Strange happenings in Golden Bengal!

STRANGE kinds of things have been happening in Golden Bengal since time immemorial. The quirkiness of the events and incidents has been so baffling and scary that even mighty Alexander who had conquered half the world did not dare to venture into the dark depth of this land mass. Things beyond the norm still happen here. Our players and athletes unabashedly lose to our opponents and come back to explain that “it was a great experience gathering tour from which the next gen players would learn a lot and play better.” And we still send equal number of over-aged and overweight officials to such tournaments under many guises. What do they do really? Good question. Cynics say that throughout the tournament they sleep, snore, drink, devour and shop without any qualm. It has been happening since 1972.

The story of gold! The proverbial Golden Bengal seems to be now turning golden in the literal sense of the term. It's gold everywhere for one to pick.  No, you don't have to go to the mountains with a shovel and a sieve to dig up plenty of dirt and sand to find a small nugget of gold. It's much easier than that. Just walk into a toilet in one of our airports or in an aircraft, and voila! There it is! A sack containing hundreds of pure gold biscuits in a corner…8kg, 10kg 11kg in weight!    

In the 17 and 18th century, prospectors had to rush to the mountains with shovels and sieves to find nuggets of gold after removing tons of sand and dirt. Sometimes they had to spend months in severe winter chill in the mountains before finding a nugget or two the size of a glass marble. Many of the prospectors, all strangers to one another, died of pneumonia or bullet wounds, as brawls often turned violent. See Charlie Chaplin's epic film 'Gold Rush' to have some idea.

Yes, finding gold was that difficult and life threatening those days. But today, on a lucky morning, one may strike GOLD in a toilet of an aircraft! The gold craze reminds this writer of the Ian Fleming story titled Goldfinger. Ian Fleming's hero James Bond had to handle only one gold hungry maniac, the villain named Goldfinger, but in this country, there are dozens of them or may be more! In the novel the villain gets caught finally, but in Bangladesh our very own Goldfingers are too clever. They never get caught. They know who in the administration love gold and how much it takes to keep their mouth shut. It's always the poor couriers who get caught, and strangely enough most of the gold seized by the law enforcers allegedly disappears over the years.

Fun in the political arena. Lately, after the public display of puffing acumen, some of our public representatives are indulging themselves in crooning in meetings with great gusto. Crooning during devastating floods! Reminds one of Nero and his violin! Well, crooning is no doubt entertaining and the person(s) should be encouraged to sing on instead of talking politics that the audience would not find interesting. Political talks are limited to “We did this” and “They did that.” Some of the opposition leaders should also learn to sing in public meetings to pacify the angry supporters. That would at least save our automobiles and buses.

Scholars have been writing books since the advent of printing machines to entertain or educate readers. But, in this country, unscholarly people have started to write books that neither entertain nor educate. There is no plausible answer to the question: Why do they write? In recent times, there has been much brouhaha over the publication of two books written by two aged warriors belonging to two political camps in the country. Frankly speaking, the world would not have come to an end if these two writers had not written the books in question. Then why? Surely, no one would remember the existence of these two books next year except for their grandchildren.

People all over the world eat good food to stay alive and healthy. In this country, food traders force us to eat food to fall sick and then “live happily ever after.” There seems to be no stopping these 'Reapers of Souls.'  So, we eat all sorts of chemicals in our food every day blissfully unaware what damage these are doing to our kidney, liver and other vital organs. This is possibly unique in Golden Bengal as we do not hear of such horrendous practice in other neighbouring countries. Yes, we are told that some preservatives are applied everywhere but not in proportions that would kill a person.

We don't know, maybe we should look at it as a novel attempt by our food traders to keep the population growth under control.  Anything is possible here, Seleucus !

The writer is Special Supplements Editor, The Daily Star.