All sound and fury? Signifying nothing?

A line from William Shakespeare's Macbeth, from Act 5, Scene 5: "Macbeth's plans are falling apart around him."
Elsewhere he says: "And all our yesterdays have lighted fools. The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Here, what the playwright meant is that life is like a bad play, or a good play that has been spoiled by a bad third act. A bad drama is one that is full of sound and fury, special effects and battle scenes, all occurring without a context. Ah! How coincidental! How terribly, terribly close to truth!
Dear readers, we are all witnessing a bad drama, a chaotic stage performance, where the storyline is changing fast, thus causing nausea and vertigo among the audience. They are at a loss, failing to comprehend the bizarre acts going on stage. They cannot decide whether to clap, or cry, or flee from the dark theatre.
In a manner that is manifestly macabre, our politics resembles a bad drama where it is more noise than a spectacle of significance. It is vociferous and raucous at the same time, like it used to be in the good old days. Whatever is happening in the name of politics has the foreboding of doom that crouches not too far away -- like a nasty cyclone hovering on the horizon.
It is a matter of time only. We are yet to learn that nothing that is based on deception can sustain and produce better results. Our politics at the moment, in general, is fraught with elements of deception, and all good attempts at sanitising the system have proved to be counterproductive. We are returning to ditch number one, to live with the slithering organism once again. No escape. Good Lord! Are we destined to live in a ditch?
The successive developments in the recent weeks have been unusual to say the least. The very imprisoned people (VIPs) have managed to come out of jails and, as we had written earlier in this column, they went home with garlands around their neck. And true to their reputation, they have started to threaten the people who had filed cases against them. Now it is the turn of the accusers to flee.
Oh, we have heard so much about reforms in the style and manner of politics as done in this country. We hoped politicians and supporters and their student cadres have learned one or two things in the last 18 months.
We hoped they would understand that the days of politics of violence were over and days of tolerance and practicing democratic norms were about to be ushered in. But alas! It is not to be so. Nothing has changed.
For example, one activist of BNP was beaten up mercilessly by other supporters of the same party accusing him of being a reformist. It happened in front of the BSMMU hospital when he went there to see the BNP chairperson after her release. The young man died of grievous injury two days later. He is veritably the first victim of the kind of politics that we shall see in the near future. So, fasten your seatbelt.
The lucky VIPs have been released from jails. But what about 14.95 crore people out of the 15 crore? Will they be able to end the life sentence of rigorous existence with the help of law? Is there any such law? They were born to serve the sentence -- a bondage in perpetuity -- for having committed, unknowingly, the crime of being born in poverty. For them -- the faceless millions -- Samuel Beckett had written: "The major sin is the sin of being born."
What a shame! We rejoice at the release of some people from confinement, people who have committed crimes that would shame any sane person to death, but we do not think for a while of the millions who need to be given freedom from a life of drudgery.
Do we find a minute to contemplate, sitting in our political party office, that each day of the common people is but an episode of cruel real life drama, where there is no such thing as bail or release or treatment in a foreign hospital.
The question that haunts my mind is: Are the people who are being released and those who remain imprisoned within the bounds of their fate created by two different creators? If not, then who are responsible for the divergence, for the inequality?
Why must some people get bail for engaging in corruption themselves and making a large number of people around them corrupt, while common criminals will not get such differential treatment? Does political identity ensure impunity from criminal proceedings?
The kind of politics we are advocating for is responsible for perpetuating poverty in this country. A sea change is needed to make politics accountable, transparent and productive through playing a supporting role to the economic and social progress.
Politics by itself is meaningless unless it creates the right environment for the blooming of the potential in all the sectors that would lead to production and progress. Therefore, stop the noisy politics, settle down, use your grey matter, and find out how you can contribute to nation building. Making it "signifying something."

Shahnoor Wahid is a Senior Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.