Dhaka Diary: Memories of Durga Puja

by Fakrul Alam

The very first time I heard Shah Abdul Karim’s heart-stirring song, “Age Ki Shundor Din Kataitam” I was transported to my childhood years in Dhaka‘s Ramkrishna Mission Road and the Durga Puja days we used to revel in then. Karim remembers lyrically “how happily” he and other village youths would spend their childhood days, “Hindus and Muslims, /Singing Baul and Ghetu songs all together!” He goes on to narrate how he and his friends would listen to Ghazi, Baul and Ghetu songs during the monsoons as they raced their boats or watch jatras being staged in Hindu households and how politics and/or religion would never come in the way. He concludes wistfully: “I keep thinking: we’ll never be happy like then./Though I once believed happiness was forever/Day by day things get worse and worse/Which path will distraught Karim now follow?”