Who are those that whisper?

[Samrat Sarkar]

Then I grew up. The age-old rhythm of the simple village life was greatly disturbed by the open market policy and globalization. Many of our neighbours of the village moved towards the bigger cities with bigger dreams in their eyes for a better living. The small canoes remained idle on the elevated land on the eastern side of the Beel and gradually started gathering moss on them. And modern way of agricultural activities started flourishing on the eastern bank of the Beel.

Slowly, the poison of the new industrial activities followed the modern cultivation near the Beel. Then there sprang up a number of human settlements. Some concrete pillars were erected on the north side, in the dense bushes of the reeds. By then sky-high electric towers stood boldly in the middle of the Boisa Beel. Truckloads of river sand started pouring in day and night to develop the land and thereby to choke the heart of the Beel. One day a group of unknown people laid a measuring tape in front of ‘Saheb Bagan’ where large flocks of swamphens kept on skirmishing all the time. People from the big city came at nights and threatened dire action if anybody went against their will. That was it, the construction of boundary wall continued unhindered. The Boisa Beel started being engulfed little by little by the Land-Hawks.

The Boisa Beel, which once flew through my heart and through my veins, was stopped by the political flags and by the dirty tussles between opposite groups. Many of our neighbours and friends changed colours in the pretext of their livelihood. Among many known people my private tutor also disappeared in the oblivion from my life. But I could not obliterate his words and his famous sentence from my memory which often brought me right into the center of the Mother Nature, close to the canals, channels, lowland water bodies and swamps of our village. That is where I always felt at home, safe and secure and that is where I could make new discoveries.