Dreams dashed on highways
Photo: STAR
I will forever remember that tragic June morning 16 years ago when I had to inform my wife that her brother, the youngest in her family, died in a road accident on the Dhaka-Chittagong highway. All untimely deaths are tragic, but what made this death unbearably tragic is the fact that he went to Bangladesh on his summer break from the university he attended in Minnesota to surprise everybody at home and take part in his elder brother's wedding. There's no doubt that he did surprise everybody, but by not how he came but by how he left all of us forever while on his way to Dhaka to attend his brother's wedding. One might think that we see tragedies like these in movies, but, for us reality proved that life holds more tragedy than a movie could ever portray. There's uproar now in Bangladesh over the death of these two famous people but within a few weeks everything will become quiet again but the untimely deaths of the ordinary people will continue and nobody will utter a word in protest until someone famous gets killed again. How can anybody expect change where accountability is owed to one person only and not to the people? How can anybody expect change to happen when our leader is busy implementing her own agendas while the dreams of thousands of fathers and mothers lay dead on the highways of Bangladesh?
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