Himchhari's Live Kitchen

Sun Dancer Cafe & Restaurant, Himchhari, Cox's Bazar.

 

S.H. Mahbub, entrepreneur.

For some people it’s the geography of the capital which appeals. They may wish to climb the corporate ladder or be near the centre of national decision-making. For others there’s nowhere better than a farm with clean air, simplicity and open space. Still others are enticed by the call of the sea.

When S.H. Mahbub of Kishoreganj arrived in Cox’s Bazar for a vacation in 1999, little could he imagine he’d stay there. “Cox’s Bazar has the atmosphere of a never ending fair,” he says, “People are always coming and going. I like this the best.” 

Marine Drive, Himchhari.

Instead of returning home he took a job at a guest house, later a hotel and finally at the renowned Mermaid Café. With fifteen years of hospitality experience behind him, two years ago Mahbub decided to branch out, to bring his own brand of dining to the beachside Himchhari restaurant strip.

The restaurant strip at Himchhari, between the beach and the hills.

 

Sunset over the Bay of Bengal.

“In most Cox’s Bazar restaurants you can view either the sea or the sunset but not both,” he says while sitting in the relaxed wooden-built restaurant he established. “Here you can sit and watch the sun dance, which is why I called it the Sun Dancer.”

Along with a few neighbouring restaurants, Sun Dancer pursues the modern culinary philosophy of a ‘live’ kitchen. Mahbub explains that it’s something like a live cricket match where the action occurs right before the customers’ eyes.

The beach at Himchhari, part of the longest sea beach in the world.

There’s an open menu that takes into account each customer’s wishes: one can basically order anything. Mahbub says available cooking styles include fried, curried, bhuna masala, grilled, baked and steamed; in international, local and traditional food categories. “But we only serve fresh sea fish, not project fish,” he says.

Wherever possible, dishes are prepared from scratch with fresh ingredients, in the kitchen that’s in full view of diners. “Guests can even go in and cook for themselves if they want,” he says, noting that the restaurant sometimes features celebrity chefs.

S.H. Mahbub is hopeful the live kitchen and relaxed atmosphere will attract customers to the Sun Dancer.

 

The Sun Dancer, Himchhari, Cox's Bazar.

He hopes Sun Dancer can welcome customers in formal attire as easily as those who’ve just stepped off the beach, aiming to create an information and entertainment hub that showcases the district through tour options and visiting musicians performing rural, philosophical and life-related songs. Fire spinners regularly display their skills.

But the road hasn’t been smooth with political turmoil leading a tourism nosedive in Cox’s Bazar earlier this year and a regular nine-month low season to contend with. In an attempt to extend tourism potential the town hosts full moon parties in June and July when the waves are high. At Sun Dancer this brings in some Bangladeshi and Indian customers during the traditional off-season.

Despite such business difficulties Mahbub is pleased with his life choice. “Every day is new here,” he says, “I came to Cox’s Bazar today. It always feels like that, even now.”

Marine Drive. Himchhari is a popular spot for beach-side dining.

The restaurants at Himchhari.

Hibiscus welcomes early spring to Himchhari Beach.

Himchhari Beach with sandbags to prevent erosion.

Himchhari, a part of the world's longest sea beach.

This article is published in The Daily Star, here: Redefining Hospitality and Cuisine at Himchhari

Relaxing at the Sun Dancer.

VF Traveller: Tonga Music Festival

VF Traveller takes Village Flute beyond Bangladesh and out into the world. Here, aspiring and established writers and photographers can present a village that is special to them, in their language, from their perspective, from their neck of the woods...

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Featured village: Chikuni, Zambia. 

By Charles Mafa.

Audience gathered for the Tonga Music Festival 2014. Chikuni, Zambia.

I have been to Chikuni in Monze town, south of Zambia’s capital, on several occasions, but my recent trip to the Tonga Musical Festival stands out in more ways than one. I came face to face with the richness of Tonga culture. Even so, as someone reminded me this was “just the tip of the iceberg.” There is much to the Tonga tradition.

