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From: achaudhury@hotmail.com
To: Jimmycarter@usa.com
Dear Mr. Carter:
I am afraid you wont have the foggiest idea as to who I am; I, on the
other hand, know a lot about you. More recently you have become a man of
paramount importance to my troubled country, Bangladesh; I write this letter
with a sense of memory, nostalgia and in recognition of your role as a
peacemaker and election watcher of my nation.
I feel like I know you well; I spent a whole year of my life, the last
year of your presidency, listening to you and watching you on TV just about
every night. It wasn’t just an idle couch-potato routine; it was high
potency real life drama. The year was 1979 and you had just become embroiled
in one of the most dramatic episodes of your life and presidency, the
Iranian Hostage crisis. It was also the time when I left Bangladesh for the
first time. To escape from the homesickness I spent every waking hour
watching you and your colleagues on TV trying to deal with that dramatic
crisis.
My TV was my window to the world in those days and while I watched you,
Walter Mondale, and others come and go in TV sound bites I remembered the
green fields and crimson sunset of my land that I had just left behind. And
when Teddy Kennedy challenged you for the nomination of the democratic party
I too, along with my new-found American friends chanted boisterously in your
support “ Carter is our man; Better Dead than Ted!”.
Twenty one years ago I gate-crashed into your politics with my naïve
slogans; and to day you have been invited into mine like a born again
messiah. Asymmetric though this reciprocal intervention is, I find it like a
bizarre post-modern story being played out inside my head where memory,
fantasy and reality are juxtaposed. Except that it isn’t an exercise in
literary creativity; it is lot more serious. For you, Mr. Carter, are now
the designated shrink of my schizophrenic nation.
Mr. Carter, it isn’t only through Tehran drama of the fall of 1979 that I
feel I have known you. I remember your family well; though only virtually.
Your kind wife Rosalyn, your affable simple-minded brother Billy, your
daughter Amy; and more over your mother, the altruistic Miss Lillian, who
did so much for the poor and the dispossessed of the subcontinent. .I also
know well the rural hamlets and rolling hills of rural Georgia, your land. I
have never been to Plains but I have frequented the land around Macon and
Savannah and Athens of your State and have grown to like your food; food
that only the American south knows - grits, hush-puppy and fried Okra; and
let me confess to you: I just love watermelon.
Beyond Georgia, I have criss-crossed your giant land of the USA; from the
coast of Carolinas and Kitty Hawk to the snow capped mountain Rainier of
Pacific North-west, from the flaming fall leaves of Maine to the tinsel-town
of Southern California; I have peregrined your “land of shining light”.
Today as you take the role of a mediator, a counsel, I feel like I know you
well enough to spill my guts to you. For although I am a citizen of
Bangladesh where my forefathers have lived for hundreds of years I have no
confidence that anyone there will listen to what I have to say as much as
you would. On the other hand I am convinced that whatever you will tell
them, they will listen with alacrity. Such is our paradox, our peculiar
inverted xenophobia. I do not know how to characterize this affliction. So I
am better off talking to you, in the name of memory, nostalgia and a
familiarity of your land.
Mr. Carter, Ours is a land of giant sylvan stretches and rolling hills
much like your rural Georgia. Our country folks are also very simple
god-fearing people like yours although they don’t have the hunting rifles
and the Cherokee wagons, or the German Shepherds. However they too chew
tobacco and eat fried okra and watery rice not unlike grits. However, while
your folks are confident, cheerful people basking in health, success, and
their global menifest destiny our land has been going through a lot
recently. I am sure you have been briefed and, being a quick study, you must
have learned a lot about the chequered history of our nation.
But let me tell you this honestly. Although I respect your morality and
altruism I have been depressed that we have become so dysfunctional as a
nation that we had to call you as a election watcher, extractor of promises,
and mediator. Many of us, though respectful of your achievements would have
been happier if we didn’t need you for this.
For your information Mr. Carter, our land wasn’t always like this. Long
before the vendetta-stricken fractious rascalization that you are now
observing, civility and decorum prevailed in this land and gracious patience
is still the main characteristic of this nation. We are the descendants of
people who carried Buddha’s message to China and started the spread of
Buddhism to all of East Asia. Our forefathers sent expeditions to Sri Lanka.
We fought the Mughals, the British and in hundred rural hamlets for hundreds
of years our forefathers developed arts, crafts, poetry and music. All
through history we survived and prospered as successful people and gave to
the world a lot. And we were together, through our toils and our travails,
resisting the invaders; fashioning our identity and always triumphing in the
end.
So Mr. Carter, when you mediate, please tread carefully; you are not
dealing with the Hottentots of Asia; we are not the mental pygmies of the
eastern hemisphere. You are dealing with a proud dignified people of a long
history. We are not infants amongst people although we are displaying a
ludicrous bout of infantilism. Irrespective of how our leaders behave I am
telling you this of our people; do not judge them by the behaviour of our
leaders. Look beyond the gilded facades of Dhaka into the soul of Bangladesh
if you can. You will find resilience, pride and an age-old wisdom. Which
knows when to fight and when to stop. I don’t know how you might do it; but
please, if you can, harness that wisdom; package it in your American bottles
and give it back to our leaders as potions. Our leaders will like it because
it is coming from you, but it will be our good old Bangali medicine and
therefore it will work for us. Talk to the rickshaw puller, the little girl
that breaks bricks the whole day under scorching sun, the man ploughing his
quarter acre land through the evening into the night. These people can tell
you what our recipe for salvation is much more than the conflict-resolution
consultants ever could.
I have great faith in you, Mr. Carter. My country is on the couch now to
be counselled and psychoanalysed by you and your colleagues. Instead of
applying the conventional Jungian or Freudian routine learn if you can the
ancient wisdom of our land and then whisper it in the ear of the patient.
And then keep it as a secret and give it a complex corporate sounding name;
we’ll keep coming back to you for it again and again.
As a very well known political pundit put it, we have given you a “Carte®
blanche”. Destiny has given you the job of being the scribe who will
scribble our future on that piece of blank paper. Collect, if you can, the
tear, the sweat and the blood of my nation and then write with it, on that
carte blanche, a covenant that our fractious leaders will accept forever. If
you can achieve that, we will be grateful to you. We will call that document
our Magna Carter. |
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