Reflections

By Jahed Rahman

This is a fiction based on the settings and traditions generally of the Noakhali civil district of Bangladesh. Those were commonly akin to the greater Muslim Bengal of the pre-1947 (partition of India) period and mostly relevant even now with innate changes.
Russel Rabbani was born in that milieu in a well-to-do family of the semi-urban locale of Noakhali. While growing up, he systematically opposed tradition-laden social systems and strived for rapid changes. As he grew up, he learned through his own life experiences that radical changes are not always workable and good, mostly causing irritation and confusion, disturbing social equilibrium. The likely impact on family and personal life is often appalling. In the process of pursuing life, his sweeping zeal yielded to unrelenting but gradual changes, with himself being a beneficiary of that. He also learned while growing up that even an ordinary person like his Sanskrit teacher, Bashu Dev Sir, can be a source of wisdom and knowledge, that every element of any surrounding can provide joy and happiness, and that even the most depressed setting can provide relaxation if one intends to have it.
For Raniya, a widow, it was her second marriage with Russel. With educational attainment up to high school, she exhibited immense capability to grasp changes and evolving requirements, both at national and international locales. Her single greatest achievement was the ability to shape and articulate conjugal conversations in helping create a conducive family environment.
Other support characters like Afzal (the elder brother of Russel), Fatima Bhabi (sister-in-law and the wife of Afzal), and Parul (the wife of his younger brother Asif) played their due support roles, and so was done by Farzana (Raniya’s Bhabi). Friends like Farhan and Mukith played their roles in positively influencing Russel’s emotional paradigm at even mature later life.
After retiring from professional life in a multinational financial institution, Russel and Raniya settled in Chicago, having a stint of few years in Vancouver initially.
It was a day of incessant snowfall in late March of 2021, akin to the famous bitter cold of Chicago. That overcast skies didn’t have any marked impact on Russel’s positive mindset of the day. Without lamenting and complaining, Russel decided to travel back to his life. That long spell of contemplation was found to be refreshing and rewarding in stress management. That art of thinking had been rated as smooth.
To Russel, and the ongoing life setting of human beings, “reflection,” a continuous process, is a valued therapy for living as long as care and caution are exercised. He happily enjoyed that sort of summation while enjoying kichuri (the Bangladeshi food preparation of rice and lentil) in that snow-laden night with Raniya.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669814719

Jahed Rahman

Jahed Rahman was born and raised in Bangladesh and spent the early part of his career there in the tax and finance fields. He subsequently spent two decades at the Asian Development Bank, based in the Philippines, and was engaged in a variety of development projects throughout Asia. He also worked for the World Bank and served as the Chief of the Multi-Donor Support unit for a social action program in Pakistan. Jahed most recently lived in Vancouver and presently resides in Chicago with his wife, Shaheen. Together they raised three children across a variety of cultural and religious settings in both the developing and developed world.

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Copyright © 2022 by Jahed Rahman.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 03/23/2022

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

835150

To: My Siblings with Whom I Grew Up and Shared Life:

• Hena Halim

• Bilkis Mustafa (deceased, 2020)

• Sadeq Rahman

• Abed Mizan Rahman (deceased, 1964)

• Selina Ahmed

• Kahina Ahmed

And

Sisters-in-Law

Whose Compassion Mattered in My Life:

• Parveen Ahmed

• Nasreen Ahmed

CONTENTS

My Confession

Backdrop: 1-29

Memory: 30-70

Practices: 71– 102

Changes: 103–138

Musings: Pages 203–

MY CONFESSION

E VERY INDIVIDUAL HAS a unique way to scan his life in terms of the past and frame his desires for a likely future upturn. Uniformity in approach and direction in the process are neither expected nor practical. In my case and in my specific setting, these remain remote from all apposite perceptions.

When I was growing up in the urban locale of Sonapur in the civil district of Noakhali, the vision of life’s expectation was very limited. Anyone who could cross the threshold of matriculation (board-conducted certificate examination at the end of class 10) level was rated as a good young guy. If he could do a bachelor’s degree, he was a successful young man adored by society. If exceptionally one could finish a master’s, he was rated as extraordinary, being the pride of the society.

Related openings and opportunities of life at that time were very limited. For those who could successfully attain an educational program between high school and college graduations, the ultimate professional engagements were limited to rare openings in closed government and semi-government offices; limited access to business establishments, with both business operations and finances being confined to families of privilege; and opportunities as teachers of community schools. Nothing else was on the slate in the absence of those.

I grew up in that setting and mostly within that vision in my early life. All I wanted in my inspiring mind was to cross the threshold of high school education at the tenth level and then get a job in the district council office where my late father was the chief executive officer. That was the advantage I had, and our family friends and well-wishers used to highlight that frequently in conversations, particularly with my late mother.

