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The Merchant of Dhaka

You can't make money without the factory that cremates the workers alive.
And by the time you piled and filled your coffers with TAKA
You decided to treat the workers as creatures to be used and their bodies mutilated to reap Dollars
Your greed becomes far-reaching.

Who are 'they', these eponymous?
Anonymous, charred bodies
Who worked relentlessly to bring a huge sum of foreign money from far and wide to make you filthy rich?
It is difficult to be more specific than to say
They are the life-line of your industry.

They are related by labour to 'you, the clothing merchant'.
And those workers have to be cremated alive! Some workers have
To be burnt alive in the shrinking hole of hell that you call 'FACTORY! '
And they just happen to be standing about
Like fireflies on a dark, dark night.

She (the female charred body) is, in short, one of many
Of means to an end, that end being to enlarge your ravenous tummy
The production machineries
And to make you prosper and chubbier.

The inhuman working condition, the lowest of wages in the world,
The sexual harassment, the physical torture and mutilation, the absence of everything human,
All these singularities help you pile profits on profits;
You can't make a mountain of riches
Without mutilating their bodies,
All of them in one enclosed hole.

And if versions of the story, the complete
Valency of the tragedy is to be believed
You can't make mountains full of riches without curtailing and telling
At the very least their life span and quite possibly
An imaginary cock and bull story.

A charred female body speaks
To accuse you
You can't, You can't, You can't.
That charred female body may actually have witnessed the carnage with one hundred and twenty one co-workers the final mutilation of their human bodies.

They may have wished to confirm -
You can't make money without the factory
That cremates the workers alive.

Outside the carnage where a few gathers to find the familiar faces of fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers
You are crying your own loss: 'O, my TAKA. O. My TAKA';
Someone is going to provide 'duty of care' to your TAKA lost
Assuring you that your money won't be lost
Would be recovered from the ashes of numbers.

poem by Dr Khairul Chowdhury
Added by Poetry Lover
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