Money in the Ground

Salt production in Moheshkhali Island accounts for more than half of domestic consumption.

In the fields at Tajiakata of Moheshkhali’s Kutubjom Union they’re lifting water, bucket by bucket. The criss-cross channels are hand dug to entice a little of the sea inland. Seawater is being lifted, litre by litre, to the first of four shallow tanks carved in the ground.

Salt is one of the main industries of Moheshkhali Island.

Even in the morning the sun is fire, but then they’re counting on evaporation. When labourers sweat, sweat is salty.

It’s a semi-lunar landscape, yellow and brown, treeless and arid. It’s a shallow water-trough landscape of salt heaps. Leaving his nearby home at some minutes before 7 a.m., Abdus Salam, 34, will soon be there. For eighteen years he’s been harvesting salt.

“Water collection is the most difficult task,” he says.

For Salam, salt is a livelihood; but salt is also much more.

Salinity in the human, salinity in the sea: for centuries poets and evolutionists have contemplated a distant ancestral link to the earliest life forms that from the primordial soup clambered ashore.

Labourers Mahamadul Karim and Shefatul Islam lift seawater by bucket to begin the salt making process.

More than food seasoning, more than food preserver, sodium chloride is life’s essence: where we came from and where we are. There can be no life without salt. Should we cry, we shed salty tears.

Evaporation ponds. Salt is simple brilliance.

In South Asia there’s independence too in the white sea-spice. On 12 March 1930 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi began his famous Salt Satyagraha, a march from near Ahmedabad to the Gujarati seaside village of Dandi. At 6:30 a.m. on 6 April Gandhi collected salt by the shore.

Protesting the British salt monopoly brought worldwide attention to the non-violent independence movement and many in India took confidence from Gandhi’s symbolic act. Many followed his example and were arrested. Salt is a harbinger of coming freedom.

The afternoon sun illuminates the salt fields.

Salt taxes also encouraged the French Revolution and paid for Columbus to sail to the New World. At a time when half of China’s revenue came from salt, a Great Wall was made. At the centre of human civilisation you’ll find salt.

Aztec mythology meanwhile includes Huixtocihuatl, goddess of fertility who presided over salt and saltwater. In Hinduism auspicious salt is used in housewarmings and weddings. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) in a hadith recorded in Sunan Ibn Majah reportedly said, “Salt is the master of your food. God sent down four blessings from the sky: fire, water, iron and salt.”

Religion, civilisation, human life: salt has shaped history.

But Salam’s talk is not of this. He explains that older water will drain through adjoining, ever shallower troughs. He knows evaporation will take to its task. In the final polythene-lined tank after about a week, salt crystals awaiting collection shall sparkle, says he. Salt is brilliance in its simplicity.

The lunar landscape of the salt fields.

He predicts merchants will buy direct from his field. He understands that if he needs to store salt when the monsoon arrives he can bury it, wrapped in polythene, underground. “There’s money in the ground,” say the people of Moheshkhali.

More than half of Moheshkhali's population participates in salt.

When labourers sweat, their sweat is salty.

Salt is also a budget. From 5 kanies of land leased for upwards of 40,000 taka Salam calculates that with two labourers employed he can produce 300 maunds of salt per kanie during the January to April season. He’ll need 100 pounds of polythene for one kanie at 75 taka per pound.

There are contingencies to account for: a falling price caused by transport disruption and late winter fogs that bringing moisture to undo the sun’s work in salt’s disheartening dissolution.

Moheshkhali produces the largest portion of salt to meet domestic demand. Salt farming of about 19,000 acres enlists some degree of participation from most of the island’s 3-lac population.

Abdus Salam, 34, has been working in the salt fields for 18 years.

Yet ironically the Bay of Bengal is best suited for salt. While averaging 3.5% salinity, the world’s seas are not equally saline.

Salt crystals ready for collection.

