Dhaka, Dec. 16 -- Every year, as the calendar edges toward December 16, Bangladesh pauses as if listening to a distant echo. It is the echo of footsteps marching across muddy fields in 1971, of whispered warnings in the dark, of mothers pressing their children into safer arms, of poems recited in secrecy, of songs that sustained hope when rations ran out.

Victory Day returns not merely as a national holiday but as a test of our memory, a reminder that freedom is not secured by a single moment of triumph but by a lifetime of fidelity to its meaning.

Yet when we look at ourselves today, the question arises with unsettling clarity. What do we want in Bangladesh now? Not in slogans, not in ceremonial speeches, not in political declarations ...