Leena Alam

Every time I hear the name Hemayetpur, it reminds me of a village where people send patients for mental health treatment. This time the name was mentioned to me in a different context. She sat in her beautiful home in London, a home she had with her late husband accountant Alam.  The camellia flowers in bright red colours created a wonderful ambience and we sat in the shades of her self -landscaped garden. Every sentence that came out of her mouth made me gape. The fragrance from her magnolia tree wanted to enter my trachea. The picture of Venice and its water boats hung on the side of the living room. From the garden I had a clear view of that. My mind raced through the stories of her many travels and sojourns. She had travelled with her husband and collected many artefacts all laid so tastefully in every corner of the room. She has donated this beautiful house to a few charities.

"What charities Auntie?" I asked.

She replied, "I have bought six bighas of land in Hemayetpur. The land is near the waters where a floating school will be built for the locals. I looked at this picture of Venice and the floating school came to my mind. I am building strong pillars so that the rainy season cannot drown the school. I sold my Gulshan flat, my car and other belongings and injected the funds into my project. It is in the name of my mother-in-law Mrs.Maleka. The trust is named after her."

She had started this project five years back. Prior to that, she was working for the Centre for Paralysed (CRP). Valerie Taylor and her daughters used to come to London and spend some time in her beautiful home. Leena Auntie told me "Like everyone else in CRP, Valerie gets a salary. As the month ends, her food budget gets low and she eats rice and daal until the next cash flow arrives." I had learnt something from there. It was home to me too as I had lived there many times since Leena Auntie was our family friend. 

Her theme is to not only develop a school but also to have some accommodations for single mothers. Moreover, she is building old homes there, so that people can go and spend their old ages there. Her seventy plus face beamed with the joy of new creation, green and shiny as ever.

Leena Auntie had come to London as a young bride at eighteen. She worked in schools there. She did landscaping for others to earn money for charity. Often she brought Bangladeshi saris and other wares to sell in her wonderful garden. She organized lunch for her Bangladeshi and British friends and managed to sell all her stuff. She got her British friends over to CRP in Bangladesh and got them to sponsor various events. She used them for charity work.

In this world of greed, power, money, there are the likes of Rana (of Rana plaza) or the forest officer who had pillow covers filled with cash money, whose mission in life  is to amass immense wealth, no matter how many lives it costs. Thankfully there are Leena Alams whose mission in life is not to waste a single penny, not to leave behind hordes of wealth as inheritance, but to sell all and leave behind everything for those who don't have any. It is for people like them that this country lives, breathes and continues to be so. I am reminded of the tea seller in some remote part in Bangladesh. He sells his tea and from this humble income gives free lessons to local children. This young man from Rangpur could not finish school due to poverty, but helped form a squad and resist child marriage. Now his village is free of child marriages. They are our leaders, they are our celebrities, and we need to honour them.

The writer is an Academic, Nazrul exponent and writer.