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| On a windless afternoon the Bijoy Singh Dighee is a snapshot of the
sky to dive into. |
Often overlooked, regional towns in Bangladesh have a lot to offer the visitor. Bustling, relatively wealthy Feni is an example of a regional success story. Once part of the Tripuran Kingdom and bombed by the Japanese in World War II, Feni is also a town with an intriguing history.
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By the half-light of a kerosene lamp an old man would
recite, in the evenings and some decades ago, the memories of Feni captured in
his putipora rhymes. His regular
station was on the bank of the Bijoy Singh Dighee, the large pond built in 1760
that occupies 37.75 acres near Feni town.
In verse he would tell of the Bholbhola River,
of a warrior’s wife and a boatman’s song. According to him, warrior Bijoy Singh
and his wife lived not far from the banks of the fast flowing Bholbhola; and
his wife would bathe at its edges. But one day when Singh arrived home to hear
his wife was at the river, he also heard a nagging, worrisome boatman’s song
wafting in the air like a warning. It was the song, the old man’s verses told,
that inspired Singh to block the Bholbhola and build the dighee, so his wife
could bathe in privacy, away from the temptation of a boatman’s serenade.
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| Bijoy Singh Dighee, Feni. |
There are other tales – some say a newlywed wife once passed
by in a palki or sedan chair when she
decided to drink. She was snatched by a bhoot,
a spirit, as she drank and dragged into the dighee, never to be seen again.
Others say, perhaps it’s related, that from the dighee people took mysterious
gold plates and magnificent glasses that emerged from its depths. The dighee facts-cum-legends
must’ve been more than sufficient muse for the old man’s rhymes.
Nowadays the dighee is the perfection of a picnic spot: on a
windless afternoon it’s a snapshot of the sky to dive into. Apart from fishing
enthusiasts and friends hanging out, frequenting the chatputi snack stalls, there are couples under young love’s spell, trying
to be discrete, whose parents may not entirely know where they are.
Values are changing: it’s undeniable. In history’s midst there’s
a lot of future in Feni.
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| The perfect picnic spot: Bijoy Singh Dighee. |
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| The bank of the Bijoy Singh. |
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| Shutki fish in Feni Bazaar. |
Making the most of its strategic location in the Dhaka – Chittagong transport
corridor, Feni is outstanding for its bustle. Feni bazaar brims with customers
in search of anything from dried fish to gold jewellery, and with at least one
in every family working overseas, by local estimate, there’s foreign remittance
to drive demand. Feni presents itself as a town eager to acquire all the
facilities of Dhaka or Chittagong,
with expectations enhanced by those returning from abroad.
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| Bustling Feni. |
Yet in the honk and hassle of its traffic, over those larger
cities Feni maintains advantages. It is yet small enough for rickshaws to be
practical and with the rumble-trucks and hurtling-buses plying the capital to
port city route diverted onto a bypass, of the through traffic Feni is spared.
But it’s not because of Feni’s vibrancy that the bypass
should be bypassed. Strangely it is that in the arms of a fast approaching future
the past so often takes shelter.
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| A suburban mosque in Feni. |
In public pond neighbourhoods a smaller Feni can be
imagined. In streets where households may yet maintain cattle, where the jewel
of Bangladeshi hospitality has not left its shine, village living combines with
town lifestyle.
The evening atmosphere of Feni Bazaar is similarly sublime.
As the last alleyway-wedged lorry is unloaded, goods heaved hand-to-hand and
hauled off on trolleys, the soft glow of bulb replaces the day’s crowds. A
shopkeeper is making entries in a hand-bound ledger while a shutki dried fish seller adds to that unmistakable
shutki stench the smoke-sweet
fragrance of incense, performing his blessing ritual. As the lights go out, with
the pounding steps of the last to leave, Feni Bazaar feels intriguingly
Dickensian.
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| A goldsmith's window in Feni Bazaar. |
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| The shutki shop is incense-smoky. |
But it seems unlikely Dickens would’ve understood Feni, with its long association with the Kingdom of Tippera, the heartland of which is the modern state of Tripura across the nearby Indian border. There’s Tippera’s hint in the Bijoy Singh, and in the central Rajajhee Dighee: the dighee digging tradition features in Tripura’s Udaipur, the traditional capital of the former realm.
In February 1935, the last ruling maharaja His Highness Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya Bahadur Debbarma paid an official visit. “After a drive through the Feni bazaar which was… crowded and decorated with arches, flags and festoons,” it is written of the tour, “His Highness went to attend an Afternoon Party… at which all sections of the public were widely represented.”[1] The bazaar must’ve been of special interest since, first called Birendragonj, it was founded by the king. On 16 February 1935 he left by train for his Agartala palace.
But the king was a figurehead – from 1733 Mughal rule had attained dominance. During the British period ‘Hill Tippera’ became an independent princely state, and in 1947 the plains was slated for inclusion in East Pakistan while the hills joined India in 1949.
