East Rajabazar lockdown

From today midnight we are going to experience a unique moment in Dhaka. The neighbourhood where I stay with my family, East Rajabazar, has been declared a corona red zone. I shall not be allowed to move around. This decision has been taken by the Dhaka City Corporation considering the intensity of corona cases.
Last one week I had been attending office from my mother's Mirpur home. Meeting the office requirements from home is a very demanding exercise. One has to be constantly on phone calls. This is what we call a new normal in life. Every moment we glance through the newspaper in search of a news about a scientific breakthrough on corona treatment; we are desperate to find news that corona vaccine has been invented, it is ready for use by the human beings; by men, women and children.
Every day we get a news of an infection who is near to us as if the evil spirit is attacking us from all quarters. Even those who survive tell us that the sufferings know no limits. Let nobody ever suffer this disease! Let nobody suffer any disease at this critical time. The doctors and nurses are scared of encountering any more patients. To them, any new case is a potential corona case!
Plenty of lives are lost every moment. Precious lives are cut short. Funerals after funerals. There is no empty space at the graveyards. We are praying for an end to this untimely eternal journey. O Almighty help us get over this uncertain times! You have gifted us lives, let us complete it as our forefathers did.
The entire world is almost crippled. Except the internet there is no connecting force. Friends and families are detached for months. In the modern age we imagined of a time like this only in the science fictions.

Kapasia, July 2019

Alas! Last two years I never had an opportunity to travel to Kapasia where I lived up to the 10th grade! So much change all around. I had a glance at the Kapasia Pilot High School, my alma mater, after how many years I can't even calculate. Once a rural area now a busy township in the making. So many buildings here and there. The old muddy paths are hardly there.
I called up my school chum Shoeb, a revered science teacher now. We had a short walk on the bridge connecting Kapasia with Targaon. During my days at the High School (1986-92), the bridge was in the dreams of the villagers. Every morning I used to reach school taking a boat ride. Three decades down the line, I realize it was quite an adventure for a boy who didn't know how to swim. I remember during the monsoon days the mighty Shitalakhya would be full to the brim. One way boat ride would last for almost one hour whereas during the dry season it would be just fifteen to twenty minutes.

One day during monsoon, I probably risked life to reach school when none except me turned up! All classes were suspended that day. We escaped thanks to the extra-ordinary handling of the boat by the "captain". I wonder how lifestyle changes! When the bridge was not there, I, a non-swimmer high school boy used to take the boat ride twice a day almost every day of the class year. Now, since I haven't mastered the technique of swimming whenever go back to the village I am discouraged by my family members not to adventure with the boat ride. Is life more precious now than it was then?
When I was in the eighth grade, one day I failed to appear in an exam as the local people in our end of the river were observing a shut-down over some local politics. All the three hours of the exam time I was feeling restless. This is the only time in my student life I was absent from an exam hall.

Host officer to the prospective UN Secretary General

On May 26, 2008, the then UNHCR (now UN Secretary General) Mr. António Guterres visited Bangladesh. I was his host officer. I remember we visited Rohingya camps in Cox's Bazar. Eleven years down the line, I recollect this episode today as I delegate the job of a host officer to a junior colleague of mine at the Ministry. Mr. Luis Miguel Etchevehere, Secretary of Government of Agrobusiness, Government of Argentina is undertaking a four-day visit to Bangladesh. 

I was sharing with the host officer designate my experiences in that very role. The officials who guided me that occasion are in even senior positions. With passage of time, some responsibilities recur and some responsibilities transition. I was lucky to collect the images of the field visit during a re-visit to Cox's Bazar after many years when the Documentation officer cum cameraman recognized me.  

Sending Young Bangladeshi Footballers to Brazil

It was a memorable day at the Bangladesh Football Federation. We eventually succeeded to send four talented Bangladeshi young footballers to the Gama Club of Brazil. BFF organized a reception for the selected booters. BFF also offered us a lunch. Hon'ble Youth and Sports Minister, Youth and Sports Secretary, President of BFF, Brazilian Ambassador to Bangladesh spoke on the occasion. We have a dream to strengthen Bangladesh-Brazil cooperation in the arena of Football. A delegation of the Gama Club is expected to visit Bangladesh soon.
We wanted to send the footballers to Brazil for a year long training. We could not do that due to age restrictions. Instead we plan to implement a permanent training programme with the support of Brazil in Bangladesh.
It is a very modest initiative. However, we are confident that it will have a much deeper impact in the field of our soccer which is immensely popular in Bangladesh.
The media coverage that we have received in implementing the programme was truly inspirational. Assistant Secretary (Americas Wing), Ministry of Foreign Affairs was involved in the programme from the very beginning. He was very passionate about it.

