How dreams get shattered

Nilratan Halder | Published: February 28, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2024 06:01:00

In this land, now turned into a plain of death and destruction after the 1971 genocide, dreams just evaporate into flames. Widowed mothers or parents are compelled to become witness to insufferable pains and suffering their last hope and reliance in the shape of their only sons go through. This they do following burns the victims suffer all over as they fall victim to most barbaric arson or petrol bomb attacks. Insidious politics has been snatching away lives and dreams. Here is a land where it is a sin to harbour a lifetime's dream. One's dream may get snapped any moment. Life and dreams are inseparable but in today's Bangladesh both are most vulnerable and uncertain because politics has assumed the shape of a most malicious dragon spitting fire from all corners.
How dreams are shattered can be illustrated by the obnoxious and most tragic deaths of 100 people -- about 70 of them burnt death -- to the insanity let loose in the name of politics. Then there are incidents like the helper of a bus, son of a widowed mother, who left her with the assurance that he would come back with a large quantity of foods from the newly secured job he managed and was going to join that day. Incidents like these reinforce the fact that life and dream have been made more vulnerable here than they were before.
Then take the case of Shermin Sultana, who was going to attend the inaugural class of her first year honours, accountancy, at Kabi Kazi Nazrul Islam College. Hers was a dream to become a banker. What the first day's class means to a fresher needs hardly any elaboration. Honours graduation in particular is that staircase or escalator a student steps on with trepidation and also bosomful of dreams. It is an especial feeling and sensation. But the reality is that in this land of death now no one gets out of home with a clear mind. Fear lurks like an obsession at the back of head. When the girl set out of her home she also might have shuddered at the thought of coming under a bomb attack. It is because of this her mother accompanied her.
At a time when she was supposed to make friends with her classmates, she had to be taken to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) for treatment instead. Her dreams went up literally in flame or smoke when crude bombs hurled from a procession brought out by the Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal unit of the Jagannath University landed on her. Her mother sustained minor injury but it was the girl who fell from the rickshaw they were riding and her back and stomach were badly burnt.
Shermin is not the only student to have fallen to this kind of mayhem. Another student, a candidate for the on-going Secondary School Certificate Examination (SSC) could not appear at the examination because splinters from a bomb have damaged one of his eyes. Instead of sitting for exam, he was undergoing treatment of his eye at the Lion's Eye Hospital at Agargaon. Whether he would regain her eyesight was doubtful.
What is notable here is that the bomb that ripped through Shermin's body was hurled by none other than students from a university. How can a student do this to another student? For students involved in today's politics this seems to be normal because politics has made them criminal and murderers. They revel in inflicting most gruesome cruelty on their rivals as well as others having nothing to do with politics. Theirs is a malicious and hideous dream --one that could not care less for others' right to survive in peace. All they care about is partisan interests and self preservation and indulgence --no matter at what cost.
In a situation like this wonderous and most sacred dreams of millions get lost or shattered. It is a dangerous place to be in right at this moment. And here is a country that has been earned after a bloody nine-month war and so much sacrifice!