Traffic Light

What is the heaviest thing in the world? It isn’t the last laid brick of the day. The heaviest thing in the world, is a question. They say no man is self-made. That every individual is the by-product of his environment, the opportunities bestowed upon him and the help offered from numerous others on his journey through life. But wouldn’t that also be the case in a man’s detriment? That all the betrayal and harm his environment or others surrounding him can cause, could eventually lead to his broken end? Is man at the mercy of his own fate? What would it take to curb the direction of his inevitability? What would it cost to rewrite your own story? What does your environment have in store for you? What secrets does the universe hold for you? Where will you find yourself 10 years from now? Would you find yourself reveling in your wildest dreams, or would you find yourself cowering in the darkest depths of your horrors and fears? What could be learned? What could be forgotten? What would you hate the most in the world? What would you love more than anything? What could be lost? What could be found? Feeling heavy yet? One of my favorite questions to ask myself as a young lad, was pertaining to the function of a stop light. I would ride in the back of my fathers’ rickshaw in the late afternoons of the city heat and I’d watch every light we’d stop at. Green would mean go, orange would mean slow down and red would mean stop, but what happens if that stop light switched from green to red and never switched again. What if the red came and never left? What if you had stopped but could never go? In the Dhaka state province of Bangladesh, far across the long reaching arm of poverty, 6 pounds were bestowed upon the arms of a young new mother and her anxious husband. Far into the slummed gutters of the lowest class, 6 pounds of joy, with cries that could be heard far across the rocky roads and mud covered shacks they called homes, with shaky, pink, tiny hands trembling in the damp, humid stench polluted air, was brought into this world. 6 pounds were more than enough given the fact that the young couple had tried for 6 years to conceive a child. Had they known it was me, would they have flung that 6 pounds swiftly against the wall and save us all the trouble? Probably not, due to the fact that they were lovely parents, even if the weight of 6 pounds would soon prove too much to bear. Growing up was not the easiest of endeavors, but we made do with what we had and we never failed to have a little fun. Our humble abode was nestled between the narrow alleyways of the busy Dhaka streets, flanked by various other dwellings of similar fashion. Mud coloured bricks layered one after the other made up of most of the structure in which my parents and I spent most of our nights. Our neighbourhood consisted mostly of noisy, albeit colourful characters that served to us as friends, enemies, gossip buddies and bullies. The smell of sour sweat and watery sand is etched into my mind from those childhood memories, playing in the damp tunnels that made up our residence, running and chasing the other younglings across the endless mazes of hanging clothes and groups of bickering elderlies. After a heavy downpour of rain, my father would take me to the nearby stream not far behind our home on the edge of the woods. There we would make little paper boats out of newspaper strips, and we would place them on the water, watching them zoom through the fast, murky, meandering pathway further from us until they were no longer visible. In the cold mornings, my mother would wrap me up and sing to me softly, distracting me from my father as he left on his rickshaw for work. I never liked watching him leave, the thought of the three of us not being together at home was enough for me to kick a fuss as the stubborn child I was. Throughout the day, my mother would do her best to keep me entertained. It wasn’t too difficult, given that I was a curious boy. She would fold the clothes a certain way and I would spend hours trying to figure out how she was able to do it. With pieces of cut chalk, she would draw out an extensive labyrinth on the wall beside our bed and I would sit before it, scribbling across every possible path until I could find my way to the end of the maze, then she would rub it off with her hands and draw up a whole new puzzle for me to complete. As I got older, I was eventually made to leave the house every morning too, but my routine led me to school, or more accurately, the closest thing to school we had access to. Our institution of education was made up of me and all the other neighbourhood children, gathered up in a small assembly on the dusty ground on the outskirts of town. Our entire source of knowledge consisted of one lady, so old that the bags under her eyes drooped far below what seemed entirely possible and her back hunched far beyond anyone I had ever seen. She would attempt to teach us the Bengali alphabet, she would try to teach us a semblance of arithmetic. I doubt any of the others absorbed much given that they were a rowdy bunch, distracted by the sights and noises around them. However, being quite a curious child, even if I was considered rather daft for that age. I’d ask questions that sometimes were seemingly obvious and other times I’d ask about things completely unrelated to what was on the