True to his words, this was just a musical festival – a platform to share the Tonga cultural heritage through music and dance. But as noted by Hans Christian Anderson “where words fail, music speaks”.

On a Friday, the first day of the musical festival, Tonga patriots and others begin to assemble for the two-day annual musical festival. Individuals from the Tonga ethnic group and others gathered beneath the grey heavens to partake in the music and dance that define them as a people. One by one, individuals and groups take to the podium to participate in the music concert.

When it is time for veteran Patrick Haampongo to perform, with his Kalumbu, (a traditional musical instrument made of a stick attached to a calabash) he plays it with such energy, inter-spacing its sound with his voice. Kalumbu is not just played for fun. In the past it was played by a young man who wanted to get married.

“When a young man is about to get married he has to play Kalumbu the whole night and the parents will ask him the following morning, have you seen someone?” says Jyde Hamoonga, one of the event organisers. “If he says no, then they will take it upon themselves to find someone for him.”

Women singing at the Tonga Music Festival 2014. Chikuni, Zambia.

Later a group of women play what is known as bukonkoolo. Sitting in a semi-circle, they are beating two pounding sticks. This kind of music is usually played indoors during funerals to comfort the widow. For men, during the time of mourning, they tend to use poetry. They will not wail like the women but would rather play the namalwa – the poetry drum. They will be lamenting the loss of the beloved one as the poetry is performed.

Even the attire for each performance is different. The girls are wearing necklaces made of beads around their necks and on top of their vests as they perform ciyayaale. This tune is normally sung in the morning by girls who are in seclusion, training for the Nkolola initiation ceremony. The dance performed by girls who have come of age involves movement of the legs as a way of flexing the muscles.    

Music and poetry very much form a part of the Tonga tradition. Through this annual music festival, the Tonga people are exploring the museum of their past and reconnecting it with the present. Amidst shouts of Nkosaadi - meaning concert, several hundred guests dance and jiggle, voices blending and sentiments united. This fourteenth anniversary of one of the country’s largest cultural events demonstrates the spirit of harmony and joyfulness in those who call this land home.

Says one event organiser: “This is a combination of poetry and traditional music. It speaks of the Tonga people’s livelihood from birth to death. You have got songs, tradition and culture that is used at specific times.”

The Tonga Musical Festival is a brainchild of Chikuni Community Radio, with the primary aim of promoting a sense of belonging and cultural identity amongst the Tonga speaking people. The festival is not only for the old, it facilitates the passing down of traditions by the older generation to the young ones. The family-oriented event is a delightful coming together of all ages of the Tonga people with a wide diversity of traditions. The carnival has since been formalised into this annual event that attracts people from far and wide.

The Tonga people of Zambia and Zimbabwe (also called 'Batonga') are a Bantu ethnic group of southern Zambia and neighbouring northern Zimbabwe, and to a lesser extent, Mozambique. 

They are related to the Batoka who are part of the Tokaleya people in the same area, and also to the Tonga people of Malawi. 

In southern Zambia the Tonga are patrons of the Kafue Twa. The Twa people from the Kafue Wetlands of Zambia are one of several fishing and hunter gatherer castes living in a patron-client relationship with farming Bantu peoples like the Tonga, across central and southern Africa. 

An old man playing a traditional instrument at the festival.

Some of the key traditional tribal practices

In traditional Tongaland there were strict preparations undertaken by boys and girls who were coming of age and reaching sexual maturity. These traditional preparations were done in private by the tribal clan and these were the methods through which boys and girls were taught about sex and relationships.

Gobelo was a short preparation undertaken by boys to explain to them the roles, duties and rights in marriage.

Nkolola is a much longer preparation period, of a few months, undertaken by girls to teach them how to satisfy their husband sexually and their role in marriage. Nkolola literally means, “in the hut”, which is where girls are taken for these preparations. On completion, girls’ new sexual “maturity” is celebrated with an Nkolola ceremony involving the wider community.

