Sayam U Chowdhury

Have you ever been to our hills, deep enough to know its real inhabitants? I suspect very few of us have been beyond the boundaries of the hill-towns.

Have you seen the barn owl in the moonlight, inaudibly searching for a field mouse to feed its young or the flying squirrel leaping from one tree to another filtering the light and the shadow of the moon? Have you seen an egret flying into the moon, or just one dwarf tree standing alone in the plains under the full moon, creating a black and white negative of its daytime image?

Dhaka was surprisingly fogless as I headed southward towards the sea at dawn that late December. It was the last mode of transport for the day to get to Hatia Island when I reached the 'ghat'. The destination, Domar Char, the wave island, one of two detached limbs of Hatia Island, the other being Nijhum Dwip, the silent island.

Bangladesh has seen enough damage to its resources even prior and post 1971 and now 42 years after liberation, perhaps it is time to stop the selfish agendas, cutting and destroying and initiate the restoration what was once already there, for at least the chance of a greener tomorrow.

Far from the Bay, along the foothills of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, a few trees still stand tall and have witnessed hundreds of winters, summers and monsoons. Still they propel water with love to the village surrounded by their green turf, they provide shade while we chop them down into pieces; the trees offer us fruits to eat or give blossoms that add colour and fragrance to our horizons. While searching for peace from the uncompassionate, unsafe, unyielding, unfair and urban means of city life, I wandered through the thin vegetation and empty hilltops.

Here in the Waterland, people are yet to learn the trick of hiding their true faces behind well-polished material masks. They are not crowned with higher education nor do they wear foreign fragrances to veil the magnitude or odour of the little or the immoral sins they commit. When I looked at those fishermen who returned from fishing in 'no-fishing areas', I could clearly see the guilt and the fear reflecting in their eyes and expressions.