POETRY | HISTORY | BANGLADESH

Born

Sharing a birthday with Fall of Dhaka

2 min readDec 16, 2024

Image created by the author using Canva.

My dearest,
on your birthday,
the city basked in the warm winter sun,
but sadly it isn’t the case with history —
a myriad of confusions, conspiracies;
a confluence of raging narratives,
a murkier scene,
broken in two languages,
full of ifs and buts,
who did what and who didn’t.

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Hear the roar of the bloodied seas
of changing numbers and words —
drowning personal; birthing silence.
Hear the maddening tides
of dead stories of ideology,
Nationalism,
National,
Nation —
a country was born
on the day you were born.

Someone very dear shares a birthday with the Fall of Dhaka, December 16. As I sat down to write a birthday note, it turned into a personal grievance with history, which hides, distorts, and silences important narratives in the name of Nationalism.

Linking it to my thoughts on a book which I reviewed last year.

The events surrounding the Fall of Dhaka — 1971 remain shrouded in a narrative marred by omissions, lies, and silences in Pakistan. The state historiography of the three countries, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India, appropriated this chapter of history according to their own nationalistic aspirations. As a result, any personal experience contesting the overarching official versions of history is usually censored or ignored, and any concerns raised on the veracity of the facts are also vehemently refuted as propaganda.