Written by Alok Das
Part II: Remembering the Beginning: Wilting
This piece returns to the beginning—but not to origin myths or womb stories. Instead, it asks a hard question: What made departure necessary and possible? By sharing the story behind the story, the author invites a reckoning with motive, conditionalities and survival. Author brings the story of home, messiness and beauty and invites attention to global surrounding that makes the desire to leave one place for the other – layered and complex – just like IHE (LMAO). Wilting here is not weakness; it is the slow recognition of what staying would mean. And then what the departure requires. This piece asks: Can we be truthful with ourselves about why we left—and what this departure has cost us? Authors also takes the liberty to do what they always wanted to do – write without worrying about the grammar mechanics or narrative regimes.
29 January 2026
Dear Alok,
Why did not you think of me when you told the world that you are going to write this—the emotional toll, the cost of letting the pain grow, the fear of not knowing how it would land in others’ imagination. Why did you take on this pain when absolutely no one was asking for it?
Are you a monster killing yourself from the inside?
Or a naïve poet using higher education as a screen and a keypad?
Either way. – I am going to do this for you. Only because I have rarely failed you. But I will make it difficult. I jump between letters, stories, and poems to open as many doors as possible – Yes, I invite roller-coaster ride. I have a rush – yes, yes. Tik tok of the clock– I can hear.
I will tell the story, but
You need to know that there are stories behind the stories.
Like Kobi Guru, I want the far and the near to kiss each other—
Open the stories and characters but not people
That would be a flawed way of reading this story.
Khoda hafez
Alok Das
Wilting…..
Shuru – Story
28 September 1985 was a rainy day in the city of great daughters. September is the bridging month for my birth city. Saying goodbye to rains and welcoming the Shoroth. The lush green of mango, jackfruit, and coconut trees; water streaming down the Poetic hill into the Purity River; and the roar of waves from the Ocean jr. make this time of year feel like God’s special land.
My mother, a poet, was reading Surah Yasin from the Holy Qur’an repeatedly. Jahanara—my mother—was praying to her Allah for a son. A year earlier, she had given birth to her third daughter, Khaleda. She believed that a fourth daughter would be disastrous for herself and for all her daughters.
My three sisters—Hasina, Rehana, and Khaleda—were staying with my Nana and Nani, the oldest only eight years old. They covered their little heads with scarfs and prayed to Allah for the arrival of their “protector”—a brother. They were told by Kutni Buri that a brother was all they needed for protection. Otherwise, Bhanu, our father, might take another wife. Kutni Buri pointed out, Bhanu, a national war hero and a small businessman in the city of millions, did not even come to the hospital where my mother was admitted for childbirth.
As students at the University of Chattogram were protesting against the dictatorship of President Hussain Mohammad Ershad, Princess Daina was the face of broken dreams of privileged white girls thukku humanity, Palestine still occupied, Nelson Mandela was facing cruelty of whites inside the walls built by humans and Madiba’s people were facing cruelty of whites in the hallway of the creator(s) created for humanity to bloom…..
……..tiny dictators were drinking oil – and blood – like pepsi and coke – enough calories to become giant monsters so that White House’s main occupant blows them– whichever way it served the purpose. Uncle Sam was fighting the “equals to” for final round. The actor and the milk snatcher were plotting many games for a zero-sum win while dancing in the grand hall of injustice. No worries – all will be justified. These justifications will never stop coming. Amidst this chaos, my sisters were praying for a “protector” to save them from a looming fear, I arrived.
As soon as I was placed in my mother’s strong arms, my father arrived—celebrating. Cows were sacrificed. Sweets were distributed. Gold ornaments were brought for my mother—celebrations she had never received after the births of Hasina, Rehana and Khaleda.
The letter: Light and Dark Not Kissing Yet
Dear Alok,
Growing up, Kutni Buri would tell you that Hasina was extremely jealous of all the festivities that took place after your holy arrival. Kutni Buri made you believed that Hasina carried some measurable feeling called jealousy toward you—as if jealousy is sold in farmers market – organic product. Special discounts during your birthday –
Much later, you would understand that what gave birth to frame Hasina’s feeling as “jealousy” was a question that shook the ground of a Karan Johar movie set: why there had been no such celebration when Khaleda was born. Of course, there may have been drama too. Hasina without drama – how that is even possible? But ask yourself – is it impossible to give everything of oneself to a single body, no matter how urgently survival demands it? She could not give you your father’s priority passcard, nor her full sneho, when you were all scratching for attention between scarcity and love.
