The Hero Returns Home

I wonder if its a matter of pride or shame....should we...as a nation...be proud or be ashamed....the body of Bir Shreshtha Flight Lieutenant Shaheed Matiur Rahman was brought from Pakistan to Bangladesh today...after 35 years of independence of the country....what an irony.....one of the seven Bir Shreshthas...or Great Heros..who laid down his life heroically for the independence of Bangladesh...finally will be buried in the soil for which he sacrificed his life.....in 1971.....shame on us that we could not hear his plea....which was crying out silently from the shabby ordinary graveyard of the Maswoud Air Base of Karachi..in Pakistan....pleading to take eternal rest in the soil of his motherland....so busy our politicians were to look after their vested self-interests..or party interests.....that the very fact of independence from Pakistan became dubious....so easily we were oblivious of the cyring soul of Matiur...he was a flight instructor in the PAF...while in a training flight...he tried to take the training aircraft towards India..with the intention to join the liberation movement back in East Pakistan...Bangladesh...he had a scuffle with his trainee...captain Rashid Minhaz...inside the aircraft...and his aircraft was chased by four fighters of the PAF.....amidst all this ....his plane crashed just 3 miles away from the Indian border and both of them died.....Rashid Minhaz was declared a national hero of Pakistan...and was buried with glory and honour...and the national hero of Bangladesh...Matiur was buried as a traitor...as an ordinary person...and we bothered to show him last respect after 35 years....I am sure the souls of the Bir Shreshthas who are witnessing the situation in Bangladesh now...must be regretting having laid down their precious lives for the mess we have created in Bangladesh. This is not what they dreamt of.