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Me in a Milky Way

Memoirs of Jatismara

(Inter-Galactic Communication: i.kojan@hotmail.com)

/wal 'asri 'innal 'ins:ana laf:l xusri-

'illal ladi:na 'a:manu: wa 'amilu:ssaliha:t-

wa tawasaw bilhaqqi: wa tawasaw bissabri-/

(Time flies, mankind rushes to her Doom.

But not those who believe in and practice in Welfare,

And stand together

For the cause of the Due and endure hardship with patience)

Introductiopn

The Celestial galaxies have been fascinating me since my childhood. Once upon a time, when I was about five years old, it came to me that my biological mother was dead who had become a star. I searched her many years in the dark sky among millions of stars and wept before I fell asleep in my bed. Then at the beginning of my teens I got an insane dream to become an astronaut travelling through Inter Galactic Space for hundreds of years under anabiosis (life suspension), awaking up between arrival and departure from destinations. This fantasy began to fade away in the middle of the first one Giga second period of my solitary life. It was replaced by a Virtual Milky Way which had its centre not a Giant Black hole, but the tiny Planet Earth. This perception grew strong in me in the year 1970, not due to halucination from addiction to chemical or spiritual high, but during segregation in 27-cells of Dacca Central Jail as UT-5619, for a period of 50 Mega Seconds, as a detainee in a Kafka case of treason under a special tribunal.

(1970: The distance between Curzon Hall Campus of Dacca University and Dacca Central Jail is about 1 km)

On the break of the day, the morning sunlight fell over my face while I was still lying over a blanket on the cemented floor of the cell, and looking at the rising sun what I could see first was the gallows beside the 8-cells, over the interior wall, which was about 50 meters away from my cell. I had been there in the fourth cell of 8-cells for a fortnight before I was moved to 27-cells. Then I met there Badiuzzaman in the first cell and Rashid in the second cell who were condemned to death, and were waiting for the execution. Both of them were in their early twenties. Badiuzzaman wept when he spoke to me of his sins of adultery and of his innocence in the case of State-bank Colony murder. Rashid sat motionless, pale and dumb near the grills with an empty look at the sky. The Santri told me that Rashid became speechless when he was sentenced for the killing of his aunt, which was actually committed by his jealous uncle, the plaintiff of the case, in order to dismiss his claim over the joint land property. Badiuzzaman and Rashid were locked 24 hours in their respective cells under the watch of a gunman outside their cells. Both of them got meals of better quality than that of mine, and they kept under vigilant health-care. However, I was allowed to come out for an hour for stretching my legs within 30 meters long and 5 meters wide area during the forenoon and the afternoon.

The 27-cells which was also called the Mental, was the most open and most green area in Dacca Central Jail. Here I passed the most peaceful and the laziest part of my life. "The Iron grills of the jail do not know to cheat"- wrote Rabindra Nath Tagore in his short story "Cloud and Sunligtht". He was astonishingly right although he was never in jail.

Looking at the sky behind the bars, during the nights or the days, cloudy or clear, colourful or colourless, beautiful or frightening, I knew I could own a galaxy of my own if every man in the Earth, dead, living or unborn, got an equal share of the Universe containing a thousand billion galaxies. What would then I do with my private property of a galaxy containing a million stars, most of which are larger than the Sun, and a millions of planets like the Earth which were however, unsuitable for DNA's to survive and reproduce. It would then be no better than sitting alone day and night in a segregated cell behind the iron bars from where I could see every early morning how a house-wife stretched herself to hung a wet sharee upon a wire on the roof of a three-storied building at Urdu Road. The dozy Wind hugged her as if she was Anjana, the cute mother of Honuman, when she was busy to put aside her clumsy wet hair over her forehead. The blushing Sun peeped climbing upon the konakbarana hill Udayachala at a speed one thousand six hundred kilometers per hour, to flirt her with his rajatdhara as if she was virgin mother Kunti in the epic Mahabharata.

This narcissism was like Nero playing his flute while Rome was burning, because the colourless hundred rivers of my land of birth was then reddened from the sacrifice of millions of lives at the altar of Liberty. People's dream was a "Sovereign Independent, Democratic, Peaceful and Progressive" Bangladesh. However the boon of a Gonotantrik Bangladesh was an illusion. The land was plunged under the terror of a million two-footed jackals: al-Badar, shal-Badar, lal-Badar, pal-Badar and kal-Badar. The metamorphs of the Pakistani gundas then chanted at their every acts in a louder voice, making it a Gundatantrik Bangladesh instead, an Indian protectorate: Kingdom of Sheikh Bangla.

Afterwards, when I found myself as a virtual prisoner of consciousness for a decade as Maxim Gorky wrote about those who lived in exile within their homeland, and I got a refuge at my Alma Mater in a lab isolated from the outside world which was ravaged by the "dadas" who were the new Maharajas. Then the residuals of my lunatic dream to become an astronaut carried me over the sky like a "Garhurha" out of that disconsolate fen; and in the evening of 8 September 1982, I found my favourite Pole-Star had moved away from the horizon to near to the celestial zenith. I was destined to live here my second Giga Seconds period of life which was similar to that of the Brahmin warrior living in self exile in Bhutan, narrated by Rabindranath Tagore in his short story, "The Tale of a Muslim Woman".

I am now an old haggard under virtual house-arrest, alone in a villa in a valley often covered in snow, printing my memoir in cyberspace as if I was in my spaceship in a virtual Milky Way. In ancient India, the third Giga Seconds period of life was allotted to "Bonprastashrama", to settle in the forest after leaving the worldly affairs. For me it was to write my memoir which I had promised to my father over phone before he left us for good reminding me in a feeble voice, -"You are my rebel son". He depicted me in one of his memoirs "Chiriakhana" that I had become a "tamed crow freed from the Zoo". My life could be a funny cinema as of Prophet Brian because people suspected me as a revolutionary while I have been a true sceptic of whom my younger sibling wrote, -�Which everyone knows, he is Extra-Ordinary. He loves- The country? A woman? His own heart? Difficult to say. ...He survived in hard struggles in life and he could accept grieves as like as happiness�. My better half however blames me for almost everything going wrong in the world, -why our children do not eat like those others. It is because my father had taught me, -"more people in the world die due to eating than those die of hunger". He predicated, "Eat to live! Not live to eat!"

My stay in the Galaxy of the Milky Way has been about two Giga seconds. I am not sure what reference frame is best to set in order my memoir to draw an impressionist picture. A chronological could be easier one but might not be interesting. I had asked my father two decades ago to narrate of his life he had encountered, in order to know the past, in the quest of understanding the futile endeavours to change Tagore�s �Durbhaga Desh�. My father wrote his memoirs in a form of a diary while travelling throughout his past. But mine is more complicated than that of his, although my father had severe pains in living in a disconsolate fen which is called a Prajatantra (praja= tenant, tantra= ism) struggling to become a Gonotantrik instead of present Gundatantrik Bangaldesh. My father wrote his memoirs in Bengali, although he used to write to me letters in English. However, I had something more special to suffer throughout my life. I knew that most of our sufferings are caused through our desire, ambitions or expectations, but still then I did not know that our fate was genetically coded by virtual photons of one God who is also perhaps virtual one.

Only a few Bengalis home or abroad are good in Bengali. But I could write my memoirs better in Bengali for which I am partly indebted to my Primary school teacher Abul Hossain who was personally rewarded by President Ayub Khan as one of the best teachers in the country. So, it was my dilemma for years. But the presence of hundreds of conjunct letters in Bengali makes Bengali orthography difficult. Therefore, I refrain to write in Bengali and I wait until the idea of Bengali Easy Orthography comes in use.

My time has been fulfilled and my task is over.

Jatismara's memoir retrieval

START : October 4, 2009

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My Last Words

A Swedish lady reported in TV that when every morning she wakes up, she used to say, "Tack Gud, det blev en morgon till! (Thanks God, it has been one more morning!)". I forget often to say so. I know that my narration may remain incomplete when I can no more add to this memoir. My view of the Universe changes every day as I grow older, but seldom significantly because the changes are generally thermodynamical. In my journey in a Milky Way, I want to narrate my observations while trying to understand the occurrences. As a virtual astronaut, I would like to describe my observations, not in order to judge, but attempting to understand the mysteries behind. My tale will be stopped somewhere one day, probably just before a dawn of the new come spring, because I was born at about 3 A.M. just on the seventh day of the commence of spring. My father wrote his memoir on my request, and somewhere he wrote that if his pen had dropped in the middle of his journey while a half of the notebook was still white, I should fill the rest of it by mine. He praised God for getting time to complete his story. I would like to thank God beforehand, because I have survived many times miraculously, perhaps because I had polio-hit at the age of nine months. So, like Stephen Hawking, I would say, I am very lucky that my handicap has not been a big obstacle in my odyssey in a Milky Way. My journey started at this site of Curzon Hall where at the first class in B.Sc. Honours in Physics we got our first lessons during the fall of 1964.

Left: Septebmer 1964: Lessons on Tensor Analysis by Joy Kumar Sarogi at the North-East corner of the first floor of Curzon Hall.

Right: Dacca Hall, room 107 from where I published the Bengali Science Monthly "Bidyut" in February,1965

I left my Alma Mater for good in 1982 and in between I a detainee twice in another nearby red building called Dacca Central Jail for about two years. I succeeded to built a Laboratory in Curzon Hall New Building with the toil of a decade and out of the inspiration of "Laboratory" of Rabindranath Tagore. But the old days of the Oxford of the East was never to comeback.

1974-1982

My Solid-State Physics Laboratory in New Physics Building

"Double, double, toil and trouble

Fire burn, and couldron bubble..."

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Me in a Milky Way

Jatismara's diary

2012, February 20

Inability and Tranquility

To-morrow I shall be 66 years old. Sixteen years ago I visited Bangladesh for two weeks when my father had comeback home in Dhaka from Singapore after his treatment of lungcancer. It was our last meet. The 21st February 1996 was a great conjuncture, we went to say our Id-al-Fitr prayer, my father could not stand up, he prayed sitting. Today, you are fifty, - said he calmly. It was the martyrs-day for Bengali language. It was Id-al-fitr. And it was my 50th birthday. I would leave my father forever on the next day. It was continuous "Hartal" called by Awami League, so I have to be in the airport by night. During the forenoon, my younger sister would take my sick father by a Ricksaw to the hospital at the otherside of the city. What was the conjuncture of the planets and the stars on that very day, I do not know.

After I came back home in Sweden, I attended a lecture on "University Pedagogy" at the Deaprtment of Education (Pedagogen) of Gothenburg University. There, I was shocked to learn that from "Phenomenology", truth i relative, seldom absolute. As a Physicist, it was hard for me to understand what it meant.

The question was to find the alternatives among three arguments on a phenomenon:

The underdeveloped countries are backward because

i) These countries had been colonies of imperialist countries for centuries.

ii) The people of these countries have no technical skill to improve their living.

iii) The inability of people of these countries to change their bad situation.

None of the answers was wrong. There was only qualitatively better answer. The best answer was the last one. It was the inability of people of these countries to change their fate.

INABILITY!

Today, I got up earlier in the morning. Before my wife left home to her work, she told me that she had called home to Bangladesh over phone. A woman, our relative whom we never met before, wants to sell her gold 22K necklace cheaper becuase she needed money just now. Her son has been taken from home to police custody, accused of being a terrorist, and to get him free she must pay 500,000 Taka within a couple of days.

I travelled back in time thirty five years ago. At that time my younger brother was a cadet in Chittagong Marine Academy. He came home to Dhaka after many months for a week-end which was adjacent to 1st of May in 1977. So, he would stay for two days. The day before he would leave Dhaka for Chittagong, we two were at a nearby football ground to watch a match. When it was time for Magrib prayer, I hurried to the mosque adjacent to our house. Just when I came home after the prayer, I learnt that my younger brother, together with some other young boys, has been arrested at the playground, and they were detained at the police camp of Khilgaon nearby.

Perhaps, there has been a quarell between the football supporters,- I thought. When we came to the police camp, we found them badly beaten, and they would be sent to Dhaka Central Jail under PO XIVA, via Motijheel Police Station in Bashabo, accused for demanding collection for Kader Siddiqui! It was like a bolt from the blue. None in our family was Aweami-Leaguer. None but only one young boy at his teens, Newaz, supported Awami Leage (who in 1980 became very rich from the contract for the electrification of Zia's Parliament House). My younger brother hated politics! None of the others were active in politics.

But what to do! We left no stone unturned to get my younger brother free. There were six boys accused in the case, and all but one were from well-to-do families. I was then Lecturer in Physics of Dhaka University. I hurriedly went to my elder maternal uncle who was retired DIG of Police in Anti-Corruption. We went to meet the SP of Dhaka City Police at his residence at Minto Road. The SP too was afraid at that time at the naming of Kader Siddiqui. Although he understood that the case was false, he expressed his inability to do anything in that case, and could only order for quick FIR. It was the second officer of Motijheel Police Station in Bashabo who could undo that.

Our neigbour Nurul Huq Daroga was a police in Protokol (guarding for VIPs). I accompanied him to meet the second officer in Bashabo. While Nurul Huq Daroga stayed in the police station, I came in the house of the second officer where he lived with his two wives and eleven children. It came to me of the scene of "Nandita Narake" of my colleague Ahmed Humayun.

When the second officer learnt that I am a teacher of Dhaka University, he talked to me politely. The deal was however hard. The officer said that not only he who were involved and interested in that case. However, he was kind to drop the demand of ten thousands Taka for each of the accused by two thousnads. Each would have to pay eight thousands Taka for the FIR.

On the day after the next day, I alone accompanied the second officer in his jeep to the stadium market. He consulted with me what soffa he would buy. He bought the most costly set at the price of 40,000 Taka.

"I have submitted the FIR", - he said to me. But still it took two weeks total in that process to free my younger brother.

My maternal uncle was angry. He asked to file a case against the person who was said to be the complainant. A case of BPC 420 was filed against the complainant. But it was reported to us that police could not find that person at the filed address. The case was later dropped by police. Nurul Huq Daroga told us that the person must have worked together with the police in earning money, and looked for young boys from well-to-do families.

I recall the day in 1979 when our Shah Jahan from USA visited our Alma Mater. He was an extra-ordinary scholar from Physcis Department whose Thesis work was published in Physical Reveiw, but to the surprise of our all, he did not complete his Ph. D. in USA, and switched to Computer Business. He was in Bangladesh for emigration certificate. He had to pay a good sum of money for early process of his application. Shah Jahan's younger brother who was a student of final year in Physics, was accused to belong to JSD and having illegal fire arms in his room. The revolver was put in his drawer of his younger brother by a policeman during the search of the room. Shah Jahan decided to take his younger brother to USA before the examination, just clearing his FIR. Shah Jahan had to pay 500,000 Taka in cash for his brother, so that the same policeman "failed" to identify the accused in the Kangaroo court.

On 8 January1981, I was one of the forty teachers from Dhaka University invited to evening dinner in the Government House. One of the teachers asked Prseident Ziaur Rahman why he did not take steps against corruption. Ziaur Rahman openly expressed his inability.

"It is everywhere in all developing countries and unavoidable." - said Ziaur Rahman politely.

Ziaur Rahman was killed becuase he attempted to undo the export of Bangladeshi monkeys to USA at the price of 50 USD for neutron bomb test, the contract made by one secret Secretry of Bangladesh. Angry President Reagan then left Zia unprotected.

The Secretariet is more poewerful than the Parliament. The ministers are for a few years, and like guests. They must act as the officers of the secretariet dictates. The ministers seldom speak about their inability which Abul Mansur Ahmed disclosed in his satirical work, "Public Service University".

My father told me that during French Revolution, the last revolutionary Robespeare went against corruption, which was the cause of his fall, although he was the most polpular leader.

It came to me about the last days of President Mujibur Rahman. When he would demonitise the currencies at the advice of Nazir Ahmed, the newly appointed Governor of Statebank, none could stop his fall.

We all suffer from our inability to change the system.

Now, at the age of 66, I should have the tranquility of my father at his old age. We must accept our inability. We all are like fugitive "Haripad Kerani" of Rabindranath Tagore. Sitting at the computer desk, looking at the snowing sky over the leafless bare trees, I could see my once beloved Bangaldesh as Haripad did:

"Where this song is true during the endless sunset moments,

There flows river Dhaleshwari.

The girl who is waiting at its bank

Wearing a Shari of Dhaka, has vermilion on her forehead."

In case of inability, there is no difference between Badshah Akbar and Haripad Kerani or Presidnet Barack Obama.

