This is dedicated to Kay Jordan. UPDATING Lines of Hunger from Bangladesh 1991, 2012 [1]

This is dedicated to Kay Jordan. 

UPDATING Lines of Hunger from Bangladesh 1991, 2012 [1]

The © Muhammad Haque 

EPIC POEM

LINES OF HUNGER from Bangladesh

I am using a picture of that cyclone in 1991 that affected so many people across the southern coasts of Bangladesh.
I am publishing on any of my blogs a pictures like this for the first time.
For obvious reasons it is very upsetting.

I am dedicating today’s blogs, updates and related writing to Kay Jordan.
I am marking Kay Jordan’s conversations with me on 23 December 2010.
One of the things she said to me is of course about writing: WRITE THE BOOK!.
Kay Jordan is the one human that has understood the importance of my writing more than anyone else that I know.

I owe it to her humanity, her compassion and her enlightenment that I pay full credit to Kay.
This I am writing at the time two years ago when we were still talking in the vicinity of the Community library that she set up with my encouragement and initiative and as part of the many community education and leaning programmes that we had ben working on for the East End of London, in the Brick Lane London E1 area.
Then we walked along the Hanbury Street, into the Greatorex Street until we arrived at the place she called her Office.
[To be continued]
By © Muhammad Haque
1825 [1810] Hrs GMT London Sunday 23 December 2012

I am using a picture of that cyclone in 1991 that affected so many people across the southern coasts of Bangladesh.
I am publishing on any of my blogs a pictures like this for the first time.
For obvious reasons it is very upsetting.
This picture has been retrieved from the Wikipedia web site a few minutes ago.
I never looked at a picture like this of the 30 April 1991 Bangladesh cyclone casualties
But I must look at a picture of this detail now so that I can get the full diagnosis of the state of the world done for the whole world, for all the relevant people, to do everything they can to prevent such tragic losses of lives and sufferings
Let there be no such losses and sufferings.
There can be huge reductions to such losses and such sufferings if we human beings care at all for our humanity.
Our fellow creatures.
For All creatures!
18,000 creatures that THE BOOK says have been created for human beings!
I believe that human beings have been too, too irresponsible in looking after the creatures on the planet.
Let the irresponsibility, the lack of care, the cruelties end and let compassion begin

[More later]



THIS PUBLICATION is dedicated to

Kay Jordan

who told me on 23 December 201o
to “Write the Book”!
This is part of my writing of the Book.
Kay has often urged me to “write the book”
She has said: “forget the stupid politicians in Brick Lane, write the book”
It is writing the book that I have indeed been doing
That task has been made a little more time-costing by the Blitzkrieg
I will update on the “Brick Lane Blitzkrieg” in due course

1705 Hrs GMT
London
Sunday
23 December 2012.

Lines of Hunger from Bangladesh:
The © Muhammad Haque
UPDATER LINES,
21 years on,
on the original
Lines of Hunger from Bangladesh
that I had written in May 1991.
Here are today’s UPDATER lines recalling the campaigning moment when I went to the London office of the UNITED NATIONS ORGANISATION about the urgency to do everything to help the people in Bangladesh who had been affected by the cyclone of 30 April 1991.
It was part of my action that included telling John Major [then the occupant at No. 10 Downing Street, London] to stop uttering banal words and to show that his UK Government was up to the task. That it cared. That it was true to the routinely flaunted claims of the UK valuing human lives and of caring for the victims of natural disasters like the one that had just occurred in Bangladesh killing thousands.
He eventually gave in to the demands and his Govt made direct financial contributions to the then Bangladesh Govt.
I also spent the months that followed the cyclone in getting the UNO to put together a plan to PREVENT the huge casualties that the cyclones and storms were causing
My plan for the UNO was written in a few thousand words under the title “Bangladesh 2001.”
This was done while I was battling at the same time to get the UNO’s Geneva based bureaucracy to get off the comfy chairs, as it were and to do the urgent thinking that I was trying to share with them.
The lethargy of the UNO that I came across, both in Switzerland and in the USA and the almost lifeless zombie state in which the various personnel in the Bangladeshi “diplomatic missions” across the Western Hemisphere were found in in the weeks and months following the 30 April 1991 cyclone forced me to conclude that I had to do the fast and the comprehensive thinking. And the equally fast and urgent communicating.
How to save lives the next time the storm hits?
How to prevent such large scale loss of lives.
And the related issues.
I had written it 1991 but I gave it the title “ Bangladesh 2001”.
In the parts that follow the one below, I shall cover the campaign for relieving hunger and deaths in Bangladesh that I did in 1991 and in the years after that.
Here is how I recall the demonstration that I did outside the UNO offices in 1991. I was accompanied by two supporters: Shujata Luptajan and Peter Murray.
While Shujata held the action unit together, Peter Murray gave vocal support to my recitation of the lines of hunger from Bangladesh. We took it in turns to read out my lines of hunger from Bangladesh.
Peter Murray also read from my lines at a poetry reading event that I organised a few weeks after that in the Whitechapel Road.

[Updater on that event in due course]


THE LINES OF HUNGER FROM BANGLADESH were written in an international context seeking to raise awareness of duty to the humanity across the whole world.




We stood

We stood opposite

the tall building
we stood opposite the tall London building

We stood
to make a stand

We stood

We made the stand

We stood opposite

the tall London Building

housing the symbols

of the huge

United Nations bureaucracy

thousands of miles away

in Geneva

in New York NY USA

We stood Opposite

the tall London building

We stood making the stand

We stood

demanding action

We stood

we stood clear of the haze

of lies spread in the days

following the storm that had hit thousands

across the coasts of southern Bangladesh

the lies spread by Big Biz media

manufacturing daily diversions

away from the tears of the bereaved

bereaved parents

bereaved mums

bereaved dads

bereaved children

orphaned babies

floating signs

floating signs of life

floating signs of lives

swept away

by the harsh

killer storm

cursing the earth...

We stood

opposite the tall London building

demanding action...

[To be continued]