Australia and New Zealand

To attend the Pacific Environmental Security Forum I was in Wellington, New Zealand from 20-25 May 2019. The participants stayed in two hotels in Wellington: Bolton and Rydges. The venue of the Forum was Harbourside. It was a 15 minute walk from the Hotel to the conference venue. However I was too lazy to miss out the beautiful walkway of Wellington except for one morning when I missed the bus for a faction of a minute. It was a great discovery that unlike us in Dhaka, most of the working New Zealanders reach office in the morning and return home in the evening walking!
The opening ceremony of the Forum was graced by Honourable Ron Mark, Minister of Defence, New Zealand and Honourable Scott P. Brown, US Ambassador to New Zealand. There was a presentation on Bangladesh-India Sundarban Region Cooperation Initiative: A Vision of Joint Platform by Dr. Uttam Kumar Sinha, Fellow and Managing Editor, Strategic Analysis, Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses, India. Mr. Sanjeev Pandey, Programme Management Specialist, Office of Defense Cooperation, US Embassy, Kathmandu shared his networking experiences as a US Embassy official. There was a group exercise for the all the South Asian participants together. I was nominated to present the findings of the group exercise. I was feeling a bit nervous to address a gathering of around 200 people with mostly defense and environment exposure.  At the Icebreaker Reception of the Evening I had an opportunity to briefly interact with the Honourable Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, New Zealand. The Reception took place at The Grand Hall at Parliament.
On my way back to Bangladesh I spend two days in Sydney. I had an opportunity to spend nights at the make-shift Consulate office in a rented hotel room. Though I heard stories from different colleagues about the challenges of opening up new missions in any new place; this time I observed it first hand.I saw the Australian Maritime Museum at the Darling Harbour and the World famous Sydney Opera. My foreign service batchmate Masud Bhai and his family were generous to give me a nice Pizza treat at a Darling Harbour restaurant. I had an Uber ride in Sydney. The taxi driver appeared to be well-conversant about Bangladesh's cricket team.
The morning I left the make-shift Bangladesh Consulate for the airport, I had an opportunity to avail the Consulate's brand new Staff Car. I came to know this was the first ever protocol duty of the Consulate with their brand new BMW. The Consul General himself saw me off at the airport. How lucky I am!

With New Zealand Foreign Minister Honourable Winston Peters 

EMBASSY OPEN HOUSE 2012

5 May 2012

EMBASSY OPEN HOUSE

My third open house at this Embassy. I remember last year I quoted Sorojini Naido to describe the festive mood that prevails at the Embassy premise during the  open house. After a hiatus of several months I am trying to return to my blog by writing something on the Open House.

For my daughter (now three and a quarter years old) Ushashi today is the day to have henna tattoo on her hands and wrists. For my wife Swarna, this is an opportunity to have a glance on the food and fancy ornaments from other countries that she has not visited yet. For myself, it was a good meeting some foreigners who somehow nurture interests in unknown place and people.  I had a chat with William Francis, an Associate Deputy Administrator of US Department of Agriculture. He showed a keen interest in our garment and jute sectors.   

Ushashi in reality

When Ushashi was first born; barely did I know, between her second and third birthdays, I shall not be seeing her for nine long months. After completing the immigration and customs of the Dulles IAD, when finally the mother and daughter reached the spot of waiting greeters on a December 2011 afternoon I initially had to struggle for making an eye contact with my daughter. That was due to the imposing ‘made in Bangladesh’ that her mother put on her in anticipation of a chilly DC exterior. In a lot of issues the afternoon marked a set of ‘for the first times’ for me. It was a negotiation with a circumstance to which I was, indeed, probably not even familiar.
Because Ushashi’s stay in Bangladesh got extended to an unexpected spell of nine months and because seasons have changed in the meantime meaning a lot of adjustments for this innocent baby, all the clothes her skinny body could accommodate for the Dhaka DC flight were “Bangladesh made”. I saw her in clothes I just never saw her putting on before: in terms of size particularly. Cyber technology unfortunately did not connect the father’s end to the daughter’s. Except for the couple of still photographs that my cousin sent to me on Ushashi’s birthday all those nine months she was only in my imagination, off and on assisted by her voices over telephone. When I called her mother the mid-night of 11th December, she fortunately took the phone set and ‘accepted’ my wish.
All nine months what I would do whenever I would bump into any parents with kids of Ushashi’s age was asking the baby’s date of birth. Dulles IAD was the venue of a tough negotiation for a father connecting the daughter in imagination to the one in reality.
I wish Rabindranath had authored a sequel to his Kabuliwala based on the famous protagonist’s reunion with his own Mini! I know there are many fathers in modern Asia, Africa and the Middle East looking for such a script.