As Bangladesh returns to normal, images that are associated with the period before the students' revolution resume their agency in everyday lives. What is needed is a new normal.

Images of the old normal are everywhere, from those of the personalities of the previous regime to those of their overthrown predecessors. The latest images, of Abu Saeed being shot within his outstretched arms and protesters daring the state to take their lives as well, have achieved the immortality of virality.

What is obscured by such images of violence and protest is the continuity of life in ordinary Bangladesh, by which I mean a country where (as in every other country) people want to get along with their lives without being killed, maimed or dispossessed by those in power or by their organised opponents. A new normal would transcend the possibilities of the old normal. It would be represented by new ways of seeing and being seen, knowing and being known.

At the moment, all we have is the old normal at an inflection point. It is captured in images of the helplessness of human life amidst the flux of circumstance.

One such image is that of a girl named Chandni which was captured in a video made two year ago.

Chandi, then an eight-year-old in Dhaka, was walking down a street when the videographer stopped by to enquire about her whereabouts. Accosted and frightened, she confessed that she was in the tukai trade. She was carrying a large disposal bag containing empty bottles that she had collected. They would bring in Taka 10-15 at most, the videographer observed.

Chandni was in her first year in school. Her parents - her father was a rickshaw-driver and her mother was a home-maker - apparently did not want her to be in the trade, but that was where she was. Incomprehensibly, her grandfather had taught her to chew betel leaves, which coloured her gums. Put it all together, and there was this little Chandni of ours, whose light is meant to illuminate the skies for uplifted eyes.

Chandni would be 10 now. Over her, the skies have changed for all becausethe Bangladesh flag has touched the clouds on its rebellious wings of red and green. Beneath the skies, the land, too, is changing. The powerful have been overthrown, the next set of powerful are waiting to take power, and the students, young in age but aged in wisdom, are trying to ensure that the powerless are not forgotten.

This is where Chandni comes in. How have the skies changed for her? When will she be the new moon? When shall we see her in a video, not carrying a large plastic tukai bag but taking her rightful place in the measured ordering of human affairs? When will she become the new normal? Whenever, or never?

I asked her these questions in my mind.

What follows is a totally imaginary conversation between her and me.

Asad: How are you?

Chandni: I am waiting to go out again.

A: What has changed in your life?

C: The streets are free.

A: What has not changed?

C: I am not free.

A: What do you mean by freedom?

C: The right to be myself in a better world.

A: How could the world be made better?

C: Ha ha. Are you really asking?

A: Tell me.

C: It would be a world where I would not have to work for a living. Do you know? Tukai can pay for my lunch. That saves money for my family. In a free world, I would like to play, study and work as I pleased so that I would be like everyone else, blessed to be alive and alive to be blessed.

A: You are profound for your age.

C: Do you think that only old goners like you can be profound? Not that your questions are all that profound.

A: You are very rude.

C: I am what your world has made me.

A: How would you remake my rudely rotten world?

C: People in power should know that they are mortals, like the rest of us. Then, they will not rule as if their wants will outlast our needs.

A: In your case, how?

C: No child should be on the streets selling flowers or garbage. Do you think that we enjoy doing this? Don't you think we'd prefer to be children?

A: Absolutely.

C: Don't you also think that farmers, factory workers and rickshaw-pullers deserve the dignity that comes from adult work? Do you think that your wasted world of jousting journalists, idle intellectuals and pompous politicians would exist for a single day without the lost labour of the useless unknown? Why do the unknown have to be killed in a revolution before they are known? Isn't life the best form of human recognition?

A: Very profound. Very rude.

C: The world is both.

A: I did not create it.

C: But you live in it. You met me here. You breathe here. Take responsibility for your breath.

A: Yes. Chandni, do you really believe in change?

C: Don't you? Look, the skies are amavasya dark today. But you still call me Chandni. Why? Because the moon will rise again to its fullness.

A: To be followed by darkness?

C: Yes. But every moon that rises proclaims its victory over the dark. No darkness can ever stop the return of light.

Asad: What about me? Child, I am fading away.

Chandni: Don't, foolish old man. Just because you are disappearing doesn't mean that the world is about to go. Become me. Forget about being old. Forget whether the bhaiyyas who survived the bullets that killed my other bhaiyyas will grow old and powerful enough to control the police one day. Become the person I shall be when I grow up. I shall still be Chandni. And my skies shall await your uplifted eyes.

The writer is Principal Research Fellow at the Cosmos Foundation. He can be reached at epaaropaar@gmail.com