board, like why the clouds changed colours during rainy days or why different people had varying shades of skin tones. My teacher, often annoyed by the random curve balls I liked to throw, disregarded my inquiries and left me wandering about the many mysteries of life. Luckily when I’d come home, my mother was there to try her very best at giving the most satisfactory answers possible, even if sometimes they were completely wrong. Her patience and understanding kept me from stressing out too much about things that were on my mind for way too long. Life is like a lifeline, there are ups and downs. As cheery as my childhood seemed up to this point, still things began to change as time went on, subtleties that couldn’t be noticed at first glance like the look in my father’s eyes when he would come home at night or the slight tinge of blue below my mother’s cheek. My parents may not have been good at many things, but they were good at keeping their problems away from me, far out of sight from my impressionable young mind. Nevertheless, my childhood slowly turned into a cryptic fusion of mixed messages. I’d come home after a rather vibrant day full of things children do to occupy their time and sometimes find myself at home in a silent and cold dinner session, flanked by two slow moving pillars absent of all eye contact. From what I recall, there was never a loud noise in the middle of the night or harsh yelling of profanities while I lay on my mattress trying to fall asleep. Never was there a harsh argument or a violent hiss at one another. It was for the most part, peaceful, except for the eventual growing heaviness in the air at home. Like a beautiful picture frame that’s tilted ever so slightly. You know something’s not quite right, you just can’t put your finger on it. The dread was like a quiet creek in the distance, or an unnerving stain in the corner of a ceiling. Barely traceable but imminently prominent as time wears on. It was the night before my birthday, I can’t remember exactly which one. My father stayed up late, sitting on one of the front concrete blocks that were built right before my home’s entrance for visiting guests or friends who would drop by to sit and talk. I couldn’t sleep either, I was excited about tomorrow as my parents would usually bring home something nice for me on my birthdays. For the most part, they brought back sweets or desserts only found in the town squares. I saw him from the front door of our home and I called out to him, he slowly turns back and gestures for me to come over. As I walk towards him, I notice that familiar glazed look on his face. To this day, I’m unsure of what substance or drug my father was abusing that made him look so undead, almost demonic. Still speaking in the soft hearted manner that he always had to me, he beckoned me to come sit by his side. As I sat, I saw only a strange toy in his hand. Holding it in his right palm, the little figurine looked like some form of soldier clothed in a red coloured uniform and a black long hat on his head. I asked him what that was, he said it was my birthday gift. It was called a nutcracker. I was impressed by the shiny new plaything, albeit a bit puzzled about its name and purpose. I asked my father about the function of a nutcracker. As my father so dully put it, the function of a nutcracker is in fact to crack nuts and nothing else. A product that made its way into the cycle of demand and supply with its solitary function, probably imported from some far off European toy manufacturing company. A nutcracker couldn’t move forward or speak or spin around. A nutcracker could only crack nuts. This puzzled me even more, prompting him to ask why such a thing came to be. He scratched his head, squinting at the small figurine. “Well I couldn’t say for sure, but it surely has a long and winding back story that perfectly justifies its origination.” He said in a monotonous low voice, slurring his words. Then I asked my father what would happen if all the nuts in the world had been cracked. He thought about it for a moment and said then the nutcracker’s job would be done and there would be no purpose left for it to achieve. It would have become an obsolete product. I stopped asking questions, sensing that my father may become less tolerant of my curious mood. I gave him a sheepish smile, thanked him, and that was the last conversation I ever had with my father. I often think to myself, if I knew he’d be gone the next day, would I have liked to have a better conversation topic? Or would I have liked to chat with him a little longer, there in the cold night air, just the two of us, even in his stoned yet responsive condition? To this day, I think I would have given anything for just a few more moments. A hug, a more meaningful dialogue, anything, with my father. But I suppose a son can only wish. - I remember waiting. An excited young lad, patiently sitting on the cracking floor of his crummy abode. Sitting on the front concrete blocks in front of the entrance. Lying on the cold hard ground in the middle of the small living room. I remember the sun setting and my mother pacing in front on the alley pathway. I remember the cold night air seeping back in through the open door. I remember it being terribly late when two police officers stood before my mother as she began to wail and fall to the ground, waking up an