Will they make or become history?

Time to show some leadership. Photo: Munem Wasif/ Drik news

Three earthshaking things have happened between November 13 and 21. Bleach has been killing germs for over 200 years but US scientists just figured out how this cleaner does its dirty work. After 103 years German, French and Hungarian scientists proved Einstein's celebrated formula e=mc2. At home, top two political leaders spoke to each other after sixteen years, and this nation has been touched.
Other things also happened across the world during this time. Barrack Obama appointed his secretary of health and human services. More people got killed in Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Muqtada Al-Sadr bellowed warnings at the United States that its forces would be forced out of Iraq.
An email campaign tried to tarnish the image of Pakistani president claiming that he had misspelled the words "God" and "strength" in a message that he wrote at the tomb of Qaeed-e-Azam. And oye, oye vey, a video showed the world leaders not shaking hands with George Bush at the G-20 summit.
But amongst everything that happened, those three earthshaking things are of special significance. If an unexamined life isn't worth living as Socrates said, we have examined life a bit more in the first two instances. Hypochlorus acid, the active ingredient in bleach, attacks proteins in bacteria and causes them to clump much like a boiled egg.
The e=mc2 formula shows that mass can be converted into energy and energy can be converted into mass. But resolving this formula at the scale of sub-atomic particles, in equations called quantum chromo dynamics, was particularly difficult. What was a hypothesis for all these years has been corroborated for the first time.
We, however, can't explain why two leaders in whose hands, in whose voices, rested the fine balance of this nation's fate, refused to shake hands and talk to each other for so many years. For fifteen years they took turns in government and parliament, in position and opposition, countless times addressing the people, media and foreign guests.
It remains a mystery why they didn't want to sit with each other face to face. May be like bleach, like Einstein's formula, this mystery will be resolved someday, hopefully sooner than hundred, two hundred years.
Still it's good news that they have talked better late than never. It will be even better news should this continue in future, should these two leaders shake hands and speak more often in the truest sense of democracy, in direct interface with each other cutting out the middlemen. I plead with them that they should understand how a contentious nation is like a contentious home. When parents remain incommunicado, children stray, servants take advantage, and the house lives in disorder.
The signs of that disorder don't need introduction. People, national and foreign, have fished in this troubled water, cashing in on the silence that fell between these two politicians like an iron curtain. And this silence percolated through party ranks, business community, bureaucratic hierarchy and professionals of all kinds, down to the common folks, dividing this nation into partisan halves. It's because they refused to talk that our politics has become so cacophonous, fringe elements moving into mainstream, even a despicable dictator lusting for return to power. Rimshot, please!
Interestingly, the two leaders have behaved contrary to the law of magnetic poles: like poles repel, opposite poles attract. It's obvious that they aren't likeminded, that their political beliefs are different. Yet they failed to attract each other, may be for reasons beyond politics, may be for reasons more visceral.
For what other reason should they hold this nation hostage to their purported silence? They are not two housewives or the clucking hens in a kitty party. They are the grand dames of our national politics, former prime ministers, formidable politicians, daughter and wife of this nation's liberators. People have loved them and that love has elevated them, bestowing honour and obeisance upon them, countless people willing to lay down lives at their behest.
How can they not realise that all of these make their role larger than life? People look up to them as symbols of hope, and one hundred and fifty million people wake up in the morning and go to bed at night counting on their leadership. They have the authority of bringing this country to a halt by the wag of a finger, or gathering millions by an urgent call. How can they afford not to use this power to bring this country together? How can they afford to lose this opportunity if talking to each other is what it takes?
Sigmund Freud, the master explorer of the mental universe, coined a term in 1917. He called it "narcissism of small differences," which describes the manner in which our negative feelings are sometimes directed at people who resemble us, while we take pride from the "small differences" that distinguish us from them. The narcissist sees in others those parts of himself, which he can't countenance and deny.
Perhaps that is one thought whose time has come. Is it possible that the unwillingness to talk is a form of countenance and denial? Is it possible that these two leaders have so much in common that they have nothing to talk? These questions are relevant after what we saw last Friday, a celebration of five minutes that they spent talking between them, surrounded by ingratiating VIP smiles, shining under the glittering lights of the Armed Forces Day reception.
To me it felt like they were doing us a favour. Two leaders shaking hands and talking is a common sight in other countries. In this country it made headlines in the news as though we were most obliged by that simple gesture, a phenomenon that waited sixteen years to happen.
In another sixteen years our two leaders are most likely to fade out. Last call for them to pick a choice. Either they can talk to each other and make history if they wish. Or, they can stick to their vow of silence and become history.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a columnist for The Daily Star.