Unspoken Saga (Part-2)

HB Rita

April 2021

Art & Literature

Unspoken Saga (Part-1)

After a while, everyone probably becomes very lonely. It is difficult to say precisely when that time is. Loneliness may begin with the growth of human knowledge. Or loneliness may start when we start to understand and calculate the addition and subtraction of life.

Does loneliness mean living without a partnership or relationship? I don’t think so.  In our mind, where the loneliness we carry in the very abyss of emptiness, we can only see our view, not the world.  It does not require solitude. People can discover themselves alone amid thousands of happy moments and hundreds of people in the locality.

Our mind is an open schoolhouse. Here knowledge is acquired, distributed. The textbook introduces religious principles, reforms, and moral values, and it plants seeds of a bright future with happiness and success. But when the poisonous people enter that open schoolroom,   with injustice, sin, crime, desire, and invisibility to fulfill their lust, the schoolhouse loses its environment. Then we lose our minds, just like the schoolhouse environment. And our minds become overwhelmed with despair, frustration, loneliness.

The mind has no boundaries, no such thing as the end, or no volume-density-size or door fuel. Loneliness creeps into our minds without invitation. Even someone is living on a royal couch with a happy relationship; loneliness can lie right in the middle of two souls. Then the sorrows will awake for no reason. Instability will shake the mind for no reason. The touch of the beloved one’s hand lying right next to us will not tremble anymore.

The mind is the material of our creation, i.e., material form, feelings, perception, volition, and sensory consciousness. And it is a vast, strange, invisible, formless storage house. When loneliness enters this house, our mind is anxious to find a way to escape.  And we begin to look for the key to getting out of loneliness. In a filled room, we don’t see the world, so we don’t know how to search and find it. After all, we are stuck in a room all our lives.

Loneliness is the pain given by the disturbance between our ideal and perceived social relations. Lack of social skills and personality traits make people feel lonely when they fail to form and maintain social relationships. That’s when the feeling of loneliness comes. Here the question arises, what about the Bangali skilled poet Aleya Chowdhury? She was an open-minded person loving everyone in her community.  She had a charming relationship with many people. But why was he suffering through loneliness? Why did she die in her bathroom alone?

Sociologists believe that loneliness originates from following certain social norms. Again, some psychologists believe that the failure to establish personal relationships, the inability to express one’s feelings adequately, and the subordinate social process’s feelings take extreme shape. Loneliness is indeed an unpleasant emotional experience. In particular, they have linked with a general dissatisfaction with the human mind.

As I mentioned Aleya Choudhury with grief in my writing, I respectfully remember her as a warrior who migrated to America from Bangladesh, crossed the thorny path of life in many battles. Aleya Choudhury, who had gained so much recognition, has gone alone, lying in the bathroom! Isn’t it a cruel image of a woman? Heard from Aleya’s caring friends, Aleya often called her friends and never stopped talking. She used to share pictures of different aspects of her life at the age of sixteenth. Here we come to a conclusion about her loneliness and depression, and the question of our responsibility, society, and culture comes into play.

 Standing in the zero decades of the 21st century, we have not yet been free from our cultural demands and social aspects. In the society in which I was born, loneliness and despair have no importance. These issues are a question mark in our community. Many women like Aleya Chowdhury are still reaching old age in our society carrying their family’s responsibility on their shoulders. They can’t get married to fulfill family responsibilities. They give up their happiness, joy, and entertainment to take care of the family. The family, just compliments, takes no action because they believe it is the responsibility of the person. Many times the family does not have that opportunity. Economic instability and poverty are also an issue here.

Without marriage, they can’t think of living together to meet their sexual and emotional needs. Living together goes against their religion and culture belief. No one ever thinks about how much frustration and loneliness they carry while making their family and society happy. On the contrary, the community continues to counter whether the unmarried woman is a virgin even in her last years.

In our society, when a woman gets divorced, no one thinks about her devastated mental state. Maybe someone in the family supports (not all the family), but society sees the matter in a dirty way. The divorced girl is always the question of why the divorce took place, what happened, etc.

The main issue is not how much the divorced girl was being suffered. On the contrary, society is worried about why they disagreed with the persecution.

If the divorced girl somehow escapes from society’s tongue, she constantly fights with her parents and family members. And that girl’s family has to fight with the community. The only reason to fight so much is-why the girl is divorced!  Isn’t it a deranged cultural issue?  Whether a man or a woman, no matter how weak a person’s mental state is after divorce, no one thinks of that, no one helps the divorced person stand on her or his ability. It is very frustrating that even after being self-reliant, we have to think about society at every step. We cannot break the rules of social reform.

We often talk about social degradation. We are thinking of reforming society to change the blind customs of the society. But what is society means? What are the elements of creating a society?

When a group of people lives together in a corner for a common purpose, it is called a society. In other words, the interdependent population is called society. Society is an abstract concept. Society has no definite boundaries.

Now the question is, who is a member of society? The answer is,you and I!

We are the society. We create a society based on habits, attitudes, wants, ideological unity, and society changes because of our thinking, progress, education, and scientific contribution. We are grouped to meet the basic social needs of others. The purpose of named our group as ‘society’ is moral values, such as – devotion, honesty, compassion, cooperation, etc. We have formed families, associations, communities, etc., to live a united life from consciousness.

So, why do we blame society for injustice? Is it because we do not want to take risks and responsibilities to ensure justice?

We have to take the responsibility to change the superstitions of the society, customs, and principles, a governance system. We need to change our attitude and bring out the manifestation of beautiful positive thinking consciousness. You have to have that attitude too. You and I will be then together as a worthful society.

Needless to say, I am talking about the Bengali subculture, not traditional Bengali culture. We know that Bengali culture can be called a cohesive culture. The combination of diverse and diverse elements has created a cultural heritage of Bengalis. Various ethnic groups have inhabited historical Bangabhumi or Bangladesh since ancient times. All these ethnic groups have come up with their diverse cultural elements. Indigenous elements have been combined with these external elements or materials; thus, the cultural transformation of Bengal has taken place through the ages.

Anyway, I was talking about loneliness which can destroy our mental strength and self-confidence. However, our poet Aleya walked the path with confidence. She has succeeded in breaking the immoral culture of society. She ignored the ‘marriage’ tradition in Bengali society. I am the first divorced woman in my family. I have also broken the superstition of my famili belief. Many more are now becoming aware of the time.

Hopefully, we will build a new society in our freedom and independence without holding society accountable.

When I was in college, my college psychology teacher, Professor Princess Combs, taught me, ‘its okay to cry. It’s okay to be sad. However, it would not be right to give up. ‘