entire neighbourhood, like little crabs popping out of their sandy holes, concerned and distraught. I remember leaning against the entrance door, calling out to her unsure of what to think. I remember the officers staring down at me, hats casting a partial shade over their large faces, revealing only a pair of thick dark brown moustaches. From there on, it’s foggy. I see hospital lights, a lot of men and women in uniform shuffling me from one corner to the next, keeping me away from what seemed to be the cause of the whole midnight disturbance. I remember counters too tall to peak over, my mother being ushered in and out of rickshaws with me tagging behind, long clean corridors and empty waiting rooms, watching my mother sob her eyes out, draped in her disheveled sari, eyes like giant sparkly gems wet with tears, sunken cheeks like the sand colored trenches of the Bengali outskirts. I remember the look on my mother’s face at the funeral the next morning, the look of terror as a truth that weighed a thousand cement bricks hit her at the same velocity of the car that hit my father. Eye bags blackened, staring dead ahead as our man of the house is laid down into his final resting place. I always thought that what made the whole ordeal worse for me was that I was never allowed to see his body. Maybe if I had a last glimpse of the reality of the situation, the cold lifeless thing that used to be my father, laid out on a slab, head cut open by a concrete pavement, bruised and battered and bloodied, maybe then I would be able to come to terms with what happened. But it didn’t turn out that way. I saw him the night before well and alive, then I never saw him ever again. It was as if he never even existed, like he was a figment of my imagination. Turns out that not everyone likes obeying the colours of the traffic lights, rebels to the systems that regulate our hectic routines. Turns out, for them red means go and green means stop. Turns out, a hardworking rickshaw driver couldn’t make it back to his family that night. Turns out, even a traffic light wasn’t enough to stop him from never kissing his wife again, or playing with his son on his birthday again. The first batch of hot brewed coffee or the glorious sensation of the morning sun, add these all to the list of things that he’ll never be experiencing again. Birthdays were not a time of celebration for me since then, take away the glee of a child’s innocent anticipation and replace it with a deep void of endless longing. That’s what the rest of my childhood felt like. We would learn later that the hit and run my father was involved in was at a junction that was common for such accidents to occur. There were no credible eye witnesses, no video evidence, cctv recordings or any leads on the driver that took him from us. Seeing that this was not exactly the most high profile road statistic to take place, the case went cold pretty quick. Whichever way you want to look at it, the person that killed my father had gotten away with it. I wonder how well that person slept that night. I wonder if that person will sleep well ever again. This thought represents to me a semblance of justice to what in my mind I saw as a cruel way for a child to learn of the bitterness of life. Then again, another trail of thought that ensued, was that this person would learn to live with what he had done. He would learn to sleep in his warm bed with reassurance that anyone would have done the same. He would learn to taste the hot food on his plate, drink the hot tea in his mug, to love himself and the ones that surround him again. This thought worried me. With the bread winner gone and my mother leaving for work every morning, not coming home till late in the night, I was left alone most of the time. The house was quiet, the troublesome and sobering air of life moving forward had settled into the cracks and creeks of that home. Time hadn’t stopped, neighbours hung clothes out to dry, children played with balls made out of paper and mud in the streets. Cars zoomed by on the main roads, honking and whirling through the busy intersections, hurrying to get to where they were going. The condolences began to lessen, the sympathy visits of guests with gifts and friends with their awkward apologetic gestures, dropping by to say hello, all came to an end eventually. Essentially, time is a bandage. It wraps onto you and sticks onto the wounds, what follows is an uncomfortable sensation of pain and frustration, then healing, slow and gradual but inevitable and soothing. Even as the years went by, my mother would never be the same. Maybe it was her responsibility as a parent to start working the streets again, or maybe it was because she didn’t manage to say goodbye to my father in the best of terms. Whether it was financial strain or work stress, the smile on her face never stayed for long. From there on, my mother was struggling and lost. Her expression told a story of a broken woman trying to get by with whatever her life had thrown at her. Her clients would sometimes come by the house, for reasons still unclear to me. She would sit her bag down on the ground and usher me out into the streets, kissing me on the forehead and imploring me not to wander too far off. These clients that came and went, their faces began to blend together into a twisted abomination of either guilt-filled expressions