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| In the evenings, Feni Bazaar is a little Dickensian. |
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| Chillies in Feni Bazaar. |
Yet the founding of modern Feni town in 1876 is accredited
not to Tripuran royalty but to Deputy Magistrate and author Nobin Chandra Sen.
As for the bazaar, it was gradually expanded but later fell
into decline. In the lean years it was reduced to a single straw shack by the
trunk road where Hindu pilgrims en-route to Sitakunda stopped for supplies of ghur, chira and muri, unrefined
sugar, flattened and puffed rice.
Hectic Feni tends to overwhelm the image of Sen’s small town;
but there are some who recall a time of even greater urgency.
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| Dhaka - Chittagong train approaches a WW2 bunker beside the tracks in Feni District. |
“When the siren sounded everyone would run to the trenches,”
recalls 87-year-old Haji Sirajul Haque, whose father worked for the Tripuran
king during the Second World War years. Haque was 19 when the war ended and had
his own flour business.
When Japanese planes set out from Burma for bombing raids over Feni
they were spotted on Allied radar and a pulsating air raid siren would sound.
“They were handheld sirens,” Haque says, “It took a good deal of energy to turn
the handles – only the strong were asked to do it.”
The many trenches around Feni were dug in the usual zigzag
pattern to minimise casualties if a bomb fell into a trench; people waited
inside until a single long siren signalled the all clear. “At night in winter
we’d sometimes go to the dry canals instead and sleep,” remembers Haque.
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| Abus Sattar at his home in Feni. |
“Once, at the sound of the first siren we came home,” says Abdus
Sattar, now 85, whose father ran a shop, “but at the second siren, with my
father I left by bicycle to go somewhere. We didn’t get far before another
siren sounded and we went home again, but after some time the all-clear came so
we left for a second time. When we went out we saw a plane overhead. We took
our meal at Takea Road
and were sitting on onion sacks in the shop when gunfire in the air broke out.
We saw smoke.”
Feni was an attractive target. One of several Allied
airfields in what is now Bangladeshi territory was constructed there. From Feni
airfield, Allied bombing raids were conducted into Burma.
“The Japanese thought if they captured Feni airport,”
hypothesises 82-year-old Mohammed Ibrahim, former proprietor of a successful
battery business, “it would be a great advantage.”
But following Rangoon’s
capture on 8 March 1942 the situation was critical for the Allies. Although Japan’s initial goal for the Burma campaign had been to cut supply lines to China, it brought the front line to India’s
doorstep. From late 1942 the Allies launched unsuccessful campaigns to halt the
Japanese advance. From 1944 the Japanese invasion of India was underway.
Ibrahim lived five miles outside Feni but would accompany
his father, who worked at the courthouse, into town. The troops came from
several nationalities: “Pathan, Punjabi, Baluchi, Nepali, Gurkha, Indian,
British and African. The Nepalis were short, the Africans very strong. Occasionally
they gave us biscuits.”
“It was the first time I saw Gurkha and Sikh people,” says
Begum Masuda Khatun, 80, “and also frozen fish.”
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| Fishermen fixing nets in front of the wall of a WW2 hangar. |
Sattar remembers viewing the first plane to land at the
airfield. The runway was initially of gravel and the plane broke a wheel on
landing. All the children wanted to see it. For them, the sporadic bombing and
military activity were exciting.
For the adults too the war brought only moderate change to
daily routine. Although Sattar’s family once left for a neighbouring district
for two months, for the remainder of the period his father’s shop was open.
Although the price of rice grain rose, according to Ibrahim
from 6 poisa per sher, which is a
little over a kilogram, to 10 poisa and 3 annas per sher, it didn’t take a
large income to cover daily expenses. “Money was valuable,” says Haque, “A day
labourer could buy a big chanda fish
– expensive now.”
Money itself was, however, in short supply and the military started
printing its own. “There was a Punjabi with a machine at the airport,” recalls
Ibrahim, “He would push in paper and handmade ten-rupee notes would come out. A
Pathan made five-rupee and a Nepali, two-rupee notes. People were paid with
handmade money.”
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| A WW2 bunker is barely noticeable on the side of the main Dhaka - Chittagong highway. |
Despite the small-scale bombing raids Feni seemed to have
escaped the worst, until that fateful market day, the last Thursday in March,
1945.
“There was loud bombing. It was a big incident,” says
Sattar, “I saw planes overhead and people running. I saw boys near the Academy School, their bodies badly burnt.”
“I lay in the canal like soldiers do, taking cover,” says
Haque, “Bombs fell inside the Aliya Madrassa, behind and in the dighee. It was
around noon. The Japanese planes were white and flew in stork-like formation. A
few soldiers died. People died.”
“About 25 – 30 planes attacked,” says Ibrahim, “One pilot parachuted
down – she was a woman. There was an unexploded bomb in the mud – they fenced it
and for ten years people couldn’t walk there.”
“It was published that 27 planes were shot down,” recalls
Khatun, “People said it was actually 14. The soldiers’ bodies were buried in Comilla.”
“That was the last time,” says Sattar, “The Japanese never
came again.”
