Kill You, Sure (7)

              Kill You, Sure (7)

                                        Nidhu Bhusan Das

                    

                       

                The day after the birthday bash, Bithi’s in the arts faculty of Dhaka University to meet the teachers in the Department of sociology she often talks to when in the city. On the way, in front of Madhur Canteen, she comes face to face with a young man she thinks she knows but cannot exactly relate and recognize. The young man also looks at her in a way that suggests he knows her but isn’t sure. Both smile, and in a moment almost simultaneously, utter each other’s name.” Aren’t you Bithi?”he says.” You’re Nizam, if I ain’t wrong,” she recalls. They go to the university library complex, sit on the soft green under the shade of a krishnachuda.Nostalgic, they remember the time when Nizam taught about a fortnight at the school at the village where she’s with her grandparents in a vacation. He’s then a first year student of Dhaka Dental College. He once visited her grandparents’ house.Bithi remembers how his classroom teaching was talked about. He taught biology. In rural Bengal words have the fleeting foot. He went there to his uncle who’s the Headmaster of the school.

              Shamsudduha Mozumder Nizam’s from Kochua,Chandpur. Nizam’s dreamy eyes met the green eyes,and a dream generated.That much.They didn’t think they’d meet again.Bithi loves Nature and humans in the midst of Nature.Her area of interest’s social and cultural anthropology with specific reference to Bangladesh.She visited several times the Sociology Department while studying at Harvard in the USA to discuss the anthropological aspects of Bangladeshis.She hasn’t any tender feeling to anyone in particular.”But,is it Nizam’s stolen her heart?” she’s curious face-to-face with the dentist.”The grass’s soft,green like your eyes,”says Nizam.

“Green’s always soft,everywhere.Think of Greenland,how after ice-sheet subsides,it turns green,” Bithi smiles.

“What’re you doing now?”

“Doing M.A. in Social Anthropology at JNU,Delhi.”

“Why Delhi,not in the USA?”

“My interest’s in the sub-continent,you know.”

“I see! Then you could be at this university,I suppose.”

“It’s the natural idea.Bangladesh’s my second home.I like to explore India as well.”

“That’s a country of explorable diversity.They’ve a vibrant democracy,a working secularism with minor irritants.”

“Such irritants’re there in the USA also. But today, you see, Barak Obama’s in the White House.”

“But they in India’re yet to shake off the colonial hangover totally. The police, for example, are still not the friend of people.”

“It’s same here.”

“I agree. But they’ve the democracy since birth. The police act like rulers.”

“I’ve found them helpful in Delhi.”

“Delhi isn’t India. I’ve my own experience of the highhandedness of the police. It’s in Siliguri.We three friends were walking down the road. We saw how a senior citizen’s harassed and insulted by a police constable because he’d parked his bike on the edge of the road which wasn’t marked as no-parking zone. We came to know the citizen’s a reputed teacher. It’s just opposite the local police station.”

“Is it? Can it be in Bengal, the cradle of the nineteenth century renaissance?”Bithi wonders.

“You’re on vacation, I suppose,”Nizam tries to divert.

“Yes, leaving for Delhi on 2^nd August. What’re you doing now?”

“Have a dental clinic at Elephant Road, near here.”

“Wonderful! But why here now? Must be a busy doctor.”

“I cannot forget my student life, my days as a chhatra (Student) league leader.”

“But one should be a professional, hundred per cent.”

“True, Bangladesh’s not the USA. Here the conflict between the pro-liberation and the anti-liberation forces are quite strong. I cannot help adding to the strength of the pro-liberation forces.So, I’m here with them from time to time.”

“What about the people of Chittagong Hill Tracts? Are they happy?”

“There had been an attempt to change the demography of the area with the mass settlement of the people from the plains. But the present government tries to make for the wrong. We believe the tribal people shouldn’t be wronged.”

“I’ve the mind to visit the area before I leave this time.”

“You should if you want to explore the psyche of the people and their way of life, its evolution.”

“I believe they’re quite simple and friendly.”

“They’re, really. We must know them if we’re to bring them to the national mainstream. They participated in the liberation war, though their king sided with the Pakistan Government.”

“They’re Mongoloid as the Manipuris are in India.”

“Let’s have a cup of tea at Madhur Canteen”

“Let’s. I know Madhuda’s killed by the Pakistan occupation army for the role of the canteen in the process of the evolution of the Bangali Nationalism.”

“Having tea at the canteen would be an event in your life.”

“I believe so.”

So, they proceed to the canteen. There she finds student leaders discussing the danger of fundamentalism that undermines the spirit of the Liberation War. She thinks how the values achieved through a long struggle and great event like the martyrdom of 21^st February 1952 is sought to be negated by the anti-liberation forces regenerated and active after the tragedy of 15^th August 1975.This didn’t happen in the USA; Washington wasn’t assassinated. President Abraham Lincoln’s assassinated but the people of the USA didn’t allow slavery to get reinstated. Abolition of slavery by Lincoln laid the foundation of the strong democracy in that country. Fundamentalism doesn’t respect democracy and freedom of opinion and faith. The Nazis under Hitler demonstrated the cruelty against the Jews which didn’t win, she recapitulates.”Well, I’m to go now, my parents await me back home,” says Bithi and rises.” See you again,” wishes Nizam.( continued on 13 August 2015)