My mother, who had educational attainment up to level 6, came from a relatively upright family background with priority for education. This was bolstered because of her family’s exposure to the urban settings of Chittagong and Calcutta and later Dhaka, among others.

Her father had higher educational attainment in veterinary science, and most of her siblings had pursued college- and university-level education in my very early childhood. She was thus obliquely blessed with a different vision about me and my siblings. This even propelled an urge within her to educate my sisters and convinced our father to send my eldest sister to Comilla for education as a hostel resident pupil of Nawab Faizunnessa Girls’ School. Noakhali town at that time had no girls’ school. In that situation, that was a significantly progressive decision around the beginning of 1950s.

She, knowingly or unknowingly, resorted to other actions to transmit something different. Notable among them was sharing a few photographs of her family and encouraging them to visit our abode for our better orientation and focus.

Photographs like one capturing my maternal grandfather standing as a faculty member of the Calcutta Veterinary College and that of my well-dressed second maternal uncle wearing a jacket and adorning his head with a hat positioned in the midst of snow somewhere near Ajmir of India (a weather phenomenon mostly absent now) with a support stick in hand were exceptional. These sound to be mundane now but were vogueish in the late forties.

These experiences, emboldened by the citations of some Sonapur residents like Jane Alam, who had his maternal root at Calcutta and whom my mother reared almost like a son to fulfill her promise to his dying mother, and social elite Madhu Mia, created a startling dent in my thinking about the existence of the world beyond Sonapur. This was accentuated by two PhDs with family links in my society and the media coverage after WW II.

My life’s journey was swayed by such variables, some with negativity and most with positive outcomes, often falling short of expectations. These have brought me where I am today, a retired professional with no regret.

My latest penchant in my retired life is to write. This is my current passion. I often thought of ceasing this too but have so far been unable. There may be a host of reasons for that, but those are yet to be identified.

The persistent encouragement and support that I received from two persons outside my family and earlier-known close friends circle definitely mattered. They are my dear current friends Ms. Ruksana Hasib of Pennsylvania and Mr. Naseem Rabbani of Schaumburg, Chicago: both activists, with the first also a writer and the second also a community organizer and a social mobilizer. They played significant roles in boosting my writing zeal. Their sustained encouragement and motivating words were of immense relevance in my present life, especially continuing writing so far.

When I wrote Bends and Shades in 1974, the focus was to tell who I am and how my life has progressed. On hindsight, characterized by duress and concerns caused by the continuously mutating COVID-19 and resultant anxious thinking, a new thought caught my imagination. Would it not be also appropriate to document the settings, practices, and traditions during the time I was growing up? Reflections, my sixth book, is the outcome of that consciousness.

In writing Reflections, I also realized that the objective itself is very virtuous and the process itself is both stimulating and rewarding if focus is concentrated to analyze any past incident not to find fault afresh but to evaluate how one could knob that better, and probable other ways to do the same. It has been found to be very stress relieving if balance in thinking could be maintained. In that setting, the process itself works as a therapy. Reflections thus carried me through in these dejected days with good recollections, some frustrations, and many plenty of happiness.

Jahed Rahman

BACKDROP: 1-29

I N MID-MARCH OF 2021, Russel Rabbani, being in the prime locale of life and sitting alone in the office space of his residence, was nonchalantly gawping the snow-laden outer periphery of upscale Evanston city of greater Chicago. That mode of sitting has been an unvarying practice of retired Russel, who enjoyed the adjacent sprawling and successive parks having well-laid-out trees, with or without leaves depending on the season. The uniqueness of the park setting is the division of each by city streets and the customary use of them: The adjacent one to the residence of Russel is for toddlers and children, with amusement facilities having minor obstacles, designed challenges, and a logical sense of attainments in those small frames of flesh and blood—all planned as supportive of the goal of child development. The second one is for youngsters’ play and other activities, with formal facilities and informal arrangements depending on plans and priorities of the enthusiasts. The third one is for relaxation, including walking, by relative elders.

It is not that Russel has always had the same sedentary mode of enjoying leisure. Previously, it was mostly never. After retirement, it became occasional. But of late, there has had been some regularity in that array. In a broader context, it slowly became an unintended norm for him.

Chicago living for Russel initially had mixed reflexes as he always was reluctant even to visit the city, forget moving for a sort of permanent residency. Candidly speaking, and without any valid reason, he had an inner dislike and reservation for such an option. Destiny, however, had its own chart in this regard. The family eventually relocated to Chicago, and that too with Russel’s assent.

The initial experience of living in greater Chicago was premised on earlier perceived negative apprehensions. As he walked up and down Michigan Avenue between fabulous buildings with inimitable architectural features and numerous vertical lift bridges being pulled up and down with the help of counterweights at both ends, Russel’s impressions slowly started to turn positively about the city.