Over the last few decades this kind of traditional preparation has been decreasing and Gobelo, for boys, has nearly died out. Because talking about sex and relationships is completely culturally inappropriate outside of Gobelo and Nkolola, the decline in these traditional preparations have left a gap in young people’s education which is having an impact on cultural attitudes and expectations of sex and relationships.

With no culturally appropriate alternatives, young people are left to form their ideas about sex and relationships from the media: from television and more recently, videos and DVDs, and through access to pornography. What these portray about sex and relationships is not an accurate or helpful and only serves to fuel myths, misconceptions and attitudes that promote unrealistic expectations of sex, promiscuity and ultimately lead to unfulfilling sexual relationships. 

The Tonga Musical Festival is a platform for older people to try and help the young generation to connect with the past through traditional music. The event which is in its fourteenth year was started in the year 2000 by a local community radio station.

Performing on stage at the Tonga Music Festival 2014.

About the author & photographer: Charles Mafa is an award-winning investigative journalist from Zambia who generously granted his time to Village Flute. You can visit his personal blog site and his other blog.

"I would like to help people to know what their rights are - to investigate shortfalls and fill the accountability gap that exists between commitments and actions by those who govern us." 

The Song Catcher

Dumdee village in Narail.

Knowledge, I want to know your real name...

Bahmini Mohon Roy has reached an age. His hair is grey. He sits on the mud veranda of his house in Tabra village, Narail, waiting to speak. There is a lot to speak of and he takes a moment to consider where to start.

You think of the city mornings when half-asleep pupils file into the microbuses that circle. You’ve seen them on their honking, jam-crawling ways to school. Maybe the a/c is broken and maybe it’s sweltering inside.

A small stage in Dumdee, for Bijoy Sarkar events.

You think of the villages where the only thing circling might be a pigeon flock, where students set out on foot. From historical Dumdee village it’s a long walk to the Tabra schoolyard – and you’ve heard that when Monsoon arrives she enforces a nouka-boat necessity on them. But Roy the teacher, he lives in Tabra, so the worst the rain can do for him is to make squelching muddy steps towards the school gate. It’s obvious: the paths leading to knowledge are many.

“We are calling You different names; some say Bhagawan and some say Allah...” Roy begins. He’s reciting the lyrics of a song by Bijoy Sarkar, his Guru. “I want to know Your real name.”

There’s enough to learn from textbooks – sure – to copy into notebooks and memorise. But also from birds, from trees and from rivers are things to learn. The sun can have something to utter and neither are the farm fields silent if you care to listen.

Baul singer Bijoy Sarkar.

While SM Sultan wrought knowledge onto Narail’s canvas from all he saw his friend Sarkar listened. As he caught and was caught by songs he wrote Narail’s score. From some time after his birth 111 years ago in Dumdee, Sarkar plotted the course of Baul wisdom, what has turned up once again, just now, on that Tabra veranda. Roy has just begun to open that knowledge treasure chest.

“Vaitarani and Pul-e-Siraat are. Allah, if I can cross the Pul-e-Siraat easily...” are the lyrics of another Sarkar song, referring to the Hindu river and the Muslim bridge to be faced after death. The righteous will see nectar-like water in the Vaitarani, the sinful will see blood. The Pul-e-Siraat is thinner than a hair, sharper than a sword and hotter than fire – yet the righteous will pass quickly.

“He believed everyone should go the same way,” Roy continues in prose, “That’s why he wrote this kind of song. He wanted the whole world to be successful.”

“His name is a man’s belief,” Roy recites. Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and Muslim – in the human religion it’s obvious: the paths leading to knowledge are many.

It was 1965 and Roy had just passed his SSC examination when his father thought to take him about the villages to share the good news. He took him to Bijoy Sarkar’s house in Dumdee – they met for the first time.

Bahmini Mohon Roy with his wife, Tabra village.

And as Roy recites in this later age it returns to his eyes a curious youthfulness. His face is calming and even while animated seems to harbour a resident kindness. There’s something touching, something indefinable... Does it border on the eternal? You can feel it. It’s exciting.

