Swadesh Roy
The gentleman is over seventy, and his wife is around the same age. One night, they were returning after dinner at a relative’s house in Uttara. Suddenly, the car hit such a violent jolt that both of them felt pain in their lower backs. More than the pain, however, they were frightened. The gentleman, raising his voice slightly, asked the driver, “What happened?”
The driver replied, “Sir, the road is broken.”
“Then why don’t you drive slowly?”
The driver said calmly, “Sir, I forgot. BNP has arrived.”
A little irritated, the gentleman said, “What do you mean, BNP has arrived? BNP came after the election on 12 February. What are you saying now, six months later, that BNP has arrived?”
The driver again replied calmly, “Sir, I’ve got out of the habit. For a long time, the roads were not broken and riddled with potholes. So I had forgotten what things were like during BNP rule. From now on, I’ll watch the roads carefully before driving.”
Apparently, since then, the gentleman’s driver has become much more cautious. In the meantime, the gentleman has had to go twice to Khilgaon, once to Malibagh, and once to Naya Bazar in Badda. Each time, before reaching the destination, the driver has stopped the car by the side of the road, walked ahead to inspect the route, and then returned to say, “Sir, the car cannot go any farther. Let me leave it here. I’ll hold your hand and take you forward. Please walk carefully. There is water on the road, and there are large potholes too. You could fall.”
There was a front-page report in Amar Desh, edited by the fearless editor Mahmudur Rahman, saying that rickshaw-pullers are now earning Tk 200 to Tk 300 a day. That very day, I asked a rickshaw-puller, “What is the most you earn in a day now?” He said, “Sir, on a good day I can make even Tk 500.” I told him, “Then you are earning quite well.” The rickshaw-puller replied irritably, “What are you saying, sir? Even two years ago, I earned Tk 1,500 to Tk 1,700 a day.” After that, I did not prolong the conversation with him. Because two years ago, there was a “fascist” in the country.
But even though I had taken a solemn vow to remain silent and say nothing about fascists, the poor rickshaw-puller would not let me go. Looking at my harmless face, he asked, in a rather knowledgeable tone, “Sir, could you explain something to me? What exactly is a ‘fascist’?”
I asked him in return, “Don’t you drive your rickshaw around Dhaka University?”
He said, “Sir, I used to. I go there less often now.”
“Why do you go less often?”
“Sir, after that ‘fascist’ was driven out, there are some boys and girls there who ride rickshaws and do not pay the fare. They get off wherever they feel like.”
I said, “Surely not everyone does that?”
He said, “No, sir.”
“Then ask those who get off without paying what a ‘fascist’ is. They will be able to explain it properly. I am an ordinary person just like you. I’m not much of a learned man either. My condition is much the same as yours. There are so many difficult words whose meanings I do not know.”
By the time our conversation ended, I had reached Azimpur. The road ahead required a detour, so I began walking towards the two or three surviving bookshops in New Market. It is an old habit, after all. Even with age, many people like me still go to New Market, surrounded by the nostalgia of our youth.
It was already well past noon. Across from New Market are the little roadside food shacks which, in our youth, we jokingly called “Italian restaurants”. Rickshaw-pullers and pavement shopkeepers were coming out after eating there. Suddenly, I remembered that only a few days earlier, a reporter from Sarakhon and a reporter from Bangla Tribune had published similar reports. These restaurants no longer cook chicken or beef. They do not even cook rui fish or pona fish curry. Mostly, they cook vegetables.
I used to hear a great deal about eating more vegetables whenever I went to Delhi. In Bangladesh, I heard “vegetables, vegetables” most frequently during Yunus’s time. Now I see that after the BJP came to power in West Bengal, a great cry of “vegetables, vegetables” has arisen there as well. The independently minded gentlemen there are saying, “Who is the government to tell me whether I should eat vegetables? I will earn my own money and eat whatever I wish. If I feel like eating beef, I will eat beef. What business is that of the government?” There seems to be some sort of trouble between the government and the people there, does there not? Yet look at how successful our government is. There is no trouble at all between the government and the people. Quietly, the ordinary people of the country are eating vegetables. They are not eating beef. They are not eating chicken. They are not even eating fish.
Then again, a little fear arose in my mind. What if the BJP somehow ends up winning in this country too, the way vegetables are taking possession of people’s plates? For a long time now, I have not been able to eat those round, dark aubergines. Every morning, at the end of my walk, I hear they are Tk 180 a kilogram and simply walk away. Anyway, it is only aubergine. If I cannot eat it, so be it. Then, as soon as I regained my senses, I realised, no, that will never happen. The BJP can never come to power in Bangladesh. In fact, it was the BJP government itself that went to extraordinary lengths to bring BNP to power. And even after all that, our prime minister is not giving them much importance. No matter how much they wander around with folded hands. So, in that respect, things are fine.