Hiroshima

Then, I could see an insane mother in Bangladesh leaving no stone unturned to save her child. She is knocking door to door to sell her ornaments to collect money to realese her son. Maxim Gorky narrated a story of a mother who travelled on foot from Greece to Samarkhand to beg before Taimur to find her lost son. It is the same mother who in China recently could lift up a three ton car to save her child. In our inability to face unpredicatble situations, mothers have to find the easiest way, to submit them at the mercy of the predators with tranquility.

Me in a Milky Way

Jatismara's memoir retrieval

1970 July 11

Ten days in the White House of Segun Bagicha

In the evening of 11 July 1970, a police vehicle brought me infront of a large and high building in Segun Bagicha, Dhaka. Here I was interrogated for ten days and nights. Later I came to learn that it was called "White House" with direct line with Islamabad. I was taken in a chamber at the fourth floor.

I was sure that I would be released soon because the case was ridiculous. I had been in Rajapur at the time of bomb blast in Pakistan Council, Dhaka, and worked as ann invigilator of the SSC final examination at Rajapur Centre. I had no connection with any political party for a year. Although, I had political views as a free-standing revolutionary engaged to propagate the message of independent East Bengal, and I was friendly with the poor peasants, that could not be the cause of serious political offence. However, student leader Mahbubullah was sentenced to ten lashes and one year rigorous inprisonment for passing the proposal of independent East Bengal at the meeting in Paltan maidan arranged by the Students Union (Pro-Chinese).

I saw a sitting room with many chairs and a table. There was a bed room furnished with a comfortable bed beside the sitting room, and an attached toilet.

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Me in a Milky Way

Jatismara's memoir retrieval

1971 March 6

For Whom the Mad Bell Tolls

(VIPs: Warder Deshi Mannan of Muradnagar; Warder Biharee Shaheen of Sabujbagh; sister-cell-mates Shawkat and Salam of Awami League who were accused for armed robbery; Khasru-Montu-Selim, young members of Awami League accused for murder, living in New-20-cells had planned a jail-break in collaboration with a few AL leaders)

While the call for the morning-prayer, Adhan for Fadr, was going on in the mosques around, the warder on duty for the day went around counting the number of prisoners. The �morning counting� was done routinely as that of the �night counting� after the Adhan for Esha, which was done by the warder at night duty. A warder was called Miasab. A Counting was routinely made before the charge was handed over from one warder to another warder. The supervisor warder of the area, who was called Zamader, came to check and approve the counting.

Figure: Dacca Central Jail �Mental Area� and the 27-cells during the jail-break

March 6, 1971, 11:00 AM

In the rooms where a few people were put together, they had to sit in rows so that it would be easier for the warder on duty to count them from outside of the iron-bars and note it in the note-book. If there was no discrepancy between the number of heads noted at night and that of at dawn, then the Misab, after approval by the Zamadar, ordered the �Pahara�, a �senior� and loyal convict in charge of looking after the prisoners of the house, to open the locks of the rooms in order to let the prisoners come out. Most of the prisoners were permitted to be outside some part of the day. In case of discrepancy, the counting was made another time and it would be then late to open the locks.

I did not have not to sit when this counting went on. I stayed alone in my cell at the South-East corner of 27 cells. The locking iron-bar door was at the south but the Eastern bar side was like a window from where the morning sun peeped. There was garden of vegetables all around my cell after the shaded veranda on both at the East and the South.

The Misabs on night duty felt often boring to remain awake the whole night and to go around. Some times some of them got asleep. But if they were caught sleeping by the Zamadar on duty, or by the Jailor or the Deputy Jailor on surprise Round, they were suspended from their duties and punished for the offence. So, they liked to chat with the prisoners, specially, to the student prisoners white sitting outside of the locked bars with an ear sharp for a surprise round by a supervisor.

Some of the warders liked to talk with me about their family problem and seek advice, even a problem of their forbidden love affairs. Perhaps it was because there was no fear of leaking out confidential matters from a segregated detainee. All the Misabs I knew were from poor families from rural parts of the country and were half-educated. Many of them were helpful and two of them usually carried secret letters from me to my parents.

All the prisoners, including the Jailor Nirmal Roy or Deputy Jailor Shamsur Rahman showed respect for most of the University students detained in Dacca Central jail, although the Jailors and the Deputy Jail Superintend M A Malek, had peculiar fear for Natural Science, for example they never allowed a textbook on �Atomic Physics�, lest a student of physics would make an atom bomb in the jail!

But I liked to gossip with the Misabs during the day time, sitting on the veranda under open air and beautiful sunlight while convicts in their striped white dress was working around in the garden of Cabbage and Puishak. Since 1966 when Awami League leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was accused in Agartala Conspiracy Case for a �Socialist Independent East Bengal� together with Brigadier Moazzem Hossainm and others, the country has been set to unrest with an unseen future. Many Misabs and many convict warders believed that we were wise men who could tell them what would happen in near future, as if we had crystal balls with us.

At dawn the warder to take over the duty was Mannan from Muradnagar of Comilla who usually called me Deshi, and he loved to talk about national politics. The morning sun peeped brightly. The breakfast was served as usual. But the situation I felt was somehow in an uneasy atmosphere as if something was going around secretly and men were whispering to each other. Last night I wondered why my sister-cell-mate Salam was laughingly saying to his cellmate Shawkat that he would run away taking me on his axel because I was unable to run swiftly, while Shawkat stopped him by an angry blick. Every day we heard processions passing through Urdu Road chanting different slogans for independence except NAP Muzaffar which demanded for autonomy with the right of a secession.

The morning sun peeped brightly. The breakfast was served as usual. But the situation I felt was some how in an uneasy atmosphere as something was going around secretly. Outside the jail wall passed processions through the Urdu-Road chanting different slogans. Almost all parties were then for independence except NAP Muzaffar, that demanded only for autonomy with the right of secession.

Miasab Mannan was interested to discuss what would happen now. So we sat together on the cemented floor having our feet stretched over the steps of the varanda infront of the corner pillar supporting the roof of the varanda. The sunlight was pleasant. We were discussing the political situation in the country while waiting for the lunch. Soon the convict prisoners who were in charge of kitchen and distributing food to the prisoners would arrive. The convicts with their striped clothes will sit in rows with their plate and cups to have their food. Each of them gets a litre of rice, a litre of linser and a little amount of curry. The undertrial prisoners also sit in similar way but separately.

But just before the supply of lunch there started loud noise from the central part of the jail. Quickly that spread in the mental area too and at the same time the "Pagla Ghanti" of the jail started to ring very loudly. We saw people running around as if everyone has got mad. Miasab Mannan was also puzzled. We had stopped discussions just when the disturbances began.

Suddenly we a that at the corner of the big garden of vegetables and just behind the 26-cells a long ladder has been placed from Urdu Road outside and the prisoners were running towards the ladder and climbing upon it were disappearing. At the other side there were a mob waiting on lorries to receive them. I felt that I was dreaming. Then I recalled why my sister-cell-mate Salam said yesterday afternoon that he will take me upon his axel. A desire for freedom gave inside me jerk for a moment while I was still standing together with Miasab Mannan and watching the whole incident for about ten minutes. Then suddenly we heard the sound of shooting somewhere. Turning back towards the condemned cells we saw a few jail-warder coming upon the wall with guns in their hand. Then it was almost a turmoil around us. Miasab Mannan told me that it is better I go back in my cell and he closed the cell door from outside but did not lock it. He then went around on his duty.

From inside my cell I was still watching prisoners climbing up the ladder and I feared that at any time the long ladder may break beacuse of overload. Then looking behind I saw the jail-warders pointing their guns towards the escaping prisoners. The air became heavy of gunfires and prisoners started to run hither and thither. I do not know why instead of watching what happened to the men on the ladder, I turned my face to the shooters. It took a few seconds to recognise that the biharee warder Shaheen of sabujbag was infront of all the shooters. It was unbelievable to me that a human face can change so much. His lightly smiling innocent face of a youngman had turned into a fercious mask like a monster. When I recognised him it appeared so funny to me that that I could control me and smiling I waved my right hand towards him. Surprisingly he answered my with a shot which fell aside me. I was glad to get his friendly reply. But within a second a second shot missed my thigh for a few centimeter which hit the wall inside my cell behind me and from instinct I immediately moved myself to the South-East corner of the cell. I stood straightly at the corner pushing myself as much I could so that no bullets could reach me from any side while my cell walls on the west and north side of the cell were receiving bullets every seconds as rice-pocorn. My water pitcher was broken by a bullet just I had humped at the corner. The old white wall was then full of bullet-marks of a few centemeters depth. Still I did not feel safe because I knew that a bullet may accidentally rebounce from iron-bars. It had happend during the night of curfew break in February 1969 when a man inside a shop of Malibag Bazar was killed when a bullet rebounced hitting a corrugated iron-sheet of the house. But fortunately the my cell wall was very old one which could not rebounce a bullet and no bullet raining into my cell rebounced over me from the iron bars.

After half-an-hour it was all calm. But still I stood at that safe corner for half-an-hour more. There was none around I could see. I checked my water-pitcher, the upper part blown away. The lower half was all right and there was a few litres water left in it.

The I sat on my bed watching the green garden infront of me. My cell was not locked, but I did not try to come out. The morning hours of about eleven to twelve was like a nightmare to me and I could not believe what I saw and how I survived under the shower of bullets. I was neither thirsty nor hungry. I sat on my bed for hours untill it was dusk and the time for Magrib prayer. The evening was ghostly as if the area had been under a thunder storm which had extinguished all life.

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Jatismara's memoir retrieval

1970 July

Farid of Godnail

(Bengali Daily Prothom-alo published a

Jatismara's memoir retrieval

2009 October 13

16 November 1971

Farid of Godnail

(Bengali Daily Prothom-alo published a Parlimentary Report yesterday that nearly four thousand rapes occurred every year in Bangladesh for the last three consecutive years. I recalled one case confessed to me on the evening of 16th November, 1971, by a seriously wounded prisoner who was in 27 cell of Dacca Central Jail for one night, named Farid, of Godnail, Security Guard of Siddirganj Power Station.)

During the Later Autumn of 1971 I was placed in a cell at the middle of the northern row of 27-cells. A large room were divided into three cells through partition by iron nets. I was in the most western cell which closed by walls on the west and on the north. The cell in the middle had iron net both west and east. Here two jolly young men, Shamsu and Kamaluddin who accused for Inter-district Robbery were detained. In the remote cell slept two old convicts, cultivators in Mymensingh, who were almost at the end of their period in jail.

On the evening of 16 November, the two under-trial young men were removed and a fair complexioned tall young man was carried in there on a stretcher by two convict prisoners. The young man was groaning and could hardly sit. He looked very worried and he was left leaning over a few extra rugs. He was groaning all the time as if he would die soon. I myself was a bit worried because I had not heard of my parents for a long time. Although my parents were not allowed to visit me during last seventeen months, I could anyway hear about them. But now it was all stop for about a month. It was happening so much around which made me apathetic.

So when the young man was groaning after the Esha prayer I became a little annoyed. He was taking medicine after medicine. Then one of the two old fellows on his left cell separated by iron-net asked him whether he would not sleep. They were sentenced to rigorous imprisonment and had to work all day long without any remunerations. Then he said in a feeble voice that he had so much pain in all parts of his body and he drew his lungi up to his thighs and showed both of his legs full of black pricks which he said were caused by a brush-fire from a Stengun.

Then I became curious to know how that happened. I asked him whether he was a freedom fighter. He said me that he was not a freedom-fighter but a Security Guard of Siddirganj Power Station. Then immediately I recalled the day of my entrance in Dacca Central Jail on 20 July 1970. I was placed along with other new comers at 4 Khata Amdani, in the ground floor of a three storied building near to the entrance of the jail. In that evening the workers who went on strike in Siddirganj Power Station were sentenced in a Military Summary Court. On the next morning they were wearing the striped dresses for rigorous punishment. In near future they would be standing naked on poles waiting for their turn of ten lashes. One of them was a tall bearded man who used to see me in front of my cell affectionately with a smiling face during the serving of my lunch. He was released after one year (ten months) in May of 1971 along with many of his jailed colleagues from Siddirganj Power Station.

I have never been to Siddirganj but had heard of it because of the worker�s strike which to the Government was illegal because the Power Station belonged to Essential Service. Therefore, the workers were severely punished when they went on strike although many of them did not take part actively. Then it was question why a security guard of Siddirganj Power Station came under a brushfire by a Stengun. Did the freedom fighters tried to take over this important station?

Farid said that he could not find how and how many days ago it had happened. The Power Station came under rigorous military vigilance from the beginning of the independence war. But from the autumn the freedom fighters strengthened their hold in the villages around Siddirganj. The Pakistani Army were gradually losing their hold. The collaborators were then become more active and they began to pickup women to fulfil the lust of Pakistani soldiers stationed at Siddirganj. After some incidents, Farid war anxious for his young wife and their three months old daughter.

When Farid got his salary for October, he decided to take his family out from Siddirganj to his parents in village of Godnail which was about five kilometres from Siddirganj. At that time it was dangerous to move because nobody knew when the military and freedom fighter would encounter on the way. However, Farid and his wife with the child reached home in Godnail safely at noon of the day. It could be better for Farid to return in the daylight but his family requested him to have his dinner. So, Farid became late and after the Azan of Magrib he hurried to his way back to Siddirganj. It was only a way of an hour on foot. But when Farid had passed only about a kilometre he heard violent firings somewhere around him but he could not guess from where it came. When the firing became more intense and appeared to come nearby, he became afraid. He stood at the side of the road near a paddy field, trying to find out the source of the firing and to decide what to do. Should he proceed to Siddirganj or go back home in the village Godnail? But suddenly he fell down unconscious under a brushfire. When awaken Farid found himself in the hands of the Military who suspected him as a freedom fighter. But Farid had been bleeding and in a very bad condition and he did not know how and by whom he had been transported to Dacca Central Jail.

Although Farid was groaning all the time out of his physical pain, he said he felt worse of thinking about his little daughter and his wife because he had found the village was no better than that in Siddirganj. It was like from the pan to the fire. He was afraid that on their way home the Rajakars who worked for the Military had noted the arrival of his young beautiful wife as predators notices their prey.

Farid was almost weeping when he talked with me about himself. He took me with respect and faith as a dying catholic does to a priest and started to speak all about himself to lighten his burden. He said to me, �Bhai, pray for me, I am a great sinner. Allah has punished me for my sins which I have committed and this suffering is my expiation! I was so proud to be the security guard of Siddirganj Power Station and considered myself as a lord of the area. Everybody feared me. I have committed grave sins for which I must expiate. I only wish if I could hear before my death that my daughter and my wife were life and were in safety!�

I understood his agony for his spouse but could not understand the cause of his repentance. But I did not have to ask him about it. Farid started spontaneously tell me in detail so that I could pray to God in my �Dua� to pardon his mischief. However, the two old men in the cell at the other side of the iron-net partition reamined awake to listen to him.

[Retrieval: A secret confession during the late hours of 16 November 1971; Characters: Security Guard Farid, Carpenter Razab Ali and his daughter Sabina who was 14, Govinda Das, his wife, Gobinda�s sister Mala who was 16, Chairman Kadir Mia and others]

In my early twenties I became interested in a job advertised for the position of a �Security Guard� at Siddirganj Power Station. In my school life I was neither attentive, nor regular, and I did not complete my school certificate. But I never could think to take a job of an ordinary labour toiling morning to evening for bare living. My father was a Union Council Member who had a meagre income from our land property in Godnail. In my teens I was a gang leader of the young boys in the village who caused all possible troubles to the peasants, especially to those whom we suspected to be secretly against our powerful Union Council Chairman Kadir Mia. He was always affectionate to me.

When I sought the job of a Security Guard, I found that there were many strong candidates and some of them were willing to pay tens of thousands rupees for the job and some others had powerful maternal uncles. So I came to Kadir Mia whom I had served for many years by ousting his enemies. Kadir Mia and his patrons compelled the authority to appoint me in the post of Security Guard after a long process of negotiations under threats and cancelling another selection on the ground of speculative security question. I was happy to get the job of my choice although the salary was not so good. The workers feared me more than the chief and foremen because I seldom needed to think about the regulations.

Soon my parents arranged my marriage. My wife was a very young and obedient girl who was always afraid of me like a scared hare. But soon my wild life became a boring under a system to which I was not opted. My friends of my boyhood began to consider me as if I had become a donkey. Then I continued my time outdoors together with them teasing girls and sometimes enjoying home-made wines made out of rice or plant-juice.

