Basila & Char Washpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh
I've gone there so many times and now I have to let go.... how?.... I know its not a pleasant thing to do, but I have to.... Basila had been my quickest getaway place for years.... one of the few places in Dhaka where you can watch a nice sunset..... whenever I got bored with hectic life, but didn't have enough time to manage on weekends, Basila was the place to go.... TTL's first photowalk was there.... that was back on 5th September 2008.... the Third Buriganga Bridge was still under construction.... lots of memories.... Gazi Bhai, Rumi Bhai and me went there too many times.... also went there regularly with others....
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| From Basila & Char Washpur, May Day 2011 |
Ail Hossain is one of the handfull of boatmen still operating with their rowing boats.... he's been doing this for more than 40 years, and doesn't find any other alternative.... most of others have already changed profession
I've seen the change of life around that bridge.... the boatmen of Basila had been my subject for some time..... but with time, their numbers dwindled; so did my photography around them... the Buriganga had never presented itself as a romantic place for photography.... but thats the only place where you could see the sun going down.... with all that concrete hiding the horizon, there was no other place to go... the afternoon sun illuminating the Buriganga Bridge had always been a lovely sight... it reminded us that there still was hope if we wanted to do something....
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| From Basila & Char Washpur, May Day 2011 |
the maze of pipes and bamboo pillars now dwarf the River Buriganga....
the place on the other side of the bridge at Char Washpur was a great place to do some photography.... at least, we did find some photos during the last couple of years.... there are quite a few brick-fields around that place.... they presented a gloomy backdrop for some environment-theme photography.... there were landfill projects going on over there while we did photography.... now the landfill finally caught up with us and as it seems, thats probably the end of photography for us at that place.... there would be no way to snap the Buriganga Bridge illuminated by the afternoon sun.... the landfill is now owned by some industrial unit, probably a power plant...
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| From Basila & Char Washpur, May Day 2011 |
it was May Day.... but that didn't stop work on the embankment for the landfill... it probably is the site for a power plant...
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| From Basila & Char Washpur, May Day 2011 |
some idle moments for the workers.....
when we reached the other side of the Buriganga, we found some embankment being constructed over there..... we snapped a few shots over there with the workers.... it was May Day, which is why there were lesser number of people working, but work certainly didn't stop.... there were marks of caterpillars everywhere, making the landscape look scarred... the landfill made the river look even smaller.... and with the sand-bearing vessels unloading their sands through long pipes, the river was hard to find.....
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| From Basila & Char Washpur, May Day 2011 |
there were caterpillar marks everywhere..... a symbol of a mechanical world devouring the Nature....
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| From Basila & Char Washpur, May Day 2011 |
workers at the landfill are witness to this monster.... a monster of our own creation....
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| From Basila & Char Washpur, May Day 2011 |
it was really hard to find the actual course of the river.... most of the river has dried up..... and this is the driest part of the year, aggravating the situation even more.... we were staring at a dead river....
we were evicted.... yes, we were.... all on a sudden a manager with a tough face came up and told us to leave.... he even rebuked the worker who featured in one of our shots.... we probably didn't miss a lot of photography on that day, but the very fact that we got evicted from there was a bad memory for us.... but that bad memory is not even close to the missing opportunities in the coming days.... the snaps we got there until that day would remain as memory..... these are history.... history of Basila and Char Washpur.....