Counterweight-based pulled-up and pulled-down bridges, and that too many of them, somehow drew Russel’s nonengineering attention. All these bridges link both sides of the Chicago canal at regular intervals with well-planned walkways, commercial boat services focusing on recreation and architectural uniqueness, and common sitting benches and relaxation spaces for rest and recreation of sundry visitors. These and other desirable features gradually swayed the gratuitous negative feelings of Russel.

The canal’s formal identity is the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. It is about thirty miles long with a minimum width of about 160 feet and a depth of nine feet.

Russel was very impressed observing the multifarious productive relevance of the canal in sustaining the growth of the mega city. Subsequently, he came to know that the canal was planned during the end of the nineteenth century to preserve the water quality of Lake Michigan. The plan envisaged diversion of the city’s sewage by propelling it toward the south end of the Chicago River with a designed outlet linking and opening it up to the Des Plaines River, ultimately thawing in Mississippi River.

Evanston, as the contiguous suburb of the main city, has had been uniquely fostered by city guardians as a residential habitation without large business outlets. That has been supported by having varied and efficient means of communications with downtown Chicago, making it feasible and expedient to work in the downtown and live peaceably in Evanston. The quality of life has likewise been boosted by having rated public and private learning institutions. The presence of ranked Northwestern University as its crown jewel and the very location of the city at the belly of the western rim of Lake Michigan mostly impressed all and sundry. Within the variables of means and choices, Evanston has thus been the chosen place for living of many with families enjoying a tranquil life. Russel, because of background and vision, has aligned with these unique realities and, slowly and happily, reconciled with his chosen place of urban living.

Chicago’s profusion of various eating outlets and presence of numerous theaters, high-end boutique shops, symphony and concert venues, museums, art galleries, sports sites and regular holding of matching national events, lakeshore beaches and well-maintained walkways, etc. at relatively affordable prices, with public venues being free, fascinated Russel too.

In discovering the city, he experienced many a times free rides in the red bus, enjoyed fabulous public parks, and walked by the side of the canal and shore of the lake.

Russel conclusively reconciled about relocation to Chicago but would not forget Vancouver. Vancouver is definitely much smaller in every respect but has its uniqueness and charm, offering a life blessed with peace and tranquility. To Russel, Vancouver epitomizes the saying Small is beautiful. Compared with that, Chicago is very large and diverse and, notwithstanding the prevalence of law-and-order problems in a section of its southern part, can easily be branded as large and conspicuous.

Though Russel slowly acquiesced with the relocation decision, the distinctiveness of Ocean Park home of Vancouver was still dominating his thoughts. It was a fact that the family got settled quickly in their new second abode at South Boulevard, but Russel continued to long for their first home. That persisted for months.

Russel unpredictably had an inkling of fresh sensitivity about their South Boulevard home. The time was about the end of the first March for Russel and his family’s stay in Evanston since immigrating in July 2009. He was in need to go to the airport early morning to drop a visiting guest.

That timing was an odd one for a habitual late riser like Russel. It caused emotional fretfulness in spite of setting an alarm. The resultant upshot was his waking up about half an hour earlier than the schedule.

Russel casually moved to his office room with a cup of green tea and had an intense look outside at the emerging misty early dawn. The vacant spaces with bare tree skeletons to the east of his office room setting, analogues to the adjacent three parks, were all caged by snow having its own spontaneous and natural attributes. The fading and slowly diminishing rays of streetlights and the incipient glow of early-morning sun emissions in the eastern horizon created a unique and pleasant atmosphere, with the pile of snow as its backdrop. That was just astounding, and the sublime beauty was beyond immediate description.

Russel was overawed. He realized that even the absence of bay water and perennial tall trees, as were cases with his Vancouver home, can create a fascinating scene of uniqueness. He felt miserable for ignoring the exceptional natural aspects in which the setting of their South Boulevard Victorian home is consecrated with large glass windows.

Russel started regularly gazing outside from the appropriate vantage points of their home and other openings, including dog runs, and gradually reversed his earlier negative opinions. He started liking this house too in tandem with the Ocean Park one.

His such casual habit took a pattern in different seasonal conditions, and he always had new emotional upsurge. Russel was convinced that each specific setting has its own features. Recognition of that primarily depends on penetrating attentiveness and a responsive mind to hold it for appreciation.

There was another sublime reason for such emotion-laden practice. With his children all grown up and professionally engaged in different locations and he being retired from active exertion, with shrinking social commitments, life for Russel has become sort of deaden. That was happening slothfully even though Russel conditioned himself and his adoring life partner Raniya for a long time to gracefully breathe in retired life.

In spite of that, gloom and angst are often having overbearing impact on Russel’s retired life and thinking. Of late, these have become domineering, impacting on his mental peace and tranquility. Russel often consoles himself that the current thwarting sense of negativity is perhaps the outcome of