Elusive Angel

Nidhu Bhusan Das

A shadow eludes

My right leg itches to rise

The left one sticks, why?

If desire engenders fantasy

Reason brings back to reality

The conflict is interesting.

Rolling waves lash the coast

The water recedes

 Leaving behind surfs.

My angel hovers overhead

Sends down dew drops

That the sun swallows up.

It is bewildering

I cannot catch up with my angel.

 That’s Why I Bleed

      

                                                         Nidhu Bhusan Das

        I bleed, am being burnt. Don’t know why. Lalon was wrong, is it?  Is Allah the only word for the Almighty, Ishwar and God are forbidden? Am I the mother of only those who pray in the name of Allah?

        Look at me. I am perturbed. They kill my children who are not theocratic. They are theocratic because theocracy gives power and lucre. They shed blood because for them bloodshed goes well with attainment and preservation of power. See how they seek to repeat the rampage and killing like they did forty-two years from now in 1971.

      The youths took up arms and fought the War of Independence, with the support of the people who cherished a nation based on cultural identity. They went against the liberation war and collaborated with the occupation army of Pakistan. After the humiliating defeat of the occupation army, the collaborators went into hibernation. The usurpers who killed the Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman with his family members at 32, Dhanmondi Road on 15^th August 1975 called them to arise and shared power with them.

     The killers rewrote the Constitution to destroy the secular character of the country.

Now the country is set to restore secularism, and demand execution of the killer-collaborators. Their trial at the International War Crime Tribunal is on. Meanwhile, three verdicts have been handed out – two death sentences, one in absentia and one life imprisonment. The life term could not satisfy the overwhelming those who go by the spirit and values of the Liberation War. The youths who were born after the resurrection of the collaborators demand death sentence for kader Mollah who has been awarded life imprisonment. They launched a movement on 5^th February with the demand. The Parliament amended the Tribunal Act adding the right to appeal. The collaborators and their Islamist supporters started rampage and arson after the third verdict awarding death sentence, in presentia, was awarded to Delwar Hossain Sayedee.

      I cannot but be sad. My children are in agony being killed, wounded and rendered homeless only because they are religious minority or they demand death sentence for the collaborators, ban of communal parties and politics, and restoration of the secular polity. Do you think it right to force people into accepting any diktat in the name of religion. If yes, you do not respect human right. If no, you accept that it is not righteous. Righteousness is a tenet of foremost importance in Islam, like in other religions, monotheistic or polytheistic. I bleed because righteousness is undermined and human rights are violated in the name of Islam by those who are not enlightened and, thus, obscurantists. Let there be light for them.

Moms' Pix

          Nidhu Bhusan Das

Rini-Jhini, my nieces, born to Soma
So sweet are they, I didn’t know till the other day
When she mailed the pix, from the coast
Of the Arabian Sea, soon after we
Discovered we are siblings,
The fact, mysteriously hidden, so long.

O God, that this could happen, a sort of
Oedipus myth! We’re believers, Soma and I,
And, therefore, have no doubt
That it’s true, the discovery.
Uttam from Heaven looks down, happy
To see Soma stoically bears the brunt.

The twins, exactly like my mom,
Are good at learning, reports Soma,
And can cook assorted food.
I long for the food, moms would serve
Affectionately, sitting beside, for me to eat.