8. Assessment of Self & Contemporary Society

I am a man of strong will and quick action. I consider all the pros and cons of a matter before I take any decision. Once I make a decision, I try to stick to it.

I am hard-working and find pleasure in doing work. Even after retirement, I have tried to keep myself busy. These days too, I hardly have free time; I am either reading books or working on my computer, mostly the latter, when at home and not doing any household work. My hard childhood days might have contributed to the formation of this habit. 

I am economical in spending; I believe in the axiom, “money saved is money earned”. I don't, however, have greed for money. Money is, no doubt, an unavoidable necessity. But excess of it is prone to create trouble. Long back, I had come across a Hindi proverb, “रूपाया पैसा हातका मैल हाय, आते जाते रहते हाय”. (Money is nothing but dust on the hand; it keeps coming and going.) I look upon money in that sense.

I detest greed and addiction to the evils of modern life.

My motto is, "Honesty is the best policy". But I believe it is not enough to be honest alone; one needs to deliver goods, too.

I am a good worker and have a knack for perfection in whatever I do.

I feel strongly against wastage in any form and get worked up when this happens. But with regret I have to admit I failed to prevent it in my own house due to my wife's indifference.

I love learning new things, and that's one of the reasons I remain occupied with my computer, most of the time, when at home.

I am a fully organized person and can’t tolerate chaotic formations. I keep all records and documents duly categorized in files and folders, be it in the physical space or the electronic disk. I want things to be kept in their proper places so as to make them readily available when needed. My insistence on this becomes, at times, cause for domestic quarrels.

I cannot accept unreasonable and unjust arguments and get irritated. I find it difficult to compromise in matters of principle.

I am highly sensitive, which some may consider my weakness.

I am more or less a perfectionist. I remain concentrated on my work and try to do it to the best of my ability whenever and wherever it may be.

I worship beauty from within.

I have never lost sight of my humble beginning and shall carry it to the grave.

I have a decent memory. Because of it, I could bring out the facts of my life from the past, near and distant, to narrate the tale of my life without even having a diary or daily notes. 

I am committed to certain high ideals as opposed to modern earthly possessions. In the matter of living, I live a simple life.

I don’t understand politics as such. However, given my choice, I hate the mudslinging, dirty, and violent politics of the day but respect the politics of yesteryears.

I am an introvert by nature and cannot make friends easily. I am proficient in reasoned writing but not so much in the conversational field. There, I remain an introvert; I feel isolated in a group or gathering of unknown faces. Outside of family and friends, I speak less and listen more. I feel uncomfortable staying in friends' or relations' places.

I get involved in things happening in the family, before my eyes or within my knowledge, even at the cost of causing pain to myself. Due to this, I am not quite liked within the family and have to face hostile situations at times. But as you know, habit is second nature. 

I have strong likes and dislikes. 

My unfathomable love for beauty becomes so intense that sometimes it becomes my weakness. I then lose control and become subservient to the situation. 

I feel the measure of libido in me is more than usual. 

I hardly express myself. I am exacting and rigid, depending on the circumstances. 

I love reading, driving, working on computers, and photography, the last one with a keener interest in nature photography. Since I became used to computers, my reading remains confined to electronic materials to a large extent. Apart from the books in the physical space, I have 500 (as of July 2018) e-books of varied interests on my computer hard disk. I have completed reading most of these books. I also acquired an e-book reader called "Kindle Paperwhite" in early 2017. Using this device, I can get unlimited e-books via the internet from a well-equipped online catalogue at a nominal monthly subscription. It has been of much use to me, particularly when I travel. I have already read 384 books on this device as of June 2022. Mystery and detective stories, including legal thrillers, attract me a lot. I feel mystery stories help to unwind the mind and train it to analyse matters in their proper perspective.

Like most other Sylhetis, we are basically Vaishnabites. In my childhood, I observed religious conservativeness in my mother. The House God in our maternal house is Gopinath or Krishna. But after leaving the homeland as refugees, we hardly had the time or the mindset to follow any religious faith amid our struggle for existence in a different land and, at times, in a hostile situation. My mother, however, had never defaulted in her religious pursuits. 

As for myself, I believe in God or Almighty but not in rituals. To me, one's deeds should count for the blessings of God , not the hours spent before an idol. I don't have any superstition, nor do I subscribe to it. 

