1.
When I was young, I used to have a hobby of traveling around the country and abroad, now that hobby is no more. From the various countries of the world, I like my own simple country more. But I never crossed the equator. So there was a subtle curiosity about what the Southern Hemisphere night sky looked like.
I was introduced to the stars in the sky in 1971. When I looked at the sky in the sleepless night, it seemed as if I understood them and looked at the earth with deep compassion. Going to the southern hemisphere and looking at the sky will introduce you to more new stars; Moreover, the brightest star in the night sky appeared in the southern hemisphere with a different beauty, it was also interesting to see.
So when the Bangla Sahitya Sangsad of Australia invited me to Melbourne, I agreed to go. I am a cowardly person, I do not dare to travel alone. So when my wife agreed to go, I finally got on the plane.
After arriving in Melbourne we got out when a highly elite kind of specially trained dog sniffed everything and allowed us to set foot in Australia. Almost all the members of the Bangla Sahitya Sangsad in Melbourne have come to the airport to greet us. They started talking to me as if I was a great writer and I began to doubt whether I had gone to the wrong place!
Bangla Sahitya Sangsad is an organization of Bengalis in Bangladesh and West Bengal. Those who live in foreign lands have a different kind of illusion for the country. Those who have never left the country will never be able to feel this strange illusion for the country.
Out of this affection for the country, the Bangla Sahitya Sangsad organizes various events in Melbourne; One of them is to bring writers from Bangladesh and West Bengal. Literary writers like Sunil-Shirshendu-Samresh Majumdar have come to their organization and I have also come to the same event. I was surprised to see my own courage!
I have to go to various events in the country, I teach, so it is my job to talk. That's why I have no problem giving speeches. But that is not a wise statement in front of hundreds of people as a writer. But who will understand that!
The literary meeting ended well. There are some special benefits to being a teacher. My students all over the world. There are many of them here too, all of them left in groups. There was a question and answer session at the end of the speech, the organizers were a little worried about it.
It has just started. Razakar type people cannot do any benefit in the country by coming to the meeting-committee abroad or whatever they can do. I feared the organizers on how to deal with razakar type people. The poet Rabindranath even wrote in the poem, "Whenever you stand in front of him, he / she will go to Satras like a dog.
But nothing like that happened. From literature, the audience was more interested in education, the country, the future of the country. These are also my favorite things, I always dream about the country. I never have a problem telling that dream to ten people. (But I have no hesitation in admitting that when a visitor asked me why I wore a mustache, I was completely stunned. I had no way to show my face when my wife answered this question to the hallucinatory person before I said anything!)
The official literary meeting of the Bangla Sahitya Sangsad was only a few hours long. But we have spent uninterrupted time in a domestic environment with members of parliament. Every night everyone gathers at someone's house and the things that we Bengalis can do very well - eating and chatting - have been done very efficiently.
Tears well up in people's eyes as they say goodbye to people they have never met before - I don't know if such a bizarre incident has happened in the life of any person other than a Bengali. Sometimes it seems that Bhagyas was born a Bengali, otherwise how many things would have remained unknown!
2.
The city of Melbourne is the most livable city in the world. I went there from Dhaka city. Those who give the certificate of livable city have given the city of Dhaka the certificate of the most livable city in the world.
(Actually, Dhaka is number two. The number one bus-disqualified city is Damascus, the capital of Syria. People die of poison gas there, a war-torn city. It's not easy to compete with such a city. I think those who give bus disability certificates Hefazat-e-Islam would have given the first prize to Dhaka city instead of Damascus if he had the opportunity to witness the violence of Hefazat-e-Islam in Dhaka city on May 5.
The few days I was in Melbourne I tried to understand why this city has won the award for the most livable city. People have to live in order to be a livable city. But the funny thing is that people did not see the road in Melbourne! There are only two crore people in the whole country (and it is not only the country, but also the continent). So all around is empty. There are no tall buildings in the city. Home like a small toy. The houses are like calendar pictures. It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post.
The Southern Hemisphere says everything is upside down here. In our country, summer is over and winter is coming. Winter is over there and summer is coming. But it seems that there is no hurry for summer to come. Still plenty of winter. At night you have to sleep with the heater on. The city of Melbourne is ever hotter on the same day. Sometimes it is cold, sometimes it is raining, sometimes it is windy. When people leave the house, they get ready for four different weathers.
Stepping from the most uninhabitable (almost) city in the world to the most livable city is undoubtedly an exciting experience. But let me say that after returning to Dhaka, when I got off the plane, I felt a rush of heat like the heat of a fire. I returned home in the middle of the strike. I came and saw that there was no water in the house. Suddenly the electricity went off. What a joy for the dark mosquito! Their festival surrounds us! But the funny thing is, I didn't feel so annoyed. Rather, it seems, aha, how many cities of love in the world like Dhaka?
3.