Of open seas, the Red Sea is considered the saltiest at 4%, due to a lack of rain and river inflow, and because of its narrow connection to the less saline Indian Ocean. Enclosed water bodies can be much saltier still, like the Dead Sea with 34.2% salinity. 

The Yellow, Baltic and Black seas by contrast, like the Bay of Bengal, hold below-average salt content.

Afternoon at Tajiakata salt fields.

Salam can’t consider seawater but he does consider land. Sandy soils are not much good, where absorption is high. Suitable land produces salt more quickly, of higher quality.

As the word ‘salary’ shares its Latin root with salt: either money to buy salt or payment in salt, it’s easy to conclude that Salam has it right… Salt means food on a table and a family fed.

Should we cry, tears are salty.

The alien landscape of Shaplapur in northern Moheshkhali.

This article is published in The Daily Star, here: Moheshkhali's Money in the Ground

Salt. The stuff of life.

Where People Are Still People

Dinajpur District hosts many elaborate Durga Puja pandals every year.

Initial observation: it was deep night as the bus from Dhaka crossed the border of Dinajpur District. A few minutes later a woman needed to get down. It spurred discussion among the driver, the conductor and other passengers. Was she sure? Was it okay to leave a woman alone on a dark road?

She repeated the place name. It was right. She got out.

The bus moved forward. The bus stopped. The bus reversed. No, it couldn’t be done. She was delivered instead to the safety of a late night barber’s shop nearby. And I wondered…

I’m not alone in anticipating that assuredly considerate temperament from people of the country’s northwest. Simply mentioning a person is from Dinajpur is a kind of character reference.

This writer was determined to find out: what makes the Dinajpuri?

Goods for sale at a Hindu fair.

Observation: in Dinajpur town no rickshaw driver asked for more than the exact fare; one can’t say that of all regional centres. Indeed twice I was unexpectedly called back. “You paid too much,” rickshaw drivers said, referring to the little extra knowingly given. Now that has hardly happened elsewhere…

I asked our local The Daily Star correspondent Kongkon Karmaker his opinion; and he himself exhibits many of the admirable qualities one might associate with Dinajpur, albeit just between us there’s a bit of Barishailla in his blood.

He spoke of Hindu families preparing shemai, vermicelli, for Muslim Eid al-Fitr; of Muslims leading Durga Puja committees, with some taking the chance to perform aroti dance in front of Ma Durga’s pandal. The town’s prominent temples seem to confirm religious tolerance.

“Dinajpur has one of the highest percentages of Hindus in the country,” Karmaker says, “Disharmony is rare.” The district is also diverse with ethnic minorities, principally the Santhals. Meanwhile, according to Karmaker, local hijras are better accepted and less pushy than elsewhere.

Perhaps there was more to learn in the villages.

Locals at the Nurul Mudir tea shop in Taiabpur, Birol.

At Mahadeppur village in Birol Upazilla, at a nameless shop in the row called Bashudev Supermarket, proprietor Sanatan Chandra Roy agrees to the premise, “People are good here. There’s no conflict between Hindus and Muslims. Why I don’t know. It just is so.”

“What’s in Birol?” proposes a customer. “Everything is here: betel, cigarettes and tea.”

And history agrees. The Dinajpur District Census Report of 1961 as reported in the government Gazetteer observed that Dinajpuris are “nostalgic to a degree, and unless they are very hard pressed they do not leave their homes.”

Kali Puja, Dinajpur. 

“Few experience the pangs of hunger as our own countrymen do in times of distress,” wrote a Briton, Major Sherwill, about Dinajpur, much earlier in 1860, “They may wholly abstain from labour for weeks or even months and still manage to feed and clothe themselves and their families. Their wants are few.”

According to the Gazetteer land has traditionally been more plentiful and population density less than other regions. Have these factors influenced an easygoing attitude?