“As the world is now so it shall continue. I will go leaving this beauty behind.”

“These wonderful words,” says Roy, “the meaning that every human life shall pass. He wanted us to think more about our souls.”

Lyrics and prose, the flow of Roy’s words continues – as though certain lines have pressed themselves upon Roy’s lips, needing to be told at a particular moment. It’s like he wants to express all of Sarkar’s life and lines at once, in a rich, overwhelming and unified oneness.

Roy performs a Bijoy Sarkar song.

Sarkar wrote songs about nature: rivers, birds, waterholes called beels, trees and forests. According to Roy, Sarkar captured about 1800 songs before his passing in 1985. There are 150 in one book and 250 in another, he says. A further 450 exist in the memories of his followers; many other songs have, like their composer, already left their beauty behind.

In 1971 as Bijoy Sarkar moved about, recounts Roy, it happened one day that razakars stole some papers of his lyrics. “He tried a lot to get them back, but he couldn’t. After that, what he could remember he wrote again.”

In 1971 both Sarkar and Roy separately fled to India. Roy took with him 100 Sarkar songs, noted down – prized possessions – in order to save them. He found Sarkar at his new home in India and when he arrived there was a small stage set up in anticipation that the bard would give a concert. Sarkar addressed him, “Pundit Moshai, from where did you come?” “I am living just beside your home,” said Roy, “From there I came to meet you. From there I came to sing your songs.”

“We need another banana leaf...” called Sarkar in that house at that time when banana leaves were used as plates. He was insistent, as always, on food and pleasantries coming first – How is your family? How are your finances? Later there could be music. Later there could be the wisdom in Baul songs.

“You will come on stage with me,” Sarkar said – to Roy a great honour. And he sat beside his Guru as the concert got underway.

“Mainly we love our parents and family,” says Roy, “but not strangers, not in the same way. We can love them too, but not in the same way. Yet it’s true. Pagol Bijoy – Bijoy the fool – thought everybody was the same.” From his followers he had been gifted the nickname Pagol Bijoy, certain as they were that the man was possessed by God.

“One day the house bird will go to the sky if he gets the chance.”

Roy at the harmonium.

“You would never think about it, but it’s true that your taken-for-granted faithful pet bird will die one day. Some of us might even think that lyric was about a wife leaving from the house,” says Roy, “but he did not give this kind of message. We did not think about the soul, which he meant.” When asked how he came to write such songs he said it was simple logic that the human soul would depart.

You wonder if there is a pet bird in a cage hanging somewhere on Roy’s long veranda.

Songs caught Sarkar or he caught them – in the morning, in the evening; he even met them in his dreams. “Sometimes he would dream songs,” says Roy, “and it would wake him and immediately he would note them down.”

The conversation meanders still further into the harmonious depths of the song catcher’s soul. Roy tells of a time at the last of Choitro or the beginning of Boishakh many years ago when Roy’s son was deathly ill. Sarkar came on three consecutive days to pray at the hour of Fajr – and it wasn’t easy to move about in those days – but Roy’s son recovered surely enough.

Biplob Biswas and Brahmini Mohon Roy.

More remarkable is the history of 45-year-old Biplob Biswas who has come to join us. When he was aged six he could not walk and his mother appealed to Sarkar to see him. Sarkar went there, touched his legs and blessed him, promising that after two days he would be able to walk again. And it happened – just as the bard foretold.

The harmonium is brought and both Roy and Biswas ready themselves. The first notes begin and their faces, each in turn, fill with emotion – uplifted and overflowing. There’s something indefinable there, on the veranda. Does it border on the eternal? You feel it. It’s exciting.

Knowledge, I want to know your real name...

The emotion of a Bijoy Sarkar song. Spiritual and uplifting.

Biplob Biswas plays harmonium.

Temple in Dumdee featuring Bijoy Sarkar's photograph.

Bijoy Sarkar gave to Narail its score.

This article published in Star Magazine, here: The Song Catcher

*song lyrics are challenging to translate. Please forgive these humble efforts.