One day I saw a Hindu woman on the way having a line of vermilion over her forehead. She was quite attractive to me. One of my friends told me that she was the wife of Govinda Das, a carpenter of Siddirganj Power Station. One afternoon when I was roaming alone, I decided whimsically to visit Govinda�s house who was surprised to see me there. I knew Hindus never allowed a Muslim to enter into their house. But I was allowed to enter in to his drawing room. I was entertained with tea and biscuits and I felt something in me when Govinda had introduced his wife to me. I thanked Govinda and his charming wife my �Baudi. I took my dinner with my wife while I had �Baudi� in my head all the time.

After a few days I could not stop myself to visit Govinda�s house when I knew that he was on his duty. Govinda�s wife, my �Baudi� received me cordially. But she was a hard nut to crack and when I forced her to me, she said strongly, �Dada, Don�t try me!� I was fully prepared to have her in me but I was also afraid of troubles, especially when she belonged to another community which could arouse communal problem. �Baudi� took shelter at a corner of the room and by gesture showed me a room inside of the house. When I entered in that room I found a girl sitting on a bed beside a reading table. I have had seen her on the way to her school but I was never interested in her because she was not so attractive. I did not know who she was and what her name. �Baudi� showed herself at the door of the room and she instructed her sister-in-law �Mala� to take care of me and to serve me whatever I needed while she had go for shopping. So, I took Mala in me imagining as if she was my �Baudi�. Mala was shy and obedient like my wife. Afterwards, whenever I felt such a desire I went to Govinda�s house when he was on duty and before Mala went to school. Sometimes I had a little conversation with her. Her father lived in Pubail who was killed during the communal riots of 1964 while she was eleven years old and she was raped by her father's killers. Her mother was living there in the village with her younger brother.

One early morning while I was walking together with some of my old friends on the main road I saw an attractive girl together with a few other girls on their way to school. I was eager to know who she was. One of us told me that she was the daughter of our Carpenter Razab Ali of Siddirganj Power Station. My bosom friend whom I call �dost� told me that Razab Ali was proud of his daughter who had won a scholarship in order of merit. We followed the girls and teased them. When I approached very near to Razab Ali�s daughter and commented about her, she took her sandal from her right foot and showed it to me and screamed that she would hit me with her sandal. Her words and gesture set fire in my head which was blazed by laughter of my friends. They laughed at me rebuking, �Our Hero! You are now beaten by the sandal of a girl. What a shame!�.

I slept badly at that night. I must prove my masculinity and show my power. I was a hero of my area and did not tolerate any insult upon me. Nobody ever dared dishonour me. Now this petty girl showed me her sandal. It must be avenged to regain my honour. I made a plan what I would do. It took me a week to arrange everything. When it was all ready, I got the desire to go to �Baudi� and proxy of her sister-in-law in order to relax my stress and to feel good. But on that day it became a despair. Just when I went in bed with Mala, she bled copiously out of her menstruation which made me wet with an ugly shower over my thighs and knees. I was angry with her why she did not tell me that she was in her period. I washed myself and came back to my work in disgust. I told in office that I had got a headache and went home to my wife.

At last it was my day. One afternoon when every one was at work and Sabina was on her way to school along with her class-mate, we three stood in ambush at a lonely place which was suitable for a sudden attack. A rickshaw ready for transport. It was about ten O'clock in the morning and a calm and clear day. The school going girls are always subjects of teasing by men on their way to school. Therefore, they usually do not look at the sides of the ways to avoid sexual gestures. They walk looking down to the ground and pretends not to hear comments showering upon them. That gave us a better chance for a surprise attack. As soon as she made a turn in her way to school at the place of our ambush, we two jumped over her as as lions over a prey and within a moment I bound her mouth with a piece of cloth and lifted up her in the ricksaw. She had no chance to shout or escape. We took her away from the town at a lonely place in a village and carried her in a small house which had only a door that could be locked from outside.

Then I locked the door from inside and freed her from the bindings of clothes and ropes. As soon as she fell to my knees and burst in tears, -"You are my elder brother! Forgive me if I have done anything wrong to you! Forgive! Forgive your younger sister!...".

I smiled hard and said ironically,-"It will not help if you call be father and brother! Nikuchi tor baap bhai." Then I dragged her to me and forced her on the bed in the floor while she was still uttering to which I did not care. Then I did what I desired to do so long time. It took half an our to perform my job and I felt so good. I wished I would have her for ever to enjoy. She was lying like a dead bleeded from my passionate pressing. I did not care. It will be allright soon. Then I locked the door from outside and asked the lady of the home at the other side of the court yard to give food and drinks for her. I left the food beside her and found her sitting with a piece of cloth over her naked body. I ordered her to eat and said her that I am coming back in the evening after my duty.

I came to my duty and tried to see what is going around. I was in fear that the kidnap will not remain secret even if nobody would dare to accuse me in public. But there are always some daring people. Govinda once narrated to us about the communal riots during the winter of 1964. He said that he would not be in life if the American Padri Novak had dared to come at their place to save the Hindus. Govinda and some other Hindus in the area survived at the cost of the life of Father Novak. Many Muslim men also lost their lives to save the Hindus from the Bengalis feeling. But the murder of young Father Novak by the Muslim rioteers terrified the world and compelled the Government of East Pakistan to stop the devasting communal riot. Although there was no Padris in Siddirganj or Godnail and I knew that no Christian, Muslim or Hindu priest would come forward to rescue a Muslim girl, yet I was under a great tension.

When I came back after the sunset and openned the door I found Sabina sitting. She was pale and looked sick. She had not touched the food or water I left before her. Then I became angry. She is trying to punish me by starving. Angrily I took the food before her and ordered her to eat. She pretended as she did not hear me. I said repeatedly and tried to put a glass of a drink over her lips. But she did not open her mouth. Then I took my hand over her head and tried to force her to drink. Then I slapt her in my anger. But in vain. I lost my patience and said, -"Don't try to fool me! You would not escape out of my hand if you starve." Then I took her in me and fucked her hard and passionately to teach her a good lesson. Before I left, I gave a kick and locked the door.

That night I slept little and wondering what to do now. I was anxious also whether the police will look for me. Whether Razab Ali had dared to file a case against me. Next day I went to Sabina in the afternoon. She was lying on the floor motionless. I tried my best to force her to drink and eat. But that day I could not put her to sit. She was like a fallen tree, a dubm and deaf, which made me more angry. But that did not help her and I took her in me but a bit softly in fear of she may die. She did not resist or had no strength to resist. Now she must sit up and take the food, I thought. But I was not sure.

On the third day I went to Sabina at noon. She was lying on the floor and her eyes were closed. I thought she was sleeping. But I could not wake up her. It looked as she had fainted. I took the pulse and checked her breaths. She was in life although the pulse was feeble. Then I was in panic. If she dies it would be very bad. I got up and went in the house of the old woman who was the mother of my friend and was to make Sabina's food. We hired a ricksaw and took unconscious Sabina to the house of Chairman Kadir Mia. A doctor was called in who checked Sabina and gave her saline. I felt guilty and left the place leaving the responsibility to Kadir Mia and my friends, but was in touch with them every half-an-hour to know the progress.

In the afternoon Sabina came to her consciousness. Then came the crucial point for me what to do now. Kadir Mia rebuked me for my stupidity. He could find a better way to seduce Sabina if I wanted her. Now Razab Ali has filed a police case of Sabina's disappearance. I could have a terrible fate if the girl stood against me in the court. Kadir Mia has an accomplice who was an expert. His advice was to eliminate all evidence. Once he narrated for us how he eliminated people without any trace. The victim was cut into small pieces which he fed to an ox which was then sold at a high price before Korbani. The head of the victim was deshaped and thrown in the river. But I could not agree with him and give my consent. I begged Kadir Mia to inform Razab Ali to take his daughter and appeal for a negotiation.

Razab Ali took his daughter and promised to have a negotiation. But after two days he filed a case of kidnap and rape. I was arrested for which I was not ready. I was sent in jail custody. My father and Kadir Mia met Razab Ali at home. They told me that they could convince Razab Ali but the girl was very hard to convince. She had threatend her fahther to hang herself if her father did not pursue justice in the court. So all my hope was gone and lying on blanketts in the jail I was in grief. My only hope was my relatives and friends who promised me do anything needed to get me freed.

While the case was in the court, I had visits everyday of my relatives and friends who reported me all in detail. Sabina had been to a hospital in Dacca for a few days. She did not go to school any more. Her father seldom comes out of the house and walk on looking to the ground and every one with a light smile on the lips pointed at him as the father of a raped daughter. He has become well-known in Siddirganj as the father of Sabina, the raped school-girl. Those who had never seen Razab Ali before asks how is his daughter. Sabina's brother and sister also stopped going to school because all in the school enjoys to narrate the incident of rape, mobbing them cruelly.

After a fortnight a T I Parade was arranged at the jail gate. fifteen other prisoners of my age sat in two rows. I tried to disguise me as much I could, looking like a peasant, with a beard and short hair. I could not recognise myself in my new appearance. I hoped that the petty girl would fail to identify me. My heart was beating fast when Sabina along with a Magistrate entered in. The Magistrate asked her to indentify the culprit. I did not look at Sabina lest my eyes betray me. I looked to the ground. But within a second Sabina stood infront of me and pointed out me. To the question of the Magistrate she said that there was no doubt. The I was undone. I must wait for life imprisonment for kidnap and rape.

That was a great shock to my relatives and friend. But they did not give up. Razab Ali was threatened to lose his life and family without any trace if the case was not withdrawn. Chairman Kadir Mia called an assembly of local Mullahs who surmoned Razab Ali and Sabina for an Islamic punishment of Sabina for adultry beacause there were three witnesses who knew that Sabina came to me at her own wish.

P.S.

While Farid was narrating his story as a dying catholic confess before a priest, I was drowsy and I do not know when I fell asleep. But my sleep was disturbed soon as if I had a night-mare. I heard somebody whispering in my ears �Allah!, Allah! Allah!�, uttered under deep and frequent breath. It came to me in a frightening voice as I first time in my life heard when I was four of five years old, - just before dawn. It happened during our visit in the village at my paternal grandfather�s house. It was winter and I wake up frightened me in my bed. That ghostly sound terrified me and I hided myself under the quilt. That sound sometimes had stopped to my relief and started again and again, with a dark nasal voice, -A~lla H~u .. A~lla H~u �. . First day I did tell it none lest others joke at me for my peculiar dream. After three consequent nights suffering from that ghostly sound late at night, I told of it to my mother who laughed and said,- �It is your grandfather who makes �Jikir� before morning prayer�.

I was tired and fell asleep again. In half-sleeping I could hear low noise some where outside. Perhaps, it was time for Sehri, I thought and fell in deep sleep. It was 28 Ramadan. Although, I do not fast, I am enlisted for fasting. Not only because, those who fast get better food but I am told that even I do not pray, do not fast, I should eat the Sehri and the Ifter, lest I become an infidel. I take my Sehri after sunrise and those who serve Sehri knew it and did not disturb my morning sleep.

I was awake late on the next morning. I looked at my neighbour Farid and found him prepared to leave. He said,- �Bhai, Forgive me for disturbing your sleep. I have to go now. If I have done any fault to you, forgive me as your brother. My heart is so heavy with my sins. I take it as God�s punishment. If we never see us again, forgive me and tell others you meet to whom I am guilty, to forgive me if they can!�

All cell doors were already opened. I came out in the veranda and saw there a stretcher and two convict warder beside it. One of the convict warder was of our zone. They were ready to carry Farid on the stretcher to the jail hospital. I was not yet fully awake and I was horrified to see that the stretcher is fully strained with fresh red blood. I saw such blood during the slaughter of cow under Eidul Adha. �From where come from?�- I screamed. Our convict warder was an old man affectionate to me. He said politely, -�Yesterday night there has been hanging of a pair. It is their blood.�

Now I recalled why I heard some whispering and noise previous night. It was during their execution.

- �But why so much blood?�

- �After hanging the hanged was taken down after half-an-hour. Then the jail surgeon cut their arteries at their ankles and thier wrists to bleed, so that the hanged would never awake again. This was done to confirm the death.�

I was perhaps half-faint. I could not realize what was going on around as if I was unconscious. I knew that Matin and Sona Mia were convicted to death. But I did not expect it will come so soon.

�Sona Mia was first to step upon the gallows�- said the convict warder. He did not utter a word.

I was trying to keep me up. It was less than two years ago, in January 1969, when we twelve visited Sona Mia's home in Keraniganj, at about ten O�clock. At that time it was curfew in the city of Dacca from evening to morning. Political students were picked up from home under curfew. So, we left the city at the afternoon crossing the river Buriganga by a canoe. In the previous night we had no food. Therefore, we were very hungry. Sona Mia was a poor peasant who lived with his wife and five children in their own house which was situated in between Keraniganj and Postgola. Sona Mia had a very fine kitchen garden where tens of green pumpkins were hanging.

Sona Mia was recruited by our comrade Raquib. He was a handsome well-to-do young man who was the only son-in-law of his rich maternal uncle who had only one daughter. Raquib practised as a Homeopathic doctor. He had then got his first child, a son whom he named Maolin from Mao-Tse-Tung and Lin-Piao. Sona Mia had heard of us before from Dr. Raquib. He was glad to meed us and he introduced us to his wife, a simple peasant wife, older than her age taking care of five children in a poor family. They hurriedly arranged our food, rice and pumpkin cooked in linser soup. We were so hungry that we ate that simple food to our content. Then we marched to Postogola Match factory to meet the workers there. The workers union was then run by Shramik League of Sirajul Alam Khan that won against Shramik Federation of Toha, and Matin was elected as the President of the Workers Union there.

The landed property of Sona Mia was not enough for his large family. He was an expert mechanic to repair bi-cycle. He had a repairing shop near Postagola Match Factory in a small road. There was little space inside the workshop and therefore, he usually repaired bi-cycles on the road. On that day when a police DSP was killed by the workers, Sona Mia was repairing a bi-cycle on the road. The workers became ferocious after the DSP had killed three workers. Persuaded by the workers the DSP took the narrow road to flee. Driving his motor-cycle at high speed, the DSP was often looking behind to the mob and was late to detect Sona Mia�s bi-cycle on the road and crashed over it. The workers caught DSP and threw him in a water-well where he died. Sona Mia was sentenced to death for his fault.

Matin was newly married was away in his father-in-law�s house in Noakhali without leave. He could not prove his absence because he received salary for working on that day.

�It was Matin who was trembled and uttered �Allah, Allah, Allah� all the time. He repeated his innocence all the time and standing upon the gallows he said for the last time, -�aami nirdosh!�.

- said the convict warder.

It was meaningless to tell the convict warder that Matin was innocent. Perhaps, it was Gods wish I was put in 6cells which is known as punishment cells in July and August. I suffered two months in a terrible cell there, dark all the time, full of mosquitoes and warm as an inferno. It was there one morning two young men made a show up over the wall from seven-cells, about three meters over me, Ruhul Amin and Asharaf Uddin who were approvers of the case. They told me that Matin was a thief who stole the workers money to make ornaments for his the bride and that�s why they implicated him in the case as the leader who had ordered to though the DSP in the water-well.

�It was very bad!�-said I, �How could you do it?�

�Otherwise we would be hanged, our police interrogators told us!� The industry owners also wanted to be quit with Shramik League leader Matin whom they hated more than general workers.

I was standing as a thunder struck. Just at a distance of 50 meters is the gallows which I cannot see because of a high wall separating my twenty-seven-cell from the condemned eight-cells. I was in the fourth cell of eight-cell for a fortnight during September 1970. The cells are quite large there and separated by another wall from each other. In my cell I found on the wall written with red gravel �Majid� in three places. Majid was hanged in 1960 for murder of Samad Contractor. Samad�s fourth wife Saleha was also convicted to death but got transportation for life because she was pregnant. At that time Matin or Sona Mia were not there. In the first cell there was Badiuzzaman, a student of Dacca College, convicted to death for State Bank Colony murder and in the second cell was Rashid, a young man from a village convicted to death for killing his paternal uncle�s wife. Badiuzzaman always wept and said to me that he was a sinner for adultery but he never committed the murder. Mahrufa, the wife of the murdered Peon was also convicted to death but transformed to life transportation by Tikka Khan. Rashid was like a dumb, did not utter a word. Somebody told me that he was shocked to find himself convicted when it was his uncle who killed his own young wife out of suspicion and quarrel and Rashid was an offer of the conspiracy of his uncle for animosity over inherited landed property. When I came back from my day dream, I found Farid was being carried away on the stretcher by the two convict warders.

