Bangladesh Memories

It should feel like just another December day but
For some of us it makes 50 years with
A distant thought, much pain, it overwhelms even now
Bengal I still remember your scents, the richness, the memories
Of the friends that one hoped to never leave so soon in life
Yet today as the much older memory cells struggle to revive
Just the names of people, and the hushed conversations in old Dacca
where
We discussed The Beatles, ideals, preventing oppression and
The passion for politics, and a love of the life we shared
Spent catching never ending numbers of Puti or Ruhi fish,
Golden sunsets sitting on the shores of Dhanmandi Lake with
The peaceful haunting sounds of  Bansuri flutes playing.

But the dreams of youth just could not last long
Like the Lychee seasons the sweetness came and was gone
As our lives were invaded by murder and death because
People who kill could  not understand the concept of such a peace and
Still offer strange excuses for carrying out orders for "our" sake
as if
The parting of ways with the surrender wasn't enough
Not forgetting that East-Bengal too was the country of our love but
Since there is no turning back the clock on such a partition of the
hearts
At the half-century mark of a much lesser known Asian holocaust
A strange sadness forces this abstraction,  this writing  again today
To commemorate the painful and blood soaked birth of Bangladesh
Because the memories of eating fresh Cham Cham sweets in Savar
Mingled with the smell of death and gunpowder, the smell everywhere
And all the bridges we hoped to build between us still nowhere
Waiting for a sincere apology to start the healing of many heavy hearts.

• By Ras Hafiz Siddiqui (This was rewritten with the hope that the people of Bangladesh and Pakistan will find peace and harmony in their future. It is dedicated to my old friends at the Senior Cambridge class of 1971 at St Joseph Higher Secondary School, Dhaka.  I hope that they will get to read this.)