You see it now: it was never jealousy. It was an early interrogation of privilege—the first seed of a feminism that would one day bring two PhDs into that household, with a third still unfolding. And Khaleda kept her uncompromising insistence on becoming more than she is. What a gift.
Too often, women’s thinking is reduced to feeling alone. This is not accidental. It is necessary—for men and their loyal stooges—to control power. Remember that.
If we are in the business of complicating, then perhaps Bhanu’s absence at the hospital can never be fully articulated by a fragmented knower like Kutni Buri. Single narratives cannot hold this complexity—and perhaps that is the danger. As Tagore reminds us, when reason, ego, and certainty are severed from wholeness, darkness itself is misnamed as evil. It becomes an “enemy” only when confronted by incomplete understanding. But what if even in darkness you have something to hold on to? William Stafford words are important to remember here – don’t let the fear loosen your grip on the threads that allow movement in the dark.
Bhanu was a feminist within the confinement of his imagination—but he worked to expand that imagination for his daughters. Maybe not enough. But there were some good.
And yes—Bhanu favoured you.
Tata
Alok
Aim in Life …. Story
My beginning can easily be described as privileged. I was born male, into a well-read, middle-class Muslim family. I held power over many around me. I was constantly told that I could become anything I wanted.
When I became a teenager, the aim of life became an essential matter to think about . When I say essential, I really mean it. From primary through higher secondary school, we were made to write the same essay over and over—My Aim in Life. Teachers handed us notes, books, sentences to memorize word for word. They rewarded the best memory, not the creative mind. They played with our heads while our bodies were changing fast.
How do you think I did? You’ve read me this far. I was not bright. Or at least, I was not considered bright.
Jahanara and Bhanu did not know what to do with their first son. He was “abnormal.” A boy who dressed in his sisters’ clothes, wore lipstick, danced like Urmila Matondkar when courage arrived like a tsunami. I wanted to be either a flight attendant or the Prime Minister of a republic once ruled by women. Nothing in between. Nothing.
I was a terrible student. Teachers punished me regularly, and we did not like each other. I sat on the last bench with the macho boys and their sticky adult books. Believe me—it worried me far more than it aroused me.
Regardless of my conditionality, there is no doubt that I have wielded my privilege whenever I could. I did not ask for this power, but I have used it. Like others in dominant groups, my privileges were unearned granted regardless of my actions, much like whiteness operates in Western societies. And Hasina kept questioning these privileges. Every time. Non-stop. Nothing will tire her.
I knew I was different, but I had no language for it. No agency to name it. My desires felt wrong—certainly lesser than my sisters’—and always in conflict with the men around me. I wanted to solve a mystery: was there a way to be a “man,” to desire men—not just their bodies, but their hearts too—and still not be ridiculed by men or women? Remember at that time, gender was binary. Sexuality was singular. For some, it still is.
From primary school through high school, I was regularly bullied by boys in the neighbourhood. They laughed at me and called me half-lady. Rehana protected me when she could and drowned me in sorrow when it was completely unnecessary. She sent my best friend, Saber, to “man me up.” Saber—fully in love with his Moina Pakhi—introduced me to brotherhood: Kalo the Bir, Chammu the power, Dipjol the hero, Shah Alam the storyteller, and Saleh – unsolved mystery. Brotherhood taught me how to perform masculinity (well.. I understand the controversy) but it allowed me whip borrowed power, and I learned the first lesson on how to survive in closet. Like many gay men, I learned early that same-sex desire makes one vulnerable in a heteronormative world. Gayness is framed as immoral, disgusting, in need of correction. Coming out can be dangerous. I made my closet colourful and glittery. My shed stories are for another blog, naughty people.
Poem: My Landscape. Analog.
Land of Women Prime Minister was changing—fast and slow at the same time.
Snakes stopped visiting our home.
Cockroaches were everywhere—
Then came the dark age. No light—only lanterns. Big waves. Many screams.
All threads lost. Six seasons collapsed into two. People’s faith were changing.
Breathing became harder. Foreign trees were planted in my land.
Refugees flooded my streets.
Dead bodies floated—
people starving, drifting in boats.
History was made— returned, ruled, left – no one bothered to weave the three threads to read the other story.
And the fall—oh my—the riots.
The smoke that never asks permission. Death that was looking for bodies. Lust that was looking for destruction. Who is dropping them—Uncle Sam or their enemy? Faces swapped, hands clasped behind the curtain.