The convict warders are called Mate. Our Mate could not give me any further information about Farid after leaving him in the JailHospital. Sometimes the military kept the heavily injured suspects in jail for future interrogation and action. Farid did not return to us.

On 17 December 1971, I was virtually in-charge of Dacca Central Jail during morning while all Jail officers and Warders fled away in fear of being charged for collaboration with the army and while our naughty Shah Jahan had snatched the bunch of key from a trembling warder who dared to come inside jail that morning. I gave the convict warders the responsibility to open the locks to let the prisoners come out but to stay in their respective area. Then I did not see Farid among them anywhere in the jail.

In the afternoon of the day Charu Chowdhury of Gandhi Ashram Noakhali, invited Mahbub Ullah Bhai, Chakma and me to the first tea to celebrate the victory in 26 cells, one freedom fighter with a gun upon his shoulder appeared before us and screamed, - �You are still here! The jail is empty!�

�Is there nobody left?�- I asked.

�No, only three mad men in 40 cells. They will not come out. They say it is our home. Where will we go?�.

The freedom fighter followed me to nearby 27-cells and helped me to carry my belongings and heavy books up to the jail-gate in two bags. It was a dense crowd outside. Just when I had entered in the crowd, suddenly someone snatched my bags forcibly from me. I was lost. But within a few seconds I got my bags but not my clothes and notebooks. My manuscripts were all missing. I made my way out and took a Ricksaw to my home in Malibag.

My parents were at home who saw me after 18 months. �Where is my brothers and sisters�- I was worried.

�Don�t worry, they are well. They have left Dacca the day before yesterday after General Aurora had ordered Pakistan Army to surrender. Otherwise the city of Dacca would be smashed to ashes. All were leaving Dacca. Your father will not.

-�My son is here in jail, he cannot come out. I will die with him�,- he had said. But you uncle was brutally killed a week ago by al-Badrs because had learnt that his son had been trained in Meghalaya in India, and a freedom fighter.�- said my mother.

�You go to the village to see your grandfather who had prayed for you all the time�,- said my father, -�My grandson is in jail like Joesph was in the water-well. God will rescue him out of it and make him a victor as He made Joseph in Egypt��.

Me in a Milky Way

Jatismara's memoir retrieval

2011 May 23

I was like a joker in politics and a sceptic. I was a stupid boy since my childhood. In 1955, I was a student of class IV, and attended a meeting of Maulana Bhashani in Laksham after a tornado which devastated the area. At that time, it was only I, the first boy in the class supported Muslim League, that brought Pakistan, and all others in the Nasharatpur Primary School supported the United Front. I was mobbed for my support for Muslim League. At that meeting Maulana Bhashani said that "Iskander Mirza is a descendant of Mir Jafar!" That made me so worried that I could not sleep many nights. Then it was the end of Pakistan for which so many people had sacrificed their lives. The country will be again under the British rule, if the descendents of Mir Jafar had usurpt the power. I wanted to be sure about it. Some of the Government employees subordinate to my father were close to me, whom I called "Chacha". When I asked them whether Iskander Mirza was a descendant of Mir Jafar Ali Khan, they found my question amusing, and every one of them smiled and said, "I am not sure, but what matters if he is a descendant of Mir Jafar!". I was surprised to see that none was worried about it. I was sure that none of them were patriots. When a descendant of Mir Jafar became the Governor General of Pakistan, none but only me was worried.

A year letter I became the School Captain as the first boy of Class-V of the Primary school. One day we watched the students of Laksham Atul High School marching in a procession towards the Railway station against the visiting Education Minister. They went on strike, - told one of my class-mate who was much older and experineced. One boy should ring the bell and all the pupils should run out and march in a procession. It was so exciting to all the pupils. As the Captain of the school I should take the lead, - my class-mates pleaded. I was afraid. I knew that I was a good student of whom the Head Master was expecting much. I would be the first pupil of the school to be awarded the primary scholarship in that year. So, I did not dare to lead the strike of which I had no experience. "Not ring the bell!", said I, "We are going on strike without breaking discipline."

Then very quickly I wrote an application, and we three went to our Head Master Abul Hossain. He warmly received our application:

The Honourable Head Master....

With due respect and humble submission we beg to state that we have seen the students of Atul High School going on strike agaisnt the visiting Education Minister. We also are eager to go on a strike! We hope you would kindly grant us permission to go on a strike for which we shall remain ever grateful to you.

Your most obedient students of Class-V.

But after reading the application, he became hard and very angry. When I became pale in fear, he laughed, and advised me not to write such an application in future. I could not understand why our Head Master was angry with us while I had written all correct. I understood it later in 1964 when Head Master Abul Hossain got an invitation to meet President Ayub Khan in West Pakistan as the best Primary School teacher of East Pakistan. That newly started poor primary school where the benches made out of beetle-nut plants, became a five star school within a few years, starting from the award of Primary Scholarship to me in the year 1956.

I was always curious like Pandora, and I was curious about Nature and Nebulae too. In 1968 I came to learn about the Cheists from one EPSU (Menon) leader whose family was a migrant from West Bengal, and whose family rented a one storied house owned by Minister Mofizuddin Ahmed in Segun Bagicha. The elder brother of my peer was a leftist journalist working for a Daily. He was told that the Cheists considered the Maoist method obsolete. According to Mao Tse Tung it was possible in China because China was never a colony, and the Imperialists were then divided. In the colonies the Imperialists had established compradors to serve them like the convict warders in jail. Then the Cheists planned to follow the same method as that M16 did in Iran (1953) and in Congo (1961), and already in 1968 they planned to have nationalist Sheikh Mujib like Fidel Castro against Batista. The Cheists successfully infiltrated within CIA of Bangladesh, but not within SIS, which was weaker than CIA but more notorious in inflicting internal strife based on religion, sect, colour or creed. M16 was keen in throwing the �Apple of Discord�.

Me in a Milky Way

Jatismara's memoir retrieval

2010 August 2

Hungry Abul Hossain in the Ancient Kingdom of Sheikh Bangla(KSB)

Who remembers Abul Hossain of Malibag who led a hunger procession in the city of Dhaka during the man-made famine of 1973?

His death became simple news in the Dailies in Bengali and English. When his procession had passed Segun Bagicha, the crown prince of KSB, Sheikh Kamal appeared there as a Hells Angel in a white jeep. Within a few seconds Prince Sheikh Kamal together with his accomplices extinguished the hunger of Abul Hossain and two others who led the hunger procession.

I met the rickshaw driver Abul Hossain at the end of 1968. He was with his rickshaw at Malibag rail-crossing. My neighbour Siraj Sikder and I were on the way to Mao-Tse-Tung Research Centre situated at the crossing of the roads towards Shantibag and Malibag, beside the Nawab-home. Siraj Sikder asked Abul Hossain about his whereabouts. Abul Hossain was feeling uneasy, and he left us with a passenger while we walked towards our destination about a half-kilometre from there. Siraj Sikder told me that a year ago Abul Hossain belonged to a study-circle of rickshaw drivers. But he had broken contact with the group after some lessons in politics.

I understood that while Abul Hossain had learnt a little, he thought he knew a lot.

In February 1969 I saw Abul Hossain collecting donations for a �Shaheed Minar� for a matyr shot at Malibag rail-crossing. The victim was a rickshaw driver. East Bengal was then under flame at the brutal killing of Dr. Zoha, a Reader of Rajshahi University. The curfew was broken by angry public. Abul Hossain was speaking fiercely,- �When the sons of the rich people become martyr, we see Shaheed Minars are built. Why not in case of a martyred rickshaw driver?......�

I am a suspicious person. I did not donate to Abul Hossain�s collection. After a fortnight I found a small brick-built small structure at Malibag rail-crossing, in between to rail-ways. It was made about ten meters East of the crossing where rickshaws usually stood waiting for passengers. The structure was simple, made of about two dozens bricks. My suspicion became true. This monument would not cost more than fifty rupees.

My last meet with Abul Hossain was a few months later at Malibag rail-crossing. I was looking for a ricksaw on my way to Curzon Hall. I could not believe what I saw. Abul Hossain got off there from a ricksaw. He was no longer driving rickshaw, rather riding rickshaw. He had ironed white punjabee and trousers and a chaadar around his neck. I am not sure but I think he had spectacles too. But I fell from the sky when he offered me his visiting card, Abul Hossain, General Secretary, East Pakistan Bekar Somitee (unemployed association). Proudly Abul Hossain told me that hundreds of graduates were around him in the belief that he can manage jobs to them. I did not quarrel with him. My only question was why he named his organisation �East Pakistan Bekar Somitee� and not �East Bengal Bekar Somitee�. �Because then the police will be after me!�- was his smiling reply. The rickshaw driver was getting irritated and I got the rickshaw by which Abul Hossain came to Malibag in organising his newly built association.

During the war I was in jail and after the war I was under virtual house arrest. My only movement every day was from Malibag to Curzon Hall. Sometimes I had to walk the whole distance because rickshaw was scarce and I had only one pair of trousers from the donation of my cousin, a deputy secretary who visited India. Long cloths were unavailable in the country. From Curzon Hall I could hear JSD members singing in previous Ramna race-course:

�Sonar Bangla aj kothay?

Mubibbader astanay.�

Curzon Hall

The ballot-box of the Students Union election had been robed by Crown prince Sheikh Kamal who appeared suddenly in a white jeep along with his accomplices. None of the teachers were brave like Joy Kumar Sarogi who resisted NSF gangsters. At the order of Sheik Kamal, all teachers and house tutors who were in the charge of elections in all the student Halls laid themselves on the floor under the sten-guns. When the JSD students surrounded the palace of Home Minster Monsur Ali at Minto Road, hundreds of them were shot down there. Perhaps Lord Minto was ashamed, and his spirit took revenge when Monsur Ali in jail had to repay in blood within years.

My teachers Readers Rafiqullah, Belayet Hossain and Professor Harun-ar-Rashid were engaged in preparing khichuri for the feeding the hungry in the camps at Ramna maidan.

Every morning before I left home for Curzon Hall, I would usually read a Bengali Daily while I took my breakfast. The news of the attack on Hunger Procession attracted me. It was the end of the political career of opportunist rickshaw driver Abul Hossain. I recalled his name I read in a Daily while I was working in Barishal as a school teacher, there Abul Hossain had been mentioned as one of the speakers in a public meeting of Maulana Bhashani at Dhaka stadium. He was mentioned there as the General Secretary of East Pakistan Bekar Samitee.

Certainly Abul Hossain was not a patriot who brought a Hunger-Procession amidst the great famine which gave the country an income of 20 billion dollars to make some of the patriots rich like beggar boy Aladdin who overnight got both Palaces and princesses. Then the founder of the Kingdom of Sheikh Bangla (KSB) was angry and he roared, �I beg all over the world and choshar dal chete pute khay.�

At Curzon Hall I could hear the JSD members singing:

�deshpremik na a hale bhai

keno amar khabar chhapa habe prothom patai.

Ami ki diye bhat khai,

ami kothay kothay jai,

ki khabe mor chhele hole

ki molom lagai.�

Abul Hossain was afraid to say Purba Bangla. A rickshaw driver who had been lebelled by East Bengal Worker's Movement (EBWM) as an opportunist renegade, dreamt to become a shrewd national politician!

In the Kingdom of ancient Bengal, the rogue Prince Bijoy Singha together with his 750 accomplices were banished to the sea in three large boats. They roamed in the Bay of Bengal, and ultimately they conquered Srilanka, and the island was renamed as Singhal after the name of the leader prince Bijoy Singha. If Prince Sheikh Kamal and his acomplices were banished in time, it could save the ancient Kingdom of Sheikh Bangla (KSB) from the incident of "righting the grievous wrong", and Prince Sheikh Kamal could perhaps conquer "Kamalaloy" (Home of Goddess Laksmi alias Kamala).

If Abul Hossain had survived, today he could be one of the ninety nine jewels in the court of Her Majesty of KSB (Emperor Akbar had only nine jewels), where there are so many Abul Hossains who show up everyday in Bengali satellite TV channels. May be someone of them is Abul Hossain reborn.

Me in a Milky Way

Jatismara's memoir retrieval

2010 June 16

The legend of Shahu Rahman Bhumiya

Abdur Rahman BhumiyaaliasShahu

(1894-?- 1972 June 16)

Today is 16 June. It is the thirty-eighth death anniversary of Abdur Rahman Bhumiya who was my maternal grandfather. This morning I do some unusual thing. Instead of saying my prayer for his departed soul, I decided to write about him while I am taking my morning coffee.

Abdur Rahman Bhumiya was a very rich man. He owned a vast landed property. He was born to a noble family that claimed to bear blue-blood. His paternal grandfather was Raushan Hazari, who was fabulously rich, and about whom there were many myths. But economically none of his nearly one hundred grandchildren succeded except Abdur Rahman Bhumiya whom the people defamed secretly behind him as Shahu, a word derived form the Hindu capitalists name having family title Shaha.

Genealogical chart of Abdur Rahman Bhumiya andhis seven children

Abdur Rahman Bhumiya also left nearly fifty grand-children and a vast landed property at his death. The picture of him above was taken by me in 1972 March while he was staying for a short time at his eldest daughter�s home in the village of Saktala. He was then a broken man, an ill-fated widower living a distressful and vagabond life. My grandmother died of a heart-attack eight months ago during the liberation war.

My widower maternal grandfather reminded me of Kailash Chandra of novelist Sharat Chandra. During his last days on the Earth, in the playing of Chess, Abdur Rahman Bhumiya had suddenly lost his Queen. He was then helpless like the King of the Chess. His only companion in his life was his wife who was very social and she was not haughty like him. Abdur Rahman Bhumiya was a nobleman who had problem of his dignity to talk to a peasant who would rent a piece of land from him. Often he was cruel to them. Although he was a religious Muslim, he treated the lower class people badly, and he never gave alms to poor other than blind or handicapped beggers.

Abdur Rahman Bhumiya beared the lion share for the cost of building a brick-built Mosque in the village. But he went there only on Friday noon. Otherwise, he would say his prayer at home. He had many religious books at home, and he was once forced to take a photograph for his pass-port when he went to Hajj by plane in the year 1955. It was an unforgivable sin (qabirah gonah) to take a photograph of a person or an animal.

I have mentioned that the picture above was taken by me in 1972 March while he was staying for a short time at his eldest daughter�s home. He was then taking his breakfast near at the door under the sun-shine. He was puzzled to find himself photographed. But he said nothing. It was astonishing to me. He was feared by all of us except his eldest grandson. Then I understood that he was then a broken widower who has lost all his mental strength.

Abdur Rahman Bhumiya was haughty and considered living at any daughter�s house a question of his prestige. He was worried for his vast property he made out of his own effort. He wanted that the eldest son of his eldest daughter would marry the eldest daughter of his eldest son, and the pair would then inherit his whole property. But that dream was not realized due to an accident. However, during the Big-Bang period of Bangladesh his Civil Servant grandson could make his own fortune better than Jajabar in the famous banned book Dristipat(Glance) wrote about the ICSs in British India. Abdur Rahman Bhumiya�s all daughters except the eldest one had settled in the capital city. His eldest daughter was married in the same village to a parallel paternal second cousin which however later on caused deterioration of the old relation.

Abdur Rahman Bhumiya knew that if the landed property in the village was divided, his children would eventually sell out it. So, he would not divide the property to pieces. He asked my father what to do with his vast property. But my fahter�s suggestion to form a trusty for an orphanage made Abdur Rahman Bhumiya to a crazy man for a few days.

Abdur Rahman Bhumiya died in his own house in Shah Saheb Lane of Narinda, Dhaka. That house he bought for 64,000 Rupees just after the partition of India. His eldest son was living in that one-storied brick-built old house with his wife and three grown-up children. But these children used to keep themselves far away from Abdur Rahman Bhumiya because he had got leprosy at his toes and at the tips of his fingers.

Nobody knew when and how Abdur Rahman Bhumiya died on the night of June 15. When the house-servant looked after him for the breakfast, his dead-body was found in the bath-room and bleeding from his ears. His attached bath-room was fully covered with green mosses and was extremely slippery.

The two sons of Abdur Rahman Bhumiya had sometime bitter relations over share the house in Narinda. However, at the death of their father they decided to share the property between themselves by deceiving their sisters. So, the brothers quickly took a print of the thumb of their deceased father upon a white paper to write a Will. Then they sent the information of Abdur Rahman Bhumiya�s death to all of his relatives.