“There is no district in Bangladesh as thanda [cool] as Dinajpur,” says Md Fazlul Haque at the Nurul Mudir tea shop in Birol’s Taiabpur village. The Upazilla administrative officer spent years in Khulna, which he liked, but “Dinajpur’s people are best.”

Dinajpur's Kali Temple.

His hypothesis: “People are occupied with their own business. Nobody has intention to harm someone. We don’t like conflict.”

“At any Durga Puja pandal,” interjects shopkeeper Mozammel Haque, “for every four Hindus there must be eight Muslims. Everyone enjoys. We are one.”

“The land is good,” he reflects, “That’s why people are gentle.”

“People here are very simple,” suggests farmer Sri Manmohan Chandra Roy of village Andharmucha in Chirirbandar Upazilla. “People are not much desperate so we don’t quarrel.”

Observation: evening on a narrow road in town and I’m surprised by overpowering music blasting from a red-light flashing amplifier, street-side. “Inconsiderate,” is the first thought, but then I notice the other side of the street: the long concrete wall of Dinajpur gaol. Perhaps somewhere inside a prisoner was smiling from hearing the distant rhythms of their favourite Bollywood and Bangla dance numbers? Perhaps a prisoner was having a birthday, knowing they were not forgotten? It takes volume to conquer concrete.

Motorcycle parking area at a Hindu fair. 

And yet the Gazetteer mentions mass migration into Dinajpur, especially at the time of Partition’s upheaval. It lists periods of famine. And news out of the district over the past several months is peppered with instances of violence, some political, others not. Surely such facts remind us: every rule has exceptions.

Regardless, in Dinajpur you’ll find it in general: that helpful, sincere majority – a little more tolerant perhaps, a little more peaceful perhaps…  Exactly why, I’m still unsure.

Kali  Puja in Dinajpur. 

 A ride at a village fair. 

The Miraculous Dog

A boat on the Brahmaputra River.

An old well, Ghoraghat.

It was after evening when we sat in the living room ready for adda, a chat that could foreseeably last half the night. Zaharul Islam, 50, had just arrived in the city from his home in Dinajpur’s Ghoraghat. He found his way to my place from Gabtoli Bus Stand.

It’s ironic we spoke of it then – it was hardly the first topic – because well-after-evening is probably the time of day when people most readily consider those Islamic spirits called jinns. And yet, from Zaharul Bhai I was about to hear that a jinn can also arrive of an afternoon.

Before we go further… Of course I cannot attest to the veracity of what he described. It occurred when he was twelve years old. What I can say is that he was entirely serious in the telling.

It happened on a day in Falgun or Choitro month – the season of spring. The sun was hot enough for his uncle, with whom the young Zaharul was to travel to his maternal grandmother’s house, to carry an umbrella.

And the late Hafez Abdur Rahman was no ordinary uncle. Blind from birth, he was renowned for being spiritually gifted – he was considered a pir or a dervish. “In Ghoraghat we use the word aulia,” says Zaharul Bhai.

Early morning, Ghoraghat.

From childhood Zaharul’s uncle had been educated by a Maulavi from Noakhali. The parents hoped their blind son could memorise the holy Quran to become a Hafez, which village wisdom says assures one a place in heaven. Zaharul’s uncle studied for seventeen years. He was a good student.

“He didn’t only know the Quran,” says Zaharul, “He knew all the hadiths. Not only did he know the hadiths but he understood their meaning.”

“Planes, volcanoes, science…” says Zaharul, “How big is the world? Without the hadiths, who could understand?”

There are many stories about his uncle. “He could read palms,” says Zaharul, “telling people about a serious disease they’d suffered ten years before. He’d tell their futures, including when they’d die.”

Once, Zaharul’s uncle is said to have arrived home with his wife and after going inside, he told her they’d been robbed. The blind man described what was missing and where it had been placed; and he identified the thieves.

