Posted on 21 August 2007 by Tasneem Khalil
Learning things the hard way
[Strawberry, Bangladesh.]
For last two days, things are looking much brighter. Just a few days ago, I was frustrated, said a lot of cynical things such as we are done for good and that there is no way out from this incredible pressure that this army-led caretaker government is putting on general people like us.
Kicking the hawkers, spitting on slum-dwellers, shooting the jute-mill workers — what not have this government done so far? Hungry, homeless kids are standing there on water for weeks, hoping when the generals would come and give them few pieces of biscuits. And when they do come, they do not forget to preach us with a few sophisticatedly placed patriotic words as if they are our birth-mothers. What they always forget is that they are playing the reign of fire.
Yesterday and today’s screaming students, wanting their space and freedom back, are not any particular party’s so called little-put leaders. They went to study, earn a degree, with hopes that someday they would stand with their heads held high, dignified. They are not thugs. They have been holding their breaths. Hoping things will change, eventually. But it did not.