Perhaps none of Abdur Rahman Bhumiya�s grand children except me recall his death anniversary today. Only three or four of his grand children sold away all of his vast landed property property in the village, and Abdur Rahman�s eldest son�s only son, a journalist who hated him as a leper, lives in his grandfathers�s house in the capital city. Abdur Rahman Bhumiya�s residence in the village was once splendid like a botanical garden. It is a barren field now. He is sleeping beside his adviser wife in their joint grave. Only their grave has not been sold by his insurgent heirs.

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Me in a Milky Way

Jatismara's memoir retrieval

2010 June 17

The Beautiful World of Muhammad Abdul Malik

Today is 2010 June 17, the fourteenth death anniversary of Muhammad Abdul Malik. He was a philanthropist who wrote, - �The Earth has been lent to human being whose task is to make it more beautiful�. Abdul Malik was an optimist and predicated, -�Don't be frightened of the Evil. The Bad one is not the fatal enemy of the Good one, it is Better one which substitutes the Good one. The Bad one may sometime overcome the Good one, but in the long run the Bad never lasts. The winning of Better one over Good one is always decisive.�

Muahammad Abdul Malik (1913 December 11 � 1996 June 17)

Muhammad Abdul Malik loved �Man not the less but Nature more.� He believed, �A poor life this if full of care. We have no time to stand and stare.� He was a man who could stand and stare at a bunch of flowers for hours.

Abdul Malik's youngest son once wrote at his teen age, -�I never found in my father the tendency to degrade the world in order to make their own children great which was very common among the fathers of my friends.� The boy further wrote, -�The greatest dilemma of which my father suffered throughout his life was whether he would accept the Reality when it was not the Right one.� He pleaded the Islamic teachings: "You fight against an evil when you are sure to win, tell him to stop when you cannot stop him by force, and hate him when you do not dare to speak against him."

Muhammad Abdul Malik loved to write letters, in English and Bengali to his near and dear ones abroad. His heart was heavy because he could not see them in many year. At his old age he admired the sattelite communication. He recalled his service period in Assam in late 1930s where he saw how the British tea-garden owners anxiously awaited for letters from home posted a fortnight ago. Their impatience lead them to the central post terminal where Abdul Malik worked. He witnessed how these Englishmen were longing letters from their near and dear in England. However, it was a breach of rule to pick-up any letter from the central post terminal. In 1980s the overseas telephone was quite costly and a few words like "How are you?" and "We are well" could cost a lot. If he lived till today, he would certainly thank God to live long enough to use Internet communication. He was a devotee of knowledge and a living encyclopedia.

Muhammad Abdul Malik loved poetry, the epics, the works of Tagore, Shakespeare, Keats and many others, but above all he found the Holy Quoran the best of all poetry to recite everyday. It was hard to believe that his aspiration for a beautiful world survived till his death although he had lived all his life in a disconsolate den which was submerged in the mud of seven sins.

Muhammad Abdul Malik wrote two unpublished books while he was a graduate student at Comilla VictoriaCollege under CalcuttaUniversity during 1936 and 1938. His memoirs �Halkhata� written in 1994 (http://libris.kb.se/bib/11812271), ISBN 978-91-973420-2-5, and �Chiriakhana� written in 1994 (http://libris.kb.se/bib/7799874) ISBN 91-973420-0-9, were published after his death.

Muhammad Abdul Malik wrote in his memoir Halkahta that his father Abdul Hamid Munshi had enormous thirst for education and knowledge. Born in a banished peasant family, Abdul Hamid had to give up his studies before college. His father Akram Ali, a well-to-do peasant, was sceptic to invest for higher education, and he bought instead new cultivating land every year. Akram Ali�s four sons worked hard but they were plunged into poverty when the cultivating landed property was divided. Abdul Hamid Munshi was inspired by his father�s elder brother Amiruddin Musnhi who was the first learned Muslim in the area. Abdul Hamid Munshi toiled hard to educate his sons, and his graduated eldest son Muhammad Abdul Malik in his turn followed the principles of his own father.

Me in a Milky Way

Jatismara's memoir retrieval

2010 June 21

Saga of Paiyaparah

Introduction

Paiyaparah is the south-east part of the village Allahabad alias Elahabad (N23.57 E91.02) in Bangladesh. During the British rule of India, this village belonged to the Burichong Pargana under the King of Tripura. In the beginning of nineteenth century two young brothers Jagid Ali and Jahur Ali from the village Madhyanagar (N23.54 E90.97) came to Paiaparah to build their new home. However, Madhyanagar was not the home of their forefathers. They were born in the village of Gohali in Mainamati (N23.51 E91.11), situated about fifteen kilometres north-west of Comilla (the valley koh-mela), the town which is in between two hills Mainamati and Lalmai.

A panorama of Mainamati today

When the British East India Company promulgated the doctrine of �Alliance on the basis of Subjugation�, Mainamati was surrendered by the King of Tripura for the construction a military base (comparable to Blair�s doctrine today: New liberal imperialism). But the eviction of the inhabitants of the villages in and around Mainamati caused bloodshed. Arai, the father of Jagid Ali and Jahur Ali was one of the local leaders who were wanted dead or alive for the uprising. However, most of the other villagers were later rehabilitated in Noaparah, Daiyara, Jangalia and some other villages surrounding Comilla. Arai (perhaps a nick-name, his full name is unknown) could flee and escape the gallows. He lived in absconding as a Fakir in the jungles. His wife together with their two minor sons and one daughter fled away to her parents in the village of Madhyanagar which was about ten kilometres west of Mainamati.

Arai (1810s- 1860s) showed himself openly in Madhyanagar after fourteen years when his case had passed the period of limitation. But he was then quite old and sick, and he died in Madhyanagar where he was buried. During the last a few years of his absconding, Arai lived in a lillte hut in the jungle of Sripur which was about ten kilometres north of Mainamati. His hut was a primative shelter under a big mango tree, a place nearby the large Idgah of Sripur built later on, and that tree lived until 1920s.

The distance between Sripur and Madhyanagar is about ten kiolometres, and Paiyapara of the village Allhabad alias Elahabad is situated about three kilometres north-west of Sripur on the short-cut way to Madhyanagar via the villages Mahmudpur, Kurakhal and Dhamti. It is understood that Jagid Ali (1830s-1870s) and Jahur Ali at their teens occasionally passed through Paiyaparah to secretly see their father hiding in Sripur.

When Jagid Ali and Jahur Ali became adult, they left their maternal uncle in the village of Madhyanagar, and they settled in the jungle of Paiyaparah, at the south-eastern outskirts of the village of Allahabad alias Elahabad. This large village was developed one from where many ancient statues of Hindu deities have been found and put in the museum.

The eastern part is of the village is called Utkharah where one companion of the Saint Shah Jalal (1271-1347) settled when his tired camel had come to stand at last (Ut: camel, kharah: stand). After the conquest of Shrihatta (Sylhet alias Jalalbad) that sage proceeded towards south and settled here. He renamed the village which now-a-days is called Allahabad or Elahabad (from Allah/Elahi-abad). He converted the majority of the Hindu/Budhist inhabitants to Islam. But Paiyaparah remained barren jungle full of danger. Jagid Ali and Jahur Ali cleared a part of the jungle in Paiyaparah, and they became new settlers in this village. Within a few years they owned about four hectres of land for which they had to pay revenue to the Zaminder of Burichong.

Although there was plenty of barren land at that time, people would not cultivate more field than they needed for living in fear of paying high revenue. Many cultivators abandoned thier cultivated land just after five years, and extract a new piece land from the jungle in order to avoid imposed revenue. But cultivated land became scarce within a generation with the growth of population. Many peasants, who were unable to pay the due revenue in time, lost his cultivating land, and they were forced to move tens of kilometres away to the east, towards the Udaypur Hill in Tripura.

The two brothers Jagid Ali and Jahur Ali digged a pond, and out that removed soil they raised a courtyard where they built a large house and made a garden. Jagid Ali was a strong and stout man but did not live long. He left behind him two teen aged sons: Amiruddin and Akram Ali. Then Jahur Ali became the head of the family. He had been married to his maternal cross cousin Fuljan of Madhyanagar, and his only child was his daughter: Aisha alias Esha.

Misfortune seldom comes alone. The only daughter of Arai, the sister of Jagid Ali and Jahur Ali who was married in the village Nalla, on the other side of the river Gomati, became a widow. She and her three sons were driven out from their home because her husband had died when her father-in-law was still alive. Then according to Sharia law the grandsons would no longer inherit from their grandfather. The homeless widow with her three sons took shelter to to her brother Jahur Ali in Paiyaparah.

Soon the home of Jahur Ali became a Kuruksetra. He sided with his sister�s sons in case of a quarrel between the cousins. Jagid Ali�s sons Amiruddin and Akram Ali broke from the family on a dispute of sharing labour in cultivation, and they built a house of their own at the eastern part of the coutyard. Jahur Ali had no sons, and so from Sharia law Amiruddin and Akram Ali would inherit the lion share their uncle�s property. Jahur Ali was more affectionate to his sister�s sons, to whom he gave that share instead.

At the death of Jahur Ali, the two widows living in the same house, Jahur Ali�s wife Fuljan and Jahur Ali�s sister quarreled often. One day the sons of Jahur Ali�s sister pushed Fuljan and her teen aged daughter Aisha alias Esha out of home. Then Fuljan and Aisha alias Esha came to live in the house of Amiruddin and Akram Ali. They had good relations as long they lived. Aisha alias Esha was given in marriage to Ali Mahmud of the village Alua on the other side of the river Gomati. Soon afterwards the sister of Ali Mahmud was given in marriage to Akram Ali who proved herself to be a good house-wife.

AmiruddinMunshi was least interested in farm work. He got his early primary education at Utkharah and his own effort he became a teacher and a sage at his later life. He left home, became a �Peer� of a village in Matlab where he got his second marriage. But his family in Paiyaparah was plunged into poverty, and his children were deprived of education.

On the otherhand Jagid Ali�s younger son Akram Ali (1863-1921) became a well-to-do peasant by hard work. However, he was fortunate to have a loyal wife, who was the sister-in-law of his sister-like cousin Aisha alias Esha. Akram Ali got a daughter and four sons. But the eldest child, the daughter Nesa died seven years old. Akram Ali�s second son Abdul Hamid Munshi got economical support from his double aunt Aisha alias Esha for his higher studies. There after Abdul Hamid Munshi became later the Prometheus of Paiyaparah.

Abdul Hamid Munshi (1893-1975)

However, Abdul Hamid Munshi (1893-1975) never abandoned his inheritaed habit of hard physical work. To secure his family economically, he took the initiative for the marriage of his graduated son Abdul Malik with Rabiya, the second daughter of Abdur Rahman Bhumiya of the village Saktala. Rahman Bhumiya was one year junior to him in the Madrasha where they studied at their boyhood. Later on the torch of Paiyaparah was then handed over to Muhammad Abdul Malik, the eldest son of Abdul Hamid Munshi.

Genealogy of Muhammad Abdul Hamid Munshi

Although Muhammad Abdul Malik (1913-1996) was not strong and stout as his forefathers, he became a legendary paradigm of the region. During the Big-Bang period at the creation Pakistan in 1947, Abdul Malik did not try to make his own fortune, and he instead as a Government Servant worked hard to show that �Pakistan has come to stay�. Many of his his Hindu colleagues who migrated to India had predicted that Pakistan would soon collapse in want of skilled people. However, the family MuhammadAbdul Malik escaped poverty due to the proverb: �Wealth is wife�s luck�.

Muhammad Abdul Malik desired his last resting place in his beloved Paiyaparah, beside the Mosque he had reconstructed. The mosque had been re-built by his father Abdul Hamid Munshi after its demolition because it was disclosed that a contributor for the construction of the Mosque had secretly received interest on a loan (which is haram in Islam).

In an endeavour to understand what Bangladesh was in the past, what it is at present, and what it may be in future, �Saga of Paiyaparah� is a typical account primarily on the basis of Muhammad Abdul Malik�s memoir Halkhata (http://libris.kb.se/bib/11812271).

(to continue)

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Me in a Milky Way

Diary:

One Evening in Government House Bongabhaban

When my parents ultimately moved to Dhaka in February 1960, the only attractive building in the city was the Brtish-built Government House which had occupied a vast area Motijheel to Jinnah Avenue (Gulistan). The only town service bus 2A from Sadarghat to Nilkhet had the longest non-stop road from Gulistan to Tikkatuli. The high wall of the Government House blocked the sight of that palace. Later it was the residence of Governor Abdul Monayem Khan who was liquidated under the liberation war. Since my boyhood I was eager to have a look inside of the palace.

On 8 January 1981, I was one of the DaccaUniversity teachers who were invited to a dinner by President Ziaur Rahman in Bongabhaban. I was a junior teacher and the invitation was unexpected. I was not one of them who were with Professor Abdul Matin Chowdhury, a foe of Zia. I came to know a secret from Engineer Mr. M. of our Department that Matin Chowdhury was ready to be the President of the exile Bangladesh Government in London. Engineer M. had been appointed at our Department for the service of the Electron Microscope (We made it ready to work for a look by Sheikh Mujib on 15 August 1975. After setting the Electron Microscope at 9 A.M., we two would leave Curzon Hall Campus, while my two female colleagues and ex-class-mates, wearing sharees in Ajanta style, would help Mujib to have a look through the Electron Microscope). My Engineer friend was a Christian (former Brahmin), and I have reasons to believe that he was a man acquainted with SIS (M16).

I was convinced that President Zia was a favourite person of SIS. Engineer Mr. M. told me that Bangladesh Intelligence was worthless and President Zia, informed by SIS, was lucky to arrest Matin Chowdhury at the airport just before the departure of the plane and put him into jail on charge of corruption. At that time my most favourite teacher and later colleague in the Department, Joy Kumar Sarogi, who enlisted me in Bakshal, had suddenly disappeared from the House Tutor apartment of S M Hall, without any trace. The Department could not trace him or his wife and children anywhere in Bangladesh or in Rajthan in India. He was a devotee student of Professor Matin Chowdhury. I was not in Professor Ahmed Sharif�s leftist group either, which was bitter rival of the group of Matin Chowdhury. Ahmed Shareef�s group had prayed for the life of Zia�s saviour Colonel Taher, who was hurriedly executed at the instigation of SIS. That pleading for Taher antagonised President Zia.

I was invited to Bongabhavan, perhaps because who made the list of the thirty guests of Dacca University teachers was the brother-in-law of my younger sister�s closest friend. Before my naive talk to President Ziaur Rahman, Dr. Jalil Khan and I sneaked around in Bangabhavan, while others were active to lower the pyramids of delicious foods over their plates and we two discovered that among the pictures of the presidents, Khondkar Mustaq Ahmed was missing. When we came back we found Zia looked worried and he was interrupted twice in our talk by special messengers, once one in uniform coming from Sylhet. From President Zia's answers to our questions, it came to me that he feared another invasion by India, like that of Vietnam over Kampuchea, if Bangladesh moved either to left or to right. "Not to right, not to left", - he replied firmly to a question by a teacher, -why Zia not making Bangladesh an Islamic State. "Why do you not oust the false teachers from the University? - President Zia questioned us. All of us were silent. I was anxious for my job and said,-"It may then happen that all real teachers are sucked out and only the false teachers are left." Instantly, I became worried for my harsh comment and to clarify my stand I added, -"You see, we those who work in the lab are not known to people as scientists, while those who play cards all the day and delives lectures about science are known to people as great scientists!" President Zia smiled and said, -"I have got similar experience in case of digging canals". One of us asked President Zia to dissolve his student union Chhatra Dal in order to ensure a healthy academic atmosphere. "I will do it if you can convince others to do the same, to forbid all active student politics"- replied Zia.

I was like a joker in politics and a sceptic. But I was always curious like Pandora, and I was curious about Nature and Nebulae too. In 1968 I came to learn about the Cheists from one EPSU (Menon) leader whose family was a migrant from West Bengal, and whose family rented a one storied house owned by Minister Mofizuddin Ahmed in Segun Bagicha. The elder brother of my peer was a leftist journalist working for a Daily. He was told that the Cheists considered the Maoist method obsolete. According to Mao Tse Tung it was possible in China because China was never a colony, and the Imperialists were then divided. In the colonies the Imperialists had established compradors to serve them like the convict warders in jail. Then the Cheists planned to follow the same method as that M16 did in Iran (1953) and in Congo (1961), and already in 1968 they planned to have nationalist Sheikh Mujib like Fidel Castro against Batista. The Cheists successfully infiltrated within CIA of Bangladesh, but not within SIS, which was weaker than CIA but more notorious in inflicting internal strife based on religion, sect, colour or creed. M16 was keen in throwing the �Apple of Discord�.

