"Weathered faces (lined in pain)"
Estelle Mahnuma, Frauline M Chaudhury, On e-mail
There is a Sufi saying, "The heart sees what the eye cannot". In February, the beginning of Spring, I see the cold winter pass. Every day has been cold in the past three months and in the second week of February, the snow melts and the sunbeams touch the earth. The winter is a time of great hardships for the homeless people. The spring continues for three months and hundreds of flowers grow. We can see more smiling faces. People are coming outdoors as the cold has passed. The children's faces are smiling and playful. The mother's face looks burdened, especially if she is poor. In the city the men and women are equally greedy to find their materialistic partners. I leave the city, and the faces wearing false smiles and return to look at the children in the park. The faces in China are riding bicycles and smiling at me. The faces of women in need in India show their sadness. The face of a Buddhist monk in Nepal is in search of peace. The face of the child whose parents never communicate is very sad. The lined faces of elderly people in Bangladesh are walking in the street, showing the signs of suffering and ageing. I see the sad faces of people in slums when they have lost their homes in the flood while the rich people decorate their buildings. Vincent Van Gogh painted, "nameless faces on aimless walls, ragged men in ragged clothes, weathered faces lined in pain, are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand" (McLean). Shakespeare painted hundreds of faces with his words. Rabindranath Tagore observes the landscape. He writes about a belief system of Brahma and peace. Both Edward Said (Yeats and Decolonisation) and Rabindranath talk about nationalism as a kind of racism, two sides of the same coin. As Tagore observes the beauty of the landscape and writes about it, I want to quote one striking line: "When the face of the landscape is sad, my eyes fill with tears."
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. PHOTO: Syed Zakir Hossain |