or looks of indifference. Men with thick beards or clean chins, skinny and fat, some were even older and more well-off than expected, wearing glasses, carrying suitcases and donning black or gray blazers. Some would give sinister grins and pat me on the head. Some would watch me with nervous stares as I walked out into the dark alleyway to leave them to it. In between me having gained a couple inches of height to realizing the pitch in my voice was deepening, I slowly began to know exactly what my mother’s line of work was. Once that cat was out of the bag, a mixture of disgust and sadness followed suit. If I really thought about it I was utterly devastated that my mother sold her body to the man with the highest bidder, but for the most part, I tried hard not to think about it. Those nights I spent out of the house, often times if it was late and I had nothing better to do, I’d go for a stroll into the dark edge of the woods where my father would take me for paper boat racing by the long winding river. It would be nearly pitch black. Sometimes it would be quiet, with only the tranquil sounds of flowing water gently moving across the large river body synchronised with chirping crickets in the far distance. If I was lucky, a small army of fireflies would visit the area, dimly glowing balls of light that float in the deep dark abstract of the cold forest abyss. There may or may not have been the silent yet piercing sobs of a child peering down into the black waters, mourning the loss of his father. There may or may not have been a faint call for his father from this child, tears trickling down into the undeterred dynamic of the flowing river, not stopping for even the raw pleas of a young mind too naïve to understand the mechanics of this life where nothing stops for you and the world will continue to spin without you or the ones you care about. In any case, this child had much to learn. - Dhaka, like most other cities, is a place rich with opportunities for those who are either privileged enough to have access to the highest levels of networks or the greatest levels of tenacity to go looking for them. For the rest of us, without the resources or diligence, we are cornered either by an endless supply of dead ends or a very limited selection of often unappealing options. My mother fell in line within the second faction. Without an education or an inkling of where to begin for a better career choice, she’s left only with one piece of the puzzle; experience, and she was experienced in only one of the many unappealing options. This isn’t some pathetic attempt to defend my mother’s poor decisions. My point here is that in her trail of thought she did what she had to do for a lack of a better choice. For many in this environment, a woman like her doesn’t have too many options. She is a by-product of her environment and her environment was one that suffocated the mentalities, hopes and dreams of its subjects. For the most part, the stories of individuals struggling in this environment either never get any better or end very badly. Statistics often paint a broad yet irrefutable picture of the truth. Statistics have the potential to show us the uglier things, which we rather not see but need to anyway. Like how prostitution is a booming business in this nation similar to so many other nations surrounding it with 3rd world economies. Like how some of the largest brothels in the more populated cities can house up to a hundred s*x workers at a time. Like how pharmaceutical companies provide under the table prescriptions of industrial grade bodybuilder steroids to the skinny working girl so she can put on weight and appeal to the cultural preferences of her male dominant market. Like how these same men, who want a little meat with their potatoes often abuse, r**e and take advantage of the many struggling girls who are hoping for a square meal that day. Like how these same girls, eventually fall sick from the constant steroid dosages and eventually die a slow and agonising death from organ failure, but wouldn’t mind as long as they can make money along the way. Like how people from all walks of life often prioritize wealth over well-being, little strips of paper determining the mortality rate of individuals, 7 billion stop watches on a rock in space, trading, compromising and justifying their time spent in this world. Statistics reveal to us the harshest truths and the most persistent tragedies, tragedies that take form of evergreen markets designed to manipulate the masses and reward a select few. Eventually, my mother would return home with her hair covering a part of her face or she’d pass by me holding her sari to her mouth. Of course it was difficult to keep me from seeing the bruises on her sunken cheeks or the bright red on her busted lip. The days she came home looking like she just got back from a cage fight, those days reminded me of my father and made me wonder if it was for the best that he wasn’t here anymore. The thought of a stranger laying his hands on her only made my fists clench until they were numb, that thought didn’t break my heart the same way it did when my father was alive. I could deal with wanting to beat a stranger to a pulp, I couldn’t deal with watching a slow burning cold war unravel between the two people I ever cared about. The more I’d see her, the worse she’d look. Sometimes