Home or House?
Md Amer Akhtab Muizz
Whenever someone asks where your hometown is, what should be the answer? Should I refer to the village my father came from as my own home, or rather, say that we have a house there?
Last week, I was going to my village by train. After my father passed away, my elder brother and I have to look after the school (among many other things) he built there. As a travel companion, I had Haruki Murakamis What I talk about when I talk about running. While reading it and dozing on and off with the continuously chugging train, a sudden thought came to me: Where am I going?
The scene inside the train kept changing with people going in and out of the compartments. But I couldnt hold off the thought. We have quite a big house at our village _ our grandfathers house you could say. Would I call it home? Its just a building, a house. Do I ever feel like going back there? Perhaps, my father used to think the other way, which let him dedicate himself to the village.
When I reached our village, it was the usual roads, fields and small buildings. But there was one thing that struck me _ the boom of school and coaching centre campaigns towards the end of the year.
It has been 10 years since my father built the first private school in the village to provide the children there with the same education as any other school in Dhaka. Should I be happy or sad? My father would have been happy to see the enthusiasm of the people to provide better education, while I could only see the new competitions!
Being an undergraduate student, I cant really give much time to the school. Visiting it was part of spending my recent semester break. The next day, I went to our school during school hours. What I saw was something different. The environment gave me a feel that it really is a school, not just a building and classrooms of the school that I attended in my childhood. My father did a great job at building the place.
After staying and observing the school for a few days, what I realised was that people are totally on a wrong track. The parents want their children to score the maximum grades by any means possible. Be it right or wrong. I guess it would have been better if there were a school of parenting, to keep the parents from pressure cooking their children.
Throughout my stay there, I was seeking the answer to the question. Home is where you want to go back to. Will I ever want to come back and live here? On the day before my return to Dhaka, finally, I found my answer.
After school hours, I was working at the school, checking the accounts. The deeper I got into it, the more I was depressed. The accounts doing werent going well. I could lose anything, but I would never want to shut down what my father tried so hard to build.
While I was working, a parent came to our small office room to pay the tuition fees for the month. He was an old man with a long white beard, and he looked tired as if he had rushed there after some laborious work. His clothes seemed worn-out and I never assumed him to be a parent. He asked the person in charge to know who I was. In a village, everybody knows everyone. I was the new face there. After knowing my identity, it seemed as if he had known me for a long time. He mentioned my father and while describing the loss of my father, he could not hold back his tears. He could not speak much, but managed to say how much the whole village had lost altogether. Throughout the time he was speaking, I was struck speechless. I knew how much my father did for people, but never thought there were also those who appreciated his work this much.
On my return journey, again with the same crowd, with the same book on my lap, I kept thinking about what had happened the previous day. I might have received the answer I was seeking, at least a part of it. It was just as the saying goes: Home is where the heart is.
My father kept going back to the village for the people. I really dont know how much I can give, but the tears of that old man moved me. Now, I can say at least a small part of my heart is still left back there in the small office room. Maybe, I have already built a part of my home there, may be even a whole room. To make it my home, I must go there and back again and keep on building, just like my father used to keep going back to his roots.
The writer is a 3rd year EEE student at Islamic University of Technology.
