Story of Aryan - 6

In the last week of Dhaka, Aryan and his parents paid a visit to one of Aryan's father's old friends. 

They were insanely wealthy.

Sometimes Aryan wondered where that man's money REALLY came from.

but the man himself wasn't so bad...he just loved bragging about his business.

The moms got along great.  All they ever talked about besides gossiping were clothes and jewelry...and they never got tired.

And for the cherry on top, they had a young beautiful daughter.

Aryan knew why they came here.  What he didn't know was what she was carrying...

but it was probably something worth a tons of her daddy's cash..ahem..black money.

She is perfection, thought Aryan, as he slowly drifted to lala land with his fantasies of him and his future wife ...it was too good to be true!

At last!  The parents were going to make things final.  She was the girl!

Arranged marriages aren't so bad afterall, he thought.

tbc..

Story of Aryan Part 5

He could not believe what he was doing.  Meeting a random girl for the first time at her apartment.  Hey, thats how his other friend back in virginia found ms. right.

Angry short man: Who are you?
Aryan: ummm I'm a friend..uhhh..the brother of a coworker of your daughter's..my sister had a message to send to her...is she here?

How dare you say that about my daughter? She does not even work!  Do you know who we are??? Leave us alone before I send some people to break your bones! 

Well that didn't go perfect.  Screw this, what am i doing anyway.

Aryan desides to leave.

but something stops him.

Couldn't be...could it?

wow, it has to be her.  She looks so different today.

Damn it, why can't i take my eyes off of her?

Girl:  Oh great, not another stalker..how long has this one been following me? WHY do I always have to be followed!  I wish I could leave this country!

maya!

Yes abbu..

do you know this young man?

no abbu...

you are lieing to me. I knew it!

what abbu???

This is not the first time a boy has followed you from that 5 star restaurant!  Tell me what is really going on!
*busted*

But abbu!

Go to your room!

abbu!

There goes Maya's job.  I guess I really blew it. 

Poor girl, thought aryan. 

She was cute too.

.........................................

She should have at least told her father she was working. Why would she lie.

Don't feel guilty, Aryan said to himself.

She was asking for it.

The 2nd to the last week of his stay in Dhaka...

He didn't care about the horrible heat,frequent power outages, nosey relatives, big insects,and loud cars and people around him anymore.  He managed to sleep despite all the noise.

He was going to see many things today with his family.  Like the sritishodho, shohid minar..

Fighting the traffic to see many other historical and notable places that make up the busy city of dhaka.

But the most boring part of all was listening to his father lecturing him about the importance of having a house of your own in Bangladesh no matter how far away you live from it.  So he started showing Aryan the 2 properties he had built with his sweat and blood...one building was already built while the other was in the process.

Yeah, bamboo, cement, and bricks... those arethe last things he would want to see.  What was the point of looking at all of this anyway.  He lived in the U.S. and he had no plans of ever moving back so why even bother to look.
Something however caught his attention...

This was the building that was built. There were already families living in each floor paying rent, and for a second it felt like dejavu for him.  Ofcourse, this was where Maya lived.  He couldnt help but get out of the car..

Mom and Dad wouldn't even notice.  I'll just go up there and apologize..then everything will be back to normal.

What a pleasant surprise! Yikes, she doesn't look too happy.

Maya: Get out of my way and never ever show me your sorry face again!  Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to get that well-paid job???? Thanks to you, my dad made me quit because of people like you making my life miserable.  So you have any idea how much this money could have helped the family!?

Aryan: Oh no...im really sorry..look can you keep it down...trust me..i had no bad intentions, im not a freak!

Oh great, mom's hear.

mom:  Who do you think you are insulting my son like that! It's girls like you that I am afraid would hurt my little boy. Before saying anything to my son you need to look at yourself you little ex-waitress.  Waitress in Dhaka, I can only imagine the things you do. Get down to your level you dispicable girl.

Angry short man: Forgive my daughter sir.  This is entirely my fault.  She is naive and innocent and has no understanding about manners sometimes.  I shouldn't have yelled at your son sir, I misunderstood and I apologize for my rude act.

