My wish list

I wish Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhonsle would stop singing. Their place as all time greats of Indian music is secure forever. Billions of their fans would like to remember the genius of Lata and Asha in their prime, rather than their pale shadows of the present. I wish Bangladesh would honour Lata and Asha with the nation's highest civilian award for their contribution in the field of music.

I wish President George W. Bush would realise that losing a presidential reelection is not the end of the world. Former President Jimmy Carter lost his reelection bid in 1980 and went on to win the Nobel Peace prize. It is inherently contradictory to claim to be a man of God, and, for the lack of a better word, lie. President Bill Clinton also lied about the Monica Lewinsky affair, but, unlike Bush, Clinton never claimed to be a man of God!

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I wish there more were roads and landmarks named after Rabindranath Thakur in Bangladesh. He is the Shakespeare of our mother tongue Bangla, or, rather, Shakespeare is the Rabindranath Thakur of the English language. We have adopted his Shonar Bangla as our national anthem. It is clear that Bangla is going to survive and thrive only in Bangladesh. As such it is imperative that Bangladesh honour the number one exponent of Bangla, Rabindranath Thakur.

I wish the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman would stop telling the Arabs and the Muslims what to do. Tom is all reason at all other times, but at critical times he always sides with the Israeli government. It is all right for Tom to be a supporter of Israel; it is not all right for him also to pretend to be a friend of the Arabs and Muslims. Just before the assassination of the architect of the Oslo Accord, the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, through his New York Times columns Tom Friedman was berating Yitzhak Rabin to slow down the peace process with the Palestinians! It is not politically correct to utter the truth anymore that Jewish extremist Yagil Amir assassinated Yitzhak Rabin solely to kill the Oslo peace process much to the ecstasy of Netanyahu, Sharon, and the current crop of top Bush administration officials such as Richard Perle, Daniel Pipes, and Paul Wolfowitz.

I wish Bangladesh were not such a low-level deltaic plane, forced to host the annual deluge of floods. I wish India would forewarn Bangladesh how much flood water to expect from the rivers, all of which originate or pass through India. Since Bangladesh is stuck with over three hundred rivers with shallow riverbeds, I wish the government of Bangladesh would adopt a more proactive annul flood mitigation policy.

I wish the Prime Minister of the great British people, Tony Blair, would show a little more backbone. It is one thing to be a true friend of the United States through thick and thin; it is quite another to be simply a yes-man. A genuine well wisher does not encourage his friend to embark on a costly war, whose outcome is uncertain, on flimsy grounds. The good news for Britain is that there are still public servants in the country like former ministers Robin Cook and Claire Short, both of whom resigned their ministerships to protest the Iraq war, who are guided by principle rather than political expediency.

I wish sportsmen and sportswomen, from Maradona to Marion Jones, would stop taking performance-enhancing drugs. Taking drugs is cheating, akin to plagiarism in academics. Drugged athletes not only cheat the fans; they cheat themselves of a long, healthy life. It is pathetic to behold one of the world's greatest footballers, Diego Maradona, dying of cocaine addiction.

I wish certain segments of the US population would stop taking advantage of President Bush's war on terror to demonise Islam. All fair-minded Muslims support America's legitimate war against Al Qaeda terrorists, the perpetrators of the horrors of 9/11. Solely to strategically benefit Israel, it would be a tragic mistake to extend that war against ordinary Muslims, who look up to the Americans for their free enterprise, innovative spirit, and fairness. If America is seen to be fair in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, all Muslim grievances against America would melt away.

I wish the Bangladeshi cricket team would be a little more consistent in both their batting and bowling. As long as the batsman gain experience by facing quality bowling abroad and the bowlers also keep improving by training with the best practitioners of the trade, sooner, rather than later Bangladesh will win a Test match. We should keep our cricket achievements in perspective, though. Only ten nations play test cricket; and Bangladesh did not earn the test status by defeating the MCC, as was required in the past. How we perform in World Cup football and in the upcoming Athens Olympics are better indicators of our sports prowess.

I wish the great people of Australia had not elected racist Pauline Hanson, I mean John Howard, as their Prime Minister. Mr. Howard, who has implemented all of racist Hanson's xenophobic policies, seems to believe that the only way Australia can be relevant in the world is by its uncritical obedience to America, and by its wholehearted support for Israeli terrorism. I wish Australia would stop casting its votes in the UN unfairly in support of Israel. Mr. Howard underestimates the genius of the Australians and does them a disservice. (Most of the writer's childhood sports heroes were Australians.) Australia has much more in common with two of the most civilised nations on earth -- Canada and New Zealand -- and should reflect the morals of those nations rather than identify with the intern- ational outlaw Israel and the mass murderer Sharon. Just as the Indian voters redeemed themselves by ousting the BJP recently, I wish that the Australian voters would do the same and give Mr. Howard the heave ho!

I wish there were a way to avoid Dhaka's horrendous traffic jams. Some traffic lights take 10 to 15 minutes to change. I wish there were fewer high-rise buildings, fewer one-building universities, fewer inner city shopping malls, less heat, less humidity, less squalor, less pollution, fewer people, and more open space in Dhaka! With hardly any other provincial city developing, Bangladesh is in danger of becoming a gigantic Dhaka City with 140 million people! I wish we would stop procreating so lustily!