Under normal circumstances, I could write about lots of small but interesting stories. There is the SUST story about Zafar Iqbal’s resignation and withdrawal, and the surprisingly prompt and prudent action (double somersaults) taken by ministers AMA Muhith and Nurul Islam Nahid to approve the integrated system of admission.
There is the now-boring story of the absentee JU VC on medical leave who refuses to go (it would be good to see the education minister take a quick decision on this too); there is the story about who is now boss of Jatiya Party: Ershad, or Kazi Zafar. Then of course, there is the story of the eight-year-old boy who sucks milk straight from the teats of a bitch. The list could go on.
The last story was shared online over a thousand times by readers of DT, compared to less than 100 shares for the news of six ex-advisers going to the president in search of a solution.
In the meantime, the Awami League has finalised its list of candidates for the next general national election and earned over Tk65m from selling nomination papers alone. Not bad at all, when there are still starving children surviving on dog milk. And of course, there are the intrepid connoisseurs of classical music who passed the four nights in the Army Stadium rapt in heavenly music. Life goes on.
But these are not normal times. I’m less confused now than I was a week ago about what this oborodh thing means, and about how much violence to expect from the current one that started on Saturday morning. Now I know better. You are safe until the moment that you become unsafe.
When a firebomb is hurled at your rickshaw, CNG, car, bus, or train, you know that the blockade has struck you.
That hasn’t happened to me yet, but it has happened to other people. What guarantee is there that it won’t happen to me when I take my car out later tonight?
Now is the time to hoist danger signal number 8 or 9, for the gathering storm does not bode well for the people. BNP has certainly ratcheted up its agitation against the government; the 72-hour blockade has been extended up to Thursday, a six-day shutdown for the first time in history. It seems there is no going back, until the government cracks down or BNP cracks up.
As I write this, already 20 people have died, and many more are lying in hospitals with severe burns. Now that Saturdays are no longer blockade-free days, who can ensure that henceforth only Fridays will be our only “normal” days? How many make-up classes can you hold on Friday for all the classes you miss throughout the week? And I’m not even talking about all the other things (not counting politics) that people do for living and a livelihood.
I’m a veteran of many strikes and hartals (yes, blockades too) for over half a century, have lived the first two decades of my life in one nation, lived through the War of Liberation, witnessed the birth of another, and have survived them all. For the first time in my life on Saturday morning when I hopped on a rickshaw I was scared! We have all seen pictures of burn victims bandaged head to toe, one woman with half her skull blown off, many with burnt skin peeling off their faces. These images were in my head as I sat gingerly on my rickshaw, looking left and right, ready to jump off at the slightest signal of danger.
I managed to complete my trip, my battery-powered rickshaw zipping through the thin traffic on Mirpur Road in record time, but my students decided to stay home. One former student from DU wasn’t lucky. Masuma was in the bus that was torched in Shahbagh and is now lying in Dhaka Medical College Hospital with severe burn injuries.
Facebook is full comments on her misery and appeals for help. I was on my way to teach Hamlet, and as I search for words to conclude this piece (and no class to teach) I have lines from Hamlet ringing inside my head about something being “rotten” in the state of Denmark. “The time is out of joint,” said Hamlet, and then went on to say: “O cursed spite/That ever I was born to set it right.”
At least the prince of Denmark knew that it was his responsibility to change things around, a responsibility so burdensome that he even sought escape through suicide. Whose responsibility is it to set things right in the state of Bangladesh?