ENG 2150 Assignment #1 Draft

How Culture Lives Through Us

We arrived in Dhaka early in the morning. As I left through the doors of the comfortable air-conditioned airport, my eyeglasses fogged up completely. I couldn’t see a thing. I took off my glasses and it seemed to be hundreds of men standing by the road outside, desperate to take a customer into their taxicab. You might think you are familiar with the sight, but you are not. The cabbies in New York live a king’s life compared to the men from Bangladesh. Back home, the men fight for the survival of their families. The cab money feeds the family plain rice with lentils for an entire week.
But life goes on.

We spent a week in Dhaka, where my father’s family was settled. I liked the city…I did. But my experience there was touristy and commercial at best. We didn’t stay in Dhaka for the whole trip, though. I woke up one morning, excited for the day ahead. We were going to Magura, my mother’s hometown. This was the village where she had grown up. She went to school there, lived a whole life that I knew little about. But most importantly, we were going to see my grandmother, or my “nanu” in Bangla. Before I was even 5 years old, there were months where it was my grandmother who took care of me. My mother worked full days, my sisters were in school and worked part time, and my father was hospitalized after an invasive surgery. These were the circumstances through which we survived.

Nanu went back to Bangladesh eventually, though I was too young to remember that time accurately. By the time I graduated middle school, I had not seen her in more than half a decade. We missed her. It was about time we paid a visit.

My parents, me, and my uncle left Dhaka by hired car. It was a spacious white van which would suffice for that long drive to the ferry. I remember watching the commoners passing by with great interest; it is common to stare and to be stared at in my culture. You can tell a lot about people just by observation.

Perhaps two hours had passed when we finally reached the ferry. The driver boarded our van onto the ship and we took the opportunity to walk around. I stepped into a more spacious part of the deck. There were men selling popular Bengali street foods such as jhaal muri and fuchka. “Ami jhaal muri kinthe parbo?,” I asked my mother. “Na, egula shorir’er jonne bhalo na,” she replied. How badly I wanted to try those snacks! But my mother forbade me. It wasn’t good for me, she said.

We continued onto the upper floor. There was seating and a view of the river that we were crossing. I leaned over the rail with my father. To my disappointment, the water wasn’t clear. Rather it was a dirty greenish brown. But I suppose this was expected. I remember the stories my mother told of her childhood. She used to bathe in the waters of Magura. But the rivers were since repurposed to prepare jute plants to be sold for profit.

The ferry ride was not long. After maybe half an hour, we docked and rode off in the van once more. The ride from there to Magura was the longest portion of the journey. I can’t recall if it was the nausea medicine I took earlier, or the fatigue from traveling, but at some point I fell fast asleep.

The van jerked and slid to a stop. I woke up to a farm-like setting. My parents stepped out of the van, and I followed. A handful of strangers came to greet us. Their faces lit up when they saw me. It was as if they were welcoming a good friend they had not seen in a long time. “Assalamu alaikum,” I said, greeting each of them individually.

We walked further into the property. The land was strange, unlike anything I knew. There were bundles of hay laying around on mud. All of the ground was dirt and mud. The compound consisted of five buildings surrounding an open center where my younger cousins played and, at nighttime, my family gathered to chat. Eventually my mother and I reached the farthest building, not more than fifty paces from where the van was parked. There, I met my grandmother for the first time in ages. “Kemon aso zaan?,” she said (How are you, my life?). She gently rubbed my arm. I smiled.

Over the next week, I experienced my culture firsthand. I ate delicious curries and spent quality time with my cousins, playing all kinds of games together. At night we would chase frogs around with our flashlights; this was something I taught them to do.

One day, my cousin Mithila (who was my age) took me down to the river behind our home. It was not far, but getting down to the shoreline was daunting. It was a steep, slippery slope of mud we scaled to get down. We got down eventually. We talked a lot about a lot of things while the calm sound of flowing water surrounded us. Life was good.
For my mother, especially, the trip was nothing short of relieving. Only upon returning to America did we learn that the opportunity would not come again.

Our two weeks soon came to an end. After we finished packing that morning, we took a huge family picture and said our goodbyes. Before leaving Magura, we stopped to visit one of my second uncles who I had never met before; in my religion, it is custom to visit the sick and dying. My parents spoke to him briefly, but I paid little mind to the situation. Soon, it was time to go.

Months later, I was already back in New York. It was a quiet Friday night. I was in my room playing video games. My sister barges into my room while on the phone, crying. “Nanu died!” I stared at her blankly, not understanding what she meant. “Nanu is dead!” she repeated. My eyes were instantly brought to tears.

We stayed in the living room, waiting for mom and dad to come back home. Dad had just gone out to bring mom home from work. When she arrived, we could do nothing to console her. We just cried. By midnight my oldest sister and her husband arrived. Later, my mother’s youngest brother, my uncle, came too. We did not choose sleep that night. We recited prayers until fatigue overcame us.

Being born and raised away from the motherland, I wasn’t as rooted as I wanted to be. My Bangla was not fluent, and I was by all accounts “just an American.” But my nanu was the vessel through which I reconnected with my ethnic identity. It was by visiting her that I learned to appreciate my language, my cultural food and dress, and my family’s history. It was through my grandmother that I learned the beauty of my Bengali culture.

I was proud to be Bengali.