I am liberal in my outlook towards different communities. I don't believe in casteism. I have married in a different caste.

To me, our traditional values and culture are worth more than westernised customs and culture. 

I am very selective by nature, and being so made some wrong choices in some momentous matters of life, which have been the causes of immense pain to me in later days. There, I considered all the concerned factors, external and immediate, before I made the choices. But, as it transpired later, I had failed to appreciate internal and distant factors and their implications. Usually, I consider matters from a long-term perspective. But here, I acted otherwise, possibly, because of some other factors blurring my vision or relevant data or information being unavailable. I had also ignored the sane advice of some of my well-wishers. At times, I failed to take the right decision at the right moment. 

I have succeeded in many spheres but have lacked success in my backyard. 

I had been sober, soft-spoken, and reserved since my younger days. I am still so when outside the family. But some of these traits are found missing when considered within the premises of family life. There might have been various reasons (not excluding the family environment and my discontent due to belied expectations) for this. Whatever the reasons, I feel disturbed by these changes but unable to revert to my good old self though I am trying.

In my late teens, I would dream of an intelligent, beautiful, loving, and understanding wife. It had later dawned upon me that I was asking for the moon; all these qualities are impossible to find in any person. Though I adore beauty, beauty does not necessarily have other attributes. As Leo Tolstoy has said, “It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness”. In my personal life, the woman I had chosen as my wife was beautiful and had some exceptional qualities (Ref: Para on Mother's Death in Rajbhawan Chapter and Para About Nayagram in PIREP Chapter), but our views towards life widely differed. As to our differences, we were, as it were, people from two different planets. 

In day-to-day life, differences with my wife had developed centering our children because of the policy my wife followed in bringing them up. The consequences of the faulty policy followed by my wife had not been good. This has been discussed earlier.

As or me, I have been a much-misunderstood man in my family life, often feeling isolated; in my mental space, I am all alone. 

Immune to my needs, I had always cared for those in the family and around me. Even now, at the approaching age of 82, I don't care about myself or my health but remain taut with agony for the health and welfare of my near and dear ones.

The concept of a family formed in me from childhood was far off the way my family had turned. I had a desire to bring up an ideal family. There I have failed.

Usually, it is the prime duty of the wife to run a family. The husband is to earn money and leave it with his wife to run the family, advising her as and when required for the smooth conduct of family affairs. As an exception to that practice in vogue, I had to bear the burden of running the family myself throughout. I tried a couple of times to get my wife involved. But finding my wife incapable of controlling the expenditure with perspective thinking, I felt it would be a disaster if I entrusted her with managing the household with my meagre earnings as a middle-level civil servant. I had to take the reins back in my hand.

Keeping in mind my past encounter with poverty and the uncertainty of life and considering the health of the family, the educational and related needs of the girls, future provision for their marriages, the essentiality of acquiring a roof over our heads etc., I had to be cautious about every penny I spent. I avoided avoidable expenditures to the extent possible. Barring once, I did not visit a restaurant singly or with family to enjoy food. About the cinema or the theatre, there were only a few occasions we had been there. I did not have a personal expense and did not go for any fad after giving up smoking in the mid-service stage. I had carried on with a wristwatch that my father had purchased from my prize money awarded to me by the college after the I. Sc. for as long as 40 years. I had never thought to replace it with a fashionable one, though I had the means. In my personal life, I managed with the bare minimum of clothes and garments for my use. Many a time, I suppressed my wishes to have things costing even a paltry sum. That such a small amount saved over time could come to meet the family's needs at some other time was the thought that provoked me to act like that. Maybe the lessons I got from my childhood experience had taught me to that end. I never wanted anyone in my family ever to meet a situation like the one I had once met. I had been careful to bring all austerity measures upon myself. Its effects had, however, at times fallen on the family too. I could not meet everybody's demands every time. To keep the family good, I had to control expenses ruthlessly. My daughters or wife had not seen my past nor were interested in it. Nor were they aware of these perspectives, which one should have in mind in managing family finance. They could not appreciate my limitation and compulsions. Being brought up in the way they were, it is doubtful how far they could evaluate me correctly, even knowing my past. 

Here I had been vulnerable, romantic and emotional. It is always difficult to express these inner feelings in words. I shall try to bring them as near as possible to the factual situation. 

