The Intellectual Pursuit of Art

Sharbari Zohra Ahmed
-------------------------------------

Growing up South Asian in the US my friends, our families, and I were part of a small community whose parents emigrated to New England to study. Nowadays many Bangladeshi immigrants come from educated backgrounds but must settle for non -professional jobs like driving cabs or selling fruit from carts on busy New York streets. One elderly man I once encountered at PENN Station in Manhattan, cleaning the men's bathroom, was an engineer back in Bangladesh. It was painful for me see him pushing a yellow, plastic bucket on wheels around, sopping up dirty water. People walked by him and didn't even see him. What a mental adjustment he had to make, how humiliating it must have been for him.

Bangladeshis are a forward moving people, who, when they decide to move to another country, do whatever it takes to ensure their children have a better life than theirs. As one cab driver from Syhlet put it, “Why would I bother to be humiliated in New York when I can be mistreated in Bangladesh? My son is going to Harvard, that is why I am here.”

“What will he be studying?” I asked, as I was thrown from one side of the cab to the other, while he swerved in and out of traffic, nearly missing a pedestrian walking three dogs.

After shouting various expletives at the blonde dog walker he said, “Oh, he will be a doctor or an engineer like me.”

“Well, he has until junior year at Harvard to decide.”

The Sylheti cabbie looked at me in the rear view mirror with a puzzled smile.

“Well he's seven years old,” he said. “He has plenty of time to decide between the two.”

What I have observed is that it is not much different for those of us raised in Bangladesh. Education is paramount to Bangladeshis of a certain class and would most likely be just as important to many others if they had the luxury and opportunities the rest of us do. The general consensus is that there are worthy and unworthy courses of study. Young Bangladeshis are encouraged and sometimes imposed upon to concentrate on those areas of study that would garner decent jobs and a measure of security, which is understandable, especially for those parents who have had to struggle their entire lives for survival. But what of those souls whose interests and dreams lie in the pursuit of more esoteric and not easily quantifiable intellectual endeavors? What of the artists and arts scholars who choose to pursue painting, or cinema studies, dance, theater, or become classically trained musicians? Are their aspirations not just as valuable?

Bengalis have a rich, ancient tradition in the arts. Music, poetry, literature and dance are an important part of our culture and identities. We treat our mother tongue as sacred and deify our poets and artists as much as Catholics do their saints. My walls are covered with original paintings from various Bangladeshi artists. The Bangladeshi film industry is coming along, with a new, young, smarter, technologically advanced group of filmmakers emerging, ones who blend both their Bengali heritages with influences from world cinema, 'Bollywood' and that wonderful behemoth, Hollywood. I predict we will see a surge in films coming out of Bangladesh that will be competitive and appreciated on a global level in the next decade.

I have heard complaints that Bangladeshi culture is being usurped by her insidious neighbor to the west, India. The onslaught of flashy, at times garish, images of the East's collision with the West that is 'Bollywood,' may be hindering the youth of the nation's creative growth. That is why the pursuit of cinema studies is important. A healthy balance of the arts and the sciences creates a savvier generation who will consume and enjoy the mass market offerings but won't necessarily allow it to influence them culturally or they will distill what works for them and discard the rest.

The intellectual and scholarly pursuit of the arts only enhances a culture and the national nature. It, at the risk of sounding stuffy, civilises people. It allows young people to imagine a different intellectual life and expands society. It lends itself to evolution.

The richness or poverty of a society's artistic environment is indicative of that society's overall progressiveness. When I lived in Abu Dhabi, in the UAE, in 1999, one of the first things I noticed was that there were no art galleries or readings or exhibitions. Dubai had more, but even then, it was all art from the outside. There was nothing indigenous. My friend Assya Makkawi, opened a shop slash gallery in a small storefront in Abu Dhabi, and was one of the first people to hold exhibitions. She complained that there was no Emirati or Bedouin artistic tradition. It occurred to me that a society with no discernable artistic tradition was, well, bordering on the savage. Such a society would lack sublimity and sophistication, and tolerance. This last attribute is the most imperative for a people to evolve and progress. Change will happen no matter how hard reactionary elements try to stop it. But without art and the intellectual pursuit of art, it will be more painful and slower than necessary, and more destructive. What I observed in the UAE was a society still steeped in barbarism and medieval ideas. I will argue the absence of a solid artistic tradition and lack of appreciationwhich is what Cinema studies is aboutcontributed to this dearth of tolerance and real societal expansion. The UAE is insanely wealthy so nowadays, they host film festivalsobviously someone, somewhere realised they needed to open upand exhibitions. Celebrities flock there now for luxury holidays (grossly ignoring various human rights issues). We are not as wealthy in Bangladesh and do not have all the shiny luxuries that Dubai is noted for, but what we do have is priceless, an old and lauded tradition of art. Without cinema and art scholars and that most loathsome (yet imperative) entity, the art critic, artists will be working in a vacuum. We all need each other.

Whenever I visit Bangladesh, I am reminded of the artistic potential of the place. Galleries are filled with breathtaking paintings. Amongst my own circle of friends are some wonderful singers, actors and writers. People I would put up against anything I have seen or heard in India or the West. The formal pursuit of art or cinema theory will enhance this potential. It is a logical extension of our own cultural inclinations.

I can sense the urge for the next generation of filmmakers and artists to flex their muscles on a mass scale, to show the world what Bangladeshis can do and how we are born storytellers. But even the most talented filmmaker needs guidance. Some say the best way to learn how to make a film is simply to make one. I agree, but there are techniques and tricks, and rules that would aid the fledgling filmmaker to an effective end product. There are those fine minds that do not necessarily feel the need to make a film, but rather to study the art itself. That is where they derive their satisfaction, and it is from these scholars that a filmmaker can learn aspects of filmmaking. It will also teach the filmmaker an appreciation of the medium. Most importantly, on a larger scale it will allow for our growth and evolution as a society.

(Sharbari Ahmed is a writer and a playwright. She has an MA in Creative Writing Fiction from New York University. She lives in Connecticut with her son.)