Another day, Zaharul remembers, the large stand of bamboo outside the house was behaving strangely. It was as though a large wind was passing, except there was no wind. Yet the large stalks were bending profusely until with a tap-tap-tap they hit and hit again the tin roof of the house. “The bamboo will be ruined!” said Zaharul’s father.

Ghoraghat, Dinajpur.

His uncle then called out, “Lalu… Kalu… Stop!” Suddenly the bamboo stood straight. There was no more tapping. The air was still. “He often called those names,” says Zaharul, “Nobody knew what they meant. But he said he could control jinns. On that day it seemed his jinns were making mischief.”

“My uncle had many followers. There was a retired major from Dhaka Cantonment – when my uncle died ten years ago the major offered a water buffalo for his chollisha,” says Zaharul, referring to the tradition of a deceased’s family providing food to the poor forty days after their relative’s demise. “The major gave many goats too.”

In the morning of the day when he was twelve, Zaharul set off, leading the blind man towards the house of Zaharul’s maternal grandparents – a house that sat on a shoal across a wide stretch of the Brahmaputra River, some 30 kilometres away in Gaibandha District.

They had reason to go. Zaharul had another uncle there, and that uncle’s wife was having trouble conceiving. She’d had three to four unsuccessful pregnancies and despite previous efforts by the late Hafez Abdur Rahman to help her, nothing worked.

“My aunt was very beautiful,” says Zaharul. “After we arrived, my blind uncle did some treatment.” He performed an exorcism. “Suddenly I heard my aunt shouting, ‘I will go! I will not stay here any longer! I will never come again!’” The jinn inside her, was pleading for mercy.

Zaharul’s uncle was serious. “No! You stayed here for long. You will not go.”

“When the jinn emerged, my uncle caught it and put it into a bottle,” says Zaharul. “I saw that! He buried the bottle. After that my aunt had a son followed by three daughters. One of them lives in Italy.”

Boat on a channel of the Brahmaputra.

By early afternoon it was time to leave, so uncle and nephew made their way back to the riverbank. In the morning it had been no problem but by afternoon the riverbank was deserted. There was not a single boatman waiting to ferry them across. “We could go to Phuphu’s house?” suggested the young Zaharul, knowing his paternal aunt’s house was nearby.

“No,” said his uncle. “We’ll cross the river, you’ll see!”

“After some time,” says Zaharul, “I heard a snorting sound. I saw a large dog come out of the bushes. The dog went to the water’s edge.”

“Did Kaloo come?” asked his uncle. “Don’t you see him?” The dog was in the river. He was very broad in the back and jet black. Only its head and back were above water.

His uncle told Zaharul to climb onto the dog’s back. “You must only look forward,” he told his nephew, “Don’t look around. Focus on the river’s far bank.” After Zaharul climbed aboard his uncle did the same.

“My uncle was speaking without sound,” says Zaharul. “It looked like he was reciting something.”

What happened next was remarkable. “At most,” Zaharul says, “within forty seconds we were on the other side. I hardly knew what happened. I was in ankle-deep water – it was clear, you could see everything – just beside the far bank.” The dog had vanished.

The twelve-year-old was terrified. He ran as fast as he could up the bank.

“Where are you, nephew?” his uncle was calling. “Come here! Come here!” After running some distance Zaharul stopped, and returned to his uncle. How else would the blind man find his way home? “Now, don’t tell your grandparents,” the late Hafez Abdur Rahman said.



This article published in Star Magazine, here: The Miraculous Dog

At the bank of a sand shoal in the Brahmaputra River.

My Islam

Hatiya, Noakhali. The village that made my Bangladesh.

It used to be that of a village Eid morning in Hatiya I’d get ready along with my Bengali brothers. After bathing in the pond we’d dress and walk the short distance to the mosque. What I wore varied. In later years I had fashionable Dhanmondi-style panjabis to choose from. Earlier I used to wear the greenish kabliwala set that my friend and brother Situ gave me. It was the only design readily understood by the local tailors.

