Feature

Exactly thirty days ago, when I was bundled off together with eighty students for a twelve day long course in Manikganj, I was afraid something like this will happen. My University, Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB) defined the course Live in Field Experience (LFE 201) as " The Live in Field program (is) an opportunity to sensitize our students about the socio-economic realities of rural Bangladesh. All students at IUB have to participate in this four-credit course.... Students gain once in a lifetime experience of working with people living in their traditional and yet rapidly changing environment."

Now this sounds all pretty and comfy when you read about it on the Internet. But in my pre-LFE days, I used to see it as just another evil devil way of snatching us youngsters away from the comforts of our warm home and sticking us into a "TV-less, internet-less and KFC-less" world. And it felt like one big conspiracy by IUB and all our parents - to dump us out in the middle of nowhere, in a ploy to make us appreciate all that we have and all the little stuff our parents are constantly doing for us.

And so here we are, I thought as I hurried to catch up on my group mates. By then, the group had moved on to the fifth house (our sample size was twenty-five), where once again we were all warmly greeted. Now I was basically trying to stay close to my group leader on our first day since all this was very new to me. And our group leader was amazing when it came to rapport building! Having previous experience and being a very caring and motherly person, she had taken us all under her wings from the very first day. Our challenge was to build rapport with people from a completely different socio-economic background and religion (we were assigned a Hindu area for our group's study) and to find out all sorts of information on rural health, income and lifestyle in only a few days! So after a crash-course on rapport building from our group leader, I was trying to get as much information as possible within time. For ease of data collection, I was basically operating under three broad rules.

1. Greet anyone and everyone in our area with a Namaste.

2. Hug any woman who showed a willingness to be hugged.

3. Smile if anyone co-operates, smile if anyone doesn't want to co-operate, smile if anyone is suspicious and smile if confused.

So when the frail old woman was holding on to my hands and muttering to herself, I did a quick mental calculation and figured a combination of rule two and three should work just fine for this situation. And when it did, without giving it another thought I walked away and joined my group.

From then on, for the rest of the day, I was sucked into a wind-whirl of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), jotting down endless tit bits on rural life, making chart slides out of our findings and preparing for our evening presentations. The next day we had to go to the local bazaar or the "haat" to analyze the rural market. So it wasn't till the third day that we got a chance to go back to our area of study. But Surprise! While we were thinking whether the villagers would accept us and tolerate us for another day, it was a totally different scenario. When we arrived at our assigned area (the Jelepara of Katigram), we found that the village women were eagerly waiting for our visit. An elderly housewife hugged me fondly and whispered in my ear how they had waited and waited for us to come by the day before. Her neighbor, the old woman, had even dissolved in tears when we didn't come. For I had reminded her of her beloved grand daughter who was away living in the city.

The housewife took us by the hand and led us to the house of the old woman. She was sitting inside, in the shadows of her scanty room but hearing us, she came out. Her face, which was lined with the hard lines of age and suffering, suddenly lit up with a beautiful smile. She reached out to touch my arm, lovely holding my palms in her bony hands. And she hugged me tight. Twice...

I guess at this point, I'm expected to come up with a clichéd ending like: "It hit me then and there..." and follow it with a few lines packed with tear wrenching emotions about how this event changed me for the better. But I can't. Because it wasn't anything sudden like that. That morning, standing in front of the old woman, I felt strange. I felt that I could interact with the old woman on a different level. The "three-rule" mentality didn't apply here anymore. I guess I somewhat forged a special tie with her. A bond that grew only because I looked like her grand daughter and only because she accepted me so wholeheartedly into her life. And for someone like me, who grew up in the cities, learning to be suspicious of everyone and everything, this emotion of the old woman touched me. It made me think twice about who I was.

So on the eve of February 5th, which will mark the end of the first month since I met the old woman, I wish this humble piece would pay homage to the woman who thought of me as her grand daughter, to human connection in general and to the power of hugs.

(Student of Media and Communication, IUB)

One day he visited a merchant in Hamburg who had a lovely daughter named Frumtje. Moses fell hopelessly in love with her. But Frumtje was repulsed by his misshapen appearance.

When it came time for him to leave, Moses gathered his courage and climbed the stairs to her room to take one last opportunity to speak with her. She was a vision of heavenly beauty, but caused him deep sadness by her refusal to look at him. After several attempts at conversation, Moses shyly asked, “Do you believe marriages are made in heaven?”

“Yes,” she answered, still looking at the floor.” And do you?”

“Yes I do,” he replied. “You see, in heaven at the birth of each boy, the Lord announces which girl he will marry. When I was born, my future bride was pointed out to me. then the Lord added, 'But your wife will be humpbacked.'

“Right then and there I called out, 'Oh Lord, a humpbacked woman would be a tragedy. Please, Lord, give me the hump and let her be beautiful.'” Then Frumtje looked up into his eyes and was stirred by some deep memory. She reached out and gave Mendelssohn her hand and later became his devoted wife.

--Barry and Joyce Vissell
(Source: Chicken Soup for the Soul)