An Afternoon with Father Alex

Father Alex.

We meet him at the St. Andrew’s Parish Mission in Diglakona village of Jamalpur’s Bakshiganj. It’s occasional-wild-elephant country up that way, in the dreamy lower hills adjacent to the Meghalayan border. The villagers are harvesting cassava. It’s a sunny afternoon.

There’s a shady sitting place in the grounds and we wait. After a few minutes Alejandro Rabanal, better known as Father Alex, wanders down. He’s sporting a bright orange t-shirt and casual trousers – formal attire is hardly a daily affair in Diglakona. His hair is grey yet his face looks surprisingly fresh and untroubled by time. It’s only as he starts to speak of his experiences that it truly becomes apparent that his age – well, it’s not nice to ask – is a fair bit closer to requiring three digits than it is to needing only one.

Getting there along the narrow country roads in from Bakshiganj town has been a pleasant journey, but not altogether short. Still, Father Alex’s Bangladeshi journey was a great deal longer: from his home in Pangasinan of north Luzon in the Philippines he first arrived in Barisal in the then East Pakistan, in 1959.

“I was surprised,” he says of his first impression, “by how much water there was. There were rivers, water... everywhere.”

Mandi students at the Diglakona mission school.

The church and school at Diglakona cater to the scattered twelve villages of the ethnic minority Mandi, who are commonly called Garos by outsiders. Communications between the villages isn’t easy so there’s a girls’ hostel and a boys’ hostel where the 49 young students board while completing their primary years under the guidance of three teachers. The school is called Sal Gital, meaning “New Light” in Mandi.

“We have two of our former students in Dhaka University,” Father Alex says proudly, “but it’s only a small percentage of students who can pursue higher education, mostly due to money problems.” He is passionate about education.

Father Alex conducts morning and evening prayers in the chapel, and confession. The students and local community have taken to calling him Acchu, which means grandfather.

Of course the Mandi community is itself no stranger to long journeys. According to oral tradition it was around 400 BCE when their ancestors under the leadership of Jappa Jalimpa, having left Tibet first crossed the Brahmaputra River to settle in Meghalaya’s Garo Hills. From there the civilisation spread to include villages in the lower hills and southern plains, in areas that are now Bangladesh.

The rivers and hills of both history and geography conspired to bring divergence to that civilisation. For one thing, several dialects developed in the common language. The term Mandi comes from the southern A’beng form of the language found in the plains and means ‘human being.’ Nowadays it describes the ethnic group throughout Bangladesh, be it in Tangail’s Modhupur, Netrakona, Mymensingh or Jamalpur. The northerners in Meghalaya are meanwhile described as A’chik mande, literally ‘hill people’ in the A’chik dialect, by Bangladeshi Mandi.

A local Mandi villager taking a break outside the mission gate.

Father Alex’s journey didn’t start with the Mandi – he first met them in 1972 when he accepted a position in Galchatra village of Tangail’s Modhupur, where he would stay for the following twenty-two years. Yet the Mandi have been a great influence. It is due to them he decided to join the priesthood in 1988.

Speaking of his arrival in this part of the world, Father Alex recalls, “I came to serve. It was my main aim. I came to help the poor, which I could not do as a university professor in the Philippines.”

The opportunity arose from a Canadian Catholic Brother who had been a prisoner of war in the Philippines in World War Two. From that time he had established connections with the president of the university where Father Alex had commenced his career. The Canadian Brother was supposed to take a position in Barisal to teach improved agricultural methods to primary and high school students, with the view that many would later run their family farms. However, the Canadian Brother found he couldn’t adjust to Barisal’s climate and he approached his friend, the university president, to find a volunteer to take his salary and go in his place. Father Alex raised his hand.

“The students were very receptive,” he says of his initial three years in Barisal. “We were able to help them improve their farming methods.” At the end of his term and the project’s funding, Father Alex returned to the Philippines. But he must have been popular because just three months later he was asked to return.

“Bangladesh has changed a lot since those days,” Father Alex says, “For one thing, the population has doubled.” Asked why he committed to stay in Barisal into the 1970s he says, “They wanted me to stay. They loved me. We succeeded in that way. In any case what I liked and didn’t like was never the focus. I came to serve.”

