I was living in Toronto when I got a call from Dhaka informing me that both had died in a car crash when a truck hit their vehicle. I had known both for so long and so close that it was family. I remember the scream, a kind of denial of the news that didn't go away. A few days later, at a mourning meeting for them, it all came out from many voices and hearts, of people who knew Mishuk well and Tarique too. It was so unfair, younger ones leaving us elders behind in the final journey. After all these years, the wounds remain fresh and even as I write I feel the tightness in my chest for these two kids. Farewell once more.

The article below was written in Toronto the day after they died.

Tareque, Mishuk, This is no way to say goodbye - August 14, 2011

Bdnews 24.com

My heart is rent as I write this piece. Two of our own, Tareque and Mishuk, are gone so cruelly. Both, along with three others, died in a road crash on their way to Dhaka from Manikganj. How does one console or comfort oneself when death comes this way? Words are not enough to calm our hearts as it is filled not just with inconsolable grief but anger as well. Why can't life be more secure in Bangladesh?

* * *

To have known two persons and their families almost all one's life and then hearing that their death came in such an unacceptable way is one of the most painful experiences. As waves of grief sweeps us, we can't forget that this was an utterly avoidable death, something that should have never happened to them in the first place and should never happen to anyone else.

Bangladesh doesn't always produce great people but even when it does it certainly doesn't care or bother to know how to take care of them.

* * *

Tareque and Mishuk are younger to me by at least five/six years but we have been together and fellow travellers much of our life. Mishuk's older brother Bhashon is a school friend so Mishuk was the typical younger brother to me all my life. I saw his angst ridden '70s coming to terms with life with a father taken away and never returned in December 1971. Being Prof. Munier Chowdhury's son meant, whatever he did was scrutinised socially, creating unbelievable pressure on the young boy.

He survived all that and became a keen photographer which took him to his first job at the National Museum and then later to the Dhaka University and finally to Ekushey TV where we became colleagues. Mishuk did more for building this pioneering TV station than any Bangladeshi. We have both batted for the BBC and I remember him as a person of endearing virtues, held with affection by all.

* * *

Mishuk moved to Canada and soon became involved in managing The Real News, a web-based TV station, run by Canadian journalist Paul Jay. Mishuk was quite literally the person who designed and developed this station's capacity into what it became. He was a skilled technical person, handling latest technical broadcasting matters with ease like few could as he knew both camera work and technology. He even shifted to the US to run the station from there but when the call came from Dhaka he went back and joined ATN News. This is where his heart was.

Emarn Mahmud, one of his close friends in Toronto who once ran Metrowave radio in Dhaka remarked, "He moved and worked all over the world yet nothing happened but look at how he died in his own country".

* * *

I don't remember when I first met Tareque but it must have been in the mid '70s after he reached Dhaka from Faridpur. For a while we shared the same neighbourhood - Dilu Road - but we had common political homes as well and we both were members of the Left activist organisation 'Bangladesh Lekhok Shibir' though at different times. He was always into films particularly documentaries and everyone knew he would make those one day. He was perennially short of money like many young men with causes. Once in the late '70s he took a loan of Tk 10 and paid it back much to my surprise. His reply was, "This is credibility building so that I can ask for a loan again."

Later when he lived near Asad Gate and he was making a documentary on "Vegetable Dye' as he planned his other ventures, he would say that he was surviving on exactly that diet "Vegetable and dail". He wore his wealth and poverty with a causal air. Films were all that mattered.

Tareque and Mishuk came together to work on the documentary 'Adam Surat' on the iconic painter S. M. Sultan and both would regale us with their hilarious stories on fund raising and making a film entirely on funds to arrive from nowhere. The two friends became work partners and made many films together - docs and features. On the day they died, they were doing the same.

* * *

Why should people die so regularly in road accidents in Bangladesh? There are other places and countries but in few is the traffic system such a murderer. If Dhaka's traffic is a perfect symbol of a city's inability to manage its roads rendering them to something morbidly stupid, the highway is a serial killer's dream, pathology of viciousness that is given social and economic legitimacy.

One dies every hour in accidents in Bangladesh and yet we just yawn our way through such statistics. When 41 school children died in Mirsarai, did we do anything? But then what could we do? The system that kills so many children and then assassinates our dear ones doesn't discriminate between its victims. We are not safe and we must recognise that.

* * *

But can it go beyond that in Bangladesh? We know that a probe body has been formed and now ministers are bickering about whom to blame. Many such bodies have been set up before, but have we been able to show any progress in terms of curbing road mishaps? Maybe the present government will blame it all on the past government and once in power the next government will make a similar pronouncement. It will be about blaming each other but seriously speaking, do we expect anything to come out of it? Do we actually expect things to get better?

* * *

Mishuk returned from Canada to work in Bangladesh and was doing a fine job at ATN News as its CEO. Tarque never left Bangladesh and Catherine came all the way from the US to live and work with him and make her home in Bangladesh. These were people to whom Bangladesh mattered and who mattered to Bangladesh.

Despite all odds they were continuing with their work but in the end, the country they so much loved did send in a killer bus to take their life leaving grieving families, friends and admirers behind.

It is so unfair, but then when is death fair? It isn't, but in Bangladesh it is often avoidable but never is. Every death by road accident can be prevented but the collective ennui of our ruling class prevents that from happening.

* * *

So it is goodbye time then Mishuk and Tareque. I shall cherish not just the many memories we shared as friends over our lifetime but in particular the moments when we were all together at Mishuk's Toronto apartment last year with our families - having adda and celebrating our friendship. We shall remember the laughter which faded the hours away and carried us in some mythical boats of eternity of our minds. May all who loved them find the strength to survive this terrible tragedy!

Goodbye.