After a year I left my Alma-Mater for good, and I luckily escaped from the discomforted den for which I was born unfit. So, I am still alive for one more Giga seconds in my self-exile. My voyage in my Milky Way has never been comfortable. Surprisingly, what I hoped, was seldom good, and for what I was worried were often hidden blessings! Therefore, Tagore said, "What I want, that is my mistake, and I reject what I get". Then, I agree with Chricill, -"If you are going through hell, keep going!" That I do, and I have to do.

Me in a Milky Way

Diary: 2010 August 11

The Art of Telling a Lie

There are many theories what made the Homo sapiens the best of all creatures. Yet I have not heard that the art of telling a lie has made human the best of all creatures. The holy Quran tells us that �God made human the best of all creatures and the human as the worst of all creatures� (sura Tiin: The Fig). How it can be there are a lot of debates.

Camouflage is an art of all animals. Most of the camouflage in the animal world is of optical nature: to mislead the sight. This is however a lower grade of lying as its receptor is situated at the lower brain. The acoustic kind of lying is superior one whose receptor is situated in the upper brain.

In the subsidiary holy scripts of the Muslims it is narrated once a man came to Prophet Muhammad and he confessed that he used to do many bad things before converting to Islam, but he could not get rid of those old bad habits. How can he get rid of it! Prophet Muhammad advised him to promise before him never to tell a lie. He promised for it and thought it was so easy. But later he found that he could not do anything wrong in fear that he had to tell the truth.

Lie may be fatal if it is told by one whom we believe. In the Hindu holy epic �The Mahabharata� it is narrated how God Krishana could make the invincible Guru Drona a fool by a half-truth told by always truthful Judhisthira, the son of the God of Virtue. Perhaps Schr�dinger�s cat can clarify the puzzle of Sura Tiin of Holy Quran. Judhisthir told the truth although its essence was a lie.

It is a Western story that once there was a world competition of telling a lie. Many politicians, businessmen and others disclosed about wonderful lies by which they had fooled people. Then an angry old priest appeared there, and he rebuked them and said it was a great sin to tell a lie. To a question he answered that he never in his life had told a lie. Then he got the world championship unanimously. None in the world could tell a better lie until Tony Blair.

There are four types of bad people. One of them I met recently in a party. He called me my names without any reason. In a gossip I retold a two decades old story of Professor Dr. Ali Asgar about �how a young house maids, who had lived in a rich family, becomes unhappy after marriage if she had to live in a slum where there is no electricity, tape water or a toilet.� Then suddenly the man sitting beside me became fierce and erupted like a volcano, shouting he was a milionire and not a servant. It was a surprise to me because nobody mentioned anything about him and why he reacted so. I left the party immediately.

Later I heard from others that he shouted for an hour and the reason behind it was not understood. He shouted that he had sent three crores of Taka to Bangladesh and had built a few houses in Dhaka. Nobody understood its relevance. Later I understood that the cause of his anger was some other things which my wife could point out for me.

Once he had written a few sentences in English on a present card and asked me whether it was correct. By now I have learnt not to see mistakes to the best of my knowledge (I know I am not good in English grammar). On the other hand my father had told me that English is a treacherous language. He told me that when Pakistan was created, a man who could English best was to write her first constitution. When it was sent to England, it got about a thousand corrections. On that day I had politely told him that I am not sure of my English, and I myself use the corrections tool of Microsoft Word while I write in English, and always have Oxford and Longman dictionaries near to me. According to my wife my approach was wrong. To tell him that I myself was not sure of my English and talk about my correction of English by Microsoft Word Tool could mean that his English was not correct. Further I had cited that after the creation of Bangladesh Sheikh Mujibur Rahman wept and narrated to an American reporter about the raping of Pakistani military men. Then the reporter also wept, and it was not from pathos he said, but for the raping of his mother tongue.

My wife told me that I should not be teacher, and I was not a milionaire restaurant worker. Everybody knows what I was. I would only have said, -�Very nice! Very good!�. I was not hired for talk like Maulana Saidi. He was hired from Bangladesh to London by Bangladeshi immigrants to deliver religious teachings in a gathering of a hundred thousand Bengalis where he spoke: �Admire Allah for what you have here! Think! What would you do in Bangladesh! Today you would drive rickshaw! At best you would have become a bus-driver! Here you live better than the ministers of Bangladesh can dream of!�

I understand that it is his problem he shouted. But people blame him. I feel pity for him although I would not meet him once more to accept his apology. I fear him because this incident can repeat. But yet I feel pity for him because he has cut a sorry figure of himself. He is bad but to me of the first order.

There are many bad people of the second order who hand shake with me and smile, praise me but say ill of me in my absence. I am not afraid of criticism. Mao-Tse-Tung said, - �Let people say what they wish, and do not to blame the speaker. Correct if anything wrong and be careful�. I live a life according to the teachings of Confucius: �Be honest to be free from anxiety, be wise to be free from perplexity, and be brave to be free from fear�. I find some people who speak only good of me in my presence, but ill behind me. These bad people are easily exposed and I became aware of them and people know why I do avoid them. They are of bad people of the second order.

The bad of the third order to me are people for whom I had served out of kindness, by money and labour. But in their heart they had considered me a stupid person. A person of this group admires me, not only in front of me, but also behind me expecting that I would serve him in future. He does not know that his admiration of me is ridiculous when his intention was no longer a secret to me. People wonder why I avoid him. Only God and I know. They are bad of the third order.

The bad people of the fourth order are undetectable, and only God knows of them because I have not yet been able to discover them. They have not left behind them any clue. If their masks fell off, they will be then become bad people of lower order.

Schr�dinger�s cat is no longer a puzzle for me. Many people surrounding me are like Schr�dinger�s cat. I do not know about that cat until the box is not opened. So the cat in the box is both dead and alive at the same time. Truth and Lie can exist simultaneously in the same tin.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Me in a Milky Way

One morning in the Autumn of 1999, a poem written on a paper in the corridor of Notre Dame School in Gothenburg got my attention. I took a photovopy of the poem written in Swedish. I often recall the poem while looking out side from the window at my home, a melancholy covers my heart:

ELSINORE

(PRINSEN P� DEN F�RD�MDAS SLOTT)

I ett tornrum av sten, bakom galler av j�rn

och en tillsluten port av solidaste tr�

med en sm�rta som gror som en svulst i hans br�st

st�r han och sneglar mot Sveriges kust

i dyster bergrundan av sin �mkliga lott

att f�rsm�kta p� Elsinore slott

En g�ng var han lycklig och fri och dansant

en damernas gunstling s� sk�nt och galant

en prins utan h�gmod, en v�lkommen v�n

s�v�l i palats som de enklaste hem

den siste man trott skulle f� tyna bort

i tornet p� Elsinore slott

Han red ut i v�rlden i ungdomens dar

och s�g med best�rtning hur or�tt det var

av folket gick under sjukdom och sv�lt

f�r att h�rskarnas girighet saknade gr�ns

Men den insikten borde han nog inte f�tt

f�r den f�rde till Elsinore slott

Han s�lde sin boskap, sin mark och sitt slott

och allt det han tj�nade sk�nkte han bort

men den som f�r g�vor vill ofta ha mer

och n�r hj�lpen tar slut blir den n�dst�llde vred

s� han sk�rdade ont av det goda han s�tt

d�rf�r bor han p� Elsinore slott

En prins utan pengar bem�ts av f�rakt

av alla de andra som tillh�r hans klass

an �dling som v�gar ta folkets parti

blir h�lsad med kyla och �gon av is

f�r d�r ondskan f�r r�da �r godhet ett brott

s� han s�ndes till Elsinore slott

S� nu lever han i livsl�ng exil

f�rskjuten av fattig, f�raktad av rik

v�gorna glittrar i r�tt och i guld�

n�r skymningen s�nker sig vid �resund

han sneglar mot Sverige, han ser inget hopp

Ingen friges fr�n Elsinore slott

Me in a Milky Way

Skolgate Gjovik

Diary: November 5, 2009

Today it has been first snow in Gjovik. In 1982 the first snow in Uppsala fell on November 2 which was my first experience of a snowfall. Later on I wrote an article about it in my first Swedish essay which was published in the weekly �P� L�tt Svenska�.

After twenty seven years I am sitting alone at one window of my daughter�s apartment with a view of wonderful fjord Mjosa seen from the fourth floor. Last summer we took the car at the other side of the fjord to the city Hammer which was slightly larger than Gjovik and almost plain in comparison. Although Gjovik and Hammer stand on the opposite sites, they can not see each other because of the peninsula Brumundal from the side of Hammer stretching over Mjosa from north on the way to the town of Lillehammer. The connecting bridge that belongs to the highway E6 is at about thirty kilometres north of Gjovik and near to the town of Biri.

This is my ninth visit to Gjovik. The first three visits were at the Students hostel of Nordbyen, where I drove my car Opel Vectra about five hundred kilometres from Goteborg in March, May and July of 2008. The second residence was the ground floor of a villa at Trondhemveien where I drove twice, in August and October of 2008. But I took the train there in November last year when it was snow every where. In December it was again another shift to an apartment at Skolgate in Gjovik on the fourth floor. I was here at Skolgate once again in April this year. I am here to help another shift just after about a year because the apartment is now on sale. What a gipsy life!

To be away from home is not always bad. According to Maxim Gorky the most beautiful thing on the Earth is the view of sunrise. Seldom at home could I see the sunrise for more than two decades. Here at Skolgate I could that splendid view if the morning sun peeps up over the hills beyond Mjosa, climbing at a speed of sixteen hundred kilometres per hour. You can see its slow motion over the hills depicting a colourful panorama over the horizon. Yesterday morning it was however it looked like a molten iron over the hills under the cloudy sky. The bright colour like firebricks changed many times before it disappeared. There was a sudden burst of silvery plasma over a patch of the eastern sky for a few minutes which was soon absorbed by a dark cloud.

Today it was not so dark at the dawn because of the milky white snow covering the city. But when the snow melts it will again turn grey. This is a common feature of autumn in Scandinavia. The leaves of the trees have fallen completely leaving the bare branches standing naked. The workers have almost completed their work in picking up the yellow leaves fallen over the roads.

On the other side of the apartment is Gjovik School. It is a beautiful five storied old yellow building. Three children were enjoying their play on the snow at the steep side of the courtyard separating the school from a villa area. They were trying to slip over the thin snow lying like a white bed-sheet covering the dying grasses. But other children were screaming in the courtyard, running around or swinging.

The fjord Mjosa is calm. I came to Gjovik nine days ago and have not seen a single boat within this period. The mist is still hindering the sight at longer distance where a few patches of snow weakly existing. Only few birds are flying under the grey sky, perhaps to the South. The apartment underneath also was for sale and perhaps a new owner has come in there. One can hear a lot of noise from there all the time.

Me in a Milky Way

Diary: G�teborg,

6 December 2009

On 2 December I drove back to G�teborg from Gjovik after five days stay there. On 28 November we drove to the city Hamer where I was in the last summer too. There was a high stone marked with black lines and years which I first thought was in memory of the accidents occurred in crossing the fjord Mjosa about which I saw a large paint in the CC Gjovik. But a lady living in Hamer told us that these marks indicate the water level of Mjosa during the last 200 years. It was about five meters higher two centuries ago and gradually the water level is going down.

On 30 November when we would move to a new apartment at Hjemdalsgate in Gjovik, it was a disaster due to wet snow. At night when the temperature lowered to minus thirteen, only one back door of the car could be opened. The lorry hired for transport stopped halfway and began slide back at a slope. Anyway, we were lucky to get help of a professional man. The first snow is always troblesome because the roads are not cleaned and salted.

On 2 December, after seven hours risky drive, many times blinded by the midday sun peeping over the horizon made me forget that there were two pairs of sunglasses in the car. Anyway, the day after was 4 December. In 1971 my paternal uncle was brutally killed by the Al-Badars in that night for the fault that his second son had fled to Meghalaya in India and became a freedom fighter. He was then taking part in an operation in Madyanagar in Comilla where his commander and two companions were killed in a battle. My uncle together with an Awami Leaguer were were brought over a bridge in Chandpur where my uncle was the Head of the Telephone Exchange. They were shot before dawn. My uncle fell down in the dry canal underneath and bleeded. He could creep in front of a house at the bank of the canal. He knocked at the door and cried for a glass of water but none opened the door because it was curfew. He moaned for an hour and died there. Chandpur became free from Pakistani occupation on 12 December. My father and I were there two weeks later and found my uncle's blood spread all over the sand still dark red. We filled our handkerchieves with bloodstained sand from there.

My father's favourite was the play "Macbeth" of Shakespeare and often he cited the verse "a poor player on the stage and heard no more". That came to me when yesterday I took the cellphone to ring +8801..... to call my class-friend Yafes alias Hablu who was also operating in Comilla at that time but at some other place. Although Yafes was a busy Minister, I was eager to know about others of our group of five which Faujul Akbar, one of our five named the "Pancha Pandavas". Yafes was "Bhima" because he was the strongest of us and Faujul Akbar was Arjuna because he was smartest. Perhaps, I looked pious and so named as "Judhisthira". My talk to Yafes was after more than thirty years! Yafes told me that our "Nakula" Humayun Kabir had died fifteen years ago, and he had not heard of our "Sahadeva" Selim after independence in 1971.

Selim was the eldest son of Engineer Halim and Selim had a dozen younger siblings who lived in a beautiful villa in Shantinagar where we met occasionally. But our common meeting place was on an open meadow infront of Joint Secretary Abdul Momen's House in Rajarbagh, sometimes after having a cup of tea with chanachur in the sitting room of Shawkat Osman's house. Although I passed many times Selim's house in Shantinagar after the independence of Bangladesh, I never went in the house of Engineer Halim. The only information I got of the family a decade afterwards was from my wife who was a neighbour of Engineer Halim Shaheb whose daughter recruited my wife and many young girls to train civil defence in Rajarbagh Police Line when Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had called for the Non-Cooperation Movement and to make every house a fort for the struggle for liberation.

Four of us, of the "Pancha Pandavas", became Engineers from BUET. Only I had biology as an optional subject before six months of the final examination and I got an option to get admitted in Medical which my parents desired. But I wanted to study literature and my relatives advised me to study Economics. In my boyhood I was fond of kites and my idol was Benjamin Franklin. Alas, instead I became a joker of playing cards to fill any position: in science, in politics, in engineering, in business, in literture and as a family father too. Anyway, somewhat like Benjamin Franklin!

So, when Yafes told me that he had heard that I became a pro-Chinese, it was difficult to explain that I was not a pro-Russian either, although I signed to be a member of BAKSHAL which my beloved teacher Joy Kumar Sarogi asked me to do (my close friend Achintya Sen boasted that he was the only person who refused to join BAKSHAL). I studied Russian Language at Soviet Cultural Centre for two years and was awarded scholarships to study at Lulumba University in 1974 in Philology, and in 1976 in Molecular Biology, got a Gratis passport but I did not get a leave of absence from DU.

I wanted to speak to Yafes about the future nuclear power plant at Rooppur from my own experinece in working during 1978-79 at BARC in Trombay paid by UNESCO, under Dr. Vijendra, Head of the Vacuum Physics Division, and as a Life Member of Indian Vacuum Society (LM46). I had studied Nuclear Instrumentation and Reactor Physics forty years ago in the illusion of the power plant at Rooppur (which was also cherished by Dr. Wajed Mia all his life). But the theme of the talk was lost in Humayun Kabir. Yafes told me that Faujul Akbar as an Engineer succeeded in life and became rich but now he is very sick. The untimely death of Humayun Kabir who was most naughty boy in our group shocked me. No other class-mate coming from from Bengali medium in our section of Notre Dame College was so jolly and naughty like him. Only he could drive a car and his father was the chief of Khaibar Insurance Company of East Pakistan Branch. Humayun got a bottle of whisky from his father a month before the final examination while I got a tin of Ovaltin from my father.

Me in a Milky Way

Diary: G�teborg,

21 December 2009

I am not interested to watch TV although yesterday night I watched a site Kirghistan TV program and my knowledge of Russian language helped me to recognise the channel in Russian and some of the narrations. There are a thousand channel and when sattelite ASTRA is lost and jumps to HOTBIRD and some many others I have to mend it, returning to ASTRA.

Today morning it was a heap of snow outside but not so much cold as yesterday. While I was downstairs I watched the old TV which is connected to the parabola. These channels are full of advertisements of car-insurance, sending money to Bangladesh and many others including learning program for Bengalis in UK who can read or write neither Bengali or English.