After all, it takes guts to run a country.
Just look at this. Such a huge BRICS summit took place. The president of China came, the president of Russia came, leaders from ASEAN came, as did the leader of Iran. The leaders of Egypt, Brazil and South Africa came. Even the leaders of the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia came. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif certainly wanted to attend, but he himself let it slip to the media that he could not go because his eternal sworn enemy India prevented him.
In fact, no matter how big the summit was, we did not go. India will send some half-baked invitation, and we will simply rush there? We are not that desperate. The media may have its anxieties. The leaders of all those big countries may have theirs.
Those big leaders certainly do have reasons to worry, because they must keep soybean oil available in their markets for ordinary people. For that, they have to talk to Brazil and South Africa. At this moment, soybean oil has vanished from our market. What concern is that of ours?
Besides, it became clear at that summit that Ethiopia received special importance. The reason is very simple. The Houthis have closed the Red Sea. The Strait of Hormuz is closed because of the America-Iran war. So every country needs oil and gas supplies. The Red Sea cannot exactly be reopened through the Mecca Agreement. Ethiopia will have to provide logistical support here. It will have to be done through them. Otherwise, the prices of oil and gas will continue to rise, electricity supplies will continue to fall, and fertiliser will become harder and harder to get.
Big countries may have headaches over these things. None of it affects us. After all, Rumin Farhana has already said in parliament, “BNP will be in power and there will be no crisis of oil, gas, water or fertiliser? That cannot be.” Rumin Farhana, of course, did not mention “Salahuddin’s run”. Well, let us leave that aside.
Instead, people are witnessing a new spectacle. Residents of Dhaka city are leaving the well-appointed kitchens of their flats and coming out onto the streets to cook with firewood in the ancient and authentic manner. In Jhenaidah and Rangpur, farmers who cannot obtain fertiliser are looting warehouses. Police are going from house to house arresting those farmers. Terrified, farmers have abandoned their cultivation and fled their villages. And not just Dhaka, the streets of every city become dark as soon as evening falls. Hurricane lamps and small kerosene lamps are returning to villages. Given the price of kerosene, people might as well finish dinner as soon as evening arrives, eating vegetables. Their health will be better too. I have heard that eating plenty of vegetables even improves one’s visits to the bathroom. Although, on this particular subject, it would have been best if the Yunus Center had conducted a study.
Still, boycotting BRICS has probably been good for us. Because we should not enter too early into these equations involving Brazil, China and Ethiopia. Anything should be done only after understanding it properly. There is a story that when communal riots began in Calcutta in 1946, the police supposedly went to an “Ure” neighbourhood, the old Bengali term then used for people from Odisha, and told them to leave the streets and go inside their homes. The police even warned them that they might be killed if they remained outside. But the “Ures” did not go indoors that day. Their answer was very clear: “If we die, we die. But we will die only after understanding the matter properly.”
This path of understanding things properly before acting is indeed the better one. In 1991, Bangladesh was offered submarine cable connectivity free of cost. The BNP government took five years to understand the matter. It did not accept the submarine cable facility. Sheikh Hasina came, did not waste time trying to understand it, and paid for the submarine cable connection with the country’s own money. That is precisely why everyone now has Facebook in their hands. And that was where Sheikh Hasina’s misfortune began. Smearing tomato sauce on their faces and riding on the algorithms of Facebook and YouTube, Yunus carried out his “meticulous revolution”. Sheikh Hasina was removed from power.
Anyway, nothing like what happened to Sheikh Hasina will happen again now. Because BNP has arrived. There is less Facebook too, thanks to the lack of electricity. And the people are happy.
For instance, a reader of mine named Ejaz sent me a song:
Sitting in pitch darkness, surrounded by suffocating heat,
whispers say, BNP has arrived.
BNP has arrived.
The bodies of two editors who spoke for freedom of expression
lie buried beneath the newspapers.
BNP has arrived.
I had seen this BNP from 2001 to 2006,
I first saw it in the news of “Purnima”,
then on roads without electricity,
without gas, without fertiliser, without water.
That BNP is now terribly valuable
to India, to Pakistan,
lest the Mecca Agreement be cast aside,
BNP has arrived.
On an electricity-less night,
lying in heat like a burning boiler,
Putul’s mother, listen…
Author: Journalist honoured with the highest state award; Editor, Sarakhon and The Present World.
