The dairyman that won our hearts
It doesn't get sweeter than this. A 90-year-old curd seller has been awarded the second highest civilian award in Bangladesh, Ekushey Padak, introduced in memory of the martyrs of the Bangla Language Movement of 1952. In a world where praise and prizes often grace the heads of the sweet-talking and the well-connected, the story of Ziaul Haque is both heartwarming and humbling.
A selfless man from Chapainawabganj, Ziaul dedicated his entire life to creating a public library with the little bit of profit he made from selling curd. His father forced him to drop out of school in 1957 after he passed the Class 5 exams with credible success. His father told him that he could not spare three taka and two annas on his books when a taka would fetch five kilos of rice. Ziaul then joined his father's curding profession.
The business gradually improved because there was not enough competition. "I go to bed with a filled stomach under a safe roof, but my heart remains restless. I had the hunger to get books, especially for those who could not afford them." He wanted to give the children in his village the chance to get an education, which he was denied. He started a textbook lending service in his own home for those who couldn't buy books. He realised that for a complete intellectual makeup, you need books of all sorts. Every year, he spends Tk 20,000-50,000 to buy books. His library now has over 14,000 titles, and about 450 of its users are employed in various government and private agencies. After receiving Ekushey Padak, the dairyman talked to this newspaper. I realised both his conviction and the size of his library have simply strengthened over the years.
Earlier in 2007, a Unilever campaign for unsung heroes with beautiful minds, "Shada Moner Manush," identified the bibliophile Ziaul. He was interviewed by a TV channel at that time. He began by saying, "Doi ar boi, ei niye amar jibon" (Curds and books, that's my life). The rhymed statement led me to the memory lane to meet a fictional dairyman, whose story was a staple in our children's literature and part of our growing up: the curd seller in Tagore's play The Post Office.
Ziaul's story felt like a sequel featuring Amal, the dying child in Tagore's play who's confined to a room due to his illness, and the gallery of people from the outside world who come to his window. There's one dairyman with whom Amal strikes up a casual conversation. The sound of a dairyman hawking "Curds, curds, good nice curds," later mimicked by Amal in the play, rings in my ears.
Amal tells the hawker that he has visited the dairyman's village in his imagination and seen the River Shamli at the foot of the Panchmura hills. The dairyman is so impressed by Amal's vivid description of his village that he promises the child that he will take him to the village once the doctor allows him to do so. Amal then requests that he be shown how to hawk curds. The dairyman reacts by saying, "Why should you sell curds? No, you'll read big books and learn."
Amal then says, "No, I never want to be taught—I'll be like you and take my curds from the village by the red road near the old banyan tree, and I will hawk them from cottage to cottage. Oh, how do you cry? 'Curd, curd, good, nice curd!' Will you teach me the tune, will you?"
The dairyman replies, "Dear, dear, teach you the tune; what an idea!"
The conversation ends with Amal asking whether he has kept the hawker waiting too long. The dairyman answers, "Not a bit; it has been no loss to me at all; you have taught me how to be happy selling curds." (Translation by Dababrata Mukherjee, 1914).
Just like Amal inspired the curd seller to find his inner child and the joy of doing what he does, the story of Ziaul inspires us too. At a time when a book is considered an antiquated object, when publication of books is greeted with reels and memes, when writers make a buzz not for the merit of their writings but for their quirky lifestyles, when the only big news coming out of the fair is a list of aesthetically pleasing stalls, when the traditional book fair learns to replicate some of the corporate events that take place in the Bangla Academy premises, or when crowds go to the fair not to buy books but to mark their social calendar due to a fear of missing out (fomo), the story of the dairyman sweetens our memory.
In this month where we celebrate sacrifices for languages, the sacrifice of Ziaul hearkens us back to a time beyond neoliberalism that has incentivised greed. The juxtaposition of curds and books makes me think about Amal and the dairyman's afterlife. The Post Office portrays Amal as a boy by the window, always waiting for a conversation with others. During the World Wars, this play assumed a different connotation. The play was broadcast on French radio when the country was under Nazi occupation. "The play is more than a text; it is a mood; it conveys more than emotions; it is an experience; and the actors are more than actors; they are children," explained Janusz Korczak, the director of the play who staged it featuring children of a ghetto in Warsaw. Asked why he had selected this particular play, Korczak replied, "We must all learn to face the angel of death." Three weeks after the performance on July 18, 1942, all of the child performers and the director were taken to death camps.
Like Amal, we are all stranded behind our screen windows, witnessing yet another mass killing and defeat of humanity. Often, we are reminded of the power of books that encapsulate and transport life. As we all wait for death, human spirits such as Amal's—read: Ziaul's—offer a last flicker at the wick of life to spread light against an all-pervading darkness. Let's try to learn the tune of the dairyman's cry and walk the roads of life with a heart full of joy.
Dr Shamsad Mortuza is professor of English at Dhaka University.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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