VIPs and roads
I had just got out of a screening of the film “Brick Lane” on May 13, when my cell rang. It was my sister. Without listening to her, I started telling her about the movie which I liked quite a bit. But, on the other end, she didn't seem to be listening and was rather quiet. I soon learnt that she was at the local clinic with her five-year old daughter who was being given saline. My heart jumped I remembered that, in the afternoon when I last saw them, she had vomited a few times and now the doctor is saying that she is dehydrated. I felt so bad for her - the poor little thing!
Immediately I remembered the scene of that afternoon. I was on my regular visit to my ailing mother at lunch time. My car was on one of those few school free roads in Gulshan, a rare thing in our residential areas. But that afternoon, the road was chaotic and jam-packed with all kinds of vehicles and pedestrians. I didn't understand what was going on. So I got out of the car to see what was happening. I found that all lanes leading to Gulshan 2, road number 71 were blocked. My heart started thumping! I knew that this was the time when my 71 year old mother comes back after her 4-hour dialysis from the Apollo Hospital. After her dialysis she is usually very sick & weak and hardly waits to come home and lie down. What will happen to her if she is stuck in this chaotic traffic?
So I left my car behind on road number 74 & started walking towards road number 71 where my parents live. The road looked very scary to me with not a single moveable thing on the road 71 except some armed soldiers standing all over the road. As soon as I reached the intersection a soldier came to me & said that I could not even walk on this road because a VVIP was coming to the United Hospital. I was so concerned about my mother that I didn't listen to him & walked away from him towards my parents' building. I thought it was very unfair that, at this time of the day, the VVIP would be sitting in an air conditioned car while these little kids & their parents, who have already been out waiting in the hot weather to pick up their kids from school, would be sitting for a long period under the blazing sun! There could be very sick people on the road too.
I finally managed my way through that restricted area & was relieved to see that my mother had managed to escape this horrific situation by just a couple of minutes. But the thought of poor sick people who were still on the road after their dialysis or after other medical procedures made me feel sick.
My sister's kids regularly come to my parent's house since it is close to their school. They are privileged and don't have to fight through heat & traffic every day like other kids. But on that day it took them 45 minutes to get home after school. They were cranky, dehydrated & sick. After seeing them I couldn't dare to imagine how many other kids & their parents, who are not as privileged as my sister's kids, are heading for extra miseries due to that day's 20 minutes road block! Any sensible person living in Dhaka could easily imagine how horrific the spill over impact of this 20 minutes road block could be. Still these miseries are not worth to be considered for the sake of our VVIP security!!
Initially, I thought that maybe there was an emergency; maybe our VVIP was so sick that they needed this kind of traffic free road. So I turned the TV on to see whether anything was wrong. No news, apparently it was his regular check up. If it was essential to have a traffic free road, couldn't they find another time to bring him to the hospital when you could minimize the sufferings of others? With some thought and planning, people who are responsible for the VVIP security could do their job while also showing sympathy for these innocent people.
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