This is the fifth call a man in his late 60s receive within a couple of hours. He is at his wit's end why his friends and colleagues ask him the same question. After the first two calls, he was in trepidation before receiving the third call and before receiving the fourth and fifth calls he literally felt a kind of nausea. After the first two calls, he knew how his friends would ask him to accompany them to the land of El Dorado.
Although they were the batch mates in the civil service and retired within two-three years, he led a clean life which his friends abhorred and taunted him for not joining the bandwagon of making money left and right. But his friends would not believe that he does not possess a small fortune amounting to only $5,000,000 or Tk60 crore. The barrage of phone calls follows US President Donald Trump's open declaration that anyone can qualify for the 'gold card' or citizenship of the United States of America in exchange for this amount.
At a time when Trump is bent on driving out 'illegal citizens' that include children born in America to immigrants entering his country without valid documents, he is inviting moneyed people from all around the world in order to revive his sagging economy. What a lucrative offer it is for those people in Bangladesh, who have amassed mountains of wealth over the past decade! His friends have laundered many times more than the required money to Swiss banks and other offshore banks. Their lavish living standard has even prompted his wife to chide him for his honesty. He has to bear with the reproachful question time and again, "Satata dhuey jal khaba? (will you drink honesty-washed water?).
Unmoved the retired secretary, focused on raising his two children as best as he could. His son came back to serve at a reputed public university in Bangladesh completing his PhD in computer science and engineering from the Stanford University. His daughter is married off to a teacher at the Oxford University. What else he could desire more? Material gains and comfort he has not valued much. After all, he came from a village where his father was a farmer with modest means. The value of honesty he has learnt to appreciate as a legacy from his father. But the latest socio-political developments are increasingly proving highly disturbing. He is worried what awaits the country because intolerance at every layer of society is unsettling the country's poise and stability.
It is this political volatility, he understands, that has prompted his friends to opt for a flight from uncertainty and any possible incrimination in this country. He has no fear for political incrimination because his clean image could not be soiled at any stage of service life. But he is worried about the future of the country. He is also concerned that the bait Trump is dangling to entice corrupt people around the world to sell citizenship will drain out more money from not only Bangladesh but also other poor countries where corruption is ripe and oligarchy reigns supreme. His friends even offered to help him make up for a gap of a few millions if he agreed to move out of this God-forsaken country.
No amount of entreaty could make the adamant man relent. He has politely declined their offers and said that he has not many years to live. There is no point leaving this country. There are millions of wretched lives in this country. If they can sustain, he too will somehow make do. However, he gets worried about his son's future in this country. If the boy stayed in the USA, where he had offers of high-paying jobs, he could by now got American citizenship and have his own home with attendant affluence. Distressing news is pouring from all corners.
The developed countries and some not so developed island nations are also luring the corrupt elements with money. Apart from the countries in the first world including the UK, Canada and New Zealand, rising ones like Singapore and Malaysia have their standing offer for citizenship or 'second home' in exchange for money. Already 3,604 Bangladeshi citizens have availed of the 'second home' opportunity. Then from Europe's Malta to the Maldives, from Middle-Eastern Jordan to Caribbean Grenada the selling prices of citizenship vary in between $0.23 and 0.25 million.
Not all of these countries are likely to have better living conditions but some of those can be used as a launching pad by ambitious and calculative people. Bangladesh may lose more of its resources in the process if the condition here does not improve and the moneyed people feel the compulsion to naturalise anywhere possible. Corruption is thus incited by not only the highly developed countries which time and again preach transparency and human rights but also by nations finding themselves down the development scale.
(This write-up is part fictional and part real) Correction: A key word 'ripe' in the opening sentence of the highlight was dropped.
The sentence should read as: It is not for nothing, twilight and ripe years are combined to produce a sense of a time past the summit of life when it is at its most active, productive and vigorous.
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