Aryan's dad:  I didn't expect this out of you bhai.  You need to teach your daughter many things.  He comes from a well-educated and respected family and you threat my son by telling him you will break his bones?  He is an engineer working in the state's most well known company.......

and blah blah blah..

.....oh boy it never ever ended....

Look what you've done Aryan.

part6..

Art of the Day - Charming Fella



My favorite work of all!  The handsome gentleman image that always attracted me.  A man like the one above, in this case, Shahrukh Khan from Devdas (My all-time favorite bollywood actor ever!).  I spent extra time on this one...the outfit, hands, lamppost...whatever possible thing there was.  This picture speaks for itself.  I need that patience again so I can start drawing sketches like this one.

Art of the Day - down memory lane

No, this is not a recent drawing.  This is in fact, one of many drawings I did back in 2001.  I came back home to the U.S. and this was one of the sketches I found hanging on my family room.  Who's the girl? Well guess..who else? The 8-year-old ME.  I know, you might be thinking I love myself.  The actual purpose of choosing to draw the little me, however, was to experiment with the hair texture...something I was very new at sketching. 

Wish I was that child again!  

The Bangladeshi guy moving to Europe

The first time I heard of opportunities in Sweden from immigrants was during my Bangladesh trip in December 2008. Something that never caught my attention before, a big flyer floating in the air of some university street saying Sweden is offering student visas to Bangladeshis of all ages. I was living in the U.S. at the time and the only thing that I ever heard was people really wanting to come to the states and settle.

When I got engaged I obviously knew a lot more about Sweden, but mainly that this was one of the richest countries of Europe especially during the time of the world's economic decay.

I've heard and seen many immigrant stories in America, but now it's time to share one that I am seeing (in process hopefully) living in Europe.

I want to share a little story about this young man who came from Bangladesh to settle in Sweden. He actually stayed at our place for a couple of days... nearly 3, but boy was he a character! This outgoing energetic guy opened up within the next 2 days of his stay and used to constantly make me and my mother-in-law laugh with his bangladeshi daughter-in-law/mother-in-law jokes. The kid was a motormouth.

This 21-year-old left his family giving them the hope of sending them money from the big cash he will earn abroad, working. At a young age, he felt that he was responsible to get his sister married, send money to educate his other siblings, give his parents support, buy some land in Bangladesh, make his own house, work his butt off in Europe, find a decent girl to start a family with, have kids, and so on. "The Bangladeshi Dream", which most bengalis picture abroad.

He was apparently a distant relative to my husband's cousin's husband. If that makes any sense. I'm telling you, you will be surprised who you are related to if you are a Bengali! Everybody is somehow related!

So that's how this young man got our address. We let him stay for a couple of days, because we felt awfully guilty to say no. Because we really suck at saying no. To see that a young boy from our motherland can not find a place to sleep while he searches for admission to a university with his student visa. But mainly because some families know exactly how it feels to move to a new country all by yourself and try making a new life from scratch. Having absolutely nobody to guide you not to mention the limited abililites, time, and resources you have. It becomes a lonely depressing place with lots and lots of sacrifice.

He came to Sweden in March i think. February or March. Which means it was freezing cold with damn ice all over the streets. I have absolutely NO idea how he dragged himself up that big slippery icey hill of death with his extra heavy bright red luggage all by himself. The luggage looked bigger than him. Considering he came from Bangladesh, I can just imagine how awfully cold he felt. He would always shiver. Like even inside the house, when the heater was on with all the candles lit up. He never ever took off his jacket. Not even when he slept. During the day, he hardly sat around the house. He got himself a Tunnelbana map and knew his way around the city, talked to a few people with the mixture of his bangla and english whether they understood it or not, even made a friend or 2, and learned some words in swedish. He said he even got some chick's number (I highly doubt that). All within a day. He really wanted to stay.

The first day he was so fascinated to have learned how to do dishes for the very first time. He never did his own dishes back home, they had a maid. So he requested to take both my plate and my mother-in-law's plate to show us what my father-in-law taught him. The results were 2 shiny squeaky clean plates, which took him about a lifetime to clean. At least he got potential.

