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HUMOROUSLY YOURS

Dead phone walking

NAVEED MAH BUB
THE frigid, binary cold war in Bangladesh defies all theories of global warming. The stalemate over a caretaker government really boils down to who blinks first.
And then, a flicker of hope. All eyes are on the red phone. Finally, they are both on the line. Was it a red phone ringing, a dead phone walking, a dead phone talking, a dead red phone balking, a dead phone reincarnated, or was it that the US National Security Agency (NSA) botched up the red phone trying to tap it, or did Angela Merkel tip them both off on Barack Obama's mischief, or the call came 5 days late (well, could have been made 5 years earlier) or was it Ananta Jalil's emergency Tk.5 balance that eventually gotthecall through?
Who cares! The important thing is that they are both talking! And it is good to know that the commoners' pain of playing phone tag is felt at the highest echelons of power.
There is unison - both talk at the same time, thus not listening to the other. They totally agree - to disagree. The conversation veers to the past. There is a sense of nostalgia - takes us back to the good old days of the 33 RPM long play record with a crack. One thing is for sure, Zee Bangla can make a five season mega serial from the transcripts (for the full transcript, contact the US NSA).
37 minutes sail by. There is no sequel to Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. There is no interim neutral government. There is no end to the hartal. Like a Harry Potter movie, half ( my newspaper catches fire from all the photos of arson, while the other half gets drunk from all the cocktails. Bangladesh retains its world record for the highest ratio of hostages to captors -160millionto2.Ifonlyone bothers to read the other's ransom note, that would be perfectly clear...
So, what happens next? Do winter wedding dates get shifted around on a daily basis? Do schools continue on Saturdays? Do 'ambulances' continue to make a killing shuttling people to catch their flights? Will there be a neutral, an all party or an AL party interim government? Will there be a royal democracy? Or, with an opposition boycott, will there be a one party democracy (hey, that's still a democracy, as liberal as the one in Saudi Arabia)? Will the saga continue on to the heirs apparent, thus taking politics into 3G?
We need answers! Dennis Rodman? MacGyver? What about the Mayans -what did they predict? Never mind them, they could not predict their own demise either. Edward Snowden, I know you are releasing information like an IV drip, but can you fast forward to anything you know about the situation here?
Well, one thing we do know is that, if there is an election, the motto will be: "When it comes to problems, we will solve them and in addition, we promise to create new ones..."
The writer is an engineer & CEO turned comedian (by choice) and the host of NTV's Grameenphone Presents The Naveed Mahbub Show.
E-mail: naveed@naveedmahbub.com.