On a quiet Friday afternoon, just minutes before Jummah prayers, a middle-aged woman stood in her apartment in Dhaka adjusting her hijab and searching for a designer handbag gifted by her niece. The kitchen still carried the lingering sweetness of freshly made roshogolla, prepared for family later in the evening. For a brief moment, her world felt ordered, familiar, and safe.
Then the television spoke.
As her husband watched the afternoon news, the anchor reported another act of communal violence: a Hindu man set on fire in another Bangladeshi city. He had survived, the report said, but his body was severely scarred. Almost immediately, the broadcast moved on to the government’s plans to purchase additional aircraft, as if brutality and bureaucracy belonged to the same breath.
The woman — let us call her Mother, as she would prefer — clicked her tongue in quiet frustration. “What are we becoming?” she asked softly, not to anyone in particular. “How did violence become so routine that it can be followed by procurement news without pause?”
For Mother, the news reopened anxieties she had been carrying for years. She had lived through political upheavals, military strongmen, and fragile democratic promises. When former prime minister Sheikh Hasina was ousted, her feelings were conflicted. “I was proud to see a woman in power,” she reflected. “She looked like us, spoke like us. But power hardened her. Too many people died, and the common people were forgotten.”
Yet what followed felt worse to her — not authoritarian control, but lawlessness.
Outside her apartment window, Dhaka’s usual smog now mixed with darker plumes of smoke when unrest flared. She had seen mobs surge through streets below high-rise buildings, their anger rising like the black columns of fire she associated with old photographs of war. “Sometimes,” she said, “it feels like 1971 all over again — chaos without direction.”
Bangladesh is heading toward elections next month, but Mother sees little reassurance in the political discourse. She worries about familiar names returning to power, about figures once accused of corruption now being embraced without question. “People forget too quickly,” she said. “What if we replace one strongman with another?”
Her thoughts drifted back to the immediate choices in front of her — small, human decisions that still felt within her control. Should she wear modest chappals like most women at the mosque, or slightly elevated shoes that made her feel confident among her peers? She chose the chappals. “Some days,” she said later, “you don’t want to stand out. You just want to belong.”
Religion, too, weighed heavily on her mind. The man in the news was Hindu; she is Muslim. Communal tension has been part of her entire life, yet she insists it does not define everyday Bangladesh. “Most Hindus and Muslims here live peacefully,” she said. “The world doesn’t see that. Indian media makes it seem like fire is everywhere, all the time. It’s not.”
Still, even isolated incidents leave scars — not just on victims, but on the collective conscience. “That man could have been my son’s age,” she murmured. “Accused of being something, anything. And suddenly his life is almost gone.”
As she left her apartment complex — a bubble of polished floors and quiet elevators — the city rushed back in. The smells of fish markets and trash, the relentless traffic, rickshaw drivers calling out for passengers. One young driver, thin and polite, called her auntie and smiled as they agreed on a fare. As the ride began, his manners faded, his mouth stained with gutka, his eyes hardened by routine.
What troubled Mother most was not just the violence, or the politics, or the economy — but the restlessness of the young. “So many boys with nothing to do,” she observed. “No jobs, no direction, only anger and phones in their hands. That’s dangerous.”
She wondered what future awaited them — and her country. With global ties strained, employment stagnant, and public debate consumed by fear rather than solutions, her prayers felt heavier that day.
“Is there something left to hope for?” she asked. “Something specific to pray for? Or is this just another truth we must accept as we grow older — that some problems never find answers?”
As the rickshaw rolled toward the mosque, Mother straightened her posture and whispered a quiet prayer. Not just for herself, but for a nation searching for calm amid noise, and for wisdom in a time when fear so often speaks louder than reason.
