We are celebrating the golden jubilee of our country’s independence this year. Fifty years of existence of this sovereign state called Bangladesh; the Bengali people’s thousand-year yearning for statehood finally given tangible shape and form.
Dear Opu and Topu, I am writing this letter in the hopes that you will read this someday when you’re all grown up.
I do not have the audacity to console you, the same way I couldn’t console the mother of Sheikhpara’s Akram. Do you know when I kept being reminded of you? The day the Pakistani army surrendered in Dhaka.
All of you know about the squirrel from the Ramayana, who rolled himself on the sand at the Indian seashore and then dipped into the Indian Ocean, to shed the sand off its body on the presumption that he was helping to build the bridge across the sea that would enable Rama’s forces to reach Lanka.
During a lifespan of more than 80 years, I have had the opportunity to experience a lot of extraordinary events. But there cannot be a parallel to what I saw and felt, sometimes I acted and reacted, in 1971. This was the year of our War of Liberation.
Over the last 49 years, we have observed the Martyred Intellectuals Day annually, realising more and more the significance of the damage that the enemy caused to our nation. What sort of an enemy who, on the verge of defeat, c
