Nadera Sultana Nodi(Translated by Sadia Rahman):
1. When Saira Begum was of 14, suddenly her father married her off to a widower aged nearly 30 and has children of the same age as Saira. Naturally,Saira did not get a life like ten other girls.
One day she herself became a mother too. Suppressing so many of her desires, she embraces motherhood. Glorifying this identity becomes a reason to continue living. Then one day she was forced to take up another address along with her two children. Society subjected Saira to countless questions over this decision. Saira took up a small job. Despite living in physical, mental and economic hardship- she manages to feed her children on time and sends them to a reputed school.
She is unable to provide her children with meat or fish; she cannot provide them with clothes. Still in those times she cooks in a manner that the kids’ finishes food while searching for fish. No one accompanies her in this hardship nor does Saira wish to lose her dignity and ask for any help to anyone.
Sometimes one or two comes ahead. May be they come with their self-interest. But the neighbors? They assume an illegitimate relationship with them! At the end of the day Saira gets tired, lonely. She wishes to share with someone that this lonely road is really painful!!!
- Nilufar Banu falls deeply in love with her cousin. Nilufar is beautiful, her lover is also handsome. Both are blinded by love,they dream .The boy dreams of making another Tajmahal to immortalize their love. Nilufar’s mother,brother and sister try to make her understand why this relationship won’t bring any good to her. But Banu cannot het over the infatuation. She elopes and gets married one day.
Banu suddenly comes face to face to reality. She tries to carry on that life with all the love she has, she already is mother to a princess and her husband has taken his attention elsewhere.
The infatuation gets lost in some space. Then starts Banu’s struggles who just lost everything. Parents have already left her as she decided to get married. So she does not want to show her defeated face to her family. With her daughter to bring up, in Dhaka city it is really hard to meet ends meet with the job she gets by her B.Com degree qualifications.
In that struggle to feed her baby three times a day whom could she ask to stay beside her? Whenever she runs in hope of a good job, lusty eyes penetrate her; a dark hand tries to touch her before she gets the job. Banu learns to tackle everything and live life only by looking at her daughters face. At the end of the day Banu feels tired, lonely. She wishes to tell someone that this lonely road is really painful.
In our society there are very few sympathetic eyes that could feel a single mother’s plight. love or respect may or may not exist for her, but questioning her is a trend in this society. Few days passed after such an incident where a single mother’s two children have committed suicide. After hearing such painful news, when I started to think about the struggles of known and unknown mothers, I observed a thing. Some of the people were more worried about how their mother gave them an expensive burger before death! How such mothers manage to feed their children we have no concern over that- but we have the audacity to question their morality.
This is an old article. By this time, one of our Facebook friend’s elder son committed suicide because of depression over his broken family. I saw a picture of that boy with his father. I looked into his eyes, eyes full of depression… Like no happiness ever existed in that territory; that means the boy was really sad. I don’t know if he was treated psychologically but he rang a bell of sadness in our hearts.
Actually I am not trying to say anything through this writing. I only wish to be my hearts deepest plea “Mother. I just wish your child learns to respect you, loves you and stays beside you till death. This sincere wish goes out to all the single mothers of Bangladesh!
The original article was published in the Bengali site on June 28, 2017.
Link to original article:
The writer currently resides in Australia and works at Radio Bangla Melbourne.
Sadia Rahman is a final year student of English literature,Rajshahi University. Other than writing, her passions include writing, debating and anchoring.