Mine.
She is called Bangladesh.
A place where stray dogs are strangled to death and rabid cats lurk your kitchen. The place where slavery exists in full force where the female country head decides to make prostitution legal. A place where revenge can mean disfiguring a beautiful woman’s face with sulphuric acid or even raping and stabbing a 15 year old 20 times in her own bedroom while her billionaire tycoon father hosts a party on the mansion rooftop.
A country we paid for with the lives of at least 3000000 martyrs. And the chastity of 200000 mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, nieces. We lost hundreds of intellectuals yet forgave those who killed them. Hell, we even voted them to the parliament. A democratic nation that continues to believe every word that comes out of two idiotic women who know nothing about running a country, let alone giving development some thought.
If you were born in Bangladesh towards the end of 1971 or in 1972, you could be one of the thousands of war babies gained at the cost of freedom. As for the war criminals who might have aided in your mother’s rape, they walk free. This is a free land after all, innit?
Welcome to the world’s most densely populated nation. A man barely has enough space to stand and pee on the street sides anymore. Kids as young as two sniff glue to forget hunger, children are abused, tortured and even dismembered and forced to beg at traffic signals.
But me, I eat at pizza hut and swipe my AmEx card. I admire those billboards that adorn my ideas even when they sometimes fall off during monsoon thunderstorms onto huddled people with no place to go to. I watch Beautiful Bangladesh in awe. But praise be to my own – while there are people still scrubbing their dingleberries with mud I’m here trying to sell some beauty soaps that will keep you extra fresh.
I used to drive from Rock Hill, SC to Charlotte, NC Exit 6 – to work every day. A 30 minute drive, max, no traffic, 70 miles per hour. I go from one end of the city to the other (a city perhaps smaller than Rock Hill) and it takes me an hour minimum. That is if some CNG driver mercies my poor soul. All in 100 degree weather, my straight hair curls in approximately 5 minutes. Allergy doses go higher and higher. Air becomes so heavy, I wonder how those people get any sleep, if any at all – as I cuddle with my teddy bear and goose feathered blanket blasting the air conditioner. 17 degrees, are you fucking kidding me, I need the AC guys to come up with some cooler technology please.
Ex lovers release video clips of compromising situations and the whole nation indulges the ultimate display of shame. An engineer husband gouges out the eyes of a Fulbright scholar university professor. Red usually means go, green usually means go. Yellow always means go. Traffic signals are overrated anyway. Just let him exercise some power on the poor and take whatever is at arm’s reach.
Young couples have sex at cyber cafe booths and dinky hotel rooms thanks to “values” practiced at home. The executive director of a shipbuilding company and a low income middle school dropout groove to the same beats on a thursday night at a 5 star dj party. Weed is cheaper than cigarettes, whores are cheaper than condoms. And there is no existence of a benefit of doubt.
You live in Bangladesh you can’t trust no one. That’s the first rule. People are vicious here. Nothing comes above me, myself and I. But this is the land where only the fittest can survive. And by fittest I mean the most cunning, lying, corrupt son of a bitch on the face of the planet.
At least whatever happens here happens out in the open. Open sex, open bribery, open money laundering, open loooted stock market, open election rigging. The media reports it all. And the nation just keeps watching.
That’s all we can do anyway. Back in the day there was braindrain and we used to complain about how everyone is fleeing responsibilities. Some of us came back didn’t we? What in the pope’s name am I achieving? Lord knows Im just a watcher.
At 11 am on a busy office day. I could have been in one of these buses that collided at the intersection of Motijheel. But wait, in my toyota corolla x, I don’t think I care.
So yes, welcome to the land of I don’t give a flying rat’s ass. Till i am sodomized to no end, sticks stones even acid cant break me. Let alone words.
Long live corruption. Long live Bangladesh.