The mosque is small and not old, and those who attend are family, friends and neighbours. There’d be a few personal prayers for Abba, who I never met but whose grave is there. We’d wash our hands and feet and I confess I often got a bit of stabilisation assistance from the others while dipping toes into the mosque pond so as not to fall over... Then we’d go inside.

Kids playing in the monsoon wonderland. Eid arrives in the monsoon months this year.

I like that mosque. The weekday Imam is youthful and friendly, and there’s no denying the distinctive qualities of his adhan call to prayer. It may not be of the sort that’s striking for its mystical, high beauty – such as an adhan I once heard while passing through Seremban, Malaysia, which seemed so intrinsic and harmonious that it may as well have been welded into the dawn.

No, our Imam’s adhan has a, shall-we-say, personal quality. When his voice wavers and the notes take on a more creative fluctuation – he’s doing his best, he’s really doing his best... When there’s the added flare of a high-pitched squeal from the PA system – being as it is... With the general muffled ambience familiar to current village-mosque technology... we love it all the more.

He is our Imam. It is his adhan – the one which by tradition at the Fajr dawn hour comes as finale to all the adhans in the area. It’s well-understood that not everybody can be a morning person. Although on Fridays and at Eid he bows to experience our Imam is always there.

My Eid mosque-going tradition arose naturally. Nobody told or encouraged me. Hatiyalas are too polite. It simply seemed strange that on a special day like Eid I would not share in the customs of the neighbourhood – in the same way we sometimes attend kirtan with our Hindu friends. It was my heart that took me to the mosque.

Hatiya's monsoon sky.

Inside, I used to find a place at the back so as not to get in anybody’s way. While we were sitting my legs would descend into pins and needles, eventually falling asleep such that at the end of the service I’d have trouble standing. While they were actually performing the namaz prayer I’d – rightly or wrongly, I could never decide which – add a little silent Christian-style prayer of my own. It was what I knew how to do – a way of showing respect for their beliefs and for them.

Afterwards there’d be the usual congregating on the road with those heart-to-heart salaams reserved for special days, a tradition in which I was entirely included. I was more than included because while I would have wished to say, “Thank you so much for not minding my attendance,” it was rather them who said, “We are so honoured that you shared our Eid.”

It’s a far cry from common perceptions of Islam in Australia, unfortunately.

The main road in Hatiya that became so overflowing with respectful greetings...

But I suppose the first meaningful contact I had with Islam was in Rajasthan, before Bangladesh. What I recall from those initial curious visits to various desert and semi-desert mosques was the strong sense of peace to be imbibed within, while sitting on the floor inside. It was easy to find a spiritual quality in that space. Incidentally I’ve known Iranian Muslims to admit as much about Sydney’s cathedrals.

Then there was the hospitality tradition. I came to expect it whenever visiting any Muslim majority country, and while culture also plays a role I have never been disappointed. Probably more than any other religion, Islam respects the stranger, the traveller, the guest...

A third early impression arose when it came to be that moving along the road in Hatiya meant encountering numerous salaams from villagers. It was quite a while before I genuinely appreciated it was not simply a ‘hello, hi’ but respect they were giving – the islanders are sincere in it. When it was explained, when it sunk in that it was more than a ‘hello’, I was really touched. Later – I was a little slow in adapting – I became better at salaam-giving also.

Meanwhile in Sydney where I used to speak of such experiences freely I don’t think I ever came to grips with the overwhelming but thankfully not entirely universal response to my chat: the sense of fear. It was so easy to underestimate and overlook the prejudices that characterise that society’s view of Islam, since the true complexity and diversity of Muslim communities was so blatantly clear to me. My Islam had become as our Imam’s adhan – original and personalised.

Monsoon road. Hatiya, Noakhali.

