BSS, Dhaka :
Ankita had a Doomsday experience when she was in high school. On August 21, 2004, she was studying for examination round the corner. A series of deafening explosions rocked her house and sent the family in a tizzy.
As they switched on the television, Ankita’s family were shell-shocked with what they saw-dozens dead and hundreds injured writhing in pain, blood all over, police vans and ambulances frantically rushing lifeless bodies to hospitals.
The grenades had exploded barely 400 metres from Ankita’s house, the then Opposition Leader and Awami League President Sheikh Hasina had miraculously escaped a 1975 style elimination plot but many of her unlucky party loyalists lay dead or bleeding.
History’s merciless repeat in Bangladesh had shaken the party that led the country’s Liberation War but left its top leader intact.
Ankita relives that August day as she watches “Hasina: A Daughter’s Tale”, screened by national television channels marking Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s birthday two days back on September 28.
The docudrama captures all the vicissitudes of Sheikh Hasina’s life-from just being daughter of the Father of the Nation who survived 1971 and 1975 and then 2004.
“Being safe in the house, we shuddered at the grenade’s bang. Can you imagine what it would be for those on spot,” said Ankita, who is also an IT entrepreneur.
She said: “I still remember watching on television the serial explosions and people running in every possible direction.
