To all the futures we lost

In 1996, a Japanese exchange student was gunned down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  He mistakenly knocked on the wrong door thinking it was the house where he came to attend a Halloween party.  For reasons unknown, the lady of the house screamed at her husband, "Honey!  Get the gun."  The guy came out with his weapon.  Obviously,  the conversation with the smiling Japanese kid didn't go well due to language barrier or other reasons.  Eventually, the home owner shot and killed the kid!

This incident had an impact on me!. I was a foreign student  in the US at that time.  It could have been me - I thought!  He died thousands of miles away from home, and for what - a lady with racially biased attitude, or a man with an itchy trigger finger?  We will probably never know the answers to these questions.

But one thing I know - the gun was the ultimate driving force in the death of Yoshihiro.  Avid gun lovers do not have to tell me that guns do not pull their own triggers - any idiot knows that!  See, it is not only criminals that use guns to kill.  Ordinary people can accidentally or mistakenly or in a feat of anger use a gun to take a life.  Without a gun around, a feast fight probably would have ended many of those incidences involving  fatal shootings.  And do not tell me that a killer could have used a knife to kill!  Sure!  But a gun makes it a whole lot easier to kill and to kill from a safe distance.

We can safely surmise that the lady of the house would not have asked her husband to get the gun hadn't there been a gun in the house.  The guy would have simply stayed home and called the police, and the matter would have ended in a funny note.  But that didn't happen - a gun was around!  So the man of the house felt powerful to stand against the so-called perpetrator - the gun gave him the power, the power to take a human life from a safe distance!  Whatever made him pull the trigger is inconsequential!  

I know - gun control is a sensitive issue.  But there has to be some controls somewhere so that kids can go to schools without fear of never coming back home!  Something has to be done so someone cannot shoot me just because he thinks I am a criminal.  All sides really need to sit down and come up with a way to curb gun related killings. Prejudicial statements such as "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" or "Guns are only used for killings" will not suffice anymore.

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To all the little ones we lost in Connecticut - my heart is mourning for you! I see your smiling portraits and want to hug you so badly!  You are with the Creator and in a better place than this filthy world!

Our shame!

His pictures were in the front page.  Taken in quick succession, these pictures created a movie with the sequential events that went on.  He was trying to run away, but those chasing him won't let him go; they were hitting him with bricks; they were throwing punches at him.  They also had sharp weapons they were hacking him with.  He was bloody; so were his attackers with their victim's blood!

What went on in Bishwajit's mind at that moment?  A feeling of helplessness?  A desperate calculation trying to understand why he was being murdered?  Was he trying to picture his mother's face?  I can only imagine.  I do not know.  But I do know this - this has got to stop! I am so angry!  My heart is squeezed, and I cannot breathe!

Bishwajit was hacked to death simply because some activists of Chattra League thought he was a supporter of the "Seize Dhaka" program called by the opposition party.  Whether he was a supporter or not is not the issue!  Even if he was a supporter, would that have given rights to the attackers to do what they did?  No, no, no!

We call ourselves civilized?!  I have seen many beaten to death in the streets of Bangladesh!  We cannot justify these no matter who is killing and who is being killed!  There are some people who support these incidences when the victim is someone they hate.  The attacks on 21st Of August, the barbaric killing of Babu, the logi-boitha incident, the massacre of six students in Savar - we cannot lend our patronage to any of these!  Each of these is an insult to the whole humanity!  These are insults hurled at the Creator!  

If we have an issue with someone, we must resort to the law; we must face our political opponents on political grounds, not with violence   Otherwise, the rule of law will never be established on this land!  There will be more corpses on the streets for us to clean - corpses of our loved ones or ourselves!

Dang Kids

"Everything is your fault!"  I jokingly told my middle son.  That dang 11 year old replied with a grin on his face, "Even the birth of me? Is that my fault too?" I really didn't know what to say to that and was embarrassed for a second. But it was not long, before I started laughing hard!  This son of mine has a keen sense of humor.  He can turn into a stand-up comedian quickly.  

I threatened my eldest son (he was seven I think) once that I would break his legs and throw them outside.  Believe me! I was really angry at that moment.  This is a pretty regular threat that I actually never had a chance to make good on!  Ha ha ha! Anyway, instead of being worried about my threat, he seemed to have been more worried about the logical dilemma in it. "But dad!"  he said,"How can you break my legs and throw them outside?  You will actually have to cut them off first, don't you?" My anger turned into laughter in no time!  Stupid kid!

Let's face it - kids are too dang funny and cute!  It is a very  subtle part of the Creator's plan.  If kids were

not funny and cute, almost all parents would have been accused of killing their kids; human race would have ceased to exist!

Raising kids is a stressful job, and kids can get on your nerves all too well!  They know exactly what to do and when, just to drive you crazy! And when you are ready to kill them, they do or say something so funny that stops you right on your track!

What can you do?  You are mesmerized by them when they smile; you want to roll on the floor laughing when they do a funny dance; their puppy-dog eyes force you to hug them when you actually want to slap their butts!  You are a slave to them!  But this servitude is a sweet one.