“By mid-1947 all soldiers
were withdrawn,” remembers Ibrahim, “By plane they dropped leaflets explaining
how the airport land would be divided, which part was for people, which for the
government.”
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| A WW2 bunker in Feni District. |
When hurtling along the Dhaka-Chittagong highway, it’s
hardly history that comes to mind. But exactly beside the road is what looks
like a discarded concrete slab, at road height. On inspection, it’s a half-buried
bunker.
Similarly for the train traveller… two bunkers, one in tact,
the second with a gaping Japanese bomb hole in its roof are right beside the
tracks in the village locally known as Bangaqila,
after the broken bunker.
At the centre of the airfield site you can see paving just
below the grass, with smaller hangar sites and concrete taxiways in rice paddy
country. Then there is the 49.5 acres of former airfield that in 2006 became the
Feni Girls’ Cadet
College.
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| Feni Girls' Cadet College. |
Principal Md.
Mokhlesur Rahman is attempting to plant mango saplings, to add greenery to the
college campus of the future, but he faces a problem – there are not less than
three layers of runway bricks to remove before finding clear earth.
Responsible for 327 cadets studying from classes 7 – 12 and
a faculty of 35 teachers including one Adjutant, Lieutenant Commander Imtiaz
Sabir from the Bangladesh Navy, Rahman has a lot to be proud of. Academically
the students excel, with the college in first position in the Comilla Board for
the last HSC examination when all 46 candidates achieved a GPA 5. It’s not for
the first time: outstanding results have become a habit.
Granting time to conduct a tour of the college, we see the
modern facilities and an under-construction map-of-Bangladesh feature, somehow
appropriate for a college which aims to nurture leadership. In many places the
criss-cross brickwork of the old runway is visible and there remains a singular
building from the war, once the site office of the Military Engineer Service.
It’s simply called the lal ghar, the red house.
I am introduced to the Year 12 prefects, who march into the auditorium and stand while Lieutenant Commander Sabir and I sit, for a chat. I feel sorry for them having to stand.
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| Year 12 prefects Mayisha Maliha, Farah Naz and Mayisha Nur (left), Abira Zaman, Nafiza Mahzabin, Anika Tasmia Sejuti and Sadia Khaleque Rochee (right), with Lieut. Commander Imtiaz Sabir (centre). |
For Cultural Prefect Anika Tasmia Sejuti, from Patuakhali,
the highlight of the college experience is the friendly atmosphere between
students and staff. The have additional prep periods, she explains, where
teachers are able to fix any problems.
Nafiza Mahzabin, the College Games Prefect from Gazipur, meanwhile,
values the opportunity to participate in sports. There’s even a cricket team.
“At home girls don’t get the chance to do these things,” she says.
I wonder about the food, and Sadia Khaleque Rochee from
Mymensingh is the one to ask. She is the prefect responsible for the dining
hall. Every three months a meeting is held, she explains, to design the menu.
It must adhere to designated nutritional, calorie and budgetary requirements,
but with that is the flexibility to incorporate cadet preferences. Complaints
are “mainly about the eggs,” she says, “but there have to be eggs with
breakfast.”
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| The 'lal ghar' on the college campus. |
The dining hall also presents one of the hardest adjustments
to be made on admission, Sadia suggests – learning how to eat with fork and
spoon without making sound. “Nobody has any training,” she says, “at home we
use our hands.” But within a few weeks the chinks between fork and plate
reduce, helped along by the table seating plan whereby older and newer students
are assigned to sit together.
By contrast, for House Prefect Farah Naz from Chittagong, it was the
physical training that was most challenging. “There aren’t many girls
habituated to exercise,” she says. The cadets complete half an hour of exercise
each morning and an hour of sport each afternoon.
But Farah remembers her first day fondly – a class 8 student
was assigned to help her arrange her locker, bed and table, and to explain the
regulations, including how to behave with seniors. Moreover the day was
special because she arrived with her television-actor-uncle and other cadets
were jumping around him to collect his autograph. “People were very interested
to see me, his niece,” she remembers.
Chittagonian Mayisha Nur has been inspired by her experience
as a House Prefect, she explains, to pursue a career in politics. “It taught me
how to make decisions,” she says, “and there is a lack of leadership in Bangladesh.”
Her initial hopes are to reform the admissions system so that Bangladeshis can
more easily realise their potential, and to confront public corruption. She
aims high. “Ultimately I will be, insha’allah,
Prime Minister,” she says.
Of course the Prime Minister’s job is not easy. “We can all
have problems, times when we need a psychiatrist,” says Sadia, indicating her
intended career. She agrees that even a future Prime Minister might need her
help one day.
On campus they are constructing a new map of Bangladesh. The
Principal is at pains to dig through airfield bricks to plant mango trees – in every
future the past takes shelter. But there’s a lot of future in Feni.
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| Building a new Bangladesh at Feni Girls' Cadet College, on the site of the old airport. |
[1] Mahadev Chakravarti (ed.), Administrative Report of Tripura State
since 1902, Gyan Publishing House, 1994, Vol. 4, p.1743