Surprisingly in channel IQRA there was a discussion on Sheikh Hasina's son Sajib Wajed Joy who has been reported to have 5 million USD from Shevron in USA for a contract of oil and gas in Bangladesh. The office of the newpaper has been set in fire, the car of the editor smashed and Mrs Motiya Chowdhury including many other Awami political foreman have said that those journalists have no place in Bangladesh.

Yes, it is the same Motiya Chowdhury behind whom I carried a poster in 1964 with a quotaion from Tagore of Durjodhan in the epic Mahabharata:

"Ninda! Nindare aar nahi dori

Nistabdha kariya dibo mukhara nogari

Spardhita rasana tar dribole chapi!"

Here I would like to translate it to English but now-a-days I cannot recall many words although I can understand my brain catches while some one speaks. Our Pakistani and Indian friends expects I would speak to them in Urdu or Hindi as all other Bangladeshis do. One Pakistani lady asked my wife to learn Urdu but she asked her to learn Bengali first which broke our contact. The Pakistanis arrange the Eid prayers which I attend. They use lectures in Urdu and that's good because my son do not understand Urdu while he Imam describes the terrible incidents of Ismael before the sacrifice. However the angry Pakistani took a revenge in there annual meeting telling jokes and one was about a person who understood Undu but could not speak saying, "Urdu aataa haay magar jaata nehi!" Since then I do not attend there annual meetings. May be English also will be one day for me "aataa hay magar jaataa nehi". The Bengali key-board frighten me in writing Bengali.

The TV channels have been mordernised, the watchers can also participate in discussions. Although "Sylheti dialect jaataa nehi" from me, but "aataa hay". What I understood it remind me of Jesus Christ's life yesterday from in a Middle-East channel on the occasion of Christmas. Although their language even "aataa nehi", I understood from the pictures that it was about a woman who was to be stoned to death for adultry. The priests were around with stones in their hands. Then Jesus arrived there and said, "He has never committed sin would hit her!" Then there was none!

In the discussion about the recent scandal it came two things in my mind. One is of Bofors cannon scandal in selling weapons to India for 8 billion crowns in 1988 and the other a month ago via telephone to the TV channel reminded in Sylheti dialect that Sheikh Mujubur Rahaman once said in radio that "whom he would believe while all of us thieves"!

Then one of my colleages in my Alma Mater said that it is no harm. If some of are honest and some are thieves, then those honest would be the looser. If all of are thieves, than it would equalise, you steal from me and I steal from you. What a unik idea which encampasses nationalism, socialism, democracy and seculiarism!

In 1976 we signed a great contact with a US company to export Rhesus monkeys, for 50 USD each monkey while the market price was 1,500 USD. When the wild-life protectors compelled Ziaur Rahman to stop the export, President Reagan played the same card to starve Bengalis and US did for Mujib. Ziaur Rahman was forced to beg Indira food in sacrifice of Talpatti and allow a gas-pipe-line from Bangladesh.

I am no longer a political worker (now I could become a political Foreman) carrying fastoons and chanting slogans as taught beforehand. That reminds me of talk with many old learned men. One of them was Chowdhury Nurul Azim Quaderi. While he visited Sweden a few years ago, he narrated about a teacher of Mathematics of DU and he was the Principal of Tejgaon Technical College. He did not know that Azizur Rahman Khalifa who was aplygamist was a teacher of mine for my subsidiary Mathematics. Anyway, I listened to Maulana Quaderi about his meeting with Khalifa. At that time there were many open fields in new Dhaka where cows moved freely (we had also one). The mosques were often built as small cottage of bamboos with corrogated tin-shed. There were few people who attended mosque regularly and only on Friday all went for Djuma-prayer. Then the majority had to take part in the prayer on the lawn of the mosque covered with grass where the cows grazed regularly. The cow-dunk was a problem. When they found that the cows visiting the lawn of the mosque was owned by Khalifa, Principal Quaderi lead a delegation to Khalifa's house. Quaderi and others requested Khalifa to keep his cows bound with ropes so that the lawn of the mosque would be kept free from cow-dunk. But Khalifa replied,"You see my cows are idiots and do not understand. Therefore, they visit the mosque. If they had that intelligence, they would never go there. You see, I am intelligent one who understand. Have you ever seen me in the mosque?".

Fortunately, Mujibur Rahman is not so often visted as Ziaur Rahman. Perhaps Mujibur Rahman would not like to be the father the nation of thieves. Many of religious Bengali Muslims who watch Indian TV channels regularly have started to believe in rebirth. We may look for some Indian experts to planchet some of us to find who are reborn Mujibur Rahman or Ziaur Rahman who could be the best witnesses of their killings. The BNP (Bengali one, not British one) people visit the Mazar of Zia every month (President Baduruddoza lost his job for failing once). How fortunate we are having so many holy Mazars. although we do not live in Mazar-i-Sharif. Professor Afzal of BUET told me in Uppsala about an Afghan village which did not have a Mazar. The villagers considered themselves unlucky because there were Mazars in all neighbouring villages. The elders of the villages went to Pakistan to find a "bujorg" and luckily they got one and took him in their village. They would make a Mazar on his grave after his death. But the learned "bujrorg" became unhappy to live with those primitives. He decided to leave the village but forced to stay there. Then one night he attempted to escape but caught on his way. Then the elders put gurards to watch him day and night. After a year the guards working at night came to an idea. "Our aim is to have a Mazar while this bujorg would die. The should we wait and take the trouble in the cold and darkness to guard him! We know what we want and want it now!". So,they killed him and they got a spe�lendid Mazar in their village, better than theit neighbours.

If the Afghans are "A" team then the Bengalis are "B" team of the same ideology. In difference to Afghans we are clever and our political foremen are not "Chora" but "Baatpaara" who can fool the world. So, do not complain! You may read again the works of Abul Mansur Ahmed about Bengali businessmen. Politcians are also businessmen and look for the maximum profit in their own businees! We are genetically "chora" as our "National Father" confessed, and we must accept that our "baatppars" are superior to us who can the acting: "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

Me in a Milky Way

Diary: 22 December 2009

The Myth of Climate Change and the Taming of Elephants

The meeting of the great jumping-jacks in Copenhagen has ended. It was the perfect place for the meeting because while Barak Obama is trying to convince the world that USA is not enemy of Islam, Denmark boasts to be the leading Witch to crush the Muslim Ghosts. Therefore, she has been rewarded to lead Nato in the crusade today.

The Swedes say, "When two fight, a third is the winner," We all know who were the winners of the Second World War. One of them was Sweden. Another one was India. And the best winner was China as Mao-Tse-Tung perceived "Why Red Political Power Can Exist in China."

The Sun does not yet set in the British Empire, spread from New Zealand to Canada. But as Mao-Tse-Tung saw the doom of the empire in 21st century. But not by Red Political Power because the Imperislists are united as are in 1840s against China to sell opium. The Commonwealth is failing and after half a century the children of the former slaves are not convinced in empty words of "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity." The double face of the Bourgeosie was masked by the feudal religious fanaticism which Barak Obama may recall what he saw in the genocide in Indonesia, sponcord by USA. The succes was temporary as Mao-Tse-Tung saw, "Make trouble and fail, make trouble again and fail again, until their doom." So, USA made a doom-day machine.

When some the pet bull-dogs to kill the progressives of the slave nations went mad in the era, the world imperialism is going to doom. Because, when the consensus of the slave and the slave owners was subdued by Marxian conflict, the third forces, the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) was the winner.

My father was working in Assam of India during the Second World War when Japan took Myanmar. In his memorial he wrote that the British had problem to diffentilate Japanese from Chinese because they looked similar. Chinese were friends while Japanese were enemies. The World Imperialism has now same problem to distinguish between a collaborator Muslim and a rebel Muslim.

In the mean time the BRIC has been the greater threat. To tame Indian Elephant and Chinese Dragon, the myth of climate change was conspired to capture them. Perhaps you know how to tame elephants and teach a bear to dance after a music. A herd of elephants are lured to enter in a fenced area and then the gate is closed. The elephants are starved. Then man come in there riding on tamed elephants. The wild elephants are then tamed day by day by the help of tamed elephants.

In order to teach a wild bear to dance, the chained bear is placed over a large iron-plate which is warmed from underneath. When the plate becomes warmer, the bear changes its foot, lifting one foot at a time and then a music is played synchronised with the movement of its foot. After training many times, the bear moves its feet according to the music without the use of a hot plate.

When I read the communist menifesto fifty years ago, I could not realise how the scientists had been turned into slaves of the Bourgeosie. I knew that the poets

Me in a Milky Way

Jatismara's diary

2010 August 5

The Atom Bomb

For the first time, after 65 years, a represent from USA has come to Hiroshima on the occasion of the testing atom bomb over Hiroshima and to meet the "hibakusha" (the survivers of atom bomb).

Me in a Milky Way

Jatismara's diary

2010 August 6

The episode of an unhappy house maid

A young house maid in the third world can seldom become happy, - Dr. Ali Asgar of BUET told us in Uppsala during his stay there for a couple of months. A house maid comes of a poor family from a rural area, generally at the age of ten or below. She works as a house maid in the home of a comparatively rich family. She does monotonous job day and night for many years. But she lives in a well-to-do house which has electricity, tape-water, private toilet, satellite TV, refrigerator etc., and perhaps a car too. She becomes used to a modern urban life.

But when she becomes older, near about her twenties, the employer family would get rid of her. Eventually, she would be given in marriage to a man who belongs to her own social class. The bridegroom is never of the social status of the family she lived with so long. Her dream was of a husband who would be like a hero in the cinema she watched. Her honey-moon vanishes very quickly in a hut she lives her conjugal life. There is no electricity, no tape-water, private toilet. Then her life becomes a nightmare.

So, within a few years she is back again to her former employer and beg for a job. She has then a child in her lap which would be the cause for the rejection of her tearful prayer. To abandon her child to an orphanage would then enable her to secure a house-maid job.

So is it for the immigrants from the third world living in the West, - added Dr. Ali Asgar. Some of them go back, and try to settle in the third world countries of their origin, but they return again to the first world just after a couple of years.

Dr. Ali Asgar added that he had a choice to become either the head of a cat or the tail of a horse. He took the first one. He would rather become the head of a cat in a poor country.

I am not a man of witty. Therefore, I usually steal stories from others although I always refer to the original source. I am referred as "Quotationist". The view of Dr. Ali Asgar is not my own, and I have no comment over it. I thought over it when a few days ago I watched the talk on "The immigrants coming to and coming from the third world countries", delivered by an Iranian lady at "Kunskap Channel" of SVT.

Dr. Ali Asgar of BUET was a well-known person, and he was a devotee of Sheikh Mujib. He argued that Sheikh Mujib alone was not responsible for the disaster of Bangladesh, because the country was not cured overnight at the disappearance of Sheikh Mujib. In geometry this type argument is called "alternative proof". Dr. Ali Asgar presented this argument before us twenty-five years ago at the Physics and Chemistry Seminar of Uppsala University.

Me in a Milky Way

Jatismara's diary

2010 August 16

In the Kingdom of Sheikh Bangla

Today two of my very intimate and "communist" friends in Bangladesh, Industry Minister H.M. Dilip Barua and State Minister of Science and Technology H.M. Yafes Osman (Sheikh) have been with me in our daily hymn:

"Joto gun-gan he chiro mahan

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman!"

H.M. Dilip Barua said, -"Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the first person to dream of independent Bangladesh!" My school and college friend H. M. Yafes Osman (called Hablu at home), son of "uncle" Shaokat Osman, said, "Sheikh Mujib was pure Bengalee by blood, race and culture."

Until I read quantum mechanics, it could be puzzle for me! It may be a puzzle to many others, such as Dr. Ram Pratap, Professor of Physics of Bombay University asked me why do we have names like Asadullah (who was with me as Guest scientist to work at BARC for six months). I said him that all Muslims must have names in Arabic because it is the the language of Allah. "Therefore, I dislike Muslims", -said he. Now I know Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was pure Bengalee by blood and race and leader of Awami League (in pure Bengali words!).

Comrade Dilip Barua (Marxist-Leninst) had been my comrade-in-arms during the period of 11-points movement and of same Physics Department of Dhaka University, a devoted disciple of Achintya Sen, my most intimate class-mate who subscribed Peking Review and who for a period of few months had convinced me that Charu Majumder was the right leader while I was the General Secretary of Students Union Dacca Hall (Motiya group 1967-69), said yesterday -"Sheikh Mujib was the first person to dream of independent Bangladesh."

My memory makes me puzzled. In 1969 Mr. Dilip Barua belonged to Kazi Zafar group who according to the pro-chinese communist party condemned Siraj Sikder and Mahbubullah as CIA agents because they spoke for independent East Bengal! Nobody but Comrade Dilip Barua and the God knew who first dreamt of independent Bangladesh! Why not me who instead of studying Economics, Enginnering, Medicine or Bengali opted to study Physics to make atom bomb in order to make East Pakistan independent! I think, there were many, and some people said that A K Fazlul Hoque had dreamt of independent Greater Bengal including Assam! What about Netajee or Surja Sen. They failed! So, the winner always writes the history and we make us different.

Today morning at breakfast I told my wife before she left home about a report in SVT that in Sweden the authority is to find more people to balsamise the corpse because every worker who balsamise earns one million Swedish Crowns (about 100 000 Euro) extra for the job. My wife whose salary as a primary teacher with a burden of increasing number of students is less than one-third of that felt pity for them, -�Think of those fellows who have family and children and doing this terrible job of balsamising the dead bodies every day! It is terrible job like that of the executioners.�

She is an altruist and very popular person. Although one of her elder brothers retired as the Controller of Export and Import, and other one as the Director of Education, she gives away all spendings of her hard work. She works extra for that cause even on Sundays. She said me that her mother was afraid of her when a beggar showed up because she could give alms a sack of rice. Our children have problem in visiting Bangladesh for example while they see people beat a thief. My wife and other Bengali women I know here often remind me of �Alo Baudi� of Bimol Mitra. But I can foresee more trouble for the children Bengali families living in the West.

About a month ago Yafes Osman, the Bhim of our group of five, the pancha-pandavas of Notre DameCollege, informed me that Humayun Kabir, the Nakul died a few years ago. I think that in intelligence he was comparable to Fauzul Akbar, the Arjuna of the group. Perhaps Humayun Kabir, if he would, could make a joke about the �Kingdom of Sheikh Bangla�. I recall recall many of his humour. In the beginning of the first year of college Humayun lived in Gopibag, and he was always late by half-an-hour. His regular entrance disturbed the lecture of Professor Abdul Hamid Mia. One day Abdul Hamid Mia stopped him while the whole class of a hundred students were at laughter. Abdul Hamid asked him whre he lived in order to know why he was so late each and everyday. At the answer of Humayun all began to laugh again. Then Abdul Hamid said ironically, �You are laughing! I feel pity for him. Gopibag is full of Gopinees. How pity it is for him that he had to leave them in the early morning in order to attend my lecture!�

That Humayun is dead now. He was fearless to talk to the teachers. While Mia Abdul Hamid, a good critic of all writers and poets was criticising about a poem of Nazrul (batayan pashe gubak tarur sari), Humayun raised his hand and said, - �We cannot understand poems of love because we have no practical experiments like that in Phycics, Chemistry or Biology! We could understand it better if you would arrange practical classes!�

- �What do you want then?�

- �My proposal is to have joint class in Bengali with that of Holy Cross students in the first year!�

- �You do not understand what the girls in the first year in college dream of: a CSP, an Engineer, a Doctor, at least a Professor. They take you as their juniors. You should look for practicals in High Schools, and I would recommend you rather to look for that in the Primary Schools!�

Humayun lost and the class once again burst in laughter!

