I’m writing this piece for a particular reason—one that relates to family empowerment. These days, whenever you turn on the news or open YouTube, you often see stories of families falling apart and elderly parents weeping in nursing homes.

In most reports, the voices of the parents are heard, but very few seem to listen to the sons and daughters. There are various studies and investigations on this topic, exploring factors like urbanisation, poverty, Westernisation, women’s empowerment, and the role of social media.

Beyond these commonly discussed causes, I have been studying another issue: laziness. To help us better understand the matter, I’ll refer to a general idea from a scientific study (Madsen, 2018), which offers insight into the nature of laziness.

“Laziness as a negative term referring to people who do not show an effort corresponding to their abilities and/or prerequisites, and/or the difficulty of the task in question.

Although like referring to journal articles isn’t necessary when writing for newspapers, still I’ve mentioned it here so that everyday readers can align their thinking with the nature of academic research—especially regarding cultural heritage agendas.

Since childhood, I’ve often heard that Bangladeshis are a lazy nation, and strangely, there seems to be a certain joy in saying so. In stories and casual conversations, we enjoy discussing and criticising this idea. More than that, we’ve even created a joke that if one Bangladeshi gets into heaven, another pulls him down. No one feels ashamed to tell this joke; in fact, it usually ends with applause!