In my early childhood, a romantic attachment had grown in me for a classmate, about which I have spoken in detail on the page on Women in my life. It was a one-sided love. The girl had never known of it, nor had she the occasion to respond. Later, too, another woman had hit upon me, and I had found the charms and divinity of love in it. At different stages of my life, a few other women had displayed their interest in me, but I did not feel the urge to reciprocate. It is nothing unusual; this has happened to many men and women from time immemorial. To me, love is less physical but more an intense feeling though physique plays a vital role in accentuating that feeling, and none can avoid it altogether. I had that rare intense feeling twice, once in childhood and again in my adult life. I may say without hesitation that I had experienced an ecstatic joy and fulfilment of true love in its divine reach on those occasions. It was, though the feeling of a single mind at the first instance, the other had no active part in it. To my mind, an intense feeling of love develops when the mind is captivated by someone else of the opposite sex in its entirety; the mingling of mind and body in unison (experiencing eternal joy) takes it to a divine reach. 

I may say, I am truly romantic and emotional. It is equally present in me even in this octogenarian age. Heterosexual love apart, I feel fulfilled in certain romantic situations. It charms me when, lying alone in a dark room, I listen to Rabindra Sangeet on a DVD. My finer sentiment gets inspired, and I feel an overwhelming joy within me. An emotional scene in a film brings tears to my eyes even in this eighty-second year of my age. 

I made some Himalayan blunders in course of my journey through life. These can be numericized in the following order.

(1)  In the last phase of my academic career, I discounted the tenet  Chatranam adhyanam topo and indulged in a different and lesser joy of city life. Consequently, in the last examination of formal education, my performance was nowhere near the target I had set for myself based on my achievement that far. 

(2)  At the early stage of my service career, I was transferred to a lonely place devoid of essential amenities. Though I had the scope to get the transfer cancelled and was aware that colleagues usually made all-out efforts to avoid that place, I complied with the order out of my egotism.

It had a far-reaching effect on me. Due to this indiscretion, I have lost some qualities; my nature has changed, and my character degraded.  

(3) I had to pay a heavy price for overlooking the age-old saying, ‘All that glitters is not gold at some stage of my life.

I was brought up at a time (the 1950s & the 1960s) when our society was largely corruption-free. Poverty was there, alright. But people, by and large, did not have the mindset to earn money or acquire wealth by any means, good or bad. Society used to look down upon corrupt people, in contrast to today’s way of weighing people by their monetary value. People generally preferred living within their means rather than becoming rich by having recourse to dishonesty. Moral standards were high. Traditional values of conservative society prevailed. Society was less tolerant of the wrongdoers.

Students, by and large, were devoted to their studies, and distractions were less. They had respect for the teachers and the elders. Copying in the examination was little known. Those indulging used to be taunted by their classmates when caught. No one could think of threatening or hurting the invigilators when caught copying in the examination hall. The elders could advise the younger ones on right and wrong, and such advice was listened to, by the youngsters in the right spirit, without showing any disrespect. In the School and the College where I had read, there was nothing called “Students Union” as such, and there was no political infiltration in the student community at our places. Our teachers used to look after our needs and welfare. All these are things of the past now. Although there is no student union in schools today, these students often participate in political programmes. Colleges have become the hotbed of politics. Fighting and even murders are happening amongst the rival groups of students centring on the election of the College Unions. Students now have little respect for their teachers. They often put the teachers in stressful confinement to attain illegal demands. Some of them do not waver even to beat up their teachers mercilessly. We come across such reports in the newspapers now and then. The environment in the seats of the learning is vitiated. The bond of fellowship amongst the students hardly exists. Without proper education and discipline, how could these students make good citizens and fill the political vacuum in time to lead the nation to glory? They are being taught indiscipline, crimes, and rivalry at the very prime of their life. Our so-called politicians, for their short-term gains, are ruining the nation. In student politics, it is necessary to develop brotherliness, transparency, and value sense.

