No beli flowers in Dhaka

Dhaka is no more a city, not even a town. And a metropolis it certainly is not. If not long ago we were telling ourselves it was a dying city, today we have little hesitation in saying that it is in a state of the comatose. Rare is a capital city anywhere in the world which does not move. Dhaka stands still. It is trapped in stagnation. It drowns itself in a few centimeters of rainwater. It is today a huge urban slum trying to pass itself off as a symbol of modern urban existence.

There are a thousand and one reasons why Dhaka does not excite the imagination any more. And that sentiment is in absolute contrast with the way the city used to be in the 1960s and all the way till the early 1980s. Back in the 1960s, parents happily led their children to Ramna Park on the weekends, sat beside the lake as their babies played cheerfully all around it. Today, the spaces where those families used to be are empty of people. Loud silence punctuates a park which yet remains emblematic of nature's charms.

Dhaka has lost its character. And cities without character lose respect, to a point where even their self-esteem becomes a casualty of the callousness that destroys life. In the old days, Dhaka was replete with homes, proper homes, where lawns shone through the profusion of flowers and a ubiquity of coconut and date palms, in happy co-existence with mango and jackfruit trees. And there were the banana groves besides. Something was in the air. And the breeze passed through the doors and windows, revitalizing in its power to do wonders to the soul. That was Dhaka.

That Dhaka is gone forever. The old homes, built through the hard work of diligent parents, have been given a dash of the 'modern' by the children of those parents. In the spaces that were once houses and homes are nondescript apartment blocks. Where there used to be neighbours inquiring after one another's welfare, there are today apartment denizens who do not know which family lives next door. Where there used to be hearty conversations, there are today traces of a grudging smile and hints of a forced nod. Modern Dhaka has lost its soul.

There are other ways in which Bangladesh's capital has lost its soul. Men of power, having dwindled into creatures driven by insatiable greed, have occupied, in incremental manner, the many lakes which once were a sign of the seductive hold the city had over its inhabitants. The lakes have turned into canals, and the canals have turned into dumping grounds for refuse and all other kinds of waste people are too lazy to cast into the bins on the street beyond the gates of their apartment blocks.

Dhaka, once noted for its luxuriant foliage, today lies stripped of raiment, having been defiled by bad planners and gormandizing merchants of doom, in the absence of trees. The winds do not whisper through the leaves, for the trees have all been struck down by predatory human hands. Its pavements are as good as gone, commandeered by the unscrupulous you might say. Those pavements lie buried under makeshift shops. But whatever remains untouched soon becomes hostage to motorcycle riders who feel no shame in ploughing through pedestrians only because they are in too great a haste to move on. The motorcycle riders have no shame. You think of complaining, fruitlessly of course, to the neighbourhood police officer. But, then, the police officer too breaks the rules and has his motorcycle mount the pavement.

There is no shame in Dhaka, no embarrassment at the commission of these and other infractions of the law. Ministers, bureaucrats, police officers cannot afford to waste time on traffic-congested roads. They do the next best thing: they have their vehicles use the side of the road they should not. And they get away with it. It is uncivil to abuse your place in society. That does not matter. A demonstration of power more than a display of a sense of responsibility is what you have on offer in this comatose city. On the roads the British colonial power built, roads that have gone through less than innovative renovation repeatedly, traffic comes to a halt for long minutes — because a VIP will deign to use those roads. On these shrinking roads are dumped, on a quotidian basis, anywhere from fifteen to forty new cars every day. The nouveau riche are everywhere, in nauseating fashion.

Dhaka has no place for the preservation of heritage. The culture it once boasted has given way to philistinism, to crass materialism. The old cannon at Gulistan, once a reminder of history, is forgotten, for it has been consigned to Osmany Udyan. Where the Crescent Lake and its surroundings should have been a haven for citizens in need of sunset recreation, there is the outlandish resting place of a murdered dictator. The old President's House-turned-Ganobhavan has gone out of history, for today it is home to the Foreign Affairs Training Academy. Gulistan Cinema, where once we were privy to thought-enriching movies, does not exist anymore. The old peddler of journals from whom our mothers borrowed novels and Begum magazine for a week, has receded into the past, along with that generation of enlightened mothers.

You do not hear sophisticated Bangla in Dhaka anymore. Crudity of language is all — around you, in you and on television. There used to be a time when Bengali women, in all their beauty, were symbolic of grace in their sarees. In these present times, the Bengali woman of grace and beauty is lost in attire that does not match the tradition she springs from.

Corporate culture rides roughshod over Dhaka. Bands play music you forget the minute the songs draw to an end. This tortured city does not hear any more the soothing melodies of times gone by.

In Dhaka today, there is a ubiquity of shops selling flowers that have no scent. The city does not have anymore the beli flowers whose fragrance once set off dreams across town.

In the days that once were, the skies bent low over Dhaka. Today, Dhaka has shut out the skies. It is all about shadow and reality. Dhaka today is not free to move out of the shadow.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is a bdnews24.com columnist.