Non-Fiction
Reliving time: Ted and Kara Kennedy
Senator Edward Kennedy with daughter Kara
The year: 1972. The month: February. The place: the main entrance to the Dhaka University Arts building hallway. The time: afternoon. Three or four of us, all students of that institution, were lounging on the long brown wooden bench that was placed adjacent to the high left wall of the entrance. All the three gargantuan heavy wooden doors with elaborate carvings were wide open, symbolically announcing that the massive building, looking more like an enormous lump of concrete rather than exuding any aesthetic aura, was open to entry and egress. The late winter sun, giving off wan rays, would, before long, be disappearing over the horizon in a blaze of red glory. The air was deliciously crisp, but not chilly. Classes had ended for the day, and most students had left. Only a few of us were hanging out, waiting for the sun to go down before heading for home or whatever destination was on the cards. We on the bench were having a whale of a time, engaging in bawdy jokes, a lot of banter, and generally being blithe spirits. It just so happened that my eyes were on Nilkhet road at that particular moment, really simply staring without looking at, or for, anything or anyone in particular. That is when, out of the corner of my left eye, I saw a jeep entering through the outer front gate at a speed one would not normally expect, or encounter, inside any of the university building compounds. The jeep stopped on the pathway running alongside the grassy open space where once had stood the venerable banyan tree (bott gachh---it somehow sounds so much better) that had once symbolized Dhaka University itself. Now an empty spot was a stark reminder of its lordly presence it had once held for those who had been in its proximity, and the painful reality of its premature death, cut down by the Pakistan army to remove a symbol that, to its top brass, signified Bengali yearning for freedom, and the struggle to attain it. The army, by its very act, only succeeded in underscoring the bott gachh a symbol of Bengali nationalism. Before I could fully register the men almost jumping out of the jeep, I watched a small motorcade, accompanied by several people half-running and half-stumbling, enter through the same gate and grind to a halt behind the lead vehicle. The spectacle drew my and my friends' attention all right. Not so much the twenty or so mostly university students who had accompanied the motorcade, and whose numbers had surely swelled to around one hundred by the time the vehicles were departing. The attraction was the man who had disembarked from one of the automobiles, big, dark haired, good looking, instantly recognizable. "Ted Kennedy!" I blurted, and moved towards the stationary motorcade. Security personnel cordoned off a relatively small circle inside which I saw the Massachusetts senator planting a bott sapling in almost the exact spot where the previous one had stood. Having done so, he got up, flashed a smile in the spectators' general direction, and got ready to depart. He did spare some time to sign autographs for a lucky few, mostly women, who had managed to bring along at least a notebook. And, then, the convoy vanished, as swiftly as it had come. To me, it felt like the entire episode had hardly lasted for more than five minutes. There should be some people around who still possess an autographic memento of that day, all those years ago. And now Edward Kennedy, among the greatest legislators to have graced the US Senate, is gone, lionized by his countrymen and women, respected by many around the world, a true liberal democrat who championed the cause of the underprivileged in his own country and beyond its borders, not the least Bangladesh. And those human failings of his? They only proved that he was, after all, a human being! In death he has become iconic, indeed, as he was in life, and I will always treasure the memory of that day in February 1972, when, out of the blue, he appeared, for replacing a fallen symbol of a nation that holds certain symbols sacrosanct. Fast forward. The year: 1981. The month: March. The place: the library of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Medford, Massachusetts, USA. The time: late afternoon. I was a second semester MALD student at Fletcher, and was working part-time as a library assistant. The rich library facilities of that prestigious institution were primarily used by Fletcher and cross-registered Harvard and MIT students. Outside of this limited circle, Tufts University seniors were allowed to use it. A number of them did, not the least for the "privilege" of being inside that hallowed area, and being able to check out books and other reading materials. That afternoon I was on duty at the front desk, chatting away with my classmate Ned Desmond (the last I heard of him, which was more than fifteen years back, he was an associate editor of Newsweek magazine) standing on the other side of the checkout counter. He had just checked out some reading materials, and was giving me company. Then, out of the library shelf room emerged a couple of Tufts girls (the seniors could be easily spotted simply because they were not around the graduate school most of the time, and the Fletcher community was small enough for every member to at least recognize each other), books cradled in their arms. They came up to the counter, I told them to go ahead with the routine formalities, and went back to my interrupted conversation. Once they had left the book cards on the counter, I de-sensitized the magnetic security strips in each book, and they gathered their materials and made their way to the exit door. As they were doing so, I collected the cards to file away, when I noticed that one set had not been signed by the student. The two had already walked out when I yelled at Dennis, the security guard, to call them back. They came, and I gave a stern lecture to the guilty party on the proper procedure of checking out books and other reading material. She listened in silence, looking rather embarrassed, but so courteous, that petite blonde cute girl, signed, apologized for her oversight, and left. I felt good, having put the undergrad in her place! As I was collecting the signed cards, my eyes fell on the name, and I am certain my jaws fell open. I was staring at the neatly written Kara Kennedy on each card! I was aware that Edward Kennedy's daughter studied at Tufts, but until that fateful encounter, had never seen her. I told Ned, and he was whooping with great glee! "Now we'll be able to get rid of you, Shahid!" That cad! My Fletcher mates had absolutely erroneously identified me as something of a hell raiser, a wild man! Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, but you cannot reason with unreason, now, can you? Anyway, good buddy Ned (who, by the way, was a Dartmouth graduate, a Massachusetts native, Irish-American like the Kennedys, but a staunch Republican who did not take to the American Camelot dynasty at all!) had a good tome ribbing me, and then telling the rest of the Fletcherites for me to endure further good-natured banter for a day or two! I did not see Kara again, she having graduated in a couple of months, until I saw her on TV, at her father's Irish-style wake in Boston. She still looked self-effacing, in contrast to her father who, when alive, used to deliver some of the most memorable and passionate speeches I have had the pleasure of listening to. Rest in peace, Senator Edward Kennedy.
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