But I suppose not accepting that differences must divide us runs in my Australian family. My father’s clan were Presbyterian while mother was raised as a Catholic. One Catholic grandmother married a Lutheran grandfather and in those days due to denominational differences he was not allowed to walk in the front door of the Catholic Church – when they eloped he came in via the unceremonious side door. Sometimes in response to the protestant-catholic question I used to say I was Cathlotestant... and it’s surprising that some otherwise educated Australians had difficulty in accepting even that answer. Sometimes people are like buildings. They take their structure from walls. But I don’t believe God cares for petty categories.

And on 11 September 2001 after I knew that my Australian brother in New York was okay, my main concern was for the inevitable anti-Muslim backlash. I made a personal vow: whatever happens, nothing will come between me and the Hatiyalas. That tiny but rather wonderful history we made together was more important than ever.

And yet it is sadly true that Australians can have no confidence in mature, moderate governance, especially in the country’s security sector. It is sadly true that hysteria reigned and division still does. Somehow I kept my Hatiyan Islam anyway...

Monsoon landscape. Hatiya, Noakhali.

The church in Aizawl, Mizoram.

On the other side of the coin, a few years ago came the first convenient opportunity for Situ to experience a church service – just to see how it is. We were in Aizawl, Mizoram and the Presbyterian evening service was in Mizo. We sat up the back so as not to get in anybody’s way. While one lady down the front became so moved when the music played that she started an animated dance and sang a loud lively solo, we did our best to simply follow the song book, singing in unknown Mizo language which is written with familiar European script, without knowing the tune. It must’ve made our Imam’s adhan seem as traditionally beautiful as that Malaysian adhan I once heard.

With the difficulties of transport to Hatiya I will share Eid in Dhaka this time. For the past eighteen years Islam has been a part of the mix of religious influences that make me. It’s something for which I am grateful. I’ve always felt it was life-enriching. But perhaps it’s simply Bengali: differences shall not divide us! So from a non-Muslim to Muslims and non-Muslims all, I wish you a happy and joyous Eid!

After the rain comes the sun.

Me in modern Dhaka panjabi.

This article published in Star Magazine, here: My Islam.

Temple & Mosque

Md. Aminul Islam and Ratan Chakraborty can't recall any discord between Muslims and Hindus in Rajapur.

“Dhan, nodi, khal – e tine Barisal.”

In the calm alleyway mix beyond the centre of Rajapur in Jhalokati; where the shady homestead yard may be ditch-and-mound ribbed – the mounds for trees in rows to gather contemplating while in each ditch water reclines for longer days; in that wooded zone yet to shed its rural heritage in its newer semi-suburban age; on an afternoon when rickshaws politely and without bell squeeze to pass on that forgotten arch of a bridge over whichever canal – the paddy might be some way off but it’s easy to sit back and think, easy to recall the old rhyme of that Division. “Paddy, river, canal: these three are Barisal.”

Yet in that area beside the not-so-busy bitumen road, beyond the yawn of the motorcycle repair shop to the right, beyond the shack of a tea shop too, where locals seem to loiter even when the kettle is off-the-boil and the tea is seemingly on its way from Sylhet, prior to the uninteresting junction where the road to the back of the college leads off between the trees, there’s something that’s a little more Jhalokati perhaps and less broader Barisal – and it starts with the mosque.

At the Baitul Aman Jamia mosque in Rajapur.

To say there’s any remarkable feature to the Baitul Aman Jamia mosque building would be a lie. It’s clean and functional, tiled in white with Arabic inscriptions across the doorway. The adhan call is in every sense usual. It’s the image of a mosque of the ordinary type to be found across the country.

Diagonally opposite, over the road and entered through a colourfully signposted green gate off a side lane, the Sri Sri Hari temple likewise cannot claim extraordinariness in either grandeur or historical merit. It’s peaceful and has a banyan tree in the midst of a largish yard that no doubt devotees take enjoyment from – but even that hardly makes it outstanding.

