Is it your daughter's turn next?

In the land of 'Ghapachus'
-by Afsan Chowdhury

I watch my own daughter study. Tomorrow she has an exam. I don't know if she will be able to sit for it. I shall not know if she will return home safely. I don't know what to tell her mother if a stray bullet too fells her. Like it may fell your own child...Maybe not enough died in 1971 so we have continued to die violently every year since then...This thirsty land. How much blood does it need before it is satisfied?
By now the name of Sony is known to all in Bangladesh who have access to the mass media. She was a BUET student who died caught in the crossfire between two groups of tender-box claimants, who are young, armed and ready to kill for money. The party in power also protects them. Sony will never come home again. Can you feel that as you read this?


I suggest you do the following exercise.

Call your child close to you and make her sit down. Watch her face as intently as you can. And then imagine her dead body lying on the floor. Watch the face as it slowly tilts down to the floor, the blood flow from her body and listen to the silence that shrouds everything. Think. She will never talk to you again.

That's what her family feels. That's what you don't feel today.

That's what you will feel tomorrow.


* * * * * *
"HOW far?"

"Beyond that field and after the main road and into the field. "

Nobody answered. A group of young warriors had been walking the whole day long in an area in Bogra district called Nandigram. It was a long tiring walk because these people were not used to such journeys. After sometime, they stopped to look for shelter and sent one of the boys down to see if the villages were safe or not, ready to let them be guests for the night. He returned with a blank face, a strange stare.

" I don't know if you want to go to the village. There has been a death in the family there. A girl was killed, a girl was killed. They have buried her but everyone weeps for her. I wept too. Do you want to go and weep?"

It was such a strange and unanswerable question from a boy who had already killed enemy soldiers but had wept for a stranger. They stood there and realized that amongst them all, the feeling of death of a young girl was so deep that they couldn't remain warriors anymore. Suddenly nothing meant anything except the sight of a burial mound where everyone's mother, sister, daughter sleeps for the final time.


How are the killers of BUET any different from the killers of Nandigram in that dreadful monsoon when those young men waded through hyacinth clad water to mourn with a village where a young girl had died?



* * * * * *
AN infant died sitting in her father's lap. She was not guilty but a stray bullet fired by fleeing robbers killed her. The country mourned and the Home Minister added words that God had chosen to take away his own. The killers have not been arrested and few believe that they will be. God is busy in this land it seems.

And now a young girl has been killed by a stray bullet, a human being caught in a crossfire of the greedy and super-greedy.

Newspapers have given names -- all belonging to the ruling party, as expected when any party rules -- but of course none will be caught. The whole idea is to create a ruckus, close down the campus and then hope another will die soon so that the public forgets this one.

While hired killers are necessary to do away with Ward Commissioners with criminal pasts, records and connections, it's much easier to kill innocent people. No bullet needs to be aimed and fired, as innocents are everywhere. All one has to do is just rat-a-tat with the gun supplied by the authorities who shall hide both till public memory fades or is overcome by another death.



* * * * * *
I was in the campus when the last students' election under the Awami League government was held before BKSAL was imposed. When it became clear that the JSD supported students would sweep the elections, the partisans of Chhatra League, slogan chanters of democracy and liberty descended on the halls with arms and made sure the election results were not declared.

I saw a group of men rush towards Surya Sen Hall. We were running towards the breach in the wall next to Katasur, where there was once a huge circular building, which served as a stable where the horses, which ran in the dead racecourse lived.

"Run, Afsan, run. Are you mad? What are you doing here?" It was a friend who couldn't return to his hometown for what he had done during the war and had found shelter in the liberation party's camp.

He had also started to make money by participating in University tenders. He was there with his gun to usher democracy along. He was a friend who was asking me to run away. A few others and I ran for a long time.

He later joined Gen. Zia's party. The tender business nurtured him into the mainstream.


* * * * * *
PROVIDING money as incentive to maim and kill is the commonest way of managing the politics when policies have failed. I suppose politicians consider ordinary people as "ghapachus", the most derisive possible term in the world of Punjabi commercial sex workers. I learnt the word from my friend that this meant those who couldn't do anything but just stood there and watched.

"You mean voyeurs?"

"Well yes, I suppose but impotent voyeurs. People who can't have sex even if the girls were to offer it to them for free."

I guess that describes us pretty well. Unable to do anything and condemned to watch everything happen before our eyes.

Ghapachu.


* * * * * *
I was walking out of the arts building when I met a teacher of mine. He was disturbed and when asked informed that a clerk had abused him profusely and threatened to slap him when he had gone to the office of the University administration for some work. This kind of behaviour in the late '70s was unthinkable. He was calm but his colleagues took it seriously. The matter was taken up in the DUTA and other bodies and all the usual formalities were done. And then the matter disappeared. When I asked, I was told that nothing could be done about him because he was close to the "tender party", the people who kept the VC in office. You can't touch them even if they hit the VC himself. You can't become a VC anyway, most say, unless they back you.


* * * * * *
I was sitting in the office of a Minister who had just been eased out of the cabinet due to a power struggle in the early '80s. He was bitter about all that had happened. Suddenly a young man came inside. The man was from his own faction and he wanted the ex-minister to call the office where they had dropped a tender.

He tried for a couple of minutes to wriggle out but seeing the futility of it made the call asking that the tender be considered favourably. The man left knowing the job was done.

"When we were in student politics we never did this tenderbaji."

But Dear Minister, when you began your adult politics, one of the first things you did was to introduce that.

If the liberation war was fought today, I think the two parties would fight over the tender box for dropping a bid rather than take up arms to fight the enemy. And the same number of innocents would be killed. Only by tenderwallahs.


* * * * * *
THE Awami League and BNP probably think we are so stupid that we don't know that killers and criminals can't be caught. They keep the party going in more ways than one and the power rests with them. I suppose the only safe place is the army where a gun is provided along with the job. Otherwise, who shall at least let us fire one last bullet in celebration of this wonderful land?


* * * * * *
"SHE always looked back at me as she walked towards the gate. She didn't look back the last time. She just walked to the gate. She never came back." This was Sony's mother describing her last departure from home. Nowadays I watch such scenes on TV carefully. What do they say? What are their feelings? What are the latest examples of grief? After all, as things go, we shall soon be having one or two dead bodies in our family too.

How do you console parents of children dead just for being there while being a citizen of a country, which sends armed peacekeepers to other countries?


Are we supposed to bring peacekeepers from elsewhere to protect us?


* * * * * *
I watch my own daughter study. Tomorrow she has an exam. I don't know if she will be able to sit for it. I shall not know if she will return home safely. I don't know what to tell her mother if a stray bullet too fells her. Like it may fell your own child.



* * * * * *
MAYBE not enough died in 1971 so we have continued to die violently every year since then.

This thirsty land. How much blood does it need before it is satisfied? And these dead were not even born when we were involved. I don't find them guilty of a crime of thought even.



* * * * * *
THE BNP and AL know that they will always be in power and being out of power is just like resting between tender bid drops. It doesn't matter.

As for us when you are a ghapachu, you deserve every death that happens to you.

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