This kid gave me a lot of advice. I wonder how he knew so much. I think he was way too mature for his age, in ways. But his advice about running a family was quite inciteful. I guess since he came from the same town as my in-laws, he was more familiar with the expectations that I was never aware of before. Out of all the that, the main point was, that I, as the oldest daughter-in-law, first wife in the family, first sister-in-law, and so on, should be extra careful about making big decisions. Because that decision depends on the entire family. Well thanks a lot kid. That's comforting.

Unfortunately there was a change of plans, and he was no longer going to stay in Sweden. Seemed like his destiny was somewhere else. In Belgium! He found a family there who were inviting him willingly. That family even had a daughter, not to mention a citizen. He kept telling us "I have to make my own money before I get married" like the most responsible man in the world, "citizen or not, marriage isn't for me right now."

I have no idea what happened to the student visa thing in Sweden. Don't remember, never really paid much attention.

I've noticed at times he gave me the "look". The look that a little boy gives when he wants to ask something about you. Don't know what it was though.

When I took the car keys out the night he was leaving for Belgium, he asked with a face of awe "That's impossible, you don't have to do anything. I will feel ashamed bhabi. You've done a lot." Didn't really do much for him actually. My in-laws did a lot though. I think it was his first time seeing a girl drive a car late night to drop someone off. Hey, I would feel bad to see my father-in-law walk late at night in the icey street knowing that we have a car sitting in the garage. That day, my in-laws were obligated to offer one of our old winter jackets to him so he won't shiver to death while going to belgium. We gave him bangladeshi food on his plate for a couple days, and a place to sleep. In return, he gave us a humor-filled house for 2 days, and some home-made Bangladeshi snacks (pita) that his mom made for him for his long journey. Those things were harder than rock by the way. It was sweet of him though. The last thing left to do was wish him goodluck with his life and drop him off safely to the airport, which my father-in-law had done. The least i had done was to take the car and drop them off at the station to resist the ice.

That night he suddenly said in bangla, "got to admit, the toughest life to live is abroad. You are away from family and loved ones, you have to do everything yourself, nobody is there to look after you, hell, Bangladesh is best afterall." He looked at me for a second and added on, "I'm sure you know exactly what I'm talking about."

Don't Hate on American Girls

Why do some people automatically assume that American girls are tramps?  Just because they heard a couple of distracting stories doesn't mean that's all that goes on with girls over there.  I've heard the same stories in other areas of this world so why put more emphasis on a girl from the US?  Seriously, everybody be hating on us.  We get it so bad..worse than European girls.  I just don't understand why it has always been that way. 

When my husband told my father-in-law about me for the first time, everything was ok, until some old friend of his warned him about American girls, telling him they're "danger".  Off went his sleep at night and i guess from that day on he had an image of me being some uncivilized airhead who would lead his son astray..until he finally got to know the real me.

From the time i turned 20 I've heard some guys saying that they will eventually go marry a girl from Bangladesh because the ones down here are not up to their family's standards.  So they mess around and go out with one or 2, even 3 nice american girls and eventually break their hearts, dump them make them realize how pathetic they really are and settle down with a "real desi girl" from the desh.  It's funny how even after all this, it's only the american girl that gets blamed for everything that happens.

Years back, a couple of bengalis once told me I lacked values.  Family values.  I was told that only because i was raised in the US.  They assumed that since I've been living there for so long, I know absolutely nothing about culture. That I was too "Americanized".Time to time that small, trivial little opinion of those people still gets to me.  Because those people also lived in America, not to mention they were my age.  I thought people of our generation would at least broaden their horizen a bit, and consider that this world is not just black and white.

Theres a minority that tends to generalize America, but isn't that how the world works?  It's always the bad guys that get more attention.  Just like how it is thought that Islam is not a religion of peace, but all about suicide bombing, or all blacks are criminals, that all white people in the world are racists and alcoholics. 

All American girls are not tramps.