Post-liberalisation, our society has changed to a great extent. Many of the evils of the western culture have crept in, elbowing out our traditional values, while their virtues failed to get inroads. Everyone, barring the exceptions, is now after quick money. Corruption is no longer taboo. Society has become permissive. Free mixing, living together, earning money by whatever means possible is the order of the day. Teaching, by and large, has become a means of filling one’s pocket through private tuition. There is generally no respect for parents and elders. There are good many instances of old parents thrown out on the streets with no means of subsistence: several such cases have gone to the court of law in the recent past. Even at home, the old and the infirm are often considered bothersome, and their views hardly find credence. The institution of marriage is breaking down; incidents of divorce are rampant. The boys and the girls marrying their so-called girlfriends or boyfriends soon become disenchanted and take recourse to the path of a break-up. This, I feel, is a result of intolerance backed by financial independence coupled with ego clashes. Society has become degraded and politicized. Rape, murder, and domestic crimes are day-to-day happenings. Whenever there is a crime of the higher-order, political interference brews up, making it difficult for an unbiased investigation and thereby encouraging the criminals.

People now have limitless wants as opposed to the general mental make-up of people of our times to remain content with whatever little one had. Many of them, not having the means to satisfy their wants in this age of consumerism, take recourse to illegal means to attain them. As a result, unlawful activities like corruption, theft, snatching, and murder have become rampant.

Alcoholism is ruining the younger generation, men and women alike. In our College days, there was hardly any non-tribal student familiar with drinking, even in a cold place like Shillong. Today, college-going young boys and girls are often seen having alcohol at bars and restaurants, even on the plains. Amongst those engaged in different professions, the percentage of men and women not addicted to alcohol is on the decline. In the earlier days, women went all out to prevent their alcoholic husbands from drinking. I recount here an incident of my early service life, where a colleague of mine was introduced to alcohol by a group of friends. But, he had to give up the drinks within a couple of days of his introduction to it after receiving a severe tongue lashing from his newly wedded wife. Today, the reverse is often the course, particularly among the urban elites. Husbands often encourage their wives to take to drinks, and wives oblige gleefully. The drinking of alcohol, in most cases,  starts as fun at the beginning and ends in addiction eventually. Later, it invites family feuds and domestic violence. Even though I did not have an alcohol culture in our house and never allowed alcohol to enter there, I could not stop its infiltration once my family was extended by the marriage of my daughters. 

Drinking has become a status symbol for some. Acohol has become an indispensable part of late-night parties. One could find the husbands and the wives joining the drinking sessions regularly without regard for the evil influence it could have on their young ones. A few irresponsible parents even go to the extent of drinking in front of their baby or child in bars, restaurants, and at home. If the innocent child wants to have it, they stop him by saying it is a drink for adults and not for children. Their craze for  drinks makes them blind, and they cannot see what a dangerous poison they infusied into the innocent mind by their actions and words and what a disastrous effect it could have on the child in his later life. One of my friends had once told me of an incident where a young father was having drinks while playing with his young child in the presence of his mother. I shudder to think of the impact of this incident on the innocent mind of the child. While in the prevailing social set-up, it is already difficult to bring up a child properly, how could the parents, by their airs and manners worsen it? Here again, I feel it is the fruit of the so-called modern civilization and the permissiveness of present-day society. 

People like us of the older generation who can read the future feel helpless in the face of the prevalence of this evil of alcoholism all around. Their mental placidness is disturbed, and they remain taut with agony for the future of such strayed individuals close to their hearts.

Recently (last week of July 2016), there have been a couple of incidents in Kolkata and a distant district. In the first case in Kolkata, a teenage boy died of an injury inflicted while attending a birthday party where they had an easy flow of alcohol. In the other case, in a semi-urban area of a district in West Bengal, a girl student of Class IX was rusticated when she had brought alcohol, to her class, in the garb of water. A survey amongst the medical students of Kolkata conducted sometime back (as of 2018) by the All India Institute of Public Health & Hygiene revealed that 57% of students from the first year to the fourth year are strongly addicted to various kinds of fads. The picture in other institutes of professional studies of engineering, design, and the like, in Kolkata and elsewhere in India, will not perhaps be much different.

I have seen some very talented people becoming dumb by addiction to one kind of fad or another. Instead of rising to the higher rung of the social ladder they deserved, these people had become almost non-entity and were finding it hard even to earn their bread.

These examples certainly do not predict well for our society and the country.

