Fear has many shades

Hopelessness is the primary culprit

Hope though is the most powerful triggers for empowerment

It is not a zero sum game

Equations have constants

Hope is that constant

In an world which evolves every moment

9/11 changed how one billion people were looked at forever. This is the biggest price paid, everyday at some airport security check. The amplification of the securitisation become the new normal of surveillance. India, Thailand, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Burma received the biggest leeway for persecution ever. The digital only hyper amplifies such primal and primitive biases.

9/11 changed the world for the reality of today, as we experience it. Millions killed, countries destroyed, trillions spent/squandered and sixteen years later, we have Trump who is a residual historical figure, almost as a reactionary response to the dastardly event, 15 years later.

One, sweats arguments

To win the debate

While poetry is bled, from interstices of vulnerability

To bridge the common terrain of humanity

Furniture, these inanimate objects

Placeholders of lives

Occupy a rather mundane role

In our existence

While everything else is zooming away

The showcase, the almirah

Starts being a reference node

Transforms into repository of memories

Denoting eras, of times passed by

Furniture, which is more than a brand

As memories can’t be procured at an IKEA store

It’s fascinating to observe Bangladeshis speak in accent heavy Hindi/Urdu in the Gulf as they seem to monopolise the service sector jobs here, irrespective of the typology of the eatery or the petrol station. I asked some of them if they spoke Hindi/Urdu prior to the Gulf, as they said that their exposure was limited to Bollywood Films, rather more to Kolkata Cinema. SAARC integration succeeds in the Gulf. Economics is a greater goal to Language.

It’s wonderful when one speaks about with a mathematician this evening regarding historical erasure and memory regarding 1947 partition of Bengal, and how nostalgia is misplaced as a myth in covering up for hard facts, or the inability to engage with hard truths in the Bengali consciousness.

Why is the sordid and gruesome violence happen, by members of a common linguistic community? Was it power or a desire for a different trajectory, which ultimately Bangladesh and Indian West Bengal has experienced?

Equivalence of Violence

The cancelling out of equations

Is in reality lives snubbed out

Theatres of conflict cause suffering

No scenario is the same

Lived experiences are unique

Though share a common humanity

Aspirations, suffering and everything in between

Arakan, Kashmir and Gaza

Are not same, yet similar

All proper nouns signifying

Resistance at one level

And state failure at another

Humanity reigns in the midst of politicking,

blood is shed, not differentiating between categories,

Binaries are real, yet irrelevant

and we ask, whose blood shed was more precious

#SitweSheds

Migrants listen to various genres of music on their smartphones through YouTube and other apps, to kill the mundane solitude of their days overseas. The Pakistani tea shop which I am sitting in with my Karak Chai has the Punjabi chef playing Lahori tracks. During the Eid Break couple of days back, a group of friends from Lahore all engaged in the construction space with their characteristic salwar kameez and infectious Punjabi accented Urdu were playing old early 1990’s Bollywood songs aloud. Those tracks got me humming as well.

The Transporter from Chittagong, with glitzy shades has playing a diet of Jatra and Bangla Band in his car, all of the sugary romantic realm. He is clearly nursing a heartburn as his ‘Bandhobi’ is not considering his marriage request. I was quite shocked to listen to a QSQT track from the late 1980’s (Gajab sa ye dil, dekho zara) blatantly ripped off and transmuted in to a Bangla Band song. Too much syrupy stuff for the soul. Need some Antidote at the moment.

Music is indeed the language of the soul, and plays a critical element in making migrant life bearable.