Kalurghat and beyond

As the bus crossed the Kalurghat Bridge, I saw that it met with a road that was anything but a road. The road from end to end for about five miles was full of potholes and ditches and craters. Some craters were so big that it reminded me of an airstrip heavily bombarded. The bus could hardly move.

As I occupied a front seat just behind the driver, I couldn't repress my sense of humour and asked the driver as to when the road was so heavily bombed. The driver was a shy kind of person, but he understood my question and replied that the road had been in that condition for over a year or so. My anger mixed with a sense of helplessness arose at once and I cursed the people who were in charge of the road communications. Then and there I thought of writing a column on the condition of the road when I got back from Cox' Bazar. But I forgot about the matter even though two weeks had passed after my return.

Then suddenly one night, a couple of days ago, as I sat with my family to watch a show on Channel I, I was really surprised to see Communications Minister Barrister Nazmul Huda on screen, no not delivering a speech or slicing a point in the Parliament, but rendering a song in his own voice. Though I am vaguely aware that many of our ministers and politicians have many other attractive parts rather than what they have chosen for life, but I never knew that the barrister sahib was such a great singer. The song, a great classical Tagore song at that: "Jakhan parbe na more payer chinha ei ghate" (When these steps will not be printed by my footmarks), was sung beautifully visualised by the minister's frequent change of dress and shifting of locations, while time and again the camera went inside the studio glimpsing at the minister actually recording the song locked with earphones and all that; and, he, in the studio was marvelously looking like Elton John singing his famous number, "Sacrifice." It was over all an A grade performance.

Now, what would you say about Nazmul Huda! The roads are breaking down everywhere, and he's singing on TV. This may be cruel, if we draw on the famous analogy with Nero who was fluting, while Rome was burning. But then it's a very close call, nonetheless.

The scenario has rather something to do with Stephen Greenblatt's post-historical model. This great professor of literature, who was once in Berkeley and is now in Harvard, proposes that literature should be read as a link subject with the other phenomena in society. For example, he views that Colombus' telescope symbolises the dominance of the west over the colonies, which is again reflected in the literature of the Renaissance Europe.

We twist the theory, and then we can place Nazmul Huda. That is, Bangladesh must be a country where the ministers can enjoy their time well, even when the departments they are responsible for are suffering.

Readers, sensitive to people's individual talents, might argue that a minister is not supposed to be on vigil twenty-four hours. Yes, but when he's coming to the electronic media for attention, the poor citizens of the country, and the poorer travellers on that god-forsaken road mentioned earlier would like to know whether the minister has done his homework!

Honourable Minister Nazmul Huda is well known for his gift of the gab, then does it prove that 'more talk, less work' is true!