Finding the meaning of a man's life: Tanveer Ahmed's memoir

Tanveer Ahmed tells his story in a book that might be called a memoir. He grew up in Bangladesh, came to Australia with his parents and studied medicine. He had a meteorically short career as a TV star and now practices as a psychiatrist and part-time journalist.

After the family came to Australia, Tanveer's family had a brief sojourn in inner Sydney. He did most of his growing up in the western Sydney suburb of Toongabbie. He provides a series of little vignettes with occasional events that makes one smile. He had a friend who was Turkish and had many relatives who seemed to "suffer disproportionately from injuries in car accidents". One friend could break wind on demand and other boys came from miles away to see him perform.

There are flashbacks to Bangladesh. One friend, called Rojon, died there of tetanus. There are various stories, which suggest extreme poverty and hopes for living in a more peaceful, predictable world before the move to Australia. I find these scenes rather opaque and I'm not sure what to make of them. For example, the meeting of his future mother (Minu) and father (Afsar) through a wedding planner:

…After a period of dedicated attention during which the esteemed guest was met by my grandfather, his other children and curious neighbours, Minu strode in with her sister and greeted Afsar with the Islamic "Salam alaykum" before taking a seat on a wooden chair…

I'm sad to say that I get lost in all this. There is detail a-plenty, but the human drama is lost. What did the people feel? And can we share their emotions? There is too much incidental detail and too little reflection and meaning.

Tanveer got a scholarship to Sydney Grammar School. We're not told how. His father told him not to look up to the Australians, who were descended from convicts and spent their lives drinking. He went to university and met a variety of people, many from the Indian sub-continent. He says:

I had dream Indian credentials. I was studying to become a doctor and was good at cricket but just couldn't come at pretending to be African-American and adopting the theatre of hip-hop, which was what many of the guys seemed to revert to in expressing their cultural difference. I couldn't understand how thin, Indian guys studying economics or engineering could consider themselves big, tough and well endowed. From my encounters in male change rooms most guys of Asian origin, myself included, were usually short and thin in more ways than one.

As so often, this is mildly amusing, and it's fluently written. But hardly a revelation, or riveting reading, I'm afraid.

Tanveer passed his exams and became a doctor. We hear about a cricket team briefly called the Taliban. It seemed like a good idea at the time, I suppose.

Eventually we hear about a man called Darren who becomes hyperactive on cannabis (Tanveer assures us that he himself does not). They did some comedy and Tanveer acquired a taste for the entertainment industry. He appeared in a TV show and does a variety of things including calling out "Nooooooooooooooooooooooo bingo!" Sadly, all other comment had been cut out when the show appears. He was afraid of becoming a laughing stock. In any case, the show closed.

Tanveer ends the book at the point at which he passes his psychiatrist's exam.

There are fulsome tributes on the cover from various people, footballers and so on. They tell us that the story is evocative and heart-warming and funny. But the story isn't evocative, nor more than intermittently humorous or entertaining.

Why doesn't it work better? Perhaps we in Australia can't fathom a country like Bangladesh, which Tanveer says is the size of Victoria but has 150 million people. The rituals and sacred things in that country seem difficult for an Australian mind to penetrate. Here is Don, a chubby young man with a deformed penis well known to everyone. Or a man called Hitler. The boy made it to the western suburbs, and on to live elsewhere (Vaucluse, perhaps?) and become a big success. This reader wants more. There are too many words, too much detail and not enough meaning or even entertainment.

After my students had finished a report on their research, I used to ask "So what?" Or, "what does it all mean?" If that question isn't answered, the report, or the book, lacks its necessary punch. These are some of the questions I wanted answered:

What does it mean to be a man, in Tanveer's culture? How is this different from being a man in Toongabbie or St Kilda? What if you're attracted to other men? How do parents, friends and so on usually react? What are the crises (if any) which make a man question his identity as a Muslim Bangladeshi?

How does a kind, thoughtful doctor bring himself to conduct electro-shock therapy? What DO our lives mean? Do we feel we are helping to save the world from suffering? Are we showing the world how to communicate better, as Steve Jobs might have done? Or is our life, as Macbeth said, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"?

There has to be a point to the story. At the end of his own autobiography, my father wrote…"I have had a beaut life…"

And thus the story of his life had a meaning for the reader. The story I've just read has some pleasing tales and some amusing stories. But I'm afraid Tanveer needed a tough editor with a frown, a mean eye and a sharp pen. That might have given us something that explained the lives of immigrants or of psychiatrists; or something that resonated with an Australian reader. His recent article on racism was much more relevant and meaningful to this reader. I'm confident Tanveer has a much better book in him.