Humayun was not only a good orator but a good saboteur too. In the second year we had a debate between the �will be� engineers and doctors. Who are better? The Enginners or the Doctors! Humayun defeated the doctors accusing them as brute and greedy. �Doctors are like butchers! They do an operation and would not sew until they get the fees!� �The engineers are thieves!�- cried the �will be� doctors. �What do you mean by thieves!�,- shouted Humayun, �We are devoted to built the country, and the Engineers always work so hard to save the cost of constructions. When the government allots ten lakh Taka for the construction of one building, we save a half its construction costs, and we make two buildings out of the money! It is nuisance to call this saving as a theft?�

Humayun could drive a car but could not ride a bi-cycle. He was a bad boy who teased girls. Once he earnestly requested me to have him to sit in front of me on my bi-cylce, and have ride around Motijheel. While we had just passed Pirjangi Mazar, I felt that I could no more steer the handle and it was strongly drawing to the left by some unseen force. Within a moment we fell over a girl wearing a burka. It was about 11 O�clock while the girls of Udru medium were on their way towards their home. But Humayun�s shouting made me a dumb. -�This girls wearing burka cannot see anything, and they rush over the road over the vehicles! People would now blame the cyclist for the accident!.....�. Humayun who could speak such a lie could defeat all our ideal political leaders if he had wished. But he became an Engineer and not a politician. While I was training Tagore�s song to Yafes at his home which made his sister Laila to laugh at, I was jealous of Yafes. Humayun consoled me. �You see I am ugly and black boy whom no girl likes. Hablu, the strong Bhim of us, is the least intelligent among our five, although he has so many other qualifications� � Humayun said to me. I do not agree with Humayun that I was more intelligent than any other of our five pancha-pandavas. All other four became Engineers and I became a Physicist to make atom bomb for maiking East Pakistan independent and free from proverty by nuclear power. A few kilogram of any metal converted to energy would make the whole country free from proverty. It would then be like a paradise to live in. I heard that many of my Engineer friends died of alchoholism, perhaps Humayun was one of them. My teacher at Dhaka University Professor Quamrunnessa once said,- �A man is born to be addicted. He cannot live without addiction: politics, wine, religion, women��. What is my addiction? �Computer�,- according to my wife. I let the computer to sleep at once whenever I count her arrival!�

In those happy old days I was free. It was 1964. The place of our evening gathering was at Rajarbagh, an open field in front of the house of Abdul Momen Khan and Shaokat Osman. According to my father, the college life is the most pleasant part of one�s life. A few would disagree.

In 1966, I was the Cultural Secretary of Dacca University Sanskriti Sangsad (Editor Motiur Rahman was the General Secretary), and at the 10th Annual Conference of EPSU (Motiya), a drama of Rabindranath, "Taser Desh" was staged. How funny it is to find today in "The Kingdom of Sheikh Bangla" as one real "Taser Desh", and my Marxist-Leninist Comrade Dipil Barua as an Ace, and Comrade Yafes Osman Hablu as a Jack in the play.

Me in a Milky Way

Jatismara's memoir retrieval

2011 May 11

Don Quixote of Bengal

After forty one years, I recall the day of 11 May of 1970. On this day Siraj Sikder, the Don Quixote of Bengal made his second assault on Pakistan Council Library at Topkhana Road. The detail of it I came to know after months and years later. To what extent this act was against the integrity of Pakistan and to what extent this adventure of Siraj Sikder was to attract his Dulcina Aldonza Jahan Ara, nobody knows. But the act was really like fighting against of Don Quixote against the windmill because only very few knew the importance of Pakistan Council Library promoting the integrity of Pakisatan.

It was about 11 O�clock, we were in a class-room at the north-east corner on the corridor of Curzon Hall where Dr. Hiranmay Sengutpa was delivering his lecture on Nuclear Physics. Our class-mate Azad, was late and rushed in the class-room narrating that a bomb had blasted near the Pakistan Council Library and two children were fatally injured. Dr. Hiranmay Sengupta was a sober supporter of Moni Singh. He immediately condemned the action as the deed of Naxalites, as they do in West Bengal against the election. I think there was none in the Curzon Hall campus but me who suspected that it was not that of the Naxalites like that of Matin of Pabna who rejected the election. I had no connection with EBWM, so I had only to guess who did it.

The attack on Pakistan Council by EBWM was like the the fight of Don Quixote against the windmill. After two years, I came to know that the Sancho Panza was the house-painter Altaf Mia of Barishal, living in Khilgaon, Dhaka was sent with two hand-made bombs to throw into Pakistan Council. The bombs were decorated with coloured paper. Altaf Mia had his right arm paralysed from his birth and could use his left arm only. He lived in Khilgaon together with his wifew and his cousin Jalil, who helped him in his profession. Altaf Mia was fair-skinned while Jalil was dark, both were small. Altaf Mia could seldom pay the rent of the apartments he lived in. He narrated once that once when the landlord was aggressive, he jumped before him with a �dao� (Bengali knife that looks like a thick sickle). The the landlord fled away in panic. He left the apartment after three months without paying a coin.

I cannot recall who narrated to me about the bomb blast at Pakistan Council on 11 May 1970. Perhaps, Mahbubul Alam Bulbul told me that in 1974, when I was a Reaserch Scholar in Physics of DU. I persueded him to leave Sarbohara Party after his release from jail. I took him to the LawCollege in Segun Bagicha for admission in Law, but it was late. Mahbub did not know that each of his steps was followed by SB. I learnt from him that it was Altaf Mia who left the bombs in a bin when he was afraid to bomb the heavily guarded Pakistan Council. Two homeless poor boys of age about ten years were attracted by the couloured paprers wrapping the bombs and took those as toys.

Me in a Milky Way

Jatismara's memoir retrieval

1978 March ??

Justice Party of Bangladesh

Arrest of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) Leader Saidur Rahman

Robert O. Blake, Jr.
Assistant Secretary, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs

Washington, DC

May 28, 2010

We congratulate the Government of Bangladesh on the arrest of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) leader Saidur Rahman in Dhaka on Sunday evening. The JMB has been responsible for numerous acts of indiscriminate violence against Bangladeshi civilians, including a coordinated series of bombings in August 2005 that affected 63 of the country�s 64 districts, as well as attacks on judges, police and ordinary citizens.

Sunday�s arrest is the latest in a series of high-profile success stories in which local Bangladeshi law enforcement officers have arrested terrorist leaders who threaten the country�s democratic institutions and secular traditions.

The United States looks forward to continued partnership with the Government of Bangladesh to deny space to terrorists and to promote regional peace and security.

The news which sponsored

The retrieval of my memory disk

Dated Dhaka, March, 1978

A surprising evening at an Islamists Cadre Meeting

Justice Party of Bangladesh

in a flat at Lalmatiya, DhakaCity

Dr. Khaleque borrowed a costly voltmeter from my Lab for performing some experiment together with Dr. Subal at P.G.Hospital during the winter but was I did not hear of him for a month. His brother-in-law, a second year student of BUET had informed me that he was fired from the post of R&D chief of KDH laboratory by his boss, the woman who owned the pharmaceutical company. He has got a son who named Sagar. Dr. Khaleque and his wife, an MBBS from DaccaMedicalCollege, had moved to a flat in Lalmatiya.

One afternoon in the spring of 1978, I took my bi-cycle to Lalmatiya which was about three kilometres away from Curzon Hall. I intended to surprise him with my sudden visit and congratulate the couple. But a big surprise was waiting for me which made me puzzled. I can recall that evening at Dr. Khaleque�s rented flat at the first floor, although I cannot recall the address of the house. It was a newly built nice building. The sitting room of Dr. Khaleque was quite large. But I did not meet his wife or his new born child on that evening, and never since then during that last three decades. However, I heard something more later from his brother-in-law studying at BUET.

Now, after nearly three decades of my exile abroad, I recalled that evening when I read the above news.

When I rang at the door of Dr. Khaleque, he was perhaps waiting for some other one. I was often careless to read others behaviour, I pushed myself into the sitting room. But instead of seeing a smiling and playing with a new-born child, I found a gang of about twenty young people sitting on chairs in a circle and two thick bags lying at the corner where a few shining knives were peeping upward. I think Alice was less surprised in the Wonderland than me. A few of them were bearded like me but without moustache. One man of age about forty was sitting at a leadership position and Dr. Khaleque had his chair beside him. I was introduced as a friend and a teacher of Physics at D.U. and got a chair to sit. But the whole gathering felt uneasy in my presence and was silent for a while.

A red banner standing at the corner of the room drew my attention. Two swords were placed in cross over which it was written in Arabic, �La ilaha Illal lahu Muhamuddur Rasul ullah�. Dr. Khaleque introduced me the elderly man to me as the Chairman of the newly built party: Justice Party of Bangladesh. Dr. Khaleque himself was the secretary of Bangladesh Justice Party.

In my journey over Milky Way I had then landed in a new planet where everything was striking to my previous knowledge. Was it the same Dr. Khaleque, my room-mate in Dacca Hall room 107 during the year 1966 and a member of the Executive Committee of EPSU (Motia) who was fond of Tagore�s song and a student M.Sc. in Biochemistry! He claimed that he got his Ph.D. from London in 1976 and joined as the Chief of KDH Laboratory with a lucrative salary and a car! Everything was mysterious to me.

I cannot recall how our conversation started. I left them within an hour after tea, inquiring about his research together with Dr. Subol at PG, and telling Dr. Khaleque I would contact him later. I was quite afraid too because after release from second period jail, I followed the verbal direction of Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury and kept me away from all politics, not to move outside of the city unaccompanied by my parents, and never stay out of home at night. Although after my M.Sc. result as a Gold Medalist, the fall of Mujib and a position as a teacher of Dacca University made me a little careless, I was still afraid, and I used to console me by telling to myself that I was a prisoner of war and had no right to utter about anything except about weather or of the stars in the sky.

But I realised that the goal of Justice Party is to establish Wahabi Islam in Bangladesh and the progressives were their main target. In order to divert their target I carelessly talked about Palestine and Israel which was the weak point of the Islamic fanatics. It was well-known that the communists were supporting Palestine�s right to survive and the U.S.A. was to annihilate the Palestinees. Just before I left, the Chairman of Justice Party of Bangladesh assured me that U.S.A. had understood her mistake, and leaving Israel in favour of the Muslims, and Israel would then becoming a favourite of Soviet Union. I did not ague much with him and just wanted to hear more from him because the sharp knives were dazzling over the bags at the corner and I did not wanted to be their first offer.

About a month later I met his brother-in-law who was on his bi-cycle on the other side of the Road near BUET where I occasionally went to the Microelectronics Lab at BUET. He was sad and told me that Dr. Khaleque har been totally changed. His elder sister had to resign from her post as a physician at DaccaMedicalCollege, wear a burqa and stay at home all day long. She is not allowed to speak to anyone ouside. The newly built Justice Party of Bangladesh has got a large sum of money from Saudi Embassy and Dr. Khaleque has got a sum of five lakhs Taka. The goal of the party was to establish Sharia Law in Bangladesh in Wahabi model and to liquidate the progressives as the main enemies against their mission. He told me that when I left them in that flat on that evening, they were afraid of me but Dr. Khaleque had ensured them I was not a dangerous person who would harm them or him.

Later, almost every week I could read in the news paper that some freedom fighters or progressive workers had been killed in some other districts. I left that disconsolate den in 1982.

Now, when �Ship to Gaza� carrying food to starving Palestinees is stormed with the aid of US weapons, and the arrest of Muslim fanatic killers is hailed by US Home Department, I could retrieve a part of my memory. Alas, these fools were also Bengalees who had been used by our enemies against us.

Goteborg, 2 June, 2010

Me in a Milky Way

Diary, Goteborg

15 October 2010

Bangladesh Government is planning trial of war criminals. It is not a bad idea. But I would say what I told to President Ziaur Rahman on 8 January 1981, at the dinner to DhakaUniversity teachers in Bangabhaban. At one stage of discussions President Ziaur Rahman laughingly said -"Why do not you oust the false teachers from the University and keep only the real ones!"

(Perhaps he meant Ahmed Shareef and others who pleaded for the life of Colonel Taher).

All of us were silent. I became afraid because while I was as a student leader in Dacca Central jail under 60A MLR (UT 5619) during from 20 July 1970 to 17 December 1971, I was back in the same cell on 29 August as a collaborator of Pakistan under President Order 50, which puzzled the jailor Nirmal Roy.

So, unconsciously some words came out of me. I said, - �You see, it is difficult to pick out who is false teacher and who is real. It the picking it may happen that you oust all the real teachers and left with all false teachers!�

President Ziaur Rahman looked pale, and my intention was not to hurt him (I am not one of those who evacuate their bowels in the same pot they eat).

Then I added, -�You see those of us who are in the laboratory day and night are not known as scientists, rather those who play cards all the day and deliver lectures on the benefit of science are known in the country as great scientists!�

President Zia was relieved and smiled. He left the corner I was sitting, just saying, �It is true! I have got the same experience while digging canals!�.

There came initiative from Ziaur Rahman to screen out the false teachers of DhakaUniversity.

Today, after so long time, it is impossible to find the criminals of war in 1971. It may be pointed out that only supporting Pakistan on the basis of belief cannot be a crime.

�I hate your opinion, but I fight for your right to express your opinion!�- said Voltaire.

On the other hand, a few years ago a group commander of Mufti Bauhinia trained in India (named AM), told me about one of his peer active at his neighbouring zone, during the war. When I told him about a renowned person of my Alma Mater, acquainted to me, he said that that person (named OX) also was of his age (18 years) at that time but he made a lot of money from the operations in his area.

�How?�- I wondered.

�He used to take the rich pro-Pakistanis in his camp. His agents went to the homes of those persons and collected gold ornaments and money with the promise of release. But later he (ZX) used to kill them and throw away their dead bodies in the river�.- said Mr. XM.

Mr. ZX is an honourable person and one of my peers. I do not believe it and I had read of such incidents in 1957 in a Bengali journal published from Calcutta, about the stories of Fran�ois Spain during the civil war in 1939.

It is important to investigate such incidents if occurred. I know of an incident in my village that a group of Mukti Bahini got delicious food at the house of a collaborator named Altaf, and on the way back they called Gafur Mia, who predicated for independence, to come out, shoot him at once at the door just when he had said he was Gafur Mia. Altaf Mia was enemy of Gafur Mia and perhaps none in the group of Mukti Bahini knew who was enemy and who was friend. However, it was their grievous mistake to shoot at sight.

Recalling these incidents, one should be careful to judge the war criminals in order to avoid double muder, one by the criminals and other judicial muder!

Me in a Milky Way

Diary, Goteborg

15 October 2010

Bangladesh Government is planning trial of war criminals. It is not a bad idea. But I would say what I told to President Ziaur Rahman on 8 January 1981, at the dinner to Dhaka University teachers in Bangabhaban. At one stage of discussions President Ziaur Rahman laughingly said -"Why do not you oust the false teachers from the University!"

(Perhaps he meant Ahmed Shareef and others who pleaded for the life of Colonel Taher).

Me in a Milky Way

Jatismara's diary

2011 June 17

One more day in my life

I am still alive. I have been sick for a very long time like that was "Amal" in Tagore's dramma "The Post Office". Every morning when I wake up, I utter- "Thank God, it is one more morning (Tack Gud, det blir en morgon till). No doctor could diagonise my illness. My dad recorded my birth at 3 a.m. at the beginning of spring. He was away from home at that night and had stayed in an another village after attending a marriage festival. Now it is the beginning of summer and fifteen years ago on this day he left me forever. I brought packet of his letters he wrote for twelve years I was staying abroad, I want to publish the letters in a book "my dears are abraod" (bideshe priyojana).

I am still alive but very ill, and yet I must prepare myslef for a long journey to say adieu to my mother waiting for me under intesive care in a hospital in my homeland. I am often ill during the late hours at night, at the time I was born. My sickness could not be diagonised. May be, the doctors can diagonise the cause of my illness after my post-mortem and I have to wait until that. But that waiting makes my spouse sad. Looking at the sky, at the mountains, the forests, and the world around me I become happned. I recall my last dawn struggling to survive. I recall what I felt lst night, an ultrasonic shievering from my chest spreading in all directions of my body to semi-paralyse my limbs for a few seconds like an earthquake. Then I am in me again and come up in the world around me. When I go to bed, every night I could see in the darknessthe famous painting "The last night of a one sentenced to death".

Me in a Milky Way

G�teborg 2010.02.08

Today I wrote a letter to Prothom Alo

Dear Editors

(MotiurRahamn /A Quayyum)

There is a world-wide move to undo the wrong committed long ago.

In this context I wish to inform you about a wrong-doing on 16 November 1971.

On that night Mr. Matin, leader of Sharmik League of Postgola Match Factory and Sona Mia, a bi-cycle repairer in Postgola were hanged in DC jail for the murder of a DSP.

Matin, had repeatedly uttered that he was innocent before he was hanged.<o%3

Me in a Milky Way Diary: 2010 August 11

The bad people of the fourth order are undetectable, and only God knows of them because I have not yet been able to discover them. They have not left behind them any clue. If their masks fell off, they will be then become bad people of lower order.

Schr�dinger�s cat is no longer a puzzle for me. Many people surrounding me are like Schr�dinger�s cat. I do not know about that cat until the box is not opened. So the cat in the box is both dead and alive at the same time. Truth and Lie can exist simultaneously in the same tin.

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Me in a Milky Way

Diary: 2010 August 11