Life, Dreams and Reality -- Sohel's Blog

Rest in peace dear Prince Happy birthday beloved queen Songs of love without mince Bolden Royal smile, pristine I thought you are immortal Will live forever above fractal Of life and villainous death Queen is alive, long live the queen But the bat dancing prince died,  leaving the colourful blooming wreath Scattered around the dismal gloom When the doves cry,  All the birds flutter wings and fly Away, far away.

I thought this problem was resolved years ago. When the news came about more than a decade back, lots of international activities were observed. Many deep wells were dug, many promises were made by successive Bangladeshi governments and international organizations and many sympathetic nations. It's not that all these efforts were just simply fruitless. Many millions got spared from drinking arsenic contaminated water in Bangladesh. But according to this news article published in ABC it is the poor, the most marginalized and the people with no political clout are suffering the most because of rampant nepotism and the overall poor governance in Bangladesh. Here is an excerpt: "An estimated 20 million people in Bangladesh are still being poisoned by arsenic-tainted water — a number that has remained unchanged from 10 years ago despite years of action to dig new wells at safer depths, according to a new report released Wednesday by  Human Rights Watch .   The New York-based ...

Pope Francis washes the feet of Muslim migrants, says we are 'children of the same God' from The Washington Post http://wpo.st/jRcP1 My deep respect for the great Pope Francis. One does not need to believe the same or any religion to recognize the symbolic gesture of compassion shown by this pious man to the vilified human beings (children, women, men) who fled the wars, many of them are now facing the backlash of bigotry spawning from the political exploitation. Goodness still has the core residence in this world. Pope Francis is one of the good souls like many in different faiths and non faith whose relentless struggles over zealots and fools are the source of inspiration.

What's happening  Boy, twisted metal Blaring sirens Destroy the  Musical scream Deep into the night Dark time screeches  The passersby School children  Throws the books  Of science and art Out the cryptic window Uttering flamboyant vow Not to return To the lands of the vulgar creep Mourning the mangled dead The bloody hat, prosthetics Colourful, and cheery Riders of the galloping horses Squeezing the eye lids, scrutinize All that look different, hazy Muttering the words of flame Shame! Shame! Shame! Says the neighbour, Shopkeeper, random man With dry washed suit And the lady pushing a stroller Out of here! Out of this land! Says the mass in electronic flare What's happening Had happened before Times and again Here, on this land Where the freedom reign With the songs of glory Of Beauty, goodness supreme There, the invaded, Chastised, incinerated Where little children With dried tears and muffled groan Play tic tac toe  On bloodied mud and stone Or colouring ...

All the Light We Cannot See A fantastic book, read like an epic prose poem, so much emotions, incisive observations of the war when the good and the bad collided, the dreams and the yearning for a life and longing for the loved ones, the blindness of meaningless war that had claimed so many innocent lives!  All the light we cannot see through our ordinary eyes and senses, that the colluded mind bounces from, only the brave and the kind soul who can stand affirm and say boldly no to injustice of any kind eviscerating fear to thousand pieces can have the meaningful glimpse.  Read this book and let your forever young heart cries in agony and smile with joy in taking the simple pleasures of life, as did the blind girl and the misplaced "very small" soldier with his precocious sister felt. 

I am glad that I have just finished reading Victor E. Frankl's deeply impactful book "Man's Search for Meaning". The writer was a psychiatrist who had survived the terrible Concentration Camp during the Second World War. The main part of this book was written not too long after the writer's release. Every page of this book I found to be meaningful, so eloquently written the humaneness of our existence, through sheer sufferings and joyful freedom. I could not resist myself sharing some of the enlightening words of wisdom from this must read book that to me are timeless. If you read one book this year, I humbly recommend that pick up this book and read it from the beginning to end, highlighting the words and sentences written by a man with a kind and genuine heart.  Here are some excerpts:  "In reality there are only two races, namely the “race” of decent people and the “race” of people who are not decent." "That decent people are in the minority, tha...

