I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed at conception,
liberated fruits of loins poisoned by fervent nationalism
impregnating eggs made fertile by distilled neoliberalism,
stark naked foetuses growing daily weekly monthly,
drip drip drip-fed dogma gestated over half a century,
better to be but never aborted;
dragged through brown streets by angry fathers mothers uncles aunts
who constructed the national myth of freedom
blood red splashed on fields of green hues,
to tie the children, their children, others’ children and their children
to lives of raging desperation, indentured servitude
in service of the nation;
dragged through greying streets of tarmacked development, film
of dust kicked away by the stampede of impressionable
minds programmed dawn to dusk, programmed
to obey, programmed to behave, programmed
to receive and regurgitate the propaganda
of the forsaken and the depraved;
who are taught not to rebel by those who lie that they rebelled
to rape the rewards of the glorious rebellion (Alhamdulillah);
who are taught not to rebel by those who purportedly rebelled
to seek crumbs of the rewards of the glorious rebellion (Inshallah);
who are taught not to rebel by those who were rebels in the glorious rebellion
to be crushed by the lie of the land their sacrifice freed (Mashallah);
who are taught not to rebel by those who rebelled against the glorious rebellion
to be granted duchies in the land whose freedom they fought to prevent;
descended from grey beards hennaed nuclear fusion orange to mimic
the man on the moon, the man whose face appeared crystal clear
imprinted along the lunar fault line of where Muhammad split the moon,
sending vibrations of shifting tectonic plates to shake the very foundations
of nuclear Islamistan fission into Islamidesh to be must be
has been to prevent not to be, five times a day decreed;
descended from bootlickers exuding the only bona fide founding father by
dressing a certain way, invoking the spirit of nineteenseventyone as a sacred ancient incantation a certain way, speaking tongue tied twisted of sweet
nectared development a certain way, frowning, smiling, winking, gesturing
a certain way to devour the tattered hollowed-out spoils of the War, vultures
peeling flesh putrid off bones rotting of what was once a carcass;
descended from talkers never smooth, on free radio, freer television, freest internet,
canonised intellectual saints in life to prescribe dispense proliferate
half-baked quarter ideas divided by six short of a dozen, speaking loudly and proudly false equivalences and falser theories uninhibited, searching for
sharing searing on impressionable minds decadent falsehoods in piercing
falsettos or sotto voce if the occasion calls for it, indelible indubitable stains;
descended from numismatists clawing out femurs and humeri, tibias and radii
to grind into coins passed down to the next generation, printing takas on
brown epidermis lacerated and extracted, micro-aggressions provoked by
Nobel and knighted finances universally lauded suppressed, timely
interventions of cash injections through mobile phones into dollar nest eggs
laid in shorted shares and foreign investments by laundering cuckoos;
holy be they who tell stories on virtual touchpaper in words and images profiling
the importance of storytelling and mythmaking to preserve the sanctity of lies;
holy be they who spin glorious yarns of rarefied Golden Bengal proffering
solutions to problems non-existent and no solutions to existing problems;
holy be they who make the enslaved spin cotton yarns for Golden Bengal pronouncing
pride (in the profits) to be made in Bangladesh;
holy be they who protest that the enslaved belong not in factories proclaiming
that vaginas must be veiled from labia to labia and locked in the kitchen;
marching to the beat of nineteenseventyone slogans, they speak in digital ones
and zeroes, shooting star satellite, vision discarded by the colonisers cherry-
picked from the rubbish heap of disposed foreign aid bad ideas to recreate
colonised mindless drones, repackaged as success story boasted about
in Newsweek – foreign coverage! – bought and paid for, a respectable
narrative promising the lobotomised world more, gone to the highest bidder;
marching to the beat of nineteenseventyone slogans, they speak in metric tonnes of
coal floating up the tepid waters around the Sundarbans, burn carbon burn soot
and filth and mangrove where the tiger no longer roams, calories expended as
the price too small paid for the promises of nineteenseventyone, development
delivered through thunderbolts travelling down the Jessore Road taking with
them fresh water across the border, a better deal Faust could not conjure;
marching to the beat of nineteenseventyone slogans, they speak of fucking traitors
and motherfucking rajakars waving genitals damaging destroying the image of
the nation, their wrath unburdened on the fuckers, broken bones shattered,
