A launch disaster foretold

All warnings to the motor launch-owners before Eid appear to have fallen on deaf ears. And it also turned out to be a stroke of sheer luck for some; most vessels were able to reach the capital and the nearby destinations on their return trip after Eid. The way things unfold in Bangladesh, they too might have been caught in the paws of misfortune. Luck eluded the ill-fated MV Pinak-6.
When dozens of other large and small launches filled, or overloaded, with passengers, made it to Dhaka, this launch had failed. It sank in the turbulent Padma near Louhajong, in Munshiganj, Monday, with nearly three hundred passengers. The launch was coming from Keorakandi to finally anchor at Maoa, not far from the capital. The passenger-capacity of MV Pinak-6 was 85. It did not have any updated fitness certificate after its earlier one had been cancelled.
As this write-up is being prepared on 5 August, two bodies could be recovered. About 40 could manage to swim ashore. The rest were reported 'missing'. Salvage operation was on to locate the vessel lying under water.  
That it is the overloading of the launch that has caused it to sink reminds us of the fact that as a nation we are infatuated with rhetoric. When it comes to launch travels home to celebrate Eid, we go gaga we see that the big bosses in the shipping authorities and other related offices have not abandoned us: how nice of them, they are performing their duties by warning the vessel owners against taking recourse to malpractices. They do not forget the passengers too. Special newspaper adverts are published targeting both vessel operators and passengers, because both parties are equally responsible for making a launch journey safe. All this instills big doses of 'confidence' in us.
But as Eid begins knocking at the door, everything is swept under the carpet -- the warnings to the operators, entreaties to the passengers. A lot of the passengers start thinking, "come what may, I have to reach home. Haven't they assured us of a safe trip home and return? They have already taken a raft of precautions."
Side by side with the launch owners' ingenious and mischievous attempts to take the authorities for a ride by posing as law-abiding, most of the passengers turn fatalist at this time. On top of all, they have great faith in the rhetoric and sermons of the authorities concerned.
The whole juggernaut of the Eid travel passes off peacefully. The joy of going home to celebrate the festival with the near and dear ones overwhelms the suffering one has to go through during the journey.
Almost all of them come back to the city barring those star-crossed. They get lost in the chilly chasm of death or end up being on the list of the missing ones.
When people in general are yet to shake off the festival lag, the misfortune striking a few others makes us numb with sadness. The sinking of MV Pinak-6 and the feared deaths of over one hundred passengers is yet another instance of a denouement, which has been long in the making. To many, the sad news appeared like 'Chronicle of a Death Foretold', the eerie fiction by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. A man will be killed in the wee hours in a small town. Everyone knows about it. They know who will be killed, and who the killers are. With baited breath they wait for the macabre murder.
Coming to the launch capsize, it looks as if we knew everything beforehand. We knew we were skilled puppeteers and as a nation fond of ritualistic routine work and pompous rhetoric. We knew it was a foregone conclusion that of the many launches poised to commence their Eid service, one or two will fall victim to an inauspicious turn of fate.
Because long before the festival, the stage was well-set in the dockyards near the capital to give rundown launches a fresh look. The mock-renovation spawned misgivings for many. To our relief, no launch disasters occurred last year. Maybe, it was part of the quirky ways that luck plays upon man.
This year we could not avert a launch capsize. Too much rhetoric coupled with complacency and smugness may have pitted us against the cold face of reality. How long will we be going to see these senseless deaths?
In a densely populated country full of rivers, launch or boat capsizes cannot be checked completely. But to cut down on mishaps, we can, at least, put in place a strong shipping administration with sufficient funds, experienced personnel, state-of-the-art equipment -- and a foolproof monitoring of the launches in service.
Above everything, the authorities concerned should be cleansed of the pervasive corruption, so that no errant operator goes scot-free. Post-accident probe bodies are just futile exercises. We have had enough of these banalities.   
 shihabskr@ymail.com