Pohela Boishakh

My father and I celebrated Pohela Boishakh with two glasses of Merlin's Treat on the banks of the Danube in Budapest. When we returned from Hungary, we celebrated the occasion properly with a Barbeque and invited a number of Bangladeshis. As great as the last few days have been, it reminded me of the fact that in the past 6 years, I have only celebrated Pohela Boishakh in Bangladesh once. In 2005, we were in Beijing, in 2006 in Dhaka, in 2007 & 2008 in India, in 2009 in Rabat, in 2010 in Berlin and in 2011 in Budapest. It would have been nice to see Dhaka burst into colour for the New Year but I suppose I will really savour these moments (and this travelling) once I move back to Bangladesh for a longer stretch of time. It has also been interesting to meet and hear the life stories of Bangladeshi non-residents/asylum seekers/hyphenated dual nationals around the world!

I also came across this really nice poem:

On Children 
by Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

16.04.2011

Berlin