The view was stunning; and carried elements of shock. Many felt nonplussed. The recent newspaper photograph of a group of college students frolicking during a bus ride, seated precariously on the vehicle's widow bars in a row, was extraordinary. The spectacle carried features of both amazement and apprehension. What made many feel apprehensive about the youths' derring-do were the possibilities of serious accidents. To their great relief, nothing happened. The spectre of fall stalked the students throughout the travel from college to their residences. The excesses of fun-filled youthfulness displayed in the grotesque feat may or may not have prompted the college authorities to reprimand the boys. But sections of people watching youth behaviour had reasons to take an in-depth look at the incident. They drew a different conclusion from the matter: the very youth is an age of showing off valour and mindboggling daring.
Being courageous and indomitable is innate with youth. Youth stands for defiance and being in love with the unconventional and the things that do not conform to what is traditional. The Bengalee poet Sukanto Bhattacharya says, "Attharo bacchor boyosh kee dussoho/ E boyosh maney nako kono mana …" meaning "How bursting is the age of eighteen/ this very age defies all hindrances." The poets Tagore and Nazrul et al have celebrated youth in their writings all along. Most of the young view the prevailing reality with suspicion, bringing into question the logic of its stay. At extreme points, they revolt against the system they live in, as have been the cases of Galileo, Darwin and the icons of European Renaissance. The proponents of the Young Bengal Movement spearheaded a similar awakening in the 19th century. What invites trouble for society is youth gone awry. Youth is the prime age of man. Compared to the length of adulthood including old age, the span of youth is short. Due to its briefness, wise people through the ages kept emphasising the need for proper use of this golden period in human life. A person can fritter away his or her precious youth only to repent in later life. In spite of the display of the features of youth by the college students in Dhaka, they might reflect on the incident later and feel embarrassed at their overdoing.
Ever since the dawn of civilisations, youth has stood for bravery, inquisitiveness and creativity. In order to ensure that people do not waste their prime age, sages have asked them to remain focused on definite goals --- resisting all kinds of temptations. But this has eventually proved a daunting task. Many call it the greatest challenge in one's life. As a teenager steps into youth, scores of hitherto unknown territories start beckoning him. In developing countries like Bangladesh, youths are mostly lured by material fulfilment. This allurement is invariably accompanied by the gullible young adults being drawn into a world of short-cuts and dubious means. These dishonest ways enable one to be owner of ill-begotten riches overnight. With the passing of time, a lot of other vices eventually begin devouring them. Floodgates of rot are flung open before them. Due to its volatile nature, the period of youth requires the young to remain alert about the quagmires lurking around them. Many come out successful in the task. Others jump on the bandwagon of the time and get lost in the maze of deleterious trends. Some come to their senses on being woken up by their ever-alert self, dormant in their subconscious. The process of decay cannot fully overwhelm them. But there are the doomed ones who get possessed by the Faustian devil. With their soul passed on to the grip of darkness, they find all their escape routes shut. That their fate has been sealed occurs to them as a belated realisation.
Christopher Marlow's character, the doomed young protagonist of his play 'Doctor Faustus', stands in stark contrast to the ever-ebullient heroes of the time --- the Elizabethan period. The age was characterised by positive activism. Its signs were visible in all spheres of life. But excesses of youthful energy also bedevilled the period. The death of a highly talented playwright like Marlow in a duel stands witness to this. According to behavioural scientists, youth is an amazing combination of strikingly opposite forces. At their highest creative point they remain engaged in all conceivable productive ventures. On the downside, they are seen being blinded by the urge to destroy. Thus human history has been replete with both positive and negative forces of youth. Perhaps in conformity with this reality, nations feel proud of a Michelangelo, a Voltaire or an Avicenna in their prime youth. The villains like Hitler, Mussolini et al unleashed their cruelty and crookedness on human races and remained as blots on history. Alongside these, there have been the misspent, largely misguided and finally doomed periods of youth. Arrogance and hubris also characterise the young age. These lives are led by both notoriously famous and many average people.
In the 20th century, youth has passed through a number of extraordinary phases. Most of them were focused on transformations and the introduction of new schools of thoughts. Befitting their character of heartily welcoming new forms of ideas, youths in the big cities around the globe in the 1960s emerged as a force. It came to be viewed as alterative to the existing beliefs. Socio-cultural creeds comprised a great part of them. The whole decade featured a rejection by youths of the prevailing system that included concepts, values and the way man judges himself. In course of time, the identity of youths became merged with that of rebels. Perhaps this very feature eventually moulded the century as one of rebellion. Despite the overwhelming presence of the Sartrean existentialism, Marxist left-leaning thoughts attracted youths in droves. As a result, urban centres in cities in both developed and 'underdeveloped' worlds emerged as being overcome with an all-sweeping upsurge --- one that puts everything mundane in a left perspective. With world politics caught in the protracted Cold War stand-off, the upsurges of nationalism and left thoughts swept across the continents. They left equal impacts on both the rich and poorer segments of the world community. In a context like this the then South African cities, Dhaka, Paris or Tokyo appeared on the similar level. Streets in Paris and Tokyo began to be rocked by student demonstration; death-defying anti-apartheid black youths fought battles against the white racist regime in South Africa. In the then East Pakistan, in Dhaka and the other cities, students erupted in revolt against the Pakistani autocratic rulers. In these and some other national theatres the mystique of Mandela, Ben Bella, Sheikh Mujib and many such leaders began enjoying a folk aura. It was a natural outcome of socio-political regenerations of the decade.
In the earlier decade of the 1950s, rebellion stood witness to the shocking wastage of the inherent strength of youth. It happened in the US city of San Francisco. In the beginning, the rebellion stemmed from rejection. It took shape in the form of the so-called iconoclastic attitude towards life. San Francisco is credited with giving birth to this earth-shaking movement, which emerged in the form of the Beat Generation. The alternative life-style brought to the vogue by the Beat Movement produced dozens of talented authors, painters, singers and other creative people. But most of the followers, both men and women, of this anti-establishment school had to end up being aimless wanderers out on world tours. Sadly, their search for the 'true meaning' of life became an exercise in the exploitation of sensual pleasures. The excesses in the use of psychedelic drugs, alcohol abuse and apparently reckless sexuality at one point began standing for the Beat Movement. Five long decades after the fizzling out of the movement, the Beat Generation remains a great youth movement, full of prospects, that has gone the wrong way due to its excesses.
Contrary to the Beat Movement, liberation wars and popular youth upsurges across the world once symbolised the strength of positivism. The fact has not lost relevance to the 21st century reality. For the youths, Bangladesh carries the legacy of its turbulent birth in 1971. To see this historic event ever alive in their mind, what they need is guidance --- a proper one devised at national and social levels.
shihabskr@ymail.com