To this day Father Alex admires the devoutness of Bengali Muslims. “I appreciate how regular they are in their prayers.” Likewise he thinks highly of the Muslim attributes of politeness and respect. “Even the children always greet you with an assalamu alaikum.”

Yet in 1972 providence led him to accept a position in Modhupur. “I felt at home soon after I arrived,” he recalls, “I found that Mandi culture is not far from Filipino culture. Men and women mix freely. There is no malice. They joke with each other. I like how they work together including in the field when sowing or harvesting rice. Segregation is not there.”

Mandi villagers outside the mission gate.

He was impressed by Mandi hospitality. “No matter how poor a family is, they will treat guests with a big reception. They can borrow at least two days’ labour wages to buy chicken and other food.” 

“And especially if they offer rice wine,” he adds with a laugh, “Then the hospitality is even better!” What he’s not so keen on, however, is the pungent shutki-like dried fish dish called nakam.

Father Alex also points to the Mandis’ strong sense of community. “One family I know,” he narrates, “Has eight children and they took in one more because that child’s family was struggling. It’s the maternal uncle’s duty to help out if the family is poor.”

Father Alex’s description is a far cry from how the Mandi have been described in the past. Both invading Mughal armies and the British were fearful. From around 1800 accounts describe them as ‘bloodthirsty savages’ and they had a reputation as headhunters, with a Mandi man’s status determined by the number of heads he owned. But of course the narratives of conquerors often serve their own purpose. It is likely much of the Mandis’ reputation arose as a result of their willingness to vigorously defend their lands from the invaders.

Indeed the Mandi have inherited a sophisticated matrilineal culture and had a well-developed religion which is sometimes underestimated as a form of animism, called Songsarek. Unlike many of the minority religious beliefs of India, Songsarek developed separately from Hinduism. Traditionally the Mandi believed in reincarnation but not caste.

From the 1860s however, the Mandis’ journey brought to them Christianity. “The Baptists were the pioneers,” says Father Alex. By the 1970s belief in Songsarek in Bangladesh had begun to dramatically decline. Nowadays nearly all Mandis profess Christianity, with Catholics comprising the largest denomination.

Father Alex believes the biggest contribution the Catholic Church has been able to make, for the Mandi and in Bangladesh, is in the provision of education. “It’s the best thing we have done,” he says. Another milestone in the Mandis’ journey was the Vatican II changes approved in Rome in 1965. These changes allowed for mass to be given in local languages rather than Latin, and led to a new approach to local cultures which had previously been discouraged.

“The people were very receptive,” Father Alex says of the implementation, “When we started to use local language in songs, when they understood what they were saying...” In Diglakona he gives the mass in Mandi.

Another change he has witnessed has been a decline in the Mandis’ penchant for a semi-nomadic lifestyle. “Since the forests became occupied and available land was less they stopped moving so often. Still they will move within the community, but not to new areas like before.”

By the late 1980s the funding for his position in Madhopur had dried up. “But I could see that they still needed me,” he said. “I decided to do more.” With this in mind, to facilitate his continued goal of service, he joined the priesthood. It was the decision that would bring him, ultimately, to Diglakona.

Asked what has been most difficult about living in Bangladesh he says, “The languages are very hard – Bengali more so than Mandi. It’s so difficult to find a proper teacher. I was always asking children and studying myself. And don’t ask me to write Bangla!”

Asked what he misses about the Philippines his answer is simple: the beer! And with a good Spanish name like Alejandro he certainly shares something in common with the delicious and world renowned Filipino national brew, San Miguel.

Mandi villagers making bamboo fence for the mission.

The author with Father Alex and mission staff members.

This article is published in Star Magazine, here: An Afternoon with Father Alex

A Carpenter's Journey

Carpenter Gobindra Chandra Halder can't sit or walk unaided, but he pursues his livelihood with enthusiasm.

It begins with an idea. There’s planning to be done: a sketch in pencil completes the start. It requires concentration. There’s never been a journey of substance when it’s been relentlessly easy to plot the best course. There are always obstacles. Always.

Some travellers rely on maps. Others chart their distances with compass or strategy; or alternatively follow an intuition-based path. Gobindra Chandra Halder, 55, has found in flowers, birds, trees and people the key to his way forward. He has enlisted into his service the curves, repetition and symmetry of regal design. For his is the journey of a carpenter – a carpenter with more than thirty years of experience.

