Comrade Sher Shah Ali's Poem The Jessore Road

Comrade Sher Shah Ali’s mild stroke was in the early 80s, almost a decade after, Watergate and Nixon’s presidency was ended, Allen Ginsberg wrote his poem ‘The Jessore Road’. Comrade was not ready for stroke. As if, millions of people could have it but him. After settling on hospital bed, “comrade, your concern about world politics might have had an influence to this stroke business” I alleged; “isn’t it mainly Ronald Regan who should be held accountable for this?” I continued. My voice went up, known as ‘a revolutionary style of voice’, melodious, mixed with high and low pace, leaning towered the upper pitch in a rhythm, just like a protagonist on a neighborhood stage play, an exaggerated version of Bertolt Brecht! I positioned myself next to his bed, added more names after Regan. Leonid Brezhnev, Fidel Castro, Iran's Reza Pahlavi and Ayatollah Khomeini, Afghan’s King Jahir Shah, his cousin Daud. Then it comes Nur Mohammad Taraki, Hafiz Al Amin and Babrak Karmal. …show more content…
I want to make him happy. I blame everything that he might like. I know ‘liking’ and ‘disliking’ both a pleasure for a true politician. After, I jump in from the international to local politics. Comrade turns his neck and tries to open his eyes, looks at me with a soft smile. I keep going, huh! What a program name- ‘Nineteen Steps and Digging Canals’. He participated “digging a canal? As if a Panama Canal, a Nile River”. He laughs and kept going- “what a stupid general, doesn’t even have a seventh grade standard education and knowledge.” He laughs out loudly again and said “only reason you should dig a canal is, if you want to welcome some crocodile into the canal”. He just repeats the famous Bengali