You know when the festivity is really in the air?
I think its ONLY during the Pohela Boishakh!
You see over the years I kind of got disenchanted with our religious festivals. Our religious festivals are always tied with some sort of responsibility. You have to cook delicious foods (even though you have to stay awake whole night, ask my wife how she likes the idea!) , attend guests etc. Well I am not saying these are pure duties, you would also enjoy doing these responsibilities but still some responsibility.
Now talk about Qurbani Eid. With all the hassles of buying, slaughtering and processing, distribution of animal meat, there is not much room left to feel like festival. It is rather becoming a grueling industrial supply chain process for me. I know lots of people do those things with utter enthusiasm, good for them but not for me! I really don't like the whole city becoming a slaughter house with stinking smell and spluttered blood here and there. Much more civilized approach would have been to pick some separate enclosures for only slaughtering purpose and people would carry back meat home from there.
I am also aware that my view might upset lots of folks and some of them might get so mad that they have already chosen me as their preferred choice of sacrifice for the next Qurbani! I guess I might not be a bad choice in terms of the volume of meat I would generate.
So when you can really say, well, here is the day, I don’t have to worry about nothing, I am gonna enjoy the rest of the day like anything with no threads attached. You go out and you see immediately thousands of people like you . You can feel it in their dresses, in the music, in Ramna, in Dhanmondi, wherever you go.
Pohela Boishakh is one way to express our true cultural identity. It is a purely Bengali occasion. Its for every Bengali in the whole world irrespective of religion and other caste consideration. That makes it much more enjoyable, adds much more color and vibrancy, the hallmark of a true carnival.
I wish I started the day as early as possible but with Nabeel being so restless (he never goes to sleep before 2 am in the morning) it is difficult to manage to be up and going early. I drove to Rajabazar to pick up Suzanna (our driver took the day off) and then headed towards DU campus and soon found it was a bad idea with severe traffic jam in Shahbagh. Much better option would have been to go by the Nilkhet route.
Somehow I gathered my last bit of patience to snail through the huge mass of people, turning a deaf ear to comments like “Gari anar aar jayga pailo na”, I was moving literally inch by inch. Somehow the whole dreadful exercise stopped, Suzanna was quite furious with my idea of bringing the car along and what a start to the day of festival!
We missed the procession arranged by the
Some of my good old DU friends gathered in front of the library and chatted like old timers do. Some leg pulling here and there, some laughter, some sigh for lost glory of old days and suddenly half the day is gone.
Then we met some exquisitely dressed young ladies. At first I hardly recognized them cause their appearance went through a drastic makeover with traditional Pohela Boishak attire. Then…. Lo and behold! Well..those were my very own 4th year students! They looked great and both Suzanna and I were quite impressed.
But not so impressed were some of my friends who just after couple of minutes felt that I am spending too much time with my students while keeping them in safe distance. So I had to hurry back otherwise there was a huge risk of being manhandled in broad day light. Typical male instincts I guess!
We were entertaining thoughts of going either to Gulshan youth club concert or the Dhanmondi concert. Well, if Nabeel had a say, we would have surely ended up going to the Dhanmondi one cause Mila was supposed to perform there. Nabeel is probably the youngest die-hard fan of Mila and after listening to zillion times of the same song with Nabeel I have to admit I kind of like her music too. There is a certain kind of wholesome entertainment in her music. Anyways, we ended up going nowhere. Just pure exhaustion due to heat!
Wishing Pohela boishak grows bigger and better every year. It should be at least two day national holiday. You need at least a day to recover after all those revelries, don’t you?
So how was your Pohela Boishakh?
