Shadow's Desk

Bangladesh just hosted the opening ceremony (or BCB aka India’r dalal ceremony?) for the ICC T20 World Cup. But it did not feel like Bangladesh was in the driver's seat. If a person did not know the geographical location of the ceremony, he would have guessed it was taking place in Mumbai or Delhi. Indian performers. Indian culture.  And at one point, it seemed Indian audience. Shame. I decided to collect a couple of reviews from people who went to the ceremony. I wanted to get the inside view.  So, here they go: Mastura Tasnim, 21st Batch, Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka. "Arrived two hours late because I had some work at the time, but the lines seemed to be longest right then, with people literally fighting to get in. By the time I entered, it was all AR Rahman and his group of dancing, singing musicians, and I was told Ayub Bacchu, Fuad and a number of other Bangladeshi musicians performed before I arrived. My mother naturally did not like ...

I was asked the aforementioned question while I was talking in Bengali (!) with my parents. I put down my phone, smiled and turned towards my friend and said to him: "Oh! Everyone in my country does it.We mix a couple of English words here and there with our language". With a quizzical expression, he said: "That's weird. Why don't you speak in fluent Bengali? Isn't that your mother tongue?" His questions stopped me on my track, because the answer shocked and shamed me. I realized that the reason we don't speak in straight Bengali is because we don't know how to. That we are too much used to speaking in English with everyone back in our country. That we focused so much on English that we forgot our own mother tongue. I didn't want to tell my friend that there are people, students of my age, who preferred English over Bengali, preferred to write essays in English than in Bengali. Heck! I know people who can't even count from 1 to 100 in ...