I’d see her kneeling down in the gutter just before the main road, gagging furiously. Sometimes I’d hear her sobbing at night, calling out my father’s name while I lay on my side trying to pretend I was asleep. It came to a point where she seemed constantly suffering from one ailment or another, either limping from the blisters on her feet or letting out furious coughs that persisted for weeks at a time. She’d become agitated at the slightest things, like the way I fanned the fire we used to cook what little food we had or when I got little pieces of dirt on my mattress when I stepped over it. Perhaps worst of all was when I noticed that she started gaining weight. I’d hear about the stories from neighbours about working girls who started putting on weight and the consequences that soon followed after. This is what may have been the last straw in a grueling observation made over many years. The fact that as little food as we were getting, she seemed to become more plum. Sometimes I’d take walks around the alleyways or on the large empty super highways and fly-overs that littered the city in the late nights, dreaming about walking in during my mother’s working sessions and rescuing her from a groping, sweaty, wide-eyed client. A menacing figure in the shadows standing over the cowering men that wrapped themselves around her. A reckoning force ready to deliver a large thick dose of vigilante styled justice for the thousands of oppressed and downtrodden folk of the slums. With each blow struck, colour returned to the faces of the women. With each bare-knuckle landing on the crushed eye sockets and cracked skulls of their pleading clients, smiles and laughter returned to a lifetime engulfed by fear and struggle. With each limp body that falls shattered and broken upon the cold hard ground, beauty is restored once more for the disfigured feminine spirit. An entire populace quietly cheering and applauding a faceless, dark hero. Whispering his name in the day, anticipating his return in the face of adversity. Suddenly a car or motorbike zooms past and I’m back in the unflinching, inescapable reality. A scrawny little kid, now grown into a scrawny little young man, yearning for strength he doesn’t have, to solve a problem of which the complex roots that have grown deep into the very foundation of this society so very obviously couldn’t be solved with a couple of thrown punches. The night I finally confronted her about my desire to stop studying and start helping her out with our financial situation, my mother sat across from me, chewing tiredly on a chunk of stale bread. By now, she wasn’t even trying to cover the injuries she sustained or the bruises on her face. Sitting cross legged on the floor of our messy home, we ate in silence. She must have known what was on my mind, simply ignoring the unspoken questions that filled the air, until that night, when she stopped to look up at me, eyes void of hope, and mine filled with pain from one dead parent while another worked herself to the brink. She was finally giving me a chance to speak and I wanted to let it all out. The first quiet words out of my mouth were “No more.” She probably expected a follow up to that, as did I, but nothing more followed suit. Maybe it was because ultimately, we both had spoken and argued about what had to be done, just not with words. When two people live together for that long and share the same concerns all the while, not much is needed to be said. We might not have been your typical, picture-perfect family, but my parents always did intend for me to continue studying for as long as possible so that one day I may have a shot at opportunities they could only ever dream of. After my father had gone, I suppose my mother’s intention was to honor him by staying on that path by starting back on her old line of work to make ends meet while I go on to finish school, probably even moving on to college, getting myself a degree and landing myself a nice cushy office job somewhere in the business districts of Dhaka. Sometimes life doesn’t always work out as planned. Is it not natural to want what’s best for your loved one? I wanted what was best for my mother, some time to rest and mourn her husband’s loss instead of spending nights in the arms of endless droves of paying customers just so she can put food on the table and one day see her son graduate with a fancy cert from some big educational institution. In my opinion, her pain and suffering wasn’t worth the compromise. So with that, my worn-down mother finally let me take care of her and I was off to look for any work I could find. - It was of my understanding that Toushif, one of the neighbourhood friends I had known in my adolescence had been helping out with his father’s cracker selling job. Carrying large bags of various assortments of crackers, biscuits and trinkets, him and his dad would walk miles throughout the city center in search for customers. They would hop from block to block, either standing at specific locations by specific streets where they knew customers could find them. They would walk from eatery to eatery, offering their products from table to table until either someone bought a pack or the shop owners asked them to leave. They’d rinse and repeat this process, making enough to sustain an entire household and keep their children in school. It was with this family