LIFE was not like this in the past. In our childhood, we saw many things that are not known to the children of the day. Or, I should say that we did not witness in our childhood what today鈥檚 children have been experiencing. It is not the common worries of life that I am trying to say here such as parenting and the schooling of children, mobile menace or information technology鈥檚 aggression, etc. I am talking about more down to earth things 鈥� ways of life and living, relationship between people, the sense of right and wrong, sharing home-made food with the neighbours, helping each other and so on 鈥� are on my mind. In fact, an overpowering sense of disengagement with anything good from the life of contemporary human beings is dogging my mind.
There was beauty in the exchange of glances while greeting someone by someone else. Now, people at a social gathering do not look at each other. They stare arrogantly. They do not exchange pleasantries or wish wellbeing of each other. They do not talk even. They just growl or jeer at each other or keep quiet like some members of the bovine family. Attitudes, views, dresses and behaviour had special meanings in social interactions. There was an undertone, some hidden messages and codes of conduct while the younger talked or met the elderly. Mother鈥檚 admonition and ease were manifested in their eye contact with the children. Lowering the younger鈥檚 eyes while talking to the elder was an expression of respect to the latter.
Sitting cross-legged in front of the elderly was considered unbefitting and insolent on part of younger members of the family. At a family or social gathering, even a younger member sitting on a chair leisurely while a senior individual passed or stood by was looked at disdainfully by other members present there. Dresses and their design, fabric and colour meant or carried a message of age and social standing. A festivity in a family meant to be a common colour of all the neighbours and so was an illness to any member in a family to the others. Even dying in old age had a beauty of it. The near and dear ones along with relatives from far and wide looked at the departing soul with profound condolence. There was hardly any difference between peoples鈥� words and actions 鈥� between seeming and reality. People told of things only they meant and believed.
Edibles were for human consumption and wellbeing, not to poison them. They did not cause kidney, liver, heart and lung ailments. This heinous nature of the most unscrupulous businesspeople was mostly not known to the country before the 1990s. We have done with most of the natural bounties of the Creator-听 鈥� the topsoil of farming land, air, water, fruit, vegetables, rivers, fishes, herbs, hills, beaches; and, what not? Sales at shops were graded to mark difference in quality and price, not mixed up 鈥� the good-, the bad, the worst 鈥� in a single lot to beguile customers.
The members of the age group that we commonly term now as the Gen Z were also there in the bygone days. But they were different. They might have been less meritorious but they were sons and daughters of the soil. The irony is that unlike today鈥檚 online heroes, the technology that made the Gen Z of the 21st century was shaped and reshaped by the less meritorious but socially acceptable genius of the 20th. Adolescents enjoyed liberty within the limit of allowable social tethering. Young male members of society had time to spend with friends and peers but they had to heed that family values were upheld. Parents were not stigmatised for their children鈥檚 actions both in the family as well as in society or educational institutions.
Female members were more up to the way of the late 18th and the early 10th century English middle-class girls. The contemporary English novelist Jane Austen depicted herself and hundreds of unmarried girls at that time as: when the girls reach the marriageable age, they had nothing to do but waiting for something to happen to them. Though the condition of the then adolescent females described here is not appreciable in the context of a society that denied women鈥檚 right to inheritance of their paternal landed property; it reflected the undistorted image of the Victorian Age鈥檚 young English girls of well-to-do families. In the past, younger members of our society had the courage and dedication to upholding the matrimonial decision made and the relationship between husband and wife was more of respect and rendezvous rather than that of suspicion and suspense today.
Society had an inner strength to go ahead, its values, ideology and the bearers of such, the epitome of modest life with high hopes. The village teachers, philanthropists and the elites 鈥� not to be mixed up, of course, with the moneyed and muscled ones, but the dignified character, down to earth, wise and courageous ones 鈥� tell the truth and lead the community as a whole.
Today, population increases, not the humanised beings. Number counts, not the quality in any state arrangements 鈥� research, service, social safety net programmes, the rate of literacy. Gross domestic product shoots up at the cost of unabated price of commodities, inflation skyrockets, a fewer get pot-bellied sucking on the millions鈥� dwindling daily incomes. The chosen ones get industrial loans from banks in the name of aerial companies that remain defaulted for years while owners of the pseudocompanies.com ride on the hundred million dollar sports car, meet the like-minded thugs and goons with widening smiles on beaming, oily faces. They do not feel ashamed when people call them defaulters. They, rather, enjoy the status of disrupting all norms of the state鈥檚 mechanism of financial discipline, if any though. On the other side, the plain living farmers鈥� sons need their references in their curricula vitae along with hard-earned university degrees to get a clerical job in the banks or establishments run by them.
Religion does not teach people to be honest and devoid of greed. It is now a matter of lifeless rituals 鈥� bowing heads this way or that. The benefits of rituals are advertised. The ways and life of the religious leaders are not preached and discussed and implemented. These are commodities to be sold and bought in the form of honey, holy water, dates, incense sticks, oil of such and such seeds to cure such and such diseases. Instead of teaching the core values of all religions on earth and, thus, enlightening followers of different faiths with the practicable lessons of honesty, integrity, the humbleness of approach and dealings with social members, the religious preachers or speakers today get contracted by the hollow followers to raise money for building mosques and shrines. The more the amount of collection, the higher the amount of payment in honour to the collectors concerned.
The costly hired preachers do not tell the people gathered in their mehfils to live by hard earned bread by the sweat of their brows, neither do they preach that without earning by following an honest path, no worship would be of any use or granted to the creator. Rather, they encourage people to donate as much as possible so that they would get it back in multiples in the life hereafter. They started admonishing the simple fellows by saying that no knowledge of any earthly disciplines like engineering, medicine, economics or science would be rewarded by the creator except those who have acquired the knowledge of the heavenly books. Thus, they do not attach any value to adopting any profession on the above mentioned discipline. Neither do they teach the humble followers that they need money to lead a respectable life except only to sacrifice their wealth on the path of the creator to secure an eternal blissful life in the heaven. As such, the stricter the followers of those preachers, the more penury they bring in their life for themselves as well as their children on earth which ultimately turn them parasitic and dependent on others. This cycle goes on and on.
The other day, while passing by a small group engaged in a brawl on the street, one said to his opponent that knowledge and wisdom are not the same. He shouted to his enemy in the brawl that he might be of a knowing person but was not a wise man. True, indeed, although it came out of a scuffling group on the street. An all-knowing man is no more a wise man nowadays. There are manifestations of naked snobbery, haughtiness and hypocrisy among many a knowledgeable men and women. Instead of learning from some fruit-bearing branches offering mere goodness for others in utter sacrifice, many bookish people look down on others as vile, uncouth and intolerable nuisance while declaring themselves as the successors to the illuminators in darkness driving way all the evils from the bosom of the mother earth. Their words, sharp as razor blades, cut through the ill-formed breasts of hundreds of thousands of toiling masses. Their hatred for the ordinary people is unfathomable.
As the 鈥榗eremony of innocence is drowned everywhere鈥�, what awaits us next?
听
Md Mukhlesur Rahman Akand is joint secretary to the cultural affairs ministry.
