The games some people play here are unique and ugly. These games are created here indigenously and only they and their likes can play. The games are targeted at an individual, an organisation or the government.
These people either hold powerful posts in the government or have powerful links in officialdom. The other kinds are those who target powerful individuals or even governments in what can be called 'high stake games'.
Way back in 2017, I was alerted by my well-wishers that an individual from my profession has given a Facebook status against me and one of my former employers, who is currently a lawmaker from the ruling Awami League.
On a quick check, I found it was a blatant lie and was aimed at putting myself and the lawmaker in the bad books of our supreme boss. What was more shocking that a man in power had given “LIKE” to the status without verifying the facts despite knowing both the targets.

Anyway, my former boss advised me to ignore such a “stupid and ugly game” as the one who initiated it was known to be a man who engaged in “conspiracies and ill doings.” My ex-boss considered anything the game player said or wrote had any public acceptance.

But it shook me. It saddened me. It spoke of the low taste some had in our profession failing to achieve anything in their own lives.

What about the man who gave “LIKE” on Facebook. Leave the whole thing alone as it could only turn murkier.

The two played their ugly game and cheered over drinks (as they do consume alcohol) that they had successfully tainted the reputation of two men holding respectable places in the society and also made them lose sleep for some time. They even seek to get elected in professional bodies or act as responsible men in the government.

That was my personal experience of being made a pawn in one game.

In a high stake game, Commerce Secretary Zafar Uddin told the media that at least 2,500 unscrupulous traders would face the music for playing a “game” with “onions.” This is indeed a high-stake game in which the target is the government and its head.

The jump and fall in onion prices have been proof that a game was played to demean the government, especially as the situation developed when India banned the export of this important food ingredient.

Government leaders with our intelligence network established that the current high prices in onions were a “conspiracy” by vested quarters who have failed politically against the ruling Awami League.

From the time “Mir Zafar” struck this Bengal soil, people with such cheap and ugly minds have only multiplied every day.

The game that many calls a “conspiracy” is targeted against an individual mainly as the founders of such games were no less than Mir Zafars of the contemporary era.

These Mir Zafars would do anything to win their games at any cost. They enjoy the scene of an individual in deep embarrassment or in pain and a government red-faced in front of its people or the world at large and struggling to recover from a bad situation.

In 1971, we saw fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami and other collaborators of the Pakistani army playing a game to kill and rape. They forgot to say how to be a winner and they lost.

The individual who struck me and one of my former bosses was still in a deep dark hole which could become deeper in the coming days, but his targets continued to win the love and respect of people around them. They spend away their time planning new “games” as life wastes away.

The 2,500 identified for playing the onion game forgot that the state was always more powerful, wrong or right, and one that is in power currently created games meant for themselves to win only.

The unscrupulous might have made a few extra bucks out of this game, but the “hard run” from the state would be more costly for them and they would lose even their capital investment.

Such games or if we call them “conspiracy” has always proven to be short-lived but against those it was aimed come out stronger and a winner.

Such ugly games must stop and those who create them must be given punishment which they will feel as long as they lived.

Nadeem Qadir is the Consulting Editor, Daily Sun and a UN Dag Hammarskjöld fellow.