that I would make my first business proposal. If they let me join them in their scheduled visits into the city, they could take my earnings and pay me with whatever amount of commission they deemed fit. I convinced my friend to take him over to see his father so we could hash things out. Sitting there on the floor of his living room, I looked around and realised that his home wasn’t too different from mine. The only real differences I could see were the slight improvements made in the kitchen area, an additional supply of pots, pans and groceries, seemingly new clothes on the young children that played around and outside of the living quarters and sets of cleaner and thicker mattresses. It was a step up, not too far up from where my mother and I were previously stuck in, but a step up nonetheless. Something achievable and not too ambitious was what I needed to start off my work life. His father returned home not too soon after I arrived and I greeted him at the entrance as humbly as I could. The first day of work with Toushif and his father was one that I’d remember, being a new experience and all. We’d walk along the busy highways, large heavy lumps over our backs through the daunting morning heat. My legs were giving way before we even set foot into the first district we targeted to sell at. Initially, I would watch how my friend and his father approached and interacted with people, learning the ropes in a sense. His father was a rather old but fit looking man with a stern look on his face. Yet he spoke with a soft voice that would catch you off guard if you weren’t expecting it. For every twenty rejections that they had to swallow, one would convert into an actual purchasing customer. On that first day, we managed to sell a good 30 packs of crackers and biscuits between the three of us. We worked till late into the night, walking through each district and revisiting the different eateries that we had gone to before in the morning. By the time I had returned home, my legs were burning rods that ached up to the lower portion of my spine, my arms the width of flailing straws fell limp to the sides of my torso and wouldn’t rise up any higher past my chest. All this for half the pay my mother had received performing her service. Still, I was glad she was done and I was glad I wasn’t a helpless bystander to our dire situation for a change. I had some control over my destiny for once. That control put a tired smile on my face, as I lay motionless beside my sleeping mother. As arduous at it was, in order to attempt matching my mother’s previous income I had offered to double up on Toushif’s usual schedule, venturing out on my own on some days to sell as many packets as I could in the city center. In the beginning, the journey was a grueling one. Sometimes in my ambitious endeavor, I’d bring along two colossal bags of tidbits. Limping along the highways in the scorching heat as cars passed by and swept up mountains of dust through the air. In time, my body slowly got used to the routine. What once was a frail and skinny lump of bones, soon became a toughened, tiny pack of rough skin and hard, lean muscle. I was still a scrawny thing, half the size and height of most other men, but I was made out of wood, smoked by the cruel Dhakan sun, dark skinned glistened by constant sweat on my brow and across my forearms. I was able to endure more, carry heavier loads and breathe less frantically as I made my way from district to district. In some ways, I suppose being left with little choice makes perseverance a skill that’s all the more achievable. What I remember the most about those days working for Toushif’s family, was the sights and sounds of the bustling city life that surrounded me on my endless walks throughout the different streets and office lots. The town square was a mixture of colours and smells, with stalls jutting out from every corner, producing aromas of various distinctive foods, my stomach grumbling with every whiff. I’d glance around to see the different people from all walks of life, observing their fashion sense, their mannerisms and awkward gestures as they talked to each other or passed by on their phones. The tea-maker with his thick pointy moustache that stretched way beyond the cheeks on his face, mixing an assortment of hot liquids. I’d watch the women in the city with their long wavy hair and high heels that seemed impossible to walk in yet there they were confidently strolling along the concrete pavements, busy getting to where they need to go. I’d see businessmen waiting at the side of the road for taxis or rickshaws, their buttoned up blazers blowing awkwardly in the hot wind, donning neatly patterned ties and holding sleek suitcases or large stroller bags, wiping the sweat off their foreheads with large fancy handkerchiefs. I always wondered why they looked so worried all the time, being so seemingly well-off. Most of the time after returning home from a long day of cracker selling, my mother would be sound asleep. In fact, I seemed to be able to catch her when she was awake less and less. Whenever she was awake, she would have a weary look on her face. I could tell from her deep purple, sunken eye bags that she’d been crying sometimes and I was okay with that as long as she wasn’t out there anymore, scouring the night in search for lonely men. This was after all, part of the