On a street I had passed countless times, I noticed a child holding something small that seemed to carry the weight of the world, as I kept walking quietly. A father paused at a footpath stall while his son stood beside him, restless and close to tears. The stall was filled with plastic horns, balloons, whistles, but the child kept pointing at the same thing. Among the bright, forgettable objects, a small green and red flag, hung on a thick bamboo stick. As his father placed the flag in his hand, he leaned down and whispered, "Careful." The word felt heavier than the flag was. The child adjusted his grip and held it closer, the red circle resting lightly against his chest. He didn't know the histories behind the flag, but he knew this was something that could not be dropped.
This is how most of us learn to love a country, without explanation, without context. We learn the colours first. Long before we learn the dates or names, we learn the feeling of belonging. And the weight of it in our hands.
For those who were born long after 1971, the Liberation War doesn't live in our memory. It lives in pieces. On a road named after someone we never met. In a story that stops just before the pain becomes too difficult to explain. We neither earned nor experienced victory. We simply inherited it. And inheritance is easy to take for granted.
The trouble is, victory isn't a resting place. It's a starting line. It asks something of us, every day, to carry it forward, not just in parades, but in principle. To remember that freedom wasn't won just once. It's kept, or it's lost, in the small choices of ordinary life. Independence didn't end the work. It passed it on. To us.
What happened in 1971 was never just a war ending. It was a world breaking open. It was the moment when ordinary people decided that language, name, and the right to walk through one's own home without fear were worth more than silence. Worth more than safety. They chose, when choosing felt impossible. And that choice built this country. Decades later, a different child stands on a peaceful street. He points to a flag on a stick, wanting it not as a tool of survival, but as a token of belonging. His wanting is a luxury they bought for him, at a price they never meant him to understand.
The trouble is, victory isn't a resting place. It's a starting line. It asks something of us, every day, to carry it forward, not just in parades, but in principle. To remember that freedom wasn't won just once. It's kept, or it's lost, in the small choices of ordinary life. Independence didn't end the work. It passed it on. To us.
As the distance from 1971 grows, the struggle becomes visible only as victory. But victory risks being reduced to dates and ceremonial pride. It becomes something we display rather than something we think about. We forget that this country wasn't handed down gently. There's a grief folded into our victory that no celebration can undo. Freedom did not bring the dead back to their homes and nor did it erase the pain that survivors carried. Many people built the country quietly while carrying loss that was never acknowledged publicly. Remembering this is not an act of sadness, it is an act of honesty. Perhaps Victory Day should unsettle us a little.
It should remind us that the freedom we enjoy was not free, and that forgetting the difficulty of achieving it makes us careless with its meaning. The father's whisper, careful, was not only for the child. It was a reminder for all of us.
When he learns about mass graves, silenced voices and broken families, may he find a country that still respects the sacrifices that made it possible. May he find reasons to hold the flag not only with pride, but with responsibility. Because a victory that is remembered but not understood becomes hollow. And a flag that once had to be raised through blood should never be allowed to slip from our conscience.
Sinthia Kamal is an undergraduate student of Global Studies and Governance at Independent University, Bangladesh.
Send your articles for Slow Reads to [email protected]. Check out our submission guidelines for details.
Comments