Peace is a page torn in a rage, scrunched up, thrown into the bin, carried away, added to the trash-trove and then sought for every year in a manner of institutionalized quest. If this is the notion, the metaphor aside, that forms the basic premise for the argument that the Nobel Committee for Peace is not enacting a travesty of truth, after all, by performing the annual ritual, it follows as a corollary to the argument that the Committee survives because none of its emissaries has ever found the page or the page is found only to be lost for the search to

continue in a cyclical pattern or the page has been torn into as many pieces as there are years in the life span of mankind since the ceremony began.

By further extrapolation- and because no explanation to the contrary can fit into the rationale for holding the ceremony-it can also be argued that the Committee is not putting a foot wrong by assuming that empowerment of the poor is a precondition for peace even when evidence shows many of the worst violators of peace are those with satiated stomachs.

Evidently, it is the semantic limitation of the term 'peace'-or rather the perceived malapropos-that accounts for whatever cynicism there may be in analyses such as this. But when the recipient of the award is no other than Professor Yunus, no amount of criticism can ever detract from the greatness of a soul embodied in his person and, although his micro-credit mantra and the modus operandi have not gone uncontested, it only takes insanity to question his Nobel stature. Even if the search for the right candidate for the laureateship were to be conducted in the style of Diogenes with a lighted lantern in hand in broad daylight, the face first to be illuminated would surely be Yunus's. He is the man who has proved in his unique way that poverty is not a fait accompli; he is the man who has made wise people unlearn the wisdom that the poor are not credit-worthy.

But the line has to be drawn at making of Yunus what he is not and what he cannot be. While the A-to-Zinc vitamin like news of his receiving the highest accolade has had a reinvigorating effect on the moral health of the nation, its side effect has been felt on the right brain of a few Bangladeshis, who, mistaking politics for politesse, have suddenly found a political role for the Nobel Laureate. Perhaps it is due to his honest-to-goodness nature that Yunus has reciprocated with a positive remark, which needs to be a tentative one for the simple reason that politics in Bangladesh, as it is today, is a venture that cannot be undertaken with a starting capital of dishonesty minus the pre-fix 'dis-'.

So in the pen-ultimate chapter now being written collaboratively of an episode that begins with Iagos seeking to find a cause for violence Yunus and his Grameen Bank can best be a footnote reference to the cause for peace. Curiously, not all the authors are politicians by profession; some of them are members of the so-called civil society-self-proclaimed economic heavyweights, legal beagles turned constitution experts, high brow professors and other people with intellectual pretensions-all gathered on a party platform to protest partisanship. These are the people who become conscious of their national roles at the opportunity of being 'pointed out, admired, mentioned constantly in the press' and of course shown on TV. Incidentally, Bertrand Russell did not know about the most powerful media, second on the list.

What is bafflingly interesting is everyone is talking sense: corruption must be combated, poverty alleviated, violence averted, human rights respected, the Judiciary separated, terrorists punished and the list goes on until the last good grain has been gleaned. Perhaps devils know the Bible more than angels do. But the happenings could as well be attributed to the growing process of democracy in Bangladesh, in which case the country may have to undergo growing pains without ever growing for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, with no sign of the parties in conflict mellowing, and with the common people bearing the brunt of the recalcitrance, the military may be called upon as the last resort to play their role. And if that happens the two major parties, which have agreed not to agree on anything, will have found something to agree on-eliminating the third enemy....