A new breath of life?

August 7, 2024

DHAKA – I recently learnt a Rabindra Sangeet: “Nuton pran dao prano sokha aji ei suprobhate (Bestow me with your divine energy of life, o my eternal friend, today in this auspicious dawn).” After the night of August 5 (Monday), this is the song I am trying to play in my head to stay calm.

I was a part of the crowd in Shahbag on Monday. The euphoria I felt as I was walking along with the sea of people from Shahbag moving towards Gono Bhaban evaporated as soon as I saw the black smoke rising from the ATN News office in Karwan Bazar. My own workplace was also a mess from the vandalism carried out the day before. We had to enter our office by climbing over the gate; the ground floor was a mess of broken glass and potted plants.

As the hours rolled by, the same crowd that had charged me up and made me forget my plantar fasciitis pain, turned into something I had never imagined. What started with the looting of Gono Bhaban, the official residence of the country’s prime minister, became more vicious and vindictive by the evening. The architectural pride of our nation built with money from our pockets—the parliament building—was not spared either. On a TV channel, I saw a person holding two documents he found inside parliament and announcing that those would be safer with him.

I wished there was someone to tell the young man that the documents or papers inside the building were not souvenirs, but the state’s property. Those documents need to be in place along with other documents, not for the benefit of those who left the country, but for our benefit—we the people, who are here in Bangladesh, the citizens, including him. We don’t know if it was a paper about sending relief to the people affected by flash floods