Untold Facts

Let She Have the Peanut

That the current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s beds in the Gonobhaban are being furnished afresh with fourteen (?) different luxury Khats (cots) possibly with designs of varying aesthetics should be welcomed, and in no way made anybody’s eye sore even that would cost some waste of the public exchequer. Even so, the fund need be spent for these luxury beds would be nothing more than a peanut in terms of cost involved though from the Bangladeshi poor men’s pocket.

One may not forget so soon in matter of seven years and I have not forgotten that she had in 2001 the whole of the Gonobhaban campus worth of nearly 100 Crore Taka of public property legalized as its absolute owner private property having had the credential legacy that her father happened to be the creator and founder of Bangladesh as the big real estate or fiefdom. Her younger sister Rehana was also given another public property worth another about Taka 25 crore, the old Gonobhaban at the posh area of the Minto Road in Dhaka city. The subsequent government, unfortunately, however, cancelled the relevant previous order to restore the properties to the public ownership.

Now that Sheikh Hasina has come back to the position of Prime Minister in 2009 once again after a time in between of seven years, she is supposed to re-occupy the Gonobhaban, not yet as the absolute owner of property but as normal occupier of Prime Minister’s official residence.

The people of Bangladesh, I am sure, would not like to see her any wanting of comfort but all for her convenience in the residence for physical ease and mental peace so that she could offer the best service for the people. Let she have enough to do her work best. For her physical comfort 14 Khats though may be unnecessary, would not cost much as she did manage to catch hold fraudulently the ownership of the whole campus of the one hundred crore Taka in 2001, and also managed to get another for her younger sister, as well. Compared to the cost of the two government properties they grabbed last time during her first term in office of the Prime Minister, the 14 luxury Khats like the luxury cars being given to all ministers is just a peanut.

Physical possession and comfort, however, do not necessarily ensure mental peace or real happiness. Real mental peace and happiness in absolute term do not go with enough of material possession, much les luxury, but in sacrifice and spiritual persuasion embedded in wholesome outlook of life and clean conscience based on dictates of soul and spirit or in other words in a life of complete TAQWA or self-restrain in matters of food, drink, dress habits, interactions with others, etc.

– Prof. M.T. Husssain