Mahfuzur Rahman:
Living on the other side of the world, securing my social security and finest percentage of no discrimination towards any gender/race or so called social class, I found it miserably tempered to critically evaluate the scenario back in my motherland..
What we are terribly fascinated with? We have a woman Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition and a lady luck leading the parliament..seriously? When there are many Kalpana Chakmas disappearing and Tanus’ being murdered in front of the whole countrymen who are so obsessed with their daily so called social lives, where they can practically be seating in their drawing rooms enjoying a cup of tea watching those ugly moves by their fellow civilians regretting the fact that we are actually going towards hell!! Hello people! it is not so far, when you will find the same with your own sisters, daughters or girlfriends one day!!
We Bangladeshis are so fascinated with our historical traditional family system, where women are meant to do cooking, household chores, obliged to satisfy sexual needs of their partners at any given point of time, no matter what(in one sense, I can tell those so called marriage as marital rapes!!) or mostly taking care of their families –would never ever be a part of your dream as long as you can not accept them having equal status as you or your brother/s, father or even all the males of your family are belonging. How can you? Once you see your mother is making the lunch or breakfast and dinners for you, you actually take the lead unconsciously or even some cases consciously, that you are the best man for your family. So, you keep doing it for ages and ages even with your partners, sisters, daughters and may be even with your friends as well..
As a lecturer, when talking to my South East Asian students mostly coming from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand or so and so on..I usually tell them at first to break the power distance they used to be victimized with. I tell them, before they can breath the fresh air in New Zealand (I am teaching in New Zealand), the first and foremost promise will be sensing the urgency of themselves as human beings before everything else.
Am I right? Time will say..for me, I want to be a part of the society where women will no longer be blaming me for being as a male/ a rapist/ a monarch/ a discrepant who used to victimize the lovely productive female populations of the country.
It is time to change, it is high time to change before our next generations will blame us as killers and rapists..
The author is currently working as Business Lecturer at the Abacus Institute of Studies in Christchurch, New Zealand and holds a Masters of Business Administration from University of Wales, UK and a Bachelor of Business Administration from University of Dhaka.