I am actually feeling like being settled in this foreign land after living here for three and half years now just only from last weekend. i have started saying this to my friends as well. i always see my NRB friends thinking about how to do something more for the country they left years back, never know when they will go back or whether they will go back at all. they try to be part of bangladeshi charities, cultural organisations instead and they religously read bangladeshi newspapers, watch bangladeshi tv news and generally they do blogging, some in bangla some in english with the hope of having some positive impact (i know that’s a relative term, ofcourse!!!) on whatever is happening in their home country.

i never felt interested in doing all these as i always knew i just came here for few years. I know when i’ll go back , everything was very planned for me. actually i sometimes felt pitty for them thinking most of these people even do not know the current bangaldesh very well and they actually are living in a fantasy world thinking they can bring changes from thousands miles away when they even sometimes don’t realise the ground situation in bangladesh is actually not as grave as they are trying to portray in their weekly deshi addas or in their writings.

but for some reason, i needed to wake up as i had been slowly changing to one of them as well for last few months. i could always relate to the political unrest, corruption, blame game in Bangladesh as i grew up with it all my life. i can still very well remember the frustration our leaders caused us. but the prime time of my life, my teen years and the time when i was becoming the individual i am now i have actually seen a very free environment in bangladesh in respect of free media and freedom of speech.Shishir had drawn all his legendary and very political cortoons around this time . he had to have spared no one (at least we didn’t have to know about it).

last week was an eye opener for me in this way.that cartoon incident and dhormeeo onubhuti (hurting religious sentiment) card actually scared the hell out of me. it was not rage, it was not frustration, it was just pure and simple fear of realising not knowing your homeland , where you were born where you grew up. and be sure my friends, this is not the end of it. look at the history of army rule in bangladesh and anywhere else in the world whenever the rulers are not close enough to the people they always tried to be the protector and preacher of the religion of the majority people. so be preapred there will be more incidents like these and bangladesh will be a more unknown country to us. all these ‘dhormio onubhuti’ will take our countries more far away from us.

so after a week of fighting with a very afraid myself , i settled as a declared NRB in a foreign land after all. we will be like those iranians, barmese, arab, somalian people who actually fled from those very oppresive countries of theirs knowing the door they left behind would never be opened for them again nor they would dare to open those doors for themselves ever again. and most of them do not even dream of any betterment of their countries anymore.

so when 20 years old cartoonist arif will be rotting in the prison (i hope he is there , not somewhere more brutal like DGFI blackhole or else) i will be settling better in this all civilised free country. there is a phrase in sankskrit ‘ Jaw Polayoti Shaw Jibotee’ - Je Palay she bache..he who flees, lives…

ohh, and getting really frustared with bangladeshi media over the last weeks, i started reading posts in several bangla and english blogs just to know whether my people are thinking the way local media are portraying or there are people like me as well. and i found this virtual world so truthful so much without hypocricy. specially in bengali blogs i have seen jamatee people making very reactionary comments but other people are calling them jamatee and rajakar and all . but those jamatee bloggers are not trying to hide themselves behind anything. so i decided to start blogging as well just feeling like it as the place to say whatever you feel like to say, to share whatever dream you still have to bring any change.

actually may be it is the place to still feel nostalgic about the country i want to go back so much.may be it is the place just to do some bloggorbloggor (i loved this word i found in one bangla blog)to get the heat out. after all ‘palabey Kothay’ ??? where can you hide ?how far you can go?? ;-)