 Gobindra  has made a name for himself as a carpenter.

“The throat is four fingers,” Gobindra says, explaining how he measures each body part to give his carved figures proportional accuracy. Everything is measured.

The sawing and sanding are his setting out. It’s after that he proceeds further, commencing the painstaking carving phase that will bring to each design its life, its third dimension. He inches onward, slowly, slowly – towards the destination of the finished piece. “With delicate work,” he says, “there is no time limit.”

From his two-room, mud floor home-and-studio in College Road of Rajapur in Jhalokati he’s made his name in handmade furniture manufacture. The medium he found for his each successive journey is wood and Gobindra is a respected artisan in it.

Things are never that easy. There’s never been a journey of substance that’s been free of challenges. Sometimes such roadblocks are relatively minor and easy to negotiate; at other times difficulties of the seemingly insurmountable type appear – enough to tempt any weary traveller into hanging up his hiking boots for good. It’s in the nature of a journey: problems can arise at any time, well into a long ago established voyage or, as in Gobindra’s case, right from the start. He had little choice but to face his situation. There was nothing for it but to persevere.

“He was good at school,” says his brother, high school teacher Kitish Chandra Halder, “but fate did not reward him.”

There came a night when Gobindra was about ten years old, when he dreamt that robbers were looting their household. Driven by fear the sleeping child climbed out of the window and fell from the first floor.

At work in his garden.

At first it seemed as though he had overcome his injuries – that his nightmare would be recorded as no more than an amusing anecdote among various childhood mishaps. But from age fifteen Gobindra started to lose power in his legs. The movement in his neck, back, arms and legs started to decrease: the delayed result of a possible spinal cord trauma he had sustained.

His family took him to Dhaka. But after visiting many hospitals not only were the doctors unable to offer much more than the hope his injury would right itself over time, they were unable even to name his affliction.

His parents took him to the pond for swimming, which a doctor had suggested. They even tried treatment by a local healer, a kabiraj. All that was forty years ago.

“Our family has suffered for a lifetime from concern over his injuries,” says Kitish Halder.

Gobindra proved courageous. In pain and with difficulty he completed his SSC examinations. But after that he found it impossible to continue his studies. Nor when the time arrived was he able to marry.

There’s been a gradual deterioration. Our carpenter requires a walking stick to move about. He cannot turn his head. He cannot bend. Mostly he lives in pain. He dines at either his sister’s or his brother’s house as he cannot cook a meal. But Gobindra has never stopped trying – his furniture is evidence of his determination.

From a young age he had demonstrated a talent for carpentry. It allowed him to develop his small business and manage a meagre livelihood, in the company of flowers, birds, trees and people, in the medium of wood. He can earn around 5,000 taka per month, but his work gives much more than that: a sense of purpose.

“I never had lessons in carpentry,” Gobindra says, proud of his achievements, “The designs come quite naturally as I start to draw.”

Gobindra with a bed head he has made.

He makes all kinds of furniture including sofas, showcases, wardrobes, beds, alna clothes racks and chairs. But for his condition it would be no problem to work in building construction as well, he says.

“Big items like almirahs and larger beds are difficult for me now,” he says.

Each piece takes time to complete. Gobindra is unable to sit in a chair and needs to take regular rest, lying down for greater hours than he is able to work. Nonetheless his customers are usually pleased with the results. “They often pay more than the agreed amount when they see a piece completed.”

He should really go to Dhaka. Due to the difficulties in finding suitable transport and more so the cost, it’s unlikely that he will. But it would be interesting to know what forty years of progress in medicine could do for him. He might find there are treatment options now. His affliction might at the very least find its name.

But this is not his complaint. “People don’t order the most intricate items anymore. They are too expensive.” He wishes there were more flowers, birds, trees and people for him to measure and bring to life.

Yet, when asked what sort of design he enjoys most, he says “It’s like football. The best enjoyment is not for the players but for those who are watching.”

And all around Rajapur people are watching. Many houses in the area feature his work. In each sofa, showcase, wardrobe and bed is an arduous journey of his, most often seen in an everyday and taken-for-granted way – a journey hoping to reach the twin destinations of functionality and beauty. Yet it’s never been easy for our carpenter who cannot bend.

