Sense & Insensibility
Headless horseman?
Photo: loston wallace.com
IN Washington Irving's epic story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, a headless horseman searches for its head in the woods of Sleepy Hollow, a backward village in upstate New York. The horseman was a long-dead mercenary who was beheaded during the Revolutionary War and dumped somewhere in the Western Woods. In the dark depths of the night, when a pale moon shone overhead, village people often witnessed the headless phantom searching for its head in the woods and valleys. Not finding it, the apparition let out a bone-chilling cry of frustration and rode away on a black stallion. The ghost did not rest in its grave until it found the head. Somehow and somewhere, in some strange way, we find our politics at the moment uncannily resembling a headless horseman frantically searching for the chopped off head. The body is unstable and unsure about where to look for it and where not. The body has no sight, no vision and no direction in the ominous mist of treacherous politics that was created when it was alive with the head and the body together. This tale of the macabre is known to us all. In its convoluted manifestation politics had lost sensibility, order, cohesion, sense of proportion, propriety, respectability, and courteousness. And to the peril of the nation, the actors -- the politicians -- brazenly delved into senseless debauchery and depravity and produced sequels of travesty that were unparallel in the history of Bangladesh. Those were the worst of times when some ruthless mercenary politicians had let loose a reign of terror in the country. In magnitude, enormity and pervasiveness that happened within a short span of time the looting surpassed many times over what the East India Company had done in two hundred years. Power-drunk, the wild bunch of marauders never cared to take caution as the bandwagon called Bangladesh hurtled in breakneck speed downhill towards the bottomless pit. But, it was at the very last moment that strong hands got hold of the reigns, pulled the wagon back and saved the nation. The sudden action made the mercenaries get catapulted into the air and land on their butts mighty heavily. Soon the wind of change blew them into the empty space like tiny paper puppets. Today, the headless torso of politics is trying to figure out why it had lost it in the first place; and what had gone so devilishly wrong to result in such gruesome deformity. But we observe in dismay, though politics is looking for an answer everywhere, politicians who had brought down such misfortune on it still remain fallacious and argumentative in confessing their own follies in the whole affair. In Washington Irving's story the headless ghost ultimately finds its head and rides away happily to rest in its grave and it was never to haunt Sleepy Hollow again. But what about our headless politics? Will it find the head it badly needs to make it a cohesive whole once again? Politicians who have survived so far have demonstrated very little to convince us that they have come of age. They continue to talk in riddles thinking that we all are nitwits. They are shifting blames on one another including the party top leaders for the present condition. Abdul Mannan: Saint in the making?The other day, brother Abdul Mannan has given a long homily on how all his good intentions and moves were put in the waste bin by the party top leadership. Trying to imitate the saints of the past, he told us how he and brother Abdul Jalil came so close to striking a deal during the legendary dialogue between the two. What does he think the people are -- sinners condemned to burning eternally in hell, and he is here to salvage our souls as a redeemer? People could see right through the entire circus of dialogue, which was but a ploy of the ruling party to keep the opposition activists sitting idle at home and wait for the last hour of their tenure. We remember how brother Abdul Jalil fumbled for words before camera when asked why had he joined the dialogue when it was destined to fail. But, brother Jalil was a genius in fumbling, isn't it? Don't waste a breath on him. Sleepy Delwar
Have you noticed something? A very sleepy Delwar speaks out only when Mannan speaks out. Like a football player on the field, he was told to mark Mannan. That he does when he is not sleeping. The other day he said the statement of Abdul Mannan about the dialogue and the two leaders was 'unacceptable.' That is precisely the word we have been using for the last five or ten years. We, the people of the People's Republic of Bangladesh, do not find most of the words and works of the politicians 'unacceptable.' For Delwar to say such things is politics but for us it is the esteem of the nation. We do not think in terms of party politics, we think in terms of unity, justice and progress of the nation as a whole. Brother Jalil, brother Mannan and brother Delwar, please tell us why don't you ever talk for the entire nation?
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