Cactus drink

In the sixties of the last century while travelling in the Australian outback, I had cactus drink. One can over live few days with it. Cactus is an Australian plant. It usually did not grow in Bangladesh. But it is here now. Opposite the Science laboratory, I found some vendors selling Cactus drink. It is five takas a glass, quite affordable for the poor. A gentleman got angry why I take such dirty working class drink. But it really tasted Australian cactus, only some date juice had been added to it. Surprisingly Dhaka's poor use it with Chiti pitha. A person can survive for ten takas a day. That is our struggle for survival. In the glazing shows of cricket match and in the talks of the greatest in thousand years, it goes unnoticed.

Just the other day a doctor was telling me the story of our relations with pre-historic Australia. In those days, the ancestors of ours, as well as Australians believed in ghost stories. In those days, the white men the real ghosts did not arrive on our horizons. Life was easy, everything was in harmony. Then the civilization struck. Australia was actually discovered by Abel Tasman a Dutchman with Bengali sailors. Unlike the British, the Portuguese and Dutch inter-married with the Bangalees. As most of those sailors came unmarried, they had no other way. People from Holland, the Dutch were called in our language Olondaz. They brought wooden shoes Kolm -- Kharam.

Ironically with the Bengali sailors, the Laskars and the Afghan camel drivers, the Ghans or Khans, the ungrateful British took over the vast continent of Australia. But alas! it was dusty desert. No, the British had no appetite for Cactus drink.

No, in a luxury restaurant in Sweden you can have a cactus drink. It would cost you three hundred kronors, nearly three thousand takas, I was told. No, it might be a fine joke.

It is said, a Malaysian plane was hijacked. But why should it fly to the Indian Ocean to be drowned? Better it would fly to the Australian outback and survive with cactus juice.

There is something juicy in the whole story. In Pine Gap base of Australia, the USA has its mightiest surveillance system. Why did the plane, instead of flying to Vietnam and China, flew to the opposite direction? Who was that New Zealand oil worker on Vietnam coast who sent the false information that the plane vanished on the Vietnam coast? Who promoted him? Why he has not been arrested and interrogated? The entire conspiracy involves Australia, USA and New Zealand, according to this theory.

It came under the shadow of Ukraine Crisis. Ukraine has been a part of Russian Empire and then of Soviet Union for centuries. Now the Americans are saying it is their domain. By overthrowing legal president by street thugs they have installed a government of bandits and asked Russia to recognise it. No, government of Bangladesh has not fallen in that trap. Like China and India, it abstained in the United Nations General Assembly vote.

People of the world can not be puzzled and muzzled. The Anglo-Saxons created two world wars in that way. Their brutal occupation of our country, genocide by famine and epidemic was civilised behaviour and the Germans and the Japanese, the victims of genocide are called war criminals by the guardians of civilisation. Now they jump on the Russians, the Chinese and the Arabs.

British Philosopher Hobbes said truth is lie and lie is truth, it depends on what the king decides. The King decides what the courtiers say. That is democracy.

But the best thing is to puzzle and muzzle the people. As Hobbes said commoners are not capable to know the truth.

But in hot ugly weather the hungry and the thirsty in Dhaka continue to drink cactus juice. They don't know from where it comes. They drink. They do not have a TV to see the news not a place to sleep. But I remember cactus juice in Australian outback forty years ago, they drink. In a world of global confusion cactus drink can give you some sanity. I mean sanity.