Carpenter Gobindra Chandra Halder in his two room, mud floor studio and home.

Questions for a Lone Bird Called Das

"Perhaps I shall be a duck, some young lass's."

This article mainly relates to the poem "I Shall Return Once More" and its well-known Bengali poet Jibanananda Das (1899 - 1954).

To maternal Dhansiri’s banks did you return, as according to your plan? Are you there now in the guise of a wild bird, a white hawk or shalik or dawn crow? Or were you driven to move on by the bitter realisation that found you when you saw that river later? Your heart must’ve been struck! It’s not the river you knew, Jibanananda. Change does not stop, even for you.

Trees reflected in the Dhansiri.

As the locals tell it quite assertively, it wasn’t far from the broad Dhansiri’s riverbank, your maternal uncle’s house. Is that how you came to know her, as some say, to be stirred into noting her name? Did you feel her watery breezes as you once sat beside the pond in your uncle’s yard?

Did he feel river breezes while sitting beside his uncle's pond?

On the other hand locals attest to many things and there’s no authoritative information that you really made childhood visits to the village called Bamankathi in Jhalokati – your mother was indeed from Gaila in Barisal. There would seem to be no proof that a now empty Bamankathi yard once belonged to an uncle. It’s a history unverified.

You would understand that people like to make claim to a name like yours. You of all people would appreciate that poets sometimes like to record names like Dhansiri in representing greater things. Where is the truth, Jibanananda? Did you leave it somewhere for us to find?

The Dhansiri reflecting plants and reflecting Das.

Yet it’s nice for a moment to assume you knew at least Dhansiri. It’s no great distance from Barisal Town and maybe there really was a relative’s house in Bamankathi. There are surely details that from your life’s record got lost along the way – just as the memory of the haystack doesn’t stretch much beyond the harvest. It is interesting to ponder that you might’ve held Dhansiri close as a childhood memento...

And as for the river – old people speak of a twenty-or-fifty-times larger Dhansiri, if you want to know. They can still recall, if you ask, the setting off by ship from her banks for Barisal or Dhaka – ships which must’ve reached even Kolkata once. Did you ever see those steamers passing: how each ploughed deep rippling furrows into the river’s skin? Did it seem as if those tracks would last eternally, with all the strength in the engines that made them?

Das portrait by Narayan Chandra Biswas of Itna, Narail.

But of course a boat’s trail vanishes after minor moments and perhaps you wondered as the majestic Dhansiri and her cohort wind regained the upper hand. It would’ve seemed that nothing could stop her: certainly not any manmade contraption – and you had little affection for manmade contraptions.

Yet time happened.

Some say deltas are unfaithful creatures, Jibanananda, devoid of loyalty as to where rivers lie and in what measure of bounty their waters flow. From Dhansiri’s bank that uncle’s house is a way off now. Some call the name of Farakka to explain your Dhansiri reduced to an exaggerated stream, with barely the width between its banks for a steamer to pass. It’s not a suitable transport route anymore. Others may wonder at the longer effects of British river-tinkling, turn of the last century, at the not-so-distant Gabkhan Channel.

Equally it might be that dear Dhansiri simply mourned the loss of her poet friend after you fell beneath that Kolkata tram and left that earthly life. It can be the river in protest simply refused to carry on with the vigour that had been.

"I shall return to the banks of the Dhansiri, to this Bengal / Perhaps not as a man but in the guise of a white hawk or a shalik."

Or was it your entanglement with nature that became quite unmanageable? As the currents of your own, now large, River Jibanananda grew after your death so the Dhansiri might have rather instinctively regressed towards modesty as a means of maintaining a kind of balance. Perhaps we witness in its reduction a form of love, a self-sacrifice returned to you by one of Bengal’s rivers? Could it not be so?

Some say you were a loner. But the rivers were always with you, Jibanananda.

Some say Das was a loner, but the rivers were with him.

Yet if it was your thoughts of rediscovering her beauteous strength that drove you as a bird back to Dhansiri it must have hurt to comprehend that like your own bodily vitality Dhansiri’s would eventually wane.