This is the third book by Kazuo Ishiguro I've read. Like the other two books I'd read years ago, namely The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, The Buried Giant transported me to a different time and a place, about 1500 years in the past, in the land of craggy hills, desolate cairn, musty warren where in the wild the giant ogres roam, pixies swim and crawl from the depth of the river, and the fog covers the 'peaceful' land, where the inhabitants suffer from the sweet forgetfulness, and even a dragon's poisonous breath hovers over the land. The character development I found to be skilful. The main characters, the old couple Axl and Beatrice are on a journey to see their only son, and the story unfolds, layer by layer from their arduous journey. Two great warriors, an old knight from the time of King Arthur and a travelling warrior from the 'Fenland', cross the path of Axl and Beatrice. The descriptions of the ambience and dialogues of the old Britons and ...

Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane is an excellent story from beginning to end. Once I started reading, it was hard to stop reading this fabulous book. The vivid imageries and the tight story plot are awesome!  Loved it. 

Along came a serpent exhaling The miasma of smoky air Hissing the twisted tongue At all the beautiful there For the serpent’s venom Is meant for all No discrimination in its Poisonous crawl Some in near and far Gloated as they see it as a friend That will vanquish all the misery And the subhuman fiend But the sinusoidal troll chuckles Wrapped in grimy hiss As it readies the toxic teeth For not so friendly blitz

Picture Frame - a Poem The dusk before night appears. After a day of warmth, bellowing wind and the bare naked trees without leaves and crumpling flowers on the frigid boughs holding on to the dear life as it recedes from the disappearing memories of balmy spring. Rummaging through old photo albums of days fade out color, smudging corners of decaying picture frames, brings back those laughter loud and alive, those faces and eyes no longer in visible spectrum of this glorious world. As dusk turns into a night, the sliver of broken moon glows the tiny speckles of icicles on the metallic roofs of parked cars on the street, while the dark alleys and the rows of neat slumbering houses prepare for a long wintry night of dreamless sleep. I wrote this poem after getting inspired reading the following prosy poem of Raymond Carver. His internal rhyming, the brilliance in musical devices that this writer of immense talent wrote, is beyond my rudimentary poetic ability a...

My fear for you, my son while holding you closest to my heart listening to your mild heartbeat My fear for you, my son Is the world turning into a void full of people without remorse or regret You walk and giggle all the pure delight shining through you You hold my fingers tight while exploring room to room touching new things, objects of your fascination dancing with your favorite nursery rhymes and building structure with colorful blocks you say broken words, made up words no language puts barrier no religion clouds your simple thoughts and pleasure exploring the world as it is and not make believe by the idiotic adults My fear for you, my son while feeding you a squeezed orange smearing your face with my clumsy palm that you will grow up in a world receded to the time of medieval feuds where the cries of oppressed and dispossessed are laughed and jeered at with beguiling farce

A night like any other night A day like any other day Trudge along the spiteful blight Dimming the golden ray Of hopes and dreams Simmer under the scorching sun While the sliced moon beams Over the trembling swan As the birds and the bees Fly away from the raging fire Engulfing flowers and trees In desiccated dire Premonitions of a day When badge wearing humans Dissipated into bashing gray Ash, everlasting doldrums! All the anger and hatred Thrown at the dehumanized souls Becalmed at last in kindred Spirits of acquiesced ghouls

Pray for Paris. Pray for Beirut, Baghdad, Istanbul Pray for all the dead, dying, injured Pray for lost innocence, End of hatred Pray for children Your, mine and refugees' Who will inherit this world Gone mad with shameful indifference!

Freedom is never free, someone said, and the poet Czeslaw Milosz said, "The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them." Remembering all the fallen souls who sacrificed their lives to make this world a better place. Ultimately, senseless wars and violence have the great potential planting the seeds of more wars and violence of the future, but sometimes to protect the innocents and humanity brave souls embark on the difficult journey. I can't even fathom how brave one must be staring down the barrel of a tank or crawling through the fields of mine to rescue the stranded human beings. My maternal grandfather, Moniruddin Ahmed, was one of those brave souls, a world war warrior fighting for the Allies, shoulder to shoulder, combat to combat, along with his British and Indian Army comrades in Europe, who died too early. Today, on this remembrance day, I salute his sacrifice and the sacrifice of countless many like him, regardless of creed, rac...