People don't come back to America without seeing Niagara Falls, just like when they go to Australia they don't come back without seeing kangaroos. When we were in Australia, our hobby of seeing kangaroos was fulfilled by the geneticist Abed Chowdhury. (Abed Chowdhury and his wife Tulip are our longtime family friends. We worked for a PhD at the same university in America. It is a crime to come to Australia and meet him without meeting him!)
On my way home from Canberra Airport I saw kangaroos on both sides of the road. He died after being hit by a car in the dark of night. Not alive, but still a kangaroo - I was satisfied with that. But Abed Chowdhury will not leave without showing us the living kangaroo.
So the next day he drove for a few hours and came to a place with us. There are numerous kangaroos on both sides of the road. When our country's MPs went to their areas, the kangaroos stood in the sun on both sides of the road, just as the school headmasters grabbed the students and made them stand in the sun. They looked at us with the same amazement as we looked at them!
Kangaroo movements are very funny. No other animal can run with their legs tied like a tail. Even more interesting is that the kangaroo baby is sitting in the stomach bag of the kangaroo mother. Looking at the children, it seems that there is no place in the world that is more comfortable than this.
Canberra is the capital of Australia. Embassies or high commissions of all countries are here. While passing by them, I suddenly saw a wonderful building on the side of the road. I saw the red flag with the moon and stars and realized that it was the Turkish High Commission. Tulip told us that this land was given to Bangladesh and Sheikh Hasina also laid the foundation stone for setting up a Bangladesh High Commission here.
The next time the BNP government came to power, it allowed the land to be abandoned so that it would not have to endure the humiliation of building on the foundation stone laid during the Awami League regime.
The information is varied but not incredible. In order to prevent the country's information from being smuggled out of the country, this government once deprived the people of the entire country of the internet by depriving them of the opportunity to join the submarine cable for free.
Among the countless embassies in Canberra and the High Commission, the most striking one is in a tent. In front of their old parliament building, the indigenous people of that country have flown a huge flag and placed their embassy in the middle of the tent to assert their rights. The government did not let them down, they remained in service year after year.
I sighed when I saw them, remembering the indigenous people of my own country. The Awami League government of this country has declared that there is no such thing as indigenous people in this country as to why the army can enjoy the lucrative job of the United Nations uninterruptedly. I don't know that there could be anything more heartless than this.
Indigenous peoples in Australia have long had a taste for selflessness. When white people first occupied this country, they used to go indigenous hunting in the same way that people go bird hunting for fun. If anyone could cut off the head of an adivasi, he would be rewarded. Only a few days ago, the aboriginal mother was emptied and the aboriginal children were removed.
The people of Australia have formally apologized to the Indigenous people in Parliament for this cruelty of the past. But so far so good. There is no sign of true aborigines in this vast territory of Australia. There are so many examples of such cruelty all over the world that it seems to be the rule. Taking away everything and at some point apologizing and putting a seal of morality on their own backs.
Many of our students live in Australia. Many came to see us when they heard that we were in Melbourne. At one time they were young students. Now that they have grown up, have been established, have a husband, have a wife, have children, it is great to see. Some have driven hundreds of kilometers just to meet us, some have flown on planes.
Thousands of reminiscences with them to pass the night! Many of the events of university life were fairly frightening. Now all of a sudden they seem funny. On hearing this, everyone laughed and rolled over.
The election was just over when we left. Everyone in that country has to vote. Seventy dollars fine for not voting. One of them said that his mother was very busy after receiving the news of the election and called him from the country and said, "Father, I will not leave Khabardar's house on the day of the election, when and where is the danger!"
We all laughed when we heard that. But in the middle of it, I felt a pain in the middle of my chest. Elections are coming to our country too, but what a terrible uncertainty among all of us, what a helpless panic to think about what happens!
Went to Australia for a very short time. So we couldn’t give our students too much time. But in the meanwhile they took everyone in a group and went for a walk in the forest on the beach. The funniest thing about having a trip is when you don't have to do it yourself, others do it. If those who do everything are students then there is no question.
(The funny thing is, when we get back to the country, we see that everyone knows everything about when and where we did it. The news of the incident spread all over the world before anything happened for the sake of Facebook. Did we know that something like this could happen a few days ago? What could happen that we can't even imagine now!)
4.
Those who are reading this article must have discovered that there is no such thing as Australia here, everything here is about Bengalis living in Australia! In fact, if someone goes to a country for a few days, then there is no chance to truly feel that country. If you want to feel a country, you have to stay in that country for a long time. Then the filth behind the shiny scene on the outside of that country, the failures can be seen.
I got a piece of information from people who live in that country that surprised me. There is a kind of frustration among parents about schooling. The main reason for frustration is that there are not enough good teachers. Special shortage of teachers in science and mathematics. There is no hope that the problem will be solved. There are no science students in the university, these subjects are being given in almost all the universities!
Great explanation by you