And when you knew Dhansiri reduced, did you break down? Were you overwhelmed – afflicted by the pain of that Dhansiri destiny you witnessed? No, more likely you took your anguish into yourself and waited for introspection to take its course and push it out again eventually, in a new and vast language of bird flight, a secret carnival of altered syntax cartwheels in the air and altitude rising and dipping lines seemingly without connection. Did the other birds understand your aerial acrobatics then? One day they will.

The plot in Bamankathi they call the 'Das house.'

And if you stayed at Dhansiri, were you circling overhead as we crossed the farm fields, directed by farm hands to the empty yard they call the Das house? They had excitement in their voices – they wanted that place to be special. Did you feel nostalgia or were you laughing – they got it all wrong!

Have you seen the new plantation and the fence of sticks that marks the nearby property they call the Sen house; was it there and not actually in Natore that a young lady once caught your eye, the one you reframed and named for the world as Banalata? On the other hand Sen is a common name. Nobody can ultimately know the source of your inspiration.

Beyond the fence is the 'Sen house' in Bamankathi.

That whole Bamankathi neighbourhood is gone now – just empty plots. I suppose they might have followed you to Kolkata at the time of Partition. I suppose you would have known it before your death. Was it with a sense of sadness then, for what you knew to be gone, that you wrote of Dhansiri? Or was it but a name?

Whichever was the case, wherever you put the truth, the destiny of the river you noted, you cannot have known that.

Yet don’t dismay, still there is nature’s beauty in her. A lesser Dhansiri is given to reflection and village fishing frames. Crops grow along her banks and small dinghies are yet moored there. The newer Dhansiri would be a most welcome home for a duck belonging to some young lass, her crimson feet adorned with bells. You wouldn’t be the only duck to float amidst Dhansiri’s calmed memories, though the company of other ducks might not have impressed you. Are you a duck – one of them? Which one?

Some say deltas are unfaithful creatures. The Dhansiri is not as Das would've known it.

A final question, Jibanananda, a personal question: when that tram bell rang on Kolkata’s street in 1954 did you fall or was it an attempt at suicide, a desire for an early exit from a then barely appreciative world? There is speculation, you know. Of course it’s not decent to speak much of suicide – there’s too much culture in it – and you don’t need to answer. I just wanted to say, I wanted you to know that if it was suicide, I for one can understand it.

Fishing frame in the Dhansiri.

You broke all the rules of poetry in your life and you should’ve been rewarded for that – but the reward came late and perhaps it was, in the end, the rules that broke you? Perhaps that’s how it always ends when the world is not ready. You must know that by now.

Perhaps the Dhansiri reduced its flow from missing its poet friend?

The Dhansiri, Jhalokati.

The Dhansiri today is quiet.

This article is published in Star Magazine, here: Questions for a Lone Bird Called Das

A Tale in Three Parts

A new Goni Miah gumchha is on the weave.

It’s a tale in three parts: one part warp, another part weft and the third part selvage. The first part is stationary, under tension, held tight by the frame. The warp yarn doesn’t change. The second part is the filling yarn which is movement, adding texture, closing gaps. As the shuttle slides from side to side, the twine unwinds to settle as the weft. Where they meet, the two – the structure and the movement – comes the final part. The selvage forms as firmer edge to bind, to hold it all together and prevent unwanted ravelling. Yes – it’s a woven story – a story of cloth.

Abdul Goni Miah has 60 years of experience working the loom.

It’s the tale of Abdul Goni Miah. White bearded and ninety by the calendar, he lives in a modest tin roof house in Basanda village of Jhalokati. He’s still gets about alright, relying on his one good eye. It’s solely at night when there’s a problem, when not only the sky but his whole world goes dark these days. Still, it’s only ever hours until by the light of morning he can see again.

It’s a tale of a grocer’s son whose father later had a clothing shop. It’s the story of a weaver with the experience of sixty years at the loom. He came to make his living from the old wooden pedal machine that resides on the side veranda of his home. It’s a machine with mother’s memory in it given by a brother-in-law after her death. It was a thoughtful act that set him on the course of a livelihood in three parts – through summer, winter and rain.

“You’ll not find any better gumchha in the country than mine,” Goni Miah says with pride.

There are stories in the weaving of each gumchha.

