I was born in 1988, in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh in a small community hospital in Bijoynagar, ten minutes away from the political capital of Paltan - the same Paltan where the politicos pulled absurd stunts with mob violence and made public statements and press-conferences with a degree of irresponsibility that would embarrass five-year-olds. And it was Nineteen Eighty-Eight - the year of ridiculous shamelessness and many a nature's wicked tricks.
Nineteen Eighty-eight, when General Ershad organized a mockery of an Election where nobody else participated and he won an overwhelming victory with the record lowest votes ever casted in an Election, and eventually in a desperate act to win the illiterate masses, made sweeping hard-right changes to the constitution, and sent Bangladesh on a permanent one-way metaphysical journey of identity crisis. It was also the year of the great flood, Bonna, the worst ever seen, most documented by media, the one that gave the perfect excuse to our politicos to set out to the West with their begging bowls, and the one that is primarily responsible for the Westerner's mental picture of Bangladesh as a place submerged in chest-deep water, with scantily clad, bony brown people wading-swimming-boating and whatever else flood-victims do and flashing teeth at cameras from the sheer delight of having their picture taken. It was a messed-up year.
And then, to make things worse, I was born.
