It’s been 45 years since Bangladesh became an independent nation.
Many would see this milestone as a reason to celebrate, and with good reason. Economically, Bangladesh is in the best place it has ever been.
It’s hard to imagine that we were once a nation starving, naked, and cold, as I sit on my desk and go online to order the absolute finest of fineries and have it be delivered to this most nascent of nations.
Taxes included, of course.
Our ties to other nations are as strong as a dictator’s handshake. With the Chinese/Indian inquisition seeming to be an increasingly realistic scenario in the future, it’s good to know that, at least, Bangladesh will most likely be on the right side of history when it all goes down.
But one-handed celebrations ring hollow if we forget to count all that we’ve lost in the way.
This is the nation we have won, I suppose. One with a clear divide between the few who have and the many who never had and keep being deprived
We pay ample lip service to the martyrs who did everything they could have for their country, but seldom stop to think what their country ever did for them. For us.
Patriotism makes very little sense these days. But whose fault is that?
For every little girl that we empower, we undo all that progress by doing something incredibly insipid as lowering their age of marriageability by a couple of pegs. For every percentage point gained in our national GDP, a minority has his house burned down.
How can I root for a country that undermines each of its victories with multiple self-inflicted losses?
An air of uncertainty still pervades the two controversial power plants which are set to be made way for at the cost of our national identity. We still have to hold our tongue lest we say something that might see us end up rotting in a cell.
The Chittagong Hill Tracts remain mired in communal violence. Sexual persecution, terrorism -- the list is nigh endless, and nothing, not even our leader’s much touted diplomatic wizardry, has been able to shorten it thus far.
But it would be dishonest of me to pretend to care about any of these issues as much as I care for my first-world problems as a third-world man. But whose fault is that?
This is the nation we have won, I suppose.
One with a clear divide between the few who have and the many who never had and keep being deprived.
December 16, 1971 was our victory day, but December 16, 2016 still feels like fighting a war that never really ended.
And nothing I’ve seen this year has given me hope for a better future.
Victory Day may be in the last month of the year, but the cold is just starting to set in.
Rubaiyat Kabir is a Sub-Editor at Dhaka Tribune. Follow him on Twitter @moreanik.