Days in the blackout

The silence forced upon the mass came on a sudden Thursday, as all means of communication were shut down abruptly overnight. A sense of terror rising over the nation, mothers wailing for their lost child, fathers running on the streets looking for their sons. Somewhere afar the sounds of gunshots and grenades fade behind the roaring sirens of patrolling police cars. The once scarlet-red streets and alleyways are now enveloped with dust and burnt out garbage from the past week; a rather cunning attempt at damage control, they'd say. The radios only cover their shuffled playlists on repeat, the televisions show their routined statements and further schedules about the ongoing curfews, and a falsified hope to calm down the distressed, "the situation is under complete control", they said. When an entire nation burns and bleeds at the cost of speaking up for their rights, the general people count their days of survival under repeated internet shutdowns and strict curfews. Although, it doesn't seem to affect them as much. Like a normal Sunday, the vegetables vendors hollers in the alleyways with their freshly brought tomatoes and cucumbers, the neighboring women quarreling with the vendors over the hiking prices of onions and chillies, elderly men idling away their times sitting at the street-side tea stalls, debating over their senseless notions of prejudices and superstitions—war hasn't reached over to these alleyways just yet it seemed.

Here, some sleep at night without a single noise coming out of their windows, some sleep in terror as the helicopters continue to fly off of their skylines. One... Two... Three... Ten... The child falls asleep counting the roaring choppers instead of sheeps. The mother weeps silently in a quiet corner upon the prayer mat, asking the Almighty for the impossible. Somewhere far away, far into the future where past is only a falsification deemed to be the truth accepted by the mass; someone repeats the rhyme as a lullaby to their wailing children, to shut them up from asking too much—

"Here comes a candle to light you to bed

And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!"

Maliha Tribhu is a writer, currently an undergraduate majoring in marketing at the University of Dhaka.