adhunika blog

Recently the buzz on the media is the two-year celebration of 400 Years of Capital City Dhaka, Bangladesh, we wanted to post a thought provoking article from our readers, Enjoy!

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By now many of us have watched Al Gore starred movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth‘; many of us have known about the danger of global warming. We know how quickly the glaciers in the North Pole are melting raising the sea level, that if the sea level rises, Bangladesh will be one of the most vulnerable areas on earth that can be submerged under water by year 2025.

However, in the context of Bangladesh, environmental pollution is already so severe that the bigger picture of global warming scenario may seem far away. For Bangladesh, it is not just global warming; we are polluting our own environment everyday. Especially for Dhaka, our Capital - the City that we are so proud of, we are polluting its air, water, soil/land; not to mention noise pollution and light pollution- all due to our lack of proper planning, and due to our lack of sensitivity towards saving the environment. There are so many aspects of this issue that here with this discussion we can try to focus only on what we can do at our end to protect our own environment.

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This article is written by our guest blogger Fariha Sarwat. This has been published earlier in Unheard Voices Blog.-Admin

The Newage front-page reports that among other things in Bangladesh, the state of gender-based violence at the work place is also deteriorating. Big surprise! The news comes as a result of a survey conducted by the Social Science Research Council of the Planning Commission, under Ministry of Finance and Planning. The news report by BSS states that -˜92.3 per cent working women of urban areas and 88.3 per cent of rural areas have been badly treated by various types of violence by their male counterparts”. Therefore, on an average, 90% of all women suffer from gender violence at their workplaces. I honestly can’t say that I am surprised.

The study reports that - ˜huge number of adolescent girls and women were being sexually abused in their workplace but it was the most hidden and underreported from violence as there is a tendency to deny the incident.” Almost all the women I know, including self and FnF and those I have worked with, have complained about facing gender-violence of some form or other at their workplace. It’s a malice we are all equally aware of, but powerless against. Even this report”for all it’s gravity and accuracy”is going to be well received, but after being discussed, debated and dissected, will be forgotten and our fates will remain the same. Perhaps, women who are violated every day have already lost faith in our institutions, laws and elders and their ability to protect us. Perhaps, it’s because most people still don’t even understand what constitutes gender-violence/sexual harassment, not even the victims themselves. Perhaps, it’s because we’ve all somehow contributed in making things worse for us by encouraging violence in our silences. Perhaps because we’ve become complacent about this and now choose to take it in our stride”after all, independent, successful women who’re trying to make it in a man’s world should just learn to ˜deal with it” and not complain (because men tell us they don’t).

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By Farzana Chowdhury, Bindu, member of Adhunika.

It seems like nowadays everyone wants to emigrate somewhere else from Bangladesh. Like me a lot of Bangladeshis are immigrating to Canada. When I go back home to Bangladesh, my friends and family tell me that I am far better off living in Canada than I would be living in Bangladesh. When I ask my friends or family members why they want to emigrate to Canada or North America, the answer is usually, to provide a better life for their children, to give them a secure environment and also for themselves. When I ask myself this question, why I moved to the States and subsequently to Canada, my answer is different. I got married and moved to the States where my husband was a student. Truly, North America never attracted me in the way it attracts many people back home, I loved living in Bangladesh, and I had a wonderful career. (more…)

By Moutushi Islam & Tonima Das.

Nila, her husband and their two years old daughter have landed in the United States of America, with the dream and hope for a new life of success, stability, and solvency. However, the reality speaks differently. All they have encountered are a very new culture, different climate, and a range of foreign foods. Nothing is similar to home. Nothing gives the comfort of the home they left miles away.

During this process of settling down, Nila and her husband have started looking for a regular income - a first step to a secured life in the US. They look forward to a decent job, something better than what they have done in Bangladesh. While her husband looks for a full time job Nila hopes to get a “good” job with the “green card” in her hand. With a graduate degree and months long working experience as a teacher in Bangladesh Nila expects either a teaching opportunity or may be a part time position in a bank while she can also look after her toddler. Unfortunately the “green card” turns out to be a mere entry pass to the US and does not ensure a regular job in this foreign land. For many immigrants, the dream of having a stable income usually turns into a dreadful journey of doing ‘odd job’ at ‘odd hours’. Besides, many other daily needs like a car to commute or a driving license gets into the way and stops one to take up a good job in the US. In addition, the primary information for getting training and starting a job are essential and many of them who come here for the first time are not aware of those needs. (more…)

Our recent discussions on Thoughts on Divorce at the blog brought out many poignant issues, and one of them was substance abuse among the younger generation. We wanted to highlight the work of Solace“ an initiative by a parent whose children were diagnosed with substance abuse, now another parent who has joined the network to dedicate her time for parents of children with drug problems.

While you read and learn about the network and these amazing parents to support the recovering patients, I would request you to tell the readers what have worked or working when your life partner, friends, family is dealing with the abuse, or if you are a recovering patient we would like to know what have worked for you. You can be anonymous when you share your experience.

Solace: A Network for Parents

Nothing is more traumatic for parents than to see their children slowly slipping away due to drugs. They feel helpless and see no way to help their children recover. Drug users and addicts are shunned by our society as outcasts. This is a social problem, says Lubna Marium, a well-known dancer, now a grandmother of one. Drug users are not criminals. Everyone needs to talk about this problem, whereby addicts can thrive within a support system and eventually recover. (more…)

The word ‘dawaat’ has a different connotation for expatriates of Bangladesh, it is a term for Bangladeshi party. When it comes to partying, Bangladeshis are all about food, we can call dawaats food festivals as well! Sometimes there is a hidden competition as to which party offered more entres. Really, is it the trait that we people like to feed and eat?

But that’s not all, there is more! It also includes chatting; we call it ‘adda’. In Bangladesh I was very much fond of addas, call me ‘adda-baaj’ with friends or families. I always learnt something new in those discussions, or at least gained pure joy of being with friends.

For Bangladeshi expatriates adda has taken a different shape in the form of dawaat. Here, we go to a party being all dressed up. Most of the cases male and female areas are separated. If you go with your husband or a male friend (although there is a risk of generating gossip if you are an unmarried women and taking a male friend with you), there is a risk that you won’t see him for the next few hours until the party is over. It seems to me to be the old days of ‘Andar Mahal’ (inner house for women); it also seems funny in a way that the same women who are working with both men and women in their real lives become ‘Antopoor Bashinis’ (captive women) here! (more…)

“Working woman” is no longer a new term in Bangladeshi Culture. In addition to those special feature pages in the mainstream newspapers these days we are seeing TV shows highlighting women’s careers, success stories, and issues concerning working women. The focus is really to encourage women to join the workforce and feel them welcome in this arena. In all these TV shows, newspaper columns women guests are asked how they manage the balance between their work and other household responsibilities like cooking, parenting etc -   traditionally known as “women’s responsibilities”.

It sometimes makes me curious, are we really making the room for women to work outside home when we are keeping the same expectation that they will take care of their all other traditional responsibilities even though they work outside? Managing household duties and children alone is a 24/7 job, and it is literally impossible for a woman to fulfill those when she is also working fulltime outside home. Naturally other grown up people in the household has to take more responsibility to keep the house running and in most of the cases the other significant people in the household are the husband and sometimes the in-law family. (more…)