plan, to give her an opportunity to properly mourn the loss of her husband and some time for proper rest, she needed it especially as she grew older over time. With every week, every month that went by, the work that seemed so hard before slowly began to feel easier. No doubt it was a physically challenging ordeal, but my mind slowly began to numb out the aches and cries of my own body. If taking control of my life meant that I had to put up with this pain, then I was willing to undergo the suffering as long as it meant that my destiny was in my own hands. Toushif and his family seemed happy to have me, the arrangement we had with each other was after all a mutually beneficial one. His father had begun to treat me as his own son, sometimes even offering to help me with my share of the bags if ever I looked like I was struggling. Of course I didn’t have the heart to let an elderly almost thrice my age relieve my burden for me. As I got stronger and more used to the heavy loading, I was the one who began offering to carry his bags for him and sometimes he even gave in. I’d carry six or five extra bags at a time and he seemed to appreciate the help, as did Toushif. Still, his father would like to joke that when he was my age he could carry 8 full bags all by himself. He’d like to tell us stories when we were taking breaks under the trees of the city center, eating salted gruel that Toushif’s mother would cook for us so we could bring it on our journey and have for our lunches. He’d mumble loudly with his mouth full about how he used to be the strongest boy in his district. They’d round up all the concrete pails around the neighbourhood that were used for sitting on in front of tea selling stalls, then they’d gather in large crowds as they watched Toushif’s dad lift four pails at a time, two in each arm, one of them weighing at least 40 kilograms. As he picked them up and stood with legs apart, he’d invite anyone in the crowd to attempt pushing him to the ground. According to the old man whom I only referred to as Mr Arif, not a single person could achieve pushing him down, not even once. From there on, he tells us that he went on to achieve critical fame within the city, shaking hands with officials and celebrities that would come down from various regions all around Bangladesh just to watch him perform. He’d conduct various demonstrations of brute strength, including tying a large rope around his torso and chest which was attached to a large four wheeler then begin pushing himself forward by tugging viciously on an additional rope in front of him. He’d be able to move that four wheeler as far as an entire stretch of an alleyway or inner road. His son concurred, stating that he would watch the whole thing go down and cheer his father on as a toddler. Eventually, he began entering strong man competitions which were few and far between, even getting as far as organizing his own strong man competitions throughout different areas inside and outside of Dhaka. Alas, in the middle of his promising career as a strong man, he was walking to work one day when he apparently slipped on a newspaper strip and tumbled down 30 flights of stairs, hitting his back against a cement pillar at the bottom. He was hospitalized for 6 months, suffering a concussion, broken ribs and bones in 6 different areas of his body and finally, a detrimental fracture in his lower spine. The surgeries and treatments had cost his family a fortune, putting a huge dent on his financial stability and even amounting to a serious amount of debt. With not enough left for proper rehabilitation and doctor’s grimly announcing that he will never be able to walk again, Mr Arif was discharged back to his home where he began to slowly work towards regaining his ability to get back up on his feet. Through sheer determination and a poor man’s stubborn mentality, he was able to stand up right on his own two feet for a few seconds at a time. Day by day, using a rope to hold himself in an upright position, he would train his mind and body to do the impossible, which he eventually did. He began to walk slowly once more and in a couple of years he managed to prove the doctors wrong by strolling back into the hospital, shaking the hands of the surgeon and medical consultants that helped him recover, even the ones that insisted his situation was a hopeless one. Mr Arif believes that the people and things in your life all deserve respect and appreciation, especially the ones that doubt you as they will be the ones that contribute greatly to your instinct that drives the desire for challenge. It was a great story, even if parts of it were exaggerated. Yet for me at the time, although it was primarily a story about one man who never gave up, it was also a story about how life can really throw you a crap hand sometimes. Some challenges that get hauled your way may be so severe that even if you survive them, you may never fully recover from the scars. In any case, Toushif’s father knew how to tell us stories that would forget about the horrible tasting gruel we were forced to gobble down and distract us from the aches on our bodies, so that we were able to push on after lunch with trying to sell a couple more packets for the day. The more we sell, the less bags we have to deal with on the walk home. On some days, that prospect was more incentive than the money itself.