the dying city. photograph by dev

Yesterday we went to sonargaon museum and panam city. It was my first visit there and I was really curious about this old historical place. Panam city was the capital of this region once upon a time. There are still some old buildings of that time standing. The buildings seem something like dummy for a movie comparing today’s structure. The famous one is ‘rajbari’ (palace) which I think the biggest one still surviving. We went there with a hope to take some pictures of it. But the gate was close with a notice hanging there ‘it’s a industrial restricted place’. We surprised… what kind of industry! Then we asked some people around about it and they told us that the palace now owns someone who set up a tyres factory inside it! We tried to enter the place but they didn’t permit. When we were looking the other buildings we find us so poor, so illiterate nation. It seems no one care about these ‘useless’ buildings. We are loosing our history everyday.

This time I became sure that mountains are beautiful during the rainy season. Everything seems clean and fresh that time though leaches could suck your blood. Its winter and the weather are dry and rough. We went through the same foot prints those we drew on last May [ read the previous story ]. But this time we were in a small group with less team spirit and less glamor. I had to fight lot to manage the time. I keep recalling my memories all through the way. We reached the boga lake by 29 December evening. We were prepared to face a hard cold but the weather was much warmer than the city. The home where we lived this time was a cool place than last time. It was very comfortable in every way. On 30 December some of our friend went to the peak of keokradong. We were out of all networks and that was the biggest relaxation. No regular schedule, no hurry, no boss, no computer, no mobile … drinking lake water, having tasteless same food in breakfast, lunch, dinner with a great eagerness, trying to enjoy every single moment. On 31, the sun set with great sorrow from sky of boga lake area. A deadly road accident happened on the way to boga lake, took a death toll of 4 persons. At the earlier night someone brought a dead cobra. He said it attacked him on the way so that he killed it. It brought lot of excitement to the tribal and as well as the tourists. They cooked the cobra and many of our friends took it with a great excitement. We set a fire and roasted a goat. On the first moment of New Year everyone start dancing, most of drunk till throat. The night grew older and moon started shining from behind the big mountains. That was the nicest part of the whole tour.

Next morning we got up with a spirit to walk 17 km way back. I walked the same way last time but this time it was too hard. The sun was burning all the time. Once it happened we finished the last drop of the water and had to walk another hour to find a water source. All tiredness came zero when I took a long bath in the river of sangu. It was a biggest achievement this time. Ruma bazaar is too known to us and we spend few useless hours there. Some of us wanted to get back earlier to banadarban. But most of us liked to stay motionless. 2 January, we start our journey back to Dhaka. There was a huge traffic jam on the way. It was a great time… but not so great as it was before.

Ok, I’ve learnt few things,

• >> He is a foolish who pretends to be a good, sober person all the time.
• >> ‘Out of sight out mind’ isn’t always true. Sometime you should go far to measure the depth of your sight.