up for sale), visit the cemetery, breathe the same air. I guess we did not need to see each other in person –some things are not meant to be. He and I knew it – we were so connected with our soul.

Copy of the letter:
Baba, I hope you would find some time to read my observation of this world.

One day Holbrook - a TV artist who looks just like Mark Twain and imitates his monologues on stages - sails out in a 40 feet boat all by himself. He traveled 2400 (twenty four hundred) miles across the pacific ocean- alone. In an interview, he was asked: What do you think about when you’re out there on a long trip like that and you’re alone? What do you think about night in and night out, day in and day out?
Holbrook: You think about getting somewhere. Getting…. hoping you get to where you are going. You think about that a lot. You question is the boat okay? Is everything working right? Could there be a leak somewhere I do not know about? You double check, you triple check. Basically, you are out there in the embrace, and not tender either, of this great world. You will find a huge but not empty great silence force all around you. Even though you are in that embrace, you still have to survive in it. You have to know how to keep yourself from going down. And you cannot fight it. You have to learn not to fight nature. You have to learn to give to nature just enough to stay alive and stay upright.

Now hold that thought of being lonely! Religious books tricked us by giving an impression that we have choices to make. I believe we don’t. Think of a twin sister scenario. One was born being pretty and the other being not so pretty. It happens more often than you expect. But if you think about the moment of conception in their mother’s womb, you would realize that a lot of misery was actually encoded in the not so pretty girl’s “Karma” without her consent. Later in her life, she would struggle to prove to the rest of the world that she is not any less of a person than her pretty sibling. You know she did not choose to be the way nature made her. Another example: “You can not will unless Allah wills.” That means HE has a strapping string and HE is and will play with it the way HE likes. There is absolutely nothing we can do about it!

We are indeed lonely most of the time in our life span and we really do not have many independent choices to make. There is a dangling carrot in front of us and we pretend to drive our destiny. If you think about it - no one with a bit of right senses would end up in a situation where he or she would have to regret for anything in a life. All of our intentions are always to do the right thing at the right time for the right person. Yet, we do regret for many things in our life because that carrot was a mirage and a lot of “Karma” was handed to us without our consent. If you embrace this truth then rest would be the details of HIS game that you tag along without much ado. Also, you have learnt not to fight the nature - you are giving just enough to stay alive and stay upright.