It was mid-November. Winter had not yet come to Dhaka, but outside Dhaka the cold was apparently being felt quite strongly, Badrul Islam of Kulaura told me on the phone. Badrul Islam is a relative of mine, a Bangladeshi businessman living in Qatar. He was home and staying in Kulaura, and he invited me there. I had work there too, so I agreed. I told my colleague Aditya, let us go by train. I have always loved train journeys.

We set off one morning at dawn, with Aditya Shaheen and Tanvir Ashiq. The train is a very popular means of transport. My colleagues tell me train tickets are hard to get and the trains are always overcrowded, yet year after year the railway goes on making losses. Anyway, it was a beautiful morning. As I looked out of the train window, the song 'Dekhi ek chandmukh khola janalay' started humming in my mind.

We had left at dawn and had not had breakfast, so I thought I would eat the train's breakfast. I was surprised to see that the train still serves that historic cutlet. I remember seeing this cutlet since my childhood. It is still just as hard and oily. Its price has risen over time, but for some strange reason its quality has not. On a journey you meet and talk to all kinds of people. Talking to people is my work. From talking to them I learn how each person is connected to agriculture and what they think about it, whether a government employee, a businessman or a peanut seller.

It was a journey of about six hours. Time passed reading newspapers and talking to colleagues, and the scenes outside the window changed as we went. Then a young man came into my compartment with someone. "This is my father. He is a freedom fighter. He heard you were on this train and came to see you," he said. I got up and brought him to sit beside me. He had come to see me, but his dark glasses told me he could not see.

He was freedom fighter Mohammad Manik Ali, who fought in Sector 4. He told me he lost his eyes in the war, and his left hand too. I asked him, "You never got to see the independent country! Don't you wish you could?" He said, "But I do see this country. I see it with the eyes of my mind, just as I am seeing you." I asked, "You have never seen my work or my programmes. So how do you know me?" He said, "I have heard about you. You make TV programmes for farmers. You received the Independence Award."

We talked for a long time. I heard the story of how he went to war, and his stories of the war. In 1971 he was an SSC examinee. Without sitting the exam, he went to India, took a short training and came back to the battlefield. A junior leader wing commander, he worked laying mines. It was December 1971. All around us the flag of our final victory was flying. Just then, on 7 December, while laying mines in an operation in Sylhet, Manik Ali was caught in an explosion. He lost his eyes and his left hand.

After independence, the Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, sent him to Hungary for better treatment. His sight did not return. An artificial hand was attached to his left wrist, and he still carries countless splinters in his body. The Hungarian government trained him in telephone operating, and not only that, it also arranged a job for him there.

Manik Ali said: "Bangabandhu said, he is a son of my country, he fought for the country. He will live in his own country. The country will give him a job and a house. It will take responsibility for him." Bangabandhu kept his word. He gave him a job as a telephone operator and also gave him a house in Mohammadpur. But as governments changed, the country's circumstances changed, and so did the balance of what Manik Ali received and did not. He was forced to leave the house in Mohammadpur. After much effort and lobbying, he got a house in Paltan, where he still lives.

But Manik Ali said with regret: "I have still not received the allotment of the house. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has even written a letter. Even so, I have not got the allotment papers."

Manik Ali is very proud to be a freedom fighter, and he is an eternal source of pride for us too. His one demand of the honourable prime minister is that he receives the papers for the house allotted to him. He wants to leave a secure home, a roof over their heads, for his descendants.

Manik Ali fought on the battlefield with the dream of making Bangladesh independent, and paid the ultimate price for independence. I asked him whether, having gained Bangladesh's independence at the cost of so much sacrifice, he was satisfied with Bangladesh's present state. He said: "The people of the country are better off than before. It gives me satisfaction to hear that. When all the people of the country are well, only then will the country be truly independent."

Manik Ali has four sons and five daughters. He has educated them all, and most of them are established. He now sees the future through their eyes, and wants to leave a roof over the heads of the generations to come. As we talked, much of the day went by and station after station passed. When he reached his destination, he took his leave. I looked out of the train window. The early afternoon sun sparkled over the tea gardens.

Manik Ali could not see this beauty of independent Bangladesh, but he has given us the chance to see it. My heart was moved with humility towards him. I believe that the independence won through the sacrifice of many Manik Alis will become more beautiful still, and that this Bangladesh will become a green, prosperous Bangladesh free of inequality.

Source: Shykh Seraj. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.