Youths rise, empires fall

History repeats itself. It usually repeats in a span of 100 hundred years. Old empires fall and new empires rise with the passage of time, be it 100 or 25 years. Did you remember when the Ottoman Empire collapsed with the fall of Turkish caliph Muhtasim Billah in 1924 AD. The whole Arabian peninsular was under the control of Ottoman caliphate. Kamal Ataturk toppled the last Caliph to give rise to modern Turkey. The country under Ottoman emperor turns into a secular state which in 2003 turns into a model Muslim country inside 79 years under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan of AKP. Turkey was profoundly influential not only in this region and Muslim countries of other regions but also in world stage of politics.

Gaping at Global Gypsy for Generations

Who of the present-day football fans doesn’t know A.C. Milan striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic? And most of your elders must have loved the songs of Elvis Presley. But a fortunate few of you might have known about their ancestry, creed, cast and society. Undoubtedly these two sports and music stars represent around 12 million gypsies across the planet. Real nomadic life they lead in countries. They have no land or water of their own and even their professions vary.

Going Nuclear or Not

The world, which sees over 200 crore people everyday going to bed hungry, is itself greatly hungry. The planet’s hunger is not for food stuff what human lives on. It is hungry rather for power and energy. Two billion people starve not because they don’t produce any services or goods but for sure their resources are either ripped off or gobbled up by a handful multinational corporates, their owners and their host countries. In the same way the world is going power hungry not because the mother earth doesn’t produce any energy or electricity but surely those multinational and giant corporates are failing the poor planet. In the name of human happiness these companies are producing billions of gadgets which are consuming lakhs of megawatts of electricity, making the world power hungry. Extra phones, extra freezes, easy bike, extra TV, easy cars, easy jets and air conditioners are consuming electricity hugely, making the world unexpectedly uneasy for 7 billion people.

Doing away with consumerism

Umar Buya and boys of my age represent none but those who in a year or two will leave school and enroll for college. In early years of high school like other boys and girls of his town he dreamed to be great scholars like Ibne Sina, Abu Rushd and others who translated and saved all the treasures of Greek wisdom and travel countries like Chinese and Moroccan travelers — Hiuen Tsang or Ibne Batuta — who noted down the good governance of golden age of Muslim rulers and kept diary of what they experienced in the subcontinent. Later years when he came to know about the great Greek and Kurdish conquerors like Alexander the great or Salahuddin Ayubi or the heroes of the cinema, movie and video games, wanted to live up to ideals of them. Sometimes Buya thought him as Tom Sawyer or Sindabad when in the mood of adventure, acted like Rabeya Basri when in spiritual mood and appeared sometimes to be Aesop while spinning fables and so on.

Pain and pangs on the path to Palestine

Ghanusi, lost his father, Ayaz Amir, during the Arab-Israeli war in 1967, when he was a boy of five. His father was the only victim of the war. He was youngest issue of his parents in 1967 when Syria lost Golan Heights and Egypt lost Sinai peninsular but the later regained it with a dole of two billion dollars from the US. The killing of his father undoubtedly left a deep scar on the young mind of Ghanusi. He cried, mourned and vented his remorse along with his mom, sisters, grandfather, brothers and other relatives.

A tale of two cities — Venice and Barisal

Twelve-year-old Zaheer swishing, swashing and splashing in a lake in the neighbourhood in a district headquarters in Bangladesh cannot think of the scarcity of water let alone water bankruptcy as the district is Barisal. He only knows the river — a source of fun and frolicking for him along with his fellows and also a cause of sadness — is running by their house from time immemorial. Every year their homestead along with the cattle and other pets washed away either by flood or flash flood with routinely devouring of their arable lands by the river. Whenever he is free catches fish, plies boat, swims, dives and jumps into the river water whenever he wants to ward off the sweltering heat of the summer, albeit sometimes ignoring the dangers warned by his parents.