Nitish Kumar, Chief Minister of Bihar, has imposed a total prohibition on the sale and consumption of all kinds of liquor in Bihar, the state he administers. But the desired goal can't be reached until the prohibition is effective throughout the country.

I detest alcohol. Not that I did not taste it once or twice in the company of my friends, but that did not give me any palatable taste or reasonable cause to stick to it. I had always refused the offer of drinks at official parties and elsewhere. When posted in a place of eminence in the early 1990s, I received a present of a large-sized bottle of Red Horse Whiskey from a Consulate. The bottle had remained locked in my Closet for two years. Later, I presented it to one of my friends accustomed to drinks and had a sip or two to feel how it tasted. I had not felt anything special about it. Many people say they take alcohol for its kick, but the irony is that they forget that a much stronger kick to throw them out of the field could be in wait for them.

As for the popular fad of the older days, viz., smoking, it is heartening to note that it has lost its craze amongst the current younger generation, though a host of young women, unfortunately, have gotten used to it at the same time. In our younger days, we often found ropes with their free end burning, tied to posts near almost every Paan-Biri shop in Calcutta. These one-end burning ropes were for lighting cigarettes or biris. Nowadays, these are rare, signifying a marked decline in the smoking population. Many of my smoker friends in their younger days tried to give up the habit of smoking many a time, only to resume it sooner than later. I took to smoking after I had entered my service career and continued it for several years. I gave it up forever at one stroke when my four-year-old child objected to my smoking and wanted me to give it up. I don't find such strength of mind in the next generation. In my assessment, greed and attachment have got the better of us. 

Smoking, prevalent among women of lower classes in earlier days, now seems to have caught the imagination of educated women. I was surprised to find some young educated girls from well-to-do families smoking nonchalantly on open roads in broad daylight.

Globalisation and easy money are also impediments to the proper growth of the future generation. Today, parents often leave their children in the care of domestic help or daycare centres due to their absence for long hours on the job or otherwise. These children become deprived of the loving company and care of parents, primarily of the mother for most of the day-time. The child’s woe gets further heightened if the parents have a party-going habit. Often, the parents try to make good deficiency in giving time by gifts of valuable toys. Being unable to spend playful time with the mother or the father, such children may develop behavioural problems. Getting too many gifts at ease may make them lose their urge to get things with effort. It could adversely affect their studies and stand in the way of their success. Further, being brought up in affluence, these children may take life easy, not feeling the need to be up and doing to stand on their feet. The scene of a colourful life before them may blur their vision, and they may live with a false sense that this would never end in their life.  

It is not wrong to bring up children in affluence, but the parents should be careful not to pamper the child but to keep him aware of real-world situations. A child is like a sensitive instrument that would give the best performance only by careful handling.

I grew up in poverty. Our prevailing conditions were always at the back of my mind. That gave me the impetus to work hard to get out of a life of wants. 

Poverty is, however, a curse. To my mind, it affects mental development in two different ways. On the softer side, it often makes one timid and hinders personality development (good guy). On the hard side, it may make one cruel with a criminal bent of mind to forcibly snatch things not within one's reach (a bad guy).

A new menace to the welfare of children has come in the form of mobile phones. Many parents often hand over mobile phones to their young children to keep themselves free at home for their day-to-day activities. The children get absorbed in playing electronic games, chatting or talking with friends, or enjoying other internet programmes, making themselves open to high-risk radiation. In an article on the website momjunction.com, it has been reported amongst other ill effects of mobile phones on children (including changes in their behavioural patterns and moods), as follows, Quote, WHO has classified cell phone radiation as 'possibly carcinogenic to humans. Children absorb more than 60% of the radiation. Their brain's thinner skin, tissues, and bones allow them to absorb radiation twice that of grown-ups. Their developing nervous system makes them more vulnerable to this carcinogenic, unquote. It is of utmost importance for the parents and others concerned to be alive of this danger and adopt measures to prevent their kids from falling prey to it. Unfortunately, I could not bring it home even to my family members. 

Again, due to easy accessibility to electronic devices, the inclination of children towards reading storybooks, which would enhance their imaginative power and value sense, is on the decline. While everything happens before the eyes, it leaves nothing to imagine. Further, we easily get attracted to audio-visual presentations. Easy access to the internet brings another danger to children in their formative stage; they may get exposed to harmful activities, like violence and immoral traffic.