Showing posts with label Sunday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sunday. Show all posts

Aug 29, 2011

My Sunday

Holy Rosary Church at Tejgaon, Dhaka (Photo: Chandan Robert Rebeiro)

For nearly everyone in Bangladesh, Sunday is not a weekend day. I’m one the few ‘privileged’ guys to have a weekly holiday on the Holy Day for Christians. In an earlier post I wrote why the custom of having a day off on Sunday was changed.

Sunday has always been a special day to me especially in my seminary years from 1999 to 2007. For the first two of those years, when I was studying in grade 9 and 10 Sunday was a half day school holiday. We used to have good meals –the best of the week – from breakfast to dinner at Little Flower Seminary at Bandura. Then we could take a long siesta after lunch. From the minor seminary to intermediate then degree level seminaries, both in Dhaka. Sunday was a very welcome, blissful day for me and all the boys.

But since those times it has become less of a special day. My roommate, a bachelor like me, has his weekend on Friday and Saturday, so Saturday is the common holiday for us both and we enjoy it together. Sometimes we go to the park, or the theater or cinema, or to some other cultural function in Dhaka. But then Sunday can be a tough day as I’m alone at home, so now it’s just a rest day to me.

When in Dhaka I usually sleep late, then make breakfast, do some chores and cook lunch. The routine is often interrupted as gas, water and electricity outages are frequent. Sometimes it gets to 4 o’clock before I can have lunch, so I often opt to go out for it.

In Dhaka I try to get to 6 o’clock Mass at the Holy Rosary Church in Tejgaon, about 30 minutes walk from where I live. Five priests serve here – it’s the largest Catholic Church in the country, right in the heart of the city. Not all the priests offer Mass well and they can’t all deliver a good sermon. They often just repeat the Gospel, or they speak too much on theological matters. I feel sorry for those devoted souls who come to Mass direct from their workplace. They keep coming even though they might not be inspired by some of the priests’ sermons.

Every time I’m on my way to Mass I wonder if the priest will be one that I don’t like. Unfortunately, most times, it is. Nowadays I’ve become an irregular Sunday Massgoer, not because I have such a busy life, but because I’m afraid of Mass being boring. I’m a good listener but I lose interest in boring things.

I go to my village home, 45 kms northeast of Dhaka, about once a month. Sunday is good there as my dad and mom do everything. All I need to do is get up early and get to Mass. Then, after Mass, it’s nice to meet lots of friends. Sometimes we spend some time together and go for something to eat and drink. That makes my Sunday a little bit special.

View Original Post @ UCAN Blogs on Aug. 29, 2011

Aug 23, 2011

Here comes weekend- or does it?

Unlike most Bangladeshi people, Sunday is a special day for me. I’m one of the few folks who have the weekend on Saturday and Sunday. Government offices and most NGOs follow the Friday-Saturday custom.

Sunday was traditionally the weekend until 1984, when the military ruler HM Ershad changed it to Friday. This was an attempt to win the hearts of pious Muslims for whom Friday is the holy day of prayer. It didn’t do him much good as he was ousted in 1991.

But even though he was booted out, Sunday was never reintroduced as the weekend holiday. None of the democratic governments that followed have dared to reverse it. Why? Because they’re afraid an opponent will one day use it as a ‘religious trump card’ in a general election.

In Bangladesh, it hasn’t just been about which days; it’s also been about how many days.

The government led by the Awami League first introduced a two-day weekend in 1997. It was reduced to Friday only by the BNP-led government in 2001. But then they were forced to restore a two-day weekend in 2005, as an austerity measure to reduce pressure on the national economy when fuel prices and the dollar exchange rate rose.

Officially, the two-day weekend still holds in Bangladesh though in many places, especially rural areas and private sector industries like garments factories, only Friday is the weekend.

The demand to be in step with most countries and include Sunday as part of the weekend still looms large among various section of society. It’s certainly my preference. As Friday is weekend for most people, all kinds of family, social, Church or national programs are arranged on that day. I’ve been missing most of them since 2008, when I started my career as a journalist which meant work on Friday. When I was in the seminary for nine years I also missed a lot of family and social programs such as weddings and anniversaries, because seminary directors were reluctant to allow extra holidays.

Wouldn’t it be great if we all had the same time off?

**This post was originally published on UCAN Blog on August 23, 2011

দক্ষিণ এশিয়ায় ভোটের রাজনীতি এবং খ্রিস্টান সম্প্রদায়

Bangladeshi Christians who account for less than half percent of some 165 million inhabitants in the country pray during an Easter Mass in D...