Let us spend more time with them before they grow up. It is our time they want more than shiny toys.  In case they prefer toys than our time, then there is a good chance we are guilty of making them fond of the material things of this world. Maybe, instead of spending time with them, we are busy with our own desires, and we give them fancy stuffs so that they go away!  "Go to your room, and play your video game!" - I have heard this way too many times!  This is not the track we want to put our future generation on.

Torn shoes

I was laughing hard - in my mind though!  The guy sitting next to me on the bus kept on using wrong words along with grammatically misaligned sentences!  In his early fifties with receding hairline, he reminded me of one of my colleagues.  He worked in an office - I could tell by looking at his clothing.

A while later he got up - the bus reached his destination.

I noticed his shoes were torn in two different places.  He stitched one crack up, but the other one was a gape!  Either he didn't bother about that or simply couldn't afford to get that fixed.  The 30-40 taka (about 50 cents) that would have cost him to get the shoes repaired would be valuable somewhere else;  he could use that money for two days' bus fare, or to buy a little food for his family.  

Surprising, isn't it? In Bangladesh, this is a harsh reality.

I was not laughing anymore!  I can handle or accept inequality - to an extent.  I can even justify it by labeling it as a naturally occurring phenomenon provided it is within normalcy!  But I cannot accept it, nor can I bear it if it is of ridiculous stature!  It is alright with me if someone has a nicer car while everyone else has a decent car to serve their needs.  I have no issues with someone buying the finest clothing or shoes, while everyone else has decent ones to wear!  I even do not care if someone has a palace, if everyone else has a decent roof over their heads!  But I cannot accept someone buying a house worth millions of dollars (I have serious doubts about the legitimacy of the source of the money) while many sleeps in the streets!  

On one end, some people are spending in a day for luxury what many earns in a year.  On the other end of the tunnel is just darkness and abysmal despair hammered in by poverty!  We have to merge the two sides - let the light illuminate the dark!  

No!  I am not a a communist.  But inequality is a human issue - not a political one to divide ourselves on!  It is an issue for everyone to work together to solve!

Intelligent Traffic Prediction

My colleague Ananda (Lecturer, EEE) and I often brainstorm about different issues and possible solutions to these issues.  And issues are abundant in Bangladesh!  Believe me!  Couple of weeks ago, we were discussing the terrible traffic condition in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.    We talked about a possible system to ease people's sufferings by warning them of traffic conditions in real time.
The system will -

1. leverage the widespread use of mobile/cell phones in Bangladesh to warn people of traffic conditions on different roads in Dhaka
2. use travelling volunteers to upload traffic data to a central server.   Data will include 
• current flow of traffic on a particular road
• unusual conditions on certain roads - those conditions may include accidents, demonstrations, road works and so on
3. allow people to get SMS on conditions of roads and highways based on their query

As always - our discussion remained just that - a discussion!  Unfortunate, no?
Anyway - today, I, along with Minhaz, Imtiaz and Atiq took our students to a projct show held by the third year students of the CSE department of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET).  I was amazed at the works done by the students!  The projects were truly inspirational!  Computer based applications to solve different everyday problems faced by Bangladesh were on display.  But what truly caught my attention was a project called "Intelligent Traffic Prediction" created by Mr. Ahmed-Al-Muzaddid, Mr. Saikat Chakraborty, and Mr. Mir Tazbinur Sharif.  I almost dropped the little notebook I had with me!
Their project was an almost exact replica of the system (to ease public sufferings related to traffic) Ananda and I talked about!  They implemented most of the parts we had in mind with some minor differences. And they did it way better than what we had in mind!
The project boasted an Android application that sits in the background and sends gps data through the mobile network to a central server.  The server then calculates the speed of the volunteer whose phone the data came from.   Once data from multiple volunteers are collected from a certain area, they are put together to create a model of the movement of traffic in that area.  The system also has the ability to analyze the data collected overtime to predict traffic conditions.
The only thing they didn't have was the ability for a volunteer to send unusual traffic conditions I mentioned in
the beginning!  I offered this as a suggestion to them.  They gracefully accepted my suggestion as a future enhancement.
My sincere thanks to these young Computer Scientists.  I have their contact information and hope to work with them to complete this system and make it available for public use.  I also thank Minhaz for initiating the efforts that made this trip possible and for the lunch he so graciously arranged!

Here is a poem I wrote about a friend whom I met after over a decade!  I hope you like it!

Lost Friend

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I stopped, and I stared

My neurons became restless

Hoping to find a face somewhere in memory,

A loving face from my past

To match with the face of the person in his forties

Standing before me with a vaguely familiar posture.

I know he is my friend

Whom I haven't seen for two decades.

But he is my friend I know.

Suddenly!

A match!

A moment of sheer joy!

A tight long hug, lest I lose him again!

Blending of the waves of our hearts!

I missed you so!

My dear, dear friend!

END

First step in

My first blog
This is my first attempt at blogging!  Like many others out there, I would like to share my ideas, thoughts, opinions and have refreshing discussions on issues without any mud slinging!
Wish me luck!
Thanks!