The boy’s name is Rafiq, though hardly anyone remembers it anymore. Online he goes by Bhoot Jolokia, a name borrowed from the world’s hottest chili. His followers call him Bhoot for short, half in awe, half in fear. By day, he is just another Dhaka University student struggling to stretch his money across rising food prices, hostel rent, and never-ending load-shedding. By night, though, his phone becomes a factory of laughter and fire.
Rafiq’s tiny room in a peeling dormitory smells of damp clothes and stale Singara wrappers. A fan rattles above him like an old tin can in the wind. Outside, the traffic roars endlessly down Nilkhet Road. But on his cracked phone screen, the world bends to his humor. He lifts screenshots of political speeches, photos of overpaid cricketers, and stills of ministers cutting ribbons at useless “inaugurations.” With a flick of his thumbs, captions bloom like thorns:
“Dhaka Metro Rail: Motijheel to Kamalapur, 1000 crores gone. Slow and steady robs the race.”
“Minister says onions are cheaper this year. My tears disagree.”
Within minutes, thousands of people share his posts. People from all walks of life scroll through their Android phones during lunch breaks and laugh at them. Even private university students in Bashundhara whisper the memes like they’re contraband jokes. His humor does what no slogan or rally can: it slips past fear.
But Rafiq knows the danger. Satire in Bangladesh walks a knife’s edge. In his childhood, he had heard stories of editors jailed for cartoons and writers harassed for tweets. He remembers the silence after the Holey Artisan attack, when everyone feared words could turn fatal.
Still, he continues. He tells himself he is not a revolutionary. He is a trickster—slippery and ambiguous. If the king dislikes the joke, he can always say, “It was just chili, bhai. Don’t take it so seriously.”
One evening in September, a storm batters Dhaka. Rainwater gushes over the sidewalks, carrying plastic cups and dead rats toward the Buriganga. The power dies, plunging Rafiq’s room into a cave-like dark. He lights a single candle and stares at the latest headline: Parliament approves “Digital Security Act 2.0.”
He laughs bitterly. “Security for whom?” he mutters. Then he crafts a meme:
A minister smiling broadly, the caption—
“New Digital Act: Because laughter is the real national threat.”
He posts it without thinking. The screen glowed briefly before the signal disappeared into the storm.
The next morning, his phone explodes with shares, comments, warnings. "Bro, be careful,” one follower messages. Another writes, “They’ll knock at your door.”
By noon, the meme is on the lips of tea-stall owners at Shahbagh and students marching in New Market. Rafiq watches with a mixture of pride and dread. The trickster has slipped too close to the tiger’s tail.
Two days later, the knock comes.
It is not a violent pounding but a polite tok-tok at the dormitory door. Rafiq opens to find two men in plain clothes, faces expressionless. “We need to talk,” one says. His voice is calm, almost friendly.
They take him to a tea stall instead of a station. One stirs his tea absentmindedly and says, “You are talented. Why waste your time on these dangerous jokes? We can arrange a proper job for you. Design social media campaigns. Earn respect.”
The other adds more sternly, “Stop playing with fire, brother. Jokes can turn into mobs. And mobs—into crimes.”
Rafiq listens, nodding. He said he would think about it. They leave him with a phone number scrawled on tissue paper.
That night, he cannot sleep. He stared at the candle again, thinking of Gopal Bhar—the court jester who survived by laughing with kings, not against them. Was he foolish to resist? Should he accept the offer and sell his wit for comfort?
But then he remembers a message from a clerk at a bank he once met online: “Bhai, your memes make my 10-hour day lighter. Don’t stop.”
The trickster inside him grins. If the king is laughing, the trickster has failed.
So Rafiq begins a new game. He hides his satire inside layers of absurdity.
He posts a photo of a giant Hilsa fish and writes: “Breaking News: Hilsa appointed minister of finance. Experts say it’s the most transparent minister yet.”
He shares an edited video where a politician’s speech is interrupted by a cow mooing.
He invents a character called Baba Onionswami, a mystical guru who predicts inflation by staring at vegetable baskets.
The officials could not decide if these posts were mockery or nonsense. The people, though, understood. The laughter grows sharper, louder, impossible to contain.
One afternoon, while sipping tea at DU Canteen, Rafiq overhears a group of law students analyzing one of his memes as if it were a text in class.
“This one,” a bespectacled boy says, “uses parody to dismantle the state narrative.”
Another adds, “It’s like Bakhtin’s carnival—the inversion of authority through humor.”
Rafiq nearly choked on his tea. He never intended to theory. His memes were like chili—burning quick and crude. But maybe chili, too, could be philosophy.
Then comes December, Victory Day. Dhaka is drenched in green and red. Rafiq creates his boldest meme yet: a photoshopped image of the National Parliament building floating like a boat in floodwater, with the caption—
“Fifty years of independence: Still trying to stay afloat.”
It spreads like wildfire. Some call it art; others call it treason. By evening, TV talk shows debated its meaning.
And then—just as suddenly—it vanishes. Facebook deleted it. His account was locked. Bhoot Jolokia was erased.
For a week, silence. Rafiq walks Dhaka’s streets feeling invisible. He is just another student again, lost in the crowd.
But then, one morning at Nilkhet, he notices a poster on a wall. It shows the Parliament-boat meme, hand-drawn in marker, and the chili logo scrawled at the corner. Beside it, someone has written, "Bhoot lives.”
He walks further. More walls, more posters. Rickshaw hoods painted with chili signs. University bathroom doors scribbled with his jokes. His memes have escaped the phone, growing wilder in the city’s veins.
The trickster could not be caught, he realized. The trickster is never just one person.
Haroonuzzaman is a Bangladeshi translator, novelist, poet, researcher, and academic.
