Calibration of a celebration
YESTERDAY, this nation turned thirty-eight years old, a time of life when an individual stands at the threshold of middle age. But a nation is expected to live hundreds of years, and thirty-eight for it is still formative days. It doesn't have to worry about dwindling eyesight, hurting knees, fluctuating blood pressure, not even receding hairline or diabetes. A nation is still young and fresh, hope and freedom roaring in veins.
Yet, thirty-eight proved critical for this nation. Yesterday, we celebrated our Independence Day in a cloud of gloom. Missing was the panache of parade, a nation's show of might in the disciplined air of its uniformed men. Missing was the aerial exercise in the sky above sun-glassed men and women seated in rows under colourful canopies. We celebrated the birth of our nation with the anxiety of a kid who doesn't want his stepmother to find out the cake.
It was a celebration in the midst of heightened security, conspiracy theories circling like vultures overhead. Soldiers checked vehicles on the roads, and their darting eyes frantically frisked slouching traffic and streaming crowds. There were sandbag bunkers in front of key public installations. A morbid nation shuddered because suddenly it was a dangerous place.
For the most part, the celebration faltered. It was a holiday for us, another long weekend by happenstance. The buzzing drone of chirping talkshows drowned our homes. All day long speeches flowed from the ectoplastic mouths of our politicians and intellectuals, mostly invectives and misgivings, ruminations of heroism thirty-eight years ago. They were full of passionate intensity for the past, their empty hands clutching the future on its uncharted course.
At thirty-eight, this nation's mind is overly cluttered. It wants to try the war criminals, punish the killers of its patriarch, investigate into the arms haul in Chittagong, and probe into corruptions by a former speaker of the parliament -- including all the corruption done by all the speakers since 1972. Then there are so many loose ends dangling from the two years of a caretaker government, which was neither.
Of course, deep down inside the celebration was blotched by the bloodshed at BDR. It has been a month, but the pain still permeates down our hearts, our best killing their best, apparently in collaboration with foreign hands. The irony is that even after thirty-eight years of independence, we still have to rely on foreign collusion either to hatch a plot or to scratch it on the surface.
In 1969, Kris Kristofferson, an American singer-songwriter, sang a song, which captures the dilemma in our hearts: "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." Freedom rang hollow in the midst of imminent threats, and a paranoid nation groped in its amniotic depth. The jubilation looked inadequate because so much was at stake.
So, yesterday this nation turned another year older, but its invocation was like an anguished soul behind a smiling face. It was more miffed than matured, more diffident than confident, more jolted than jubilant, more harried than hailed, more panicked than proud. It never looked so remote from dreams, never so proximate to nightmares. In fear and fury, this nation was more nervous than nascent.
In fact, our freedom has shrunk in thirty-eight years at an incremental pace. We are afraid to go out of our homes. We look over our shoulders whenever we gather in public meetings or national festivals. Now even our children are afraid to go to their schools. This nation exudes the fright of someone cocooned in the rabid fear of his own delusions.
That's right! Fear consumed the better part of this Independence Day, when a petrified nation retracted itself into its shell. Subject to debate, this watered-down celebration could mark a watershed in our history, signaling a significant departure in our national mood. We might never know the taste of real freedom again; never again celebrate a national day without being afraid of gunshots and explosions.
It reminds us of the boy who cried wolf. He thought it was fun that the villagers should come running to his rescue if he screamed for help. When the wolf finally came, the villagers didn't believe his cries. The beast ate the boy and his flock of sheep.
Yesterday, we saw a glimpse of that wolf. Not to say that terrorism doesn't exist. Not to say that we don't need to worry about it. But terrorism was never the cause of our contentious politics until our contentious politics finally made it so.
Political brinkmanship goes out of control for the same reason playing with fire burns hands. Thirty-eight years ago, we had started with a spirit of change. Yesterday, a change of spirit was clearly evident. This nation was tired and restless. It looked already aged before coming of age.
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