The cause of the two siblings' death in Kishoreganj, Brahmanbaria was suspect right from the beginning. But no one in his or her wildest imagination could have the slightest inkling of what the law enforcement has disclosed at a press briefing. It is their mother who in collusion with and aided by active help from her paramour poisoned her two sons before administering them Napa (generic paracetamol) syrup in order to pass the blame on to the widely used medicine.
The father of the two dead sons brought the charge against his wife and her lover. Suffering from impaired eyesight, the poor man stayed in Sylhet where he served as a ticket distributor among workers at a brick kiln. So what prompted the woman poison her sons? According to her confession at the judicial magistrate's court, her illicit extra-marital love affair with the man in charge of workers at a rice mill led her to take the rash and insane decision.
She and her paramour agreed to marry each other but the man gave her the condition that she must get rid of her sons before they get married. Accordingly, the man brought her five pieces of sweetmeat mixed with poison which she fed her sons. The Napa syrup was used as an alibi for poisoned sweetmeat to hide their crime. If there is no more twist to this tragic incident, it only highlights the sharp decline in human quality and values.
Society is indeed in a mad rush. People now easily lose heads in pursuit of materialistic and sensual pleasures. This woman from the lower stratum of society also indulged in something she thought would make her happy. The affair with her paramour made her so blind that the sacred and heavenly affectionate bond mother and child have proved insignificant. In Western permissible society such things happen but the lovers usually do not have to commit a crime like filicide.
Although social outlook and values may differ from society to society, morality and the basic instincts such as parental attachment to children are the same everywhere. When Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to appease goddess of the hunt Artemis for favourable wind so that his fleet could sail off, the vanity of a warrior gets exposed. In the Ashuganj filicide, the bankruptcy of a motherly heart is nakedly exhibited.
A woman of her ilk is an exception to the rule, for there are innumerable mothers in this land, who have nurtured the delight of their hearts against all odds. They have not only sacrificed all things a woman cherishes but also skipped meals in order to feed their children better without allowing the young ones to know about their own sacrifice. Mother of freedom fighter Azad personifies the ideal mother figure in the Bangalee psychology.
However parental deviation, if it is at all gender-specific, is rare among mothers and its prevalence is quite high among males in Bangladesh society. In most cases, polygamous husbands living in the wilderness of slums betray their spouses and desert them with children ---often more than one ---to live with another woman, leaving no trace. Many of these miserable mothers suffer silently but hold on to their dear children. Quite naturally, a few of these children become street urchins.
It is not easy for a society to turn the tide of moral decline where the more educated and better placed people are increasingly making news for corruption, fraudulence and mind-boggling cheating businesses. Education has mostly taught to be selfish with no obligation to society. With wealth creation, society is fast forgetting its oriental values in favour of the vices of consumerist society of the West. Those at the bottom rung are easily swayed by the infiltration of alien culture and they cannot resist the cheap temptation. Unless the people's quality of life can be raised to a modestly decent level, courtesy of pragmatic education and cultural orientation, moral decline and aberrations cannot be fought successfully.
