Warblings, not even bullet points

So more than half of my interviews are done.

Asking the questions and then resisting the urge to interrupt my (un)lucky respondents is tough. Keeping to the focal points of the interrogation whilst allowing these time generous folks to vent their spleens is too.

Funny how the question where I'm asking if they can think of any questions about the X hazard (i was fishing for nascent autonomous ganj research policy) regularly garnered a firm 'we want physical protection' demand. Not a group of vulnerable people looking for development lollipops to suck on then.

Now for the 'harder to get ones', unfortunately a lot of the political characters are now in jail

Why are the deputy commissioners (DCs - one for each of desh's 64 districts) and the government secretaries of the various ministries changed with such foolish frequency? how are they expected to understand anything?

Why does so much public engineering happen in the flood season?

Met a Muktijuddho veteran who was also a JI dude. I asked him... 'dont the Awami Leaguers call you a razakar?' (lit. volunteer, but local pejorative denoting treachery and vile things). He chuckled, and said.. 'no.... well some of them, some of the time, when they are REALLY angry'.

Another war veteran reflected 'Bangladesh has developed alot since Liberation, but our character has become ruined.' Time for the construction of an Akhaqi Bangladeshi methinks, The science of practical ethics reconstituted for this time and place, codified by very competant scholarly authorities of theory and practice. Then seeded into the public bloodstream a la Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanwi's Behesti Zewar.

Another aside aside, made contact with a ladies taleem circle in a ganj. The Maulana's publication still circulating! I wonder how dissapointed he would be if he could see the rats pachcha we have made... the muslim quam of India... maybe even amazed that nobody seems to have superceded his work.

Why don't even the madrassa educated people get the maslaha-jonnoshartho equivalence?

How comes so many politicians are presently behind the bars of Bangladeshi jails, but not a single engineer?

How can somebody simultaneously be a multiply imprisoned journalist and the district publicitymeistar of a front line political party and an EU research fellow on the question of whether the XXXX Jute Mill is feasible?

Is a confessional media exactly what Bangladesh needs or is it just not a very Asian valued(dignity, privacy, respect) means of feedback? Whats better? What can we practice that is better? Where are the lines between bearing witness to the truth, breaching trust, professionally selling information and being one of those ghoulish native informants? What am i?

Does Ed Hussain think this cuts the mustard?

Is there any peace in Dhaka?

Whats with the daytime mosquitoes?

Given the leaking of apparent interrogation recordings of detained politicians and their droogs, will people here show greater discernment in their choice of leadership?

Why is there such an absence of the Fazlul Huqs, the Maulana Bhashanis, the Suhrawardhis, the NAPs in the corporate media in this country? Why are they trying to make us forget and engineer a chosen memory?

Picked up an interesting prog rock album by a band called Adhar, they seem to have a playful guitarist and a singer well acquainted with raag and ghazal vibes (R'n'G!!!). Check it out.

Now that Gordon Brown looks set to replace Bliar's junta, will i feel less ashamed of the government and establishment of the land where I was born and raised and have spent nearly all of my days?

Why do the rich steal so regularly and in such large amounts and to such detriment to the public interest? Is it justice that they be merely contained in rooms whilst those who suffered for their foolishness and wrongdoing lumber on?

Why do the evil live for so long? Is Allah giving them an opportunity to repent and undo their bad works ? ... it cant just be that they can afford better health care. They really do make their dunya their paradise.

Reflecting on whats happening in Somalia and in Palestine and the brazen supression of movements of selfconciously Islamic character there, even in the most desperate situations (years of anarchy/occupation). There is disturbingly 'dog-in-the-mangery' and mean about the behaviour of the temporary, temporally bound worldy powers that be and the compliant natives that wannabe.