blood clotting more splattered, skin ripped open tattered, bashed open skulls
scattered, Joy Bangla motherfuckers, split-lipped toothless mouths open only
to speak of glorious Golden Bengal, glory glory Joy Bangla, glory glory amen;
marching to the beat of nineteenseventyone slogans, they speak to fill the void of
the silence of those who are not allowed to cannot speak any more, picked up
by plainclothes detectives rabid brown men in black feral brown men in army
camouflage, the indigenous social conscience coalescing in bodies blindfolded
impaled with the hot blade freshly forged by development in the hills,
imprisoned or disappeared or shot dead, all dead and forgotten, speak no more;
glory be to the warriors of god and his favoured who spared us from the
anti-national slurs of Mithun Chakma, of Abrar Fahad, of Mushtaq Ahmed;
glory be to the warriors of god and his favoured who spared us from the unbelievers
Mohammad Shahidullah, Ananda Gopal Ganguly, Maung Shue U Chak;
glory be to the warriors of god and his favoured who spared us from the preaching of
the godless pigs Avijit, Washiqur, Ananta Bijoy, Niloy, Faisal Arefin;
glory be to the warriors of god and his favoured who spared us from the scourge of
deviating from the one true way of heterosexuality, praying the rainbow away;
the lost generation copulates, breeding senseless, foetal minds undeveloped
by the lack of knowing what a protest for a child’s right to be safe looks like,
children uniting powerfully futile learning exercising displaying democracy that
shames adult dogs of war off their leash, beating senseless laughing hysterical
raging against the foolish naïve children transformed into the enemy of the state
monster defanged and manacled, lesson learnt and passed down;
the lost generation copulates, breeding senseless, foetal minds undeveloped
by the lack of knowing what a protest for a woman’s right over her body looks
like, the one true god invoked to cover her up by day pornography invoked to
tear her clothes off her by night, descent of darkness salacious thoughts given
life by taking her, ravaging her, taking hers, life for life balance restored and
all is well with the world again, lesson learnt and passed down;
the lost generation copulates, breeding senseless, foetal minds undeveloped
by the lack of knowing what a protest for land rights of the indigenous, a protest
for religious rights of the unbelievers, a protest for fair pay for the enslaved
in factories at home and sent on slave ships to bring civilisation to desert
nomads sent back in black gold made dollar and body bags, a protest of
any kind treachery sedition inhumanity, lesson learnt and passed down;
the lost generation copulates, breeding senseless, foetal minds undeveloped
by the lack of knowing words and images, pen permanently sheathed dried
brush and withered palette tamed, freedom obtained needless relinquished
erased, the green and red of Golden Bengal birthing a monochromatic
land bathed in glorious praise axiomatic so developed that words and images
and freedom are no longer needed, lesson learnt and passed down;
ganja on the mind, yaba washed down with Carew on the mind, colours washed
away by darkness spreading infection on the mind, living breathing numb,
thoughts expelled from the academies for their insanity, from ivory towers for their
savagery, from living memory for their affront to life, uncivilised,
night after night, cowering in suits and saris and panjabis and kameezes and lungis
and underwear, bare chested and bare breasted in darkness bearing,
silence continuous from houses to streets to computers to Chittagong Hill Tracts to
Sundarbans to Padma Bridge to here to now to evermore and everywhere,
no more screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes lost
in the pages torn up and shredded, dignity shredded, lives shredded,
whole intellectuals disgorged steady stream into the ether flowing seven days and
nights a week never reclaimed by the meek weak suffering what they must,
lost battalions of sinister conversationalists jumping down the throats of demons
possessing the better angels of earthbound misfits, hurting no sentiments,
curiosity wandered around and around at midnight wondering where to go
and went, leaving no minds touched or hearts broken,
thinking loned it through the streets seeking visionary minds who were visionary
minds fifty years and counting, disappeared leaving behind not even a shadow,
there is but one incomprehensible commandment comprehensibly established dictum
howled from rooftops in the mornings in the evenings by the best minds of
my generation scattering their semen to whomever come what may, snipping the intellectual golden threads of the artist’s loom breathing darkness
in the darkness, prayers manifested breaking their spines sinking the land to
hell which exists and is everywhere around us, nothing nefarious.
Painting: Zainul Abedin, from Internet
