What kind of year has 2014 been for all of us? Has it been a year of moving forward or paddling backward, or of accomplishing significant goals, of garnering pleasant experiences, or of enduring disappointments and suffering pains? Was it by and large a happy year? Or, was it a year of bloody conflicts here and there with peace not so visible in the offing? Was it a year of forced or mysterious disappearances of walking men and flying machines? Was it a gloomy year at home and abroad that portends stormy days ahead? Or, in order to console ourselves, was it a blessing in disguise--something we cogently call 'good' that comes cloaked in 'bad'?
In a fifteenth century play, that was neither a tragedy nor a comedy, William Shakespeare taught us to conclude our accomplishments by saying: "All's well that ends well". On that count, 2014 has not ended well.
In Bangladesh, the ingenuity of three volunteers in recovering the body of the 4-year old Jihad from a well shaft in Dhaka and the tragic story of authorities in doubting the presence of the child in the depth of the WASA well will ring in the ears of people as a lasting memory of the year 2014, a story as heart-rending as the last part of an emotional melody. How could the home minister and the fire brigade chief of a country announce that no human being was found in the shaft, having no patience to wait a few more moments to see how the intrepid boys, who had worked at the collapsed Rana Plaza, used an indigenously devised metal-rod case to pull the child?
On the last day of the year, planes and ships of air forces and navies of different countries are still scanning the treacherous seas in East Asia in their frenetic search for the wreckage of the AirAsia plane that disappeared on Sunday while hopes to find any survivor among the passengers are wearing thin.
Around the same time at the end of this year, ten passengers on a sea voyage from Greece to Italy have died in a fire that engulfed a Greek ferry ship in the Adriatic Sea. 427 people have, however, been rescued off the boat.
Aviation historians may mark the year as a year of air disasters. On December 28, the AirAsia plane, Flight QZ850, owned by a Malaysian company, disappeared (probably crashed on a rough sea after battling a storm at a high altitude) on its way from Indonesia to Singapore, with 162 passengers onboard, making 2014 a devastating year for aviation with a spate of airplane disasters around the world including the most mysterious disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 and the most shameful shooting down of another Malaysian Flight MH17. More than 1000 people got killed or are missing following several air catastrophes in 2014.
In March, the world was awe-struck as the MH 370 vanished into thin air. No confirmed wreckage of the flight has ever been found and the fate of its 239 passengers onboard is still unknown. In June, a Ukrainian army transport plane was shot down. All 49 people aboard died. In July, 298 people were killed when a Malaysian Airlines flight was shot down over Ukraine. Both crashes are blamed on pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine. The West accuses Russia of complicity in the airplanes' downing. In the same month of July, Taiwan's TransAsia Airways Flight 222 crashed. Of the 58 passengers aboard, only 10 survived. The month July once again witnessed yet another air disaster when an Air Algeria Flight crashed in Mali, killing 116 people after encountering rough weather. And the year ended with the latest disappearance of AirAsia Flight QZ8501.
The history books might remember this year as one in which people sowed anarchy and anxiety. Revanchism seems to have intoxicated Russia, apparently bent on reversing territorial losses, as the world helplessly witnessed Moscow laying claim on Crimea, setting off months of violent, pro-Russian separatism and terrorism in Ukraine on Europe's eastern periphery, leaving thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.
Terrorist group Boko Haram, which has been wreaking murderous havoc in Nigeria, kidnapped 200 school girls this year and vowed to kill or enslave them. Islamic State, an anathema in the history of Islam, is leaving a trail of death and wanton bloodshed.
Ebola epidemic that has ravaged the fragile states of West Africa is still threatening the world on the last day of the year as a British health-care worker, who was in Sierra Leone, has been diagnosed with Ebola and is receiving treatment in Glasgow.
Racial tensions have heightened in the American heartland in 2014 and the climatologists have claimed the year as the hottest year on record for the planet.
The beginning of the year 2014 did not augur well in Bangladesh either. The election of more than half of the parliamentary seats unopposed in January 2014 is a rare chapter in the history of democracy in the world. No sensible Bangladeshi should take pride in an election where opposition candidates were not persuaded with good intention to participate, ensuring a level field of competition based on past electoral practices. The parliament that has been running the nation does in no way represent the popular will. The legitimacy of the election has been so undermined in the eyes of the world that visiting foreign dignitaries still meet the former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, who is no more a leader of the opposition.
The year has at the same time witnessed Saber Chowdhury, a member of the present parliament, elected as the President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in October 2014 in Geneva. A distinguished Bangladeshi politician since 1996, Chowdhury, the 28th President of IPU, follows a long list of illustrious predecessors many of whom won the Nobel Prize.
Among many more socio-political developments Bangladeshis will fondly remember 2014 as the year when two officers--NaymaHaque and Tamanna-who became the first female helicopter flyers in the history of Bangladesh Air Force.
In spite of glooms and dooms around the world, the year found the world enriched with new feats and triumphs by many challengers, crusaders and advocates in the fields of science, arts, cultures, and innovations, if not so much in the domains of peace and politics.
It was a year when caregivers risked their lives to save thousands of Ebola-stricken strangers in West Africa. Protesters took to the streets demanding government reforms from Hong Kong to Caracas. Innovators fought to ensure a nuclear-zero world. Environmentalists galvanised movements around the world to guard humanity from approaching environmental calamity.
Not so much known in the world before 2014, a 43-year-old Paris-based economist Thomas Piketty rocked the world by publishing in English his book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century". The book compares how wealth patterns have evolved in different countries over the past few centuries and points out that inequality has been rising almost everywhere. The book has ignited public debates that may shape the future distribution wealth among haves and have-nots, an idea that seemed almost irrelevant in the capitalist world before 2014.
The ending of one calendar year and the starting of another often prompt us to reassess where we have been and where we think we are heading. If the year has been a good one for the most part, we are eager to proceed, hoping to experience more of the same. If the year has really been a bad one, we tend to forget the past, hoping not to experience more of the same and endeavoring to better our fate. But it is tough to project where we think we are headed, especially when we are not delighted with the journey so far. The past offers a particular puzzle. The past has a peculiar line of attack; it clings to us even when we would desperately like it to let go.
It is often said those who forget the mistakes of the past are bound to repeat them and suffer the inevitable consequences. But at the same time the latest history does not seem to punish those offenders, wrongdoers and despots who nowadays think the ancient history is not going to repeat in their times to reprove their misdeeds. They seem quite confident that history now sides with those who can flex their muscles. If not, why are the dictators around the world so adamant to cling to their thrones, muffling the voices of people?
We all have done things we wish we hadn't done in 2014. There are undone things we fondly wish we had done when we had the opportunity last year. Unfortunately, the past is written in hard stone. It can't be erased. We can't un-write our days in the past, but starting today we can breathe fresh air to hope for better tomorrows. We can, if we only will, create new chapters that don't have to result in remorse and regret.
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