Many happy returns, Madame PM

The question is why do you have to celebrate it on 15th of August? I am not questioning the date of your birth. We believe birth, death, livelihood and marriage come from God. These are givens, predetermined facts of life -- predestination. You were born on the same day a great leader of this country got killed. It didn't happen in the same year and nobody could blame you for that coincidence. It is not your fault that two opposite events got booked in our national diary on the same day!

Still, Madame it leaves a bad taste in the mouth when the nation is split between two occasions, slaying anniversary of one leader and birth anniversary of another. If you take this country as one family, politics apart, that is how leaders should treat their people. Think of yourself as the head of a family where, more or less, half the members are mourning a loss. Would you like to invite them to a wedding or birthday party on the same day? Would you like to hold any jubilation in the same house?

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Perhaps many other people celebrate their birthday on that day. But you are different from them, Madame, in stature and feature. You are the leader of the people, head of the government -- the chosen one, so to speak. You are a role model, a beacon light, who is supposed to give us hope, lead us down the moral path to make us proud of this country again and again.

But when you cut the cake on the same day as another leader goes to sprinkle flower petals on the graves of her loved ones, when you receive bouquets from your admirers in an illuminated hall room, while another leader garlands the picture of her slain father or breaks down into emotional stutters while recounting the memories of a dark night, all within the space of a single day, it looks odd like a badly edited movie where sequences are all misplaced, where tragic and comic contents are badly jumbled into confusion and don't make sense.

Our nation, more accurately our politics, has many fault lines. Many days, many events divide us already, and that division runs across the whole country "from members of the board to baby on board," like they say it in a TV ad. We need to talk about it.

Here, we need to do an examination of our conscience. Why must we subject ourselves to such surreal stupidity that insults our values and our judgments?

We all live for glories, Madame, glories which may or may not last beyond us. Bad news is that none of us will last forever. Like ones before you, you will also walk into the sunset of power. That is inevitable some day, this time or next time. But how would you like to be remembered once the glory-hounding is over?

Here is your chance to be remembered as a leader, to earn your place in the pantheon of great patriots, to be treasured in history as someone who healed the wounds of this nation and brought it together. You can fix those fault lines, which jolts this nation into violent convulsions. You can erase the barriers, which divide this house. You can knock down the walls which separate one half of this family from its other half.

A good start can be 15th of August next year. No, you shouldn't skip the celebration, but please do it a day before or a day after. Please allow the day have its due solemnity, so that those who need to mourn are not disturbed. Let us mourn this day as a nation. It is a grim day in our history, Madame Prime Minister. It is like a smudge, a dark spot, a moral eclipse that hangs over us like mushroom cloud.

When Napoleon went to conquer Egypt, he met with serious resistance and his wife was fooling around with a young lieutenant back in France. A distraught Napoleon wrote to his brother that it was a sad situation "to have so many conflicting sentiments about a single person in one's heart." Those words adequately capture the state of our minds, Madame. Right now we are a nervous nation that has so many conflicting sentiments in its heart.

Let us step out of politics for a moment, Madame Prime Minister. A great leader was killed on 15th of August like another great leader was killed on 30th of May, within the space of six years. We are still fighting over who was a greater leader between them, while our politics crumbles each day in the aftershock of our endless squabbles. You can turn it around, Madame, with your popularity, charisma, sagacity and foresight. You can stanch the hemorrhage, which will save this nation. If you rise above politics, you can lift us together.

Leaders are important for a nation because they can rouse the people and mobilize them into actions. But we need leaders who can lead by example, those who can show it to us that united we stand, divided we fall. Madame, I know you are surrounded by many yearning yes-men, demagogic dogsbodies, bureaucratic brown-noses, ideological idiots, opportunistic oilers and greedy gremlins. But I appeal to your conscience. That is the only voice you should listen in the midst of this clamour.

Set one example and it will go a long way to shape our politics. We must all show respect to the dead, and one great leader must show respect to another. Yes, Madame, how could you not enshrine the memory of a fallen hero of this country, if you could endear a foul dictator?

Once again, a Happy Birthday to you and wish you many happy returns of the day. If you return to power next time, Madame Prime Minister, feel free to celebrate 364 days of the year. Just spare one day so that this nation can mourn its loss. Even better, if you join us.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.