City of sorrow, city of illogic

Is it symbolic that wheels of buses, service sector crush worker and students, one required to run wheels of production and the other one is a budding part for production or governance? Is it symbolic of an economy that while hundreds of hours are lost in logjam in capital streets speeding buses
run over labour force and possible labour
force? Farooque Chowdhury asks

A BLACK flag of sorrow and grief has now been unfurled over the lead coloured sky of the capital Dhaka. Deaths came in rows. Buildings bowed. Fire razed homes. Cracks crackled bold appearing buildings. All these reflect an economy and a superstructure. The economy serves as base of the superstructure that gets mirrored and manifested in aspects of life. Culture is an essential part of the superstructure, and [in]consideration to human life and super attention to mechanisms of ensuring highest and quickest possible profit are parts of culture.
   A mother lost her only son as a student was crushed under wheels days ago. A factory worker had the same fate. What happened to the family of the worker? Has not a poor family’s sliding down to pauperdom been ensured? Another girl student paid price of living in this city with her life. What will be the answer forwarded by this city to the parents? Indifference? Inconsideration? A lumpen-reality does not care to provide answers to the questions of life and death. It only searches quickest possible profit; it even turns Persians in Marathon for highest possible profit. Love and sorrow are unknown to this lumpen-culture, a culture without mooring, a culture that feeds only plunder and death.
   How many lives the wheels in this city take annually? Is that number higher than the average annual death toll by flood in this land of dying rivers? Are the lives lost, save love, not even carry any value to the economy? Then, does the economy not care human lives for even regeneration of capital? Then, the capital appears outside the orbit of capitals: manufacturing capital, industrial capital, interest capital, finance capital, etc. Does it depend on only varieties of speculations including speculation with human life and even speculation with its own existence?
   A bit of different imperative would have made it aware of own interest that would have pushed it to effective efforts to streamline traffic management. An economy depending upon speed, not on stalemate on streets, does not require more than three decades to designing a smooth mobility on streets. Rome required roads. Rome built roads. Vikings’ vessels provided them speed. Speed was their need. There is at least one economy that needs speed money to fend off red tape. Speed money, essentially bribe, was legalised by that economy.
   Is it symbolic that wheels of buses, service sector crush worker and students, one required to run wheels of production and the other one is a budding part for production or governance? Is it symbolic of an economy that while hundreds of hours are lost in logjam in capital streets speeding buses run over labour force and possible labour force? Only the involved economy can supply the answer. But in absence of any demand there will not be its supply as supply without demand will diminish profit.
   So the culture that the economy breeds shows a lively exhibition of mangoes in the capital city that was inaugurated by one of the leading poets while, according to press report, at least a commoner died rescuing humans from raging fire in the city and the grief stricken city and the country was passing days with the sad memories of inferno-deaths in the same city, and the country observed a day of national mourning. Does it smell Nero? Does it reflect an indifferent elite mind? Only a lumpen-reality can market an appropriate answer. Let’s try to forget the pungent memories of death of commoners. What’s the use-value or market-value of making heart heavy with those sad stories? Let’s look at the towering hopes, building blocks for major investment, buildings changing the skyline of the city. But…
   Buildings, at least a few, betrayed. They cheated their creators, loveless to their creations. They symbolically unmasked the dynamics of decadence, decay in many spheres and layers. The trust those creators needed to market their service and product was breached by the bowed down, tilted, and cracked buildings, proud product of efficient salesmanship. Were only the creators cheated by exposed reality? Has not collusion, if any, been exposed? Shall the dead, the sufferers create these and similar questions? A lumpen-reality, a reality incapable to comprehend even own interest, best knows the answers. Or, the reality, it may happen, is incapable of providing the response. Or, the reality does not care to answer as it is confident of its all-influencing, all-trading capacity.
   But reality revolves. Breach of trust transcendences to base, and turns things bad for trustees. Seemingly silent state of mind surges to sound and fury. Breached trust fuels that fury. That will be a dangerous development.
   Reality, on occasions, cheats cheat, swindles swindler, unmasks masks. Those are clumsy moments of reality. Breach of trust puts power to those moments. Bowed and cracked buildings may initiate the process, a process almost impossible to understand by the involved, a limitation imposed on them by their very acts, the acts considered craftsmanship.
   Is this illogic? Or, is this illogic has its own logic, logic of exposing indifference to human needs, to decadence? All the sufferers are not poor. An important portion of apprehending-to-be-sufferers are well off, at least not dwelling in ramshackle homes. They, the new occupants of high-rise buildings, by money affiliation and cultural affinity, are closer to the creators of cracked structures. They are far away from the slum dwellers. A sense of breach of trust in this group provides no logic to interests involved in high-rise structures. It may be a crack in class alliance.
   Economy shapes cities. Its dwelling pattern, transit arrangement, spending spree of a section and quenching the last spirits of life for survival by the rest cannot outgrow its economy. Manoeuvre for luxury or thirst for bare minimum of life does not cross limits imposed by the economy. This stands opposite to ecology. A better living condition is dreamed by all. But it is enjoyed by an extreme-few. The rest suffers. Contradictions get a colony, and illogic illustrates throughout social setting. Prevailing facts of life grind lives of millions to meaningless miniscule. This produces uncared living places devoid of condition for life’s survival. But the poor live there, survive there till death spreads shroud of silence over their, unsung and unmentioned if not die in large number, dead bodies. They pay taxes. They toil most. They produce tangible. But they occupy least. Time does not allow them to enjoy fresh air in parks. Roads are not safer for them. Narrow alleys that connect their homes are often narrow enough that does not allow carry dead bodies or sick easily. Many of those have not seen sun for many years. Transit to and from work place is costly for them. Their transit system is deplorable. Their workplace is not comfortable. The amount they pay for water and energy is higher than the amount paid by the well off. Accidents and callous living condition take their lives most. Everyone knows these facts. But none cares for them till they turn to sheer numbers: dead and wounded. They ceaselessly create surplus value as that is their only path to keep alive dream for a decent life. But their share to accesses of life and living are negligible. Illogic thus dominates. The reality of hardship is not only for the poor. The near-poor, the lower- and middle-middle class, swell the rank of sufferers. This is not a lifetime hardship. It is a generations-long hardship.
   Then, accidents bring death to them. Pressing reality, a reality of inhuman existence, does not permit them to ponder the unveiled realities of life, to reflect the crushing cruel truth. It is an existence devoid of human existence, a murmur of life without decency and joy, a reality of illogic carved with knives of indifference. And, the depth of indifference goes down to the level of cruelty.
   Then, a city of sorrow and illogic is illuminated by hollow lights of advertisements, marketing luxuries, essentially out of reach of the commoners, the majority of the city dwellers. A list of products that try to allure customers will tale a portion of the dominating illogical reality.
   Farooque Chowdhury contributes on socioeconomic issues. Micro Credit Myth Manufactured is one of his edited books.

This editorial published in The New Age, Daily Newspaper, Bangladesh, http://www.newagebd.com/2010/jun/08/edit.html