In remembrance of heroes

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Rising from the underground train station at Charring Cross in London, one morning I set on a concrete bench at the Trafalgar Square. A lot of pigeons, the hallmark of the British capital, were intermittently flying low and descending to the earth for collecting their food. The birds were also dropping more or less constantly.
An old British gentleman came along penetrating the haze of the winter morning fog. He politely asked me whether he could share the bench. I greeted him. Both of us are smokers. We were contributing incessantly to the haze around. I was also looking around scanning the faces in stones at the square. A plaque beneath the bust of one face read: Major General William Hemlock, Commander of the British forces who suppressed the sepoy mutiny in India in 1857. I laughed. The gentleman asked me what made me to giggle. I mentioned my identity as a Bangladeshi and then pointing at the statue I told him: Keep it anywhere in our sub-continent, the next morning you will find its head blown off and fragmented into shreds.
This year, after 150 years after the sepoy mutiny, both India and Pakistan officially observed the occasion solemnly. Each paid glowing tributes to the soldiers of our last emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, who had laid down their lives in their abortive uprising to drive away the disguised invaders who had come in as the trading personnel of the British East India Company. But we in Bangladesh fell behind. Was it because the British could first dent the empire in Bengal at the battle at Plassey in 1757, in which some local conspirators connived with them? We must learn to respect our heroes to gain an indomitable spirit and embolden ourselves as passionate defenders of our national independence.
Abdul Hamid
Nakhalpara,
Dhaka