I am five, a child, when I interrupt my mother. ‘That’s not how you say it. You’re wrong.’ There is embarrassment on my cheeks, it’s colouring my face red. Red: the colour of anger, and shame, and everything bad to have ever happened in the world. Why can’t she say it properly? It’s just one word.
I am eight, a bit older. I’ve just learnt a new word at school today. It was a big word. I’m proud of myself. I was getting rid of my accent. I no longer speak like I go to a Bangla Medium school. I go to a nice English medium school and I’m not like other Bangladeshi students. Red symbolises hate, and that is exactly what I feel towards my country. I want to go abroad. I want to be ‘বিদেশি’. I want fairer skin and lighter hair. In a bit more time I can leave Bangladesh and go abroad. Then I can finally leave this embarrassment of a country behind.
I’m twelve, I’m more mature than I’ve ever been. Bangla is totally lame. No one likes it. We just want to get it over with. There are illustrations of roses in my textbook. They are red. I’m bored in class, so I hastily colour over them with a blue highlighter. Red is the colour of contempt towards why time goes so slow during boring classes. Contempt at why we have to learn this difficult language if we aren’t gonna use it anyways. I am too ‘cool’ to care about bangla, and I just want class to end.
I’m fourteen. The teacher told me to read out loud from the book, and I seem to have forgotten the bangla for ‘1952’. Once again, embarrassment paints my cheeks red, but this time, it is different. Red, the colour of blood spilt over our language. The colour of the setting sun that should give us hope and the colour of our hard won independence. I have forgotten my identity, and I don’t know how to get it back.
I am fifteen. I saw someone say that Bangla was a stupid language. Nothing compared to Urdu. The West Pakistanis should have won. I see red. Red is the colour of anger. Red is the colour of love and pride. I am a Bangladeshi and my language is my identity. Without it, I am no one. I have no home. I am as lost as a blind man stumbling over the hot sands of a desert.
Today, I lay in bed, with sweet strums of the harmonium playing from my laptop. I start to zone out, and the familiar poetic lilt of Bangla fills the room. ‘কতবার ভেবেছিনু আপনা ভুলিয়া’ It’s one of my favourite songs. I smile, absentmindedly mouthing the lyrics. Rabindranath and Nazrul did not work so hard for me to neglect the beauty of Bangla. I refuse to. I belong to Bangla, and I have from the moment I was born, and will till the moment I die.
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