By Tasnim Hasan

In Dhaka’s streets, we gather, our voices braided like threads of jute—  
stronger together, frayed when apart.  

The July heat clings to our backs;  
we wear it like armor,  
our sweat becoming salt, becoming resilience, becoming a biplob.  

Freedom isn’t the word they wrote into charters,  
it’s the child running khaalipaa through muddy fields,  
it’s the calloused hands of the farmer, palms open, asking for সুবিচার.  

We were not born with wings,  
but still, we take flight—  
kites against monsoon winds,  
dreaming of skies unbroken by the chhaya of fear.  

What is courage, if not this?  
A mother’s song as she waits in the queue for chaal,  
a teacher’s quiet lesson in a forbidden bhasha,  
a karigar’s calloused fingers clutching the handle of a plow,  
or a shadhinotar kolom.  

Our freedom is not laughter—it is louder:  
a battle cry swallowed for generations,  
unleashed now, spilling into alleys,  
dancing in the creases of old men’s smiles.  

We do not fear the future anymore.  
As they say, “Amra korbo joy ekdin”. Brick by brick, chant by chant,  
hands holding hands until borders dissolve into bridges,  
until the night bends to the light of our resolve.  

This July did not pass like others—  
it is carved in our bones,  
stitched into sharees, painted on rickshaws,  
woven into rivers that never stop flowing.  

If the world must speak of us,  
let it say: they chose to stand.  
Let it say: their shadhinota was a song  
that even history could not silence.