It’s a fifty-fifty world in Rajapur – Muslim and Hindu. Temple and mosque share fellowship as possibly their greatest reward; and that’s a phenomenon as natural to Rajapur as the shady blessing of the canopy.

“We go and sit in the temple sometimes,” says a Muslim man at the tea shop, “Nobody disturbs us there.”

Now let’s speak of two men – locally important and pious. It didn’t start with them but there they are: madrassa assistant professor Md. Aminul Islam has been the mosque’s Imam for the past three years while primary school teacher Ratan Chakraborty has filled the temple’s post of Prohith for the last five.

“Islam always wants freedom for everybody,” says our Imam, “It gives the chance to everybody to enjoy their religion. Islam does not like any violence, clashes or anarchy. Islam wants peace.”

A Durga motif at the Sri Sri Hari Temple.

“In the Gita it states that we should honour all religions,” says our Prohith, “All religions are one.”

“Communalism is a great crime for a man. A Muslim cannot do it. Those who have committed such things are not real Muslims,” are our Imam’s words.

“Communalism decreases relations between the communities. People should not be doing it,” is our Prohith’s speech.

There’s a natural beauty to Rajapur: of rain tree, chambol, mahogany, jackfruit, banyan, Hinduism and Islam. Drastic change is nowhere in the forecast.

“We have our weekly service on Tuesdays,” says our Prohith, “We celebrate many pujas – Kali, Durga, Lokenath, Shiv... Muslims are always invited to join our pujas and funeral processions – and they do. There’s never been a quarrel.”

“When they perform namaz prayer the temple stops to show honour,” he continues, “Hindus and Muslims are like brothers here.”

“We don’t disturb Hindu functions,” says our Imam, “Some Muslim youths help with their pujas. I never saw any problems between Muslims and Hindus in Rajapur.”

News? What news? There’s no news here...

One of the protimas at the temple.

At the time of Eid ul Adha there are many invitations – Hindu families will be busy visiting Muslim homes to sample shemai, noodles and fruit. At the time of Durga Puja, Muslims too dig into their pockets to help fund the festivities. The temple sends jackfruit to the mosque each year. Each Thursday after namaz and recitation of hadiths and Quranic verses at the nearby meeting hall there’s the kichuri rice dish to be savoured – and shared – to comers of either faith.

And so on and so forth it goes... the chambol stretches out another branch, new roots of the banyan find their earth, the mahongany trunk ever so slowly thickens – it’s all show for the first one hundred years. The tea meanwhile is still on its way from Sylhet – an entirely natural phenomenon – and the one community of two faiths continues to share and to respect each other beneath Rajapur’s canopy.

At the time of the Babri Mosque’s demolition in India in 1992, when also in Bangladesh communal relations reached a particularly low point, Rajapur Muslims came out onto the road to assist the police in defending the temple and Hindu homes. Some troublemakers came from further afield but sure as the trees closed in on the open sky as they approached Rajapur, they found no scope for harassment or havoc.

For about a week the temple was continuously protected. And a beautiful nothing happened.

“All Hindus and Muslims are citizens in Bangladesh,” says our Imam, “People here are educated and religious. They do not make anarchy or harm others.”

“Hindus don’t leave this area for India,” says our Prohith – and five years ago he recalls, “My kitchen accidentally caught fire. My Muslim neighbours saw it and quickly put the fire out.” Now that’s a beautiful something to consider!

“Muslims have to apologise and compensate Hindus for losing their houses,” says our Imam about the recent troubles elsewhere, “Either the Muslim community or the government should compensate them. They should try to develop their brotherhood with Hindus.”

But wait... finally there is something remarkable – something has happened in the one-canopy one-community backblocks of Rajapur... at last there’s news, quite literally, brewing: the kettle is boiled and from somewhere far in hilly Sylhet the tea seems to have arrived...

And that is, for Rajapur surely, a worthy leading story.

Our Imam and our Prohith at the temple gate.

This article is published in Star Magazine, here: Temple & Mosque