Tahmina Anan, the critically-acclaimed writer of A Golden Age, a well written novel that I had the pleasure of reading some years ago, is bold and brave pointing out the key issues surrounding the growing murderous criminality in Bangladesh. She rightly observes the following in her The New York Times article : "Even if the intelligence shared by America and Australia is right about Bangladesh, that is only part of the battle the country now faces, because the threat to pluralism doesn’t come exclusively from outside our borders.     It comes every time someone questions a fellow citizen and asks whether his version of Islam is the real one. It comes when people first appear to condemn the death of the bloggers but then qualify their condemnation by saying that the bloggers may have, after all, offended the faith. It occurs when we accept the casual racism directed at minorities, whether they are Hindu or Shiite or from one of the indigenous communities.     ...

Such a loaded word justice as if it has any real meaning when words get torn out  ripped asunder  from pages of dusty books countering the crooks  becomes only a daydream of gullible poets and writers who are haunted  by the phantom menace The words dance  in the cloud and the mind alike, where the ferocity  and calculated grin arising from shadowy goon swoon over the pen a writer holds on his hand thinking to write the next word  or not, instead catching  the bubbles of silence floating mid air   Justice not served as justice denied a father's agonies is heard from afar  travelling across Ethernet like a category five hurricane brooding on the ocean calm tears, reminder  of a storm, havoc in waiting

Richard Cohen's article titled "The Bigotry of Trump and Farrakhan" is well written, made good points on bigotry and why silence is complicity. Here is an excerpt from this Washington Post article :  "More troubling are the people who think they can parse their messages, accept what they like and discard the rest. This is possible with ordinary public figures or politicians. You can, say, endorse their foreign policy but not their position on ethanol. But when the salient piece is a call for intolerance — sometimes stated, sometimes not — then the culprit is not just the speaker but also the listener as well. Silence is complicity...... But I also believe that we all have an obligation to repudiate bigotry and not think we can use it to serve a political purpose. Many thousands failed to do that over the weekend on the Mall, and many more have done something similar by supporting Trump. For them, I have just one word:  Shame."  

One day, the world and its populace will be more matured. One day, the science and technology will leap to a new evolutionary height, so helpful to all humanity, uplifting the dispossessed and the poverty stricken from the depth of despair, solving all the human created and natural problems that have befuddled humanity from the time of antiquity. All the refugees who are desperately crossing the ocean, walking through the darkened woods and forests, sneaking through the barb wires, children, women, men, elderly and disable human beings, leaving all their possessions in the rubble of their ruined homeland to find a better place for a decent life, one day the collective core of goodness of humanity will be awaken, will not stay silent on the sideline seeing the humiliation and tears of their fellow beings. One day, all the hatred and dehumanization will be things of the past, and the world and its happy populace will march forward toward more maturity and respectful coexistence on thi...

"Fake meat" is on the rise. This possibly will have positive impact on the reduction of green house gas as the " livestock cause more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation industry". Also, this is an ethical issue. Humanity has progressed in achieving more compassion towards fellow humans. The logical progression of this compassion is to be more inclusive by abandoning the antiquated brutality that are being done on animals of all kinds for their meat.  I like the writings of Nickolas Kristof. In this NYT article, " The (Fake) meat revolution ",  Mr. Kristof shows how the pent up market demand and the advances in science and technology will eventually provides more viable options for the "weak willed" to get rid of this inhuman murderous appetite once for all. 

Oliver Sacks died today. A great loss for the humanity. I have come to known about his writings from his various articles, haven't got the chance reading any of his books yet though came very close to reading his book on music titled Musicophilia (now regretting not reading it). In February of this year I'd read his article in The New York Times, a meditative writing coming to terms with his terminal illness. Here is a memorable snippet from that article : "There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate - the genetic and neural fate - of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own, to die his own death." Tonight after learning of his passing away, I have read two of his more recent articles. The first one is titled, " My Periodic Table " and the second one is " Sa...