So they tell you: unite. Unite against the enemy. As if enemies are not trained together. As if your body was ever on the guest list. They unite against your fate, darling boy—wrap it in flags, feed it speeches, call it necessary.
Shabdhan. Not because danger is coming— but because it has already learned your name.
Shesh Story: Before Digital Adaptation and Possibility
Tremendous stories often live behind other stories. BOOM—you’re a teenager. Decision time.
In 2003, something extraordinary happened. Bhanu bought me a computer and connected it to dial-up internet. One night, reading BBC Online—yes, before that I may also have watched my first gay porn, I learned that Michael Stark and Michael Leshner had been allowed to marry following a ruling by the highest court in Ontario, Canada. I will never forget that night. I wanted to grow wings and fly. I stared at the world map, imagining myself crossing India, the Middle East, North Africa, the Atlantic reaching a land of freedom, possibility, and joy.
The next day, I exercised my first-born-son privilege and demanded that my parents send me to Canada for higher education. I told them that if they refused, I would not pursue higher education at all. To my sisters’ surprise, my parents agreed—enthusiastically—to send their “least accomplished child” to North America.
Hasina looked at me again, suspiciously. Cut your coat according to your fashion sense— right? I don’t even remember the idiom properly, but I remember her annoying questions:
Who would pay for this education?
How would it be managed?
Where was this impossible thinking coming from?
How could such a leap even be imagined?
Would people really believe Alok’s stories—that we were a rich family?
We were barely surviving. Drowning in debt. And I knew it all.
Kutni Buri planted the familiar seed: weaken Hasina’s logic by naming her jealous. She is very unkind to the first male born. Remember? This jealousy emerged since my birth. And just like that—the labeling worked, the financial bill passed without a plan, and Project “Study in Canada” was approved. We knew nothing about Canada. We knew no one there. We only knew that money would take me from here to there—and from there, I would make new stories.
I agree with scholars that gender is not the only, or even the primary, marker of difference. Still, my perceived gender played a decisive role in my escape from Section 377—a draconian colonial law criminalizing same-sex intimacy in the land of tigers. Had I been a fourth daughter and queer, I doubt my escape would have been so easy.
Perhaps Bhanu knew this before anyone else. Perhaps he gave the bigger leap to the one he sensed needed to survive. Perhaps he trusted that his eldest would never let anyone fall—everyone knows she fights, and she is a terrifying enemy. What an impossible job women have in life: to be liked by their enemies.
But before giving Bhanu sainthood, sit with this too: perhaps he also believed that men giving blowjobs to other men was a sinister disease—one that could only be cured in a free society where women waited patiently for unworthy man. Why reduce Bhanu to one thing? Why expand him into something he was not? People are rarely coherent. Love and pain often share a house.
I left the former land of women prime ministers in late summer 2003 with a dream—to fly and breathe and love – both bodies and minds. In plural. LMAO.
Pause – the letter
Dear Alok,
O ma – if I give everything today, what will I post later? Alok, tell your students—just reading stories is not enough. They have to think. Think…
Why do you want to leave home? To float? To fly? To climb? To breathe? To be free? To dream? To change? To experience?
What is calling you? Why this departure? Ask yourself and write. Be truthful to yourself—about your conditions, your limits.
Because I want to tell your students this:
If it is an escape, the work will be different.
If it is for experience, the preparation must be concrete.
If it is for upward climbing—is it necessary?
At this time of the history? To leave home? We can climb anywhere.
What is it that what would happen here is impossible there?
And I have also some thinking jobs for your comrades, Alok. It goes something like this:
I live in two modes:
too much truth,
or complete silence.
But you—
do you ask?
Do you listen?
Do you think beyond your comfort?
Empathy is not enough.
Keep it.
Resilience—
I don’t need that word from you.
It was never meant for me; I am auto built with it.
it was made to excuse your inaction and describe my survival.
Your voice?
I already have mine.
Bad grammar. Incredible Stories.
Kindness?
In kilos or grams? Rolling eyes.
Think before you speak.
Think before you advise.
Think before you call whatever you are doing as solidarity.
Think before you walk away because you are tired solving this impossibility.
think— and think with capital T –
that is the work you keep avoiding.
We all have task to complete –
You think
and I weave my pain to tell stories about falling
Stay hydrated.
Alok Das
About the author:
Alok Das is author’s pseudonym. Author is based in Canada and a doctoral candidate and an international student advisor in a comprehensive university in Atlantic Canada.