I found myself at the Boi Mela on a temperate February Friday with a line that stretched all the way to the Shahbagh intersection on one side and Doyel Chattar on the other, dividing itself at TSC.

“Oh my God! Let’s come back some other day!”

“Kirey? Tui ki Bangladeshey notun ashchish naki? Chol shamney!”

We made our way towards the entrance of Bangla Academy.

“Can you imagine cutting into a line like this? That would be the fight of the year!”

“Let’s wait. This is Dhaka, not some bloody Western city where we queue up! We have true freedom here!”

The words were not altogether devoid of irony.

Sure enough, as we loitered at the entrance of the Academy, one of the policeman there – in his hand, a heavy gun reminiscent of Governor Schwarzenegger’s in T2 – beckoned to people to start forming another line. A sudden rush of people, smiles on their faces. I stood behind one of them and motioned to my friend.

“Pagol naki? Mair khaitey chaash?”

“Arey police e to bollo line kortey!”

That convinced him. We were inside after waiting in line for around 2 minutes (judge not), elated at our luck and guilty as hell thinking about the people at Shahbagh More!

We wandered about, looking at books as much as taking in the atmosphere. “Remand” was the word I heard the most: as in “Himu Remandey”, arguably the most popular title at the Mela, followed by its usage in such classic lines as “Beshi faizlami korish na! Tokey remandey niye jabey!” (overheard near at the Bangla Academy canteen).

Muktijuddho was the word I saw in print the most: as in Muktijuddher itihash - Afsan Choudhury’s, shoshostro bahini’r etc, Muktijuddher dolilpotro, Muktijuddher kobita, Muktijuddher shera golpo, Muktijuddher kishore golpo, Muktijuddhey gonomadhyom and so forth. Whoever says that the spirit of Muktijuddho is dead should be taken with a pinch of salt. Endangered from certain unrepresentative quarters: yes! But far, far from being “dead”.

What was it about the atmosphere?

Later that night, I would see a guest on some talk show say something to the effect of “Well, you know the small number of outlets Dhakaites have for leisure, so it’s completely natural that the Ekushey Boi Mela is simply flooded with people!”

Yet, that was not all there was to that. This wasn’t 1991 anymore. There was no desperate lack of outlets for Dhaka’s over-stressed, moneyed classes. On my way to and from the Mela, I saw people hanging around Satmasjid road and all over Mirpur Road. My friends informed me that Gulshan-Banani was the same. The week before, further up north, I had seen similar signs of day-long picnics near Uttara-Ashulia-Mirpur.

Clearly, there are alternatives. Clearly something intrinsic to Ekushey drew these people to the Mela.

Perhaps it was the overtly democratic feel there was to the entire space. And by that, I don’t mean some sort of sham democracy with populist slogans, bureaucratic lethargy and the fetish of anti-politics underlying it all. I mean an atmosphere in which one felt secure to be oneself, to hold any combination and permutation of beliefs from the polarized baskets of Awami-BNP-Jamaat, religious-secular, market“Imperialist”-Marxist-Islamist dichotomy. Perhaps it was the sight of bookstalls selling Humayun Azad’s books right next to stalls selling H.M. Ershad’s books. Perhaps it was the range of books presented by some stalls for their complex consumer, who could not be simply reduced to such caricatures as a “secular man” or a “fundamentalist”, true Dhakaites vs “Bubble Boys”.

A friend bought Tagore’s Shesher Kobita to add to Mohar Ali’s History of Bengal and a biography of Hazrat Ayesha (RA). Another tried hard to obtain a copy of Himu Remandey, confessing that Humayun Ahmed was the only Bangla author he has read consistently.

Earlier in the week, I had read about protests being lodged with the authorities for allowing alleged Jamaati bookstalls. Later that evening, being pushed along by the crowd with all five senses on overload, I felt such a move would go against the very spirit of the Mela itself. As I’ve said before, this felt like a place where one had true freedom of speech and thought. Humayun Azad was not far from my mind. Dr. Azad himself had been assaulted on his way out of Bangla Academy in 2004, by people who did not like his opinions. They may well have been close associates of Jamaatis, and Islamists in general. And now, here I was worrying about upholding freedoms for those who did not necessarily believe in those freedoms themselves.
Perplexing indeed, and with no easy answers.

(I kindly request readers not to bring the War Criminals Trial issue into this. My point is about extending freedom of speech to those whom we don’t necessarily agree with, indeed those who may roll back those and other freedoms. The US faces similar dilemmas with David King/Louis Farrakhan, the UK with the British National Party and France with Le Pen.)

No thinking person ever calls for unrestricted freedoms. What thinking people do want are well-planned, thoughtful restrictions. For instance, Bangla Academy’s no-smoking law. Restrictive of a smoker’s freedom to do what they want to their own bodies (Thank YOU Jason Reitman!), sure! But restrictive of their ability to harm others who do not smoke.

In the rest of Bangladesh however, our daily lives are witness to thoughtless restrictions - checkposts, media restrictions, price monitoring, social attitudes towards young couples - and meaningless freedoms - freedom to jaywalk, freedom to throw our garbage wherever we like, freedom to urinate where we like and yes, and the freedom to break the queue and get ahead in line of thousands of people.

For around four hours at the Mela, that knack for mindless interventions or for foot-dragging on necessary ones seemed conspicuously absent. With one rather large exception. It was clear that this was hardly a place where a woman had the freedom to venture on her own and browse books at her leisure without fear of harassment, at least on such a crowded Friday. Even the best of freedoms we provide tend to reach only one half of our people. I remembered seeing Dr Azad’s “Nari” displayed proudly on a number of stalls and smiled to myself, making my way towards Shahbagh intersection once again.