But look at it like this: the warp yarn is the farmer’s field, the plot passed down through generations. It’s the earth that holds the paddy. The warp yarn is those unnoticed rain tree branches, under which the van puller goes. He’s taking baskets of fish, his cargo, to the market. In the warp is the jamai’s paish, the son-in-law’s rice porridge – and just as much the dish in which it sits. The warp yarn is the pond, not less, where the village lads take their dip. Even in the winter sky of an evening you’ll find the warp. It’s above the roadside bench where that old man has stopped to rest. He’s waiting for his chest to settle, glad to catch his breath.

And the filling yarn meanwhile must be the aches in the farmer’s bones. It’s the glisten of the sweat beads that to attention have aligned themselves across his brow. The weft you’ll see is in the paddy as it grows ever so slowly. It’s in the song of the van puller when he and his fish baskets are on their way, and equally in his angry curses when he’s underpaid. There’s weft in the jamai’s burp of satisfaction and in his grin. It’s in the lads’ splashing action and in the chattering of the old man's remaining teeth as the fog closes in.

The gumchha: that most Bangladeshi of cloths.     

Of course the selvage is the gumchha: that most essential, humble cloth. It binds structure and movement, making each moment enmesh. Yes – Abdul Goni Miah’s is a woven story at the heart of Bangladesh.

It’s quite a contribution to be weaving stories like these; and the Goni Miah gumchha, local icon, is oft presented as a gift – to Jhalokati-visiting VVIPs.

Goni Miah worked on nilambari saris for his first forty years at the loom and was recognised as the best weaver in Bangladesh. His saris found new homes as far as the Middle East and the United States.

For the following two years at lungee he tried his hand – it’s for the past eighteen years that Goni Miah gumchha has been his brand.

He’s still active at the loom, helped by his wife and eldest son. There’s only so much that can be done with eyes reduced to one. Yet from each day from Goni’s house three new gumchhas emerge – with double thread and the finest finishing, 350 taka per piece.

“Other gumchha are just for business,” Goni says, “The threads are less. But I like to give to people a product that’s the best.”

Oldest son Motiur Nasiruddin Miah hopes to continue the family's gumchha weaving tradition.

It’s a tale of three sons born in the decades of the loom – with the click and clack veranda weaving going on, his family gradually grew. One son became a carpenter and another drives a CNG in Narayanganj. It’s his oldest son, Motiur Nasiruddin Miah, who’s set as his mission carrying on the family tradition.

“If I get capital I can spread this industry all over the world,” Nasiruddin says, “Dad has the name. All I need is two electric machines. Demand is there but NGO interest rates are high.” But from pride of his father’s achievements, he plans to continue, if you wonder why.

A story in three parts: warp, weft and selvage.

It’s a story of three gentlemen who’ve passed by at various times through the years – one district judge and one DC and one Faridpur ex-MP. They came to Goni Miah’s house and chatted, bought gumchhas without saying who they were. It was only when Nasiruddin saw them off, only when he saw the car – then he realised who they are. “Baba is that well known!” he says.

“Everything is from Allah,” Goni adds of his gumchha’s design, “and one type came from Narsingdi.”

“It’s instead of a towel. Enjoy it! Pure cotton dries you really well,” Nasiruddin explains. But there’s more to it than that...

Look at it this way: Goni Miah’s there when the farmer wipes his brow. He’s there when the lads dry off on the bank of the pond. He’s there as the spots of paish are dabbed away from the corners of jamai’s mouth – and when the old man wraps his head to keep the winter cold out. He’s the van puller’s belt, the drier of dishes at times; and he’s there to help when the lid of the water bottle simply won’t budge or to lift the kettle when it’s too hot to hold. These are the stories in the weaving of every gumchha sold.

The Goni Miah gumchha is renowned in Jhalokati.

Goni’s mother is in them too, and his wife and three sons. There’s the story of Goni Miah in the gumchha too, in each and every one.

It’s a story of three leaders, from the sari-weaving days. Goni Miah’s saris to Sheikh Hasina, Khaleda Zia and Ershad’s wife found their ways. And the interesting part is when Goni tells that two of those leaders paid generously for what they bought, while the third he quietly confesses paid a little short. But to say more than that – which one – I will not do, it would not be nice. In any case it surely would’ve been the party officials who negotiated the price.

Motiur Nasiruddin Miah dreams of expanding the gumchha business.

This article is published in Star Magazine, here: A Tale in Three Parts