Today was one of those days worth remembering. To be honest, these are probably the things I will live on when I am old and have time to fill.
There was a seminar today at Bon Bhaban, the Forest Department headquarters in Agargaon, on updating the Red Data List of Bangladesh’s plants and on controlling alien plants in some of the country’s protected areas. I was there, but how I came to have an invitation is a long story in itself. If I started on it I would have to go back three days earlier, so I will leave it out. People already complain that my posts run too long and are hard to get through. It is not that I do it on purpose; one thing leads to another and before I know it the post has grown. And a story cannot really be told in pieces, it feels disjointed even to me.
Anyway, enough of this preamble. Let me pull today’s memories out of my head one by one.
From Rampura to Agargaon
I woke up to hear that Siam would not be able to come to the programme, which put me in a bit of a low mood. Hoping he would at least make it to the real project, I set off for the TV Centre at Rampura. Samrat bhai, Robin bhai, Fahad bhai and I were to meet there and go on to Agargaon together. The programme was in the Hoimonti Auditorium at Bon Bhaban. Chatting with the older brothers, with the Uber windows down and the breeze off Hatirjheel in our faces, we reached on time.
It was good to see quite a few of our department’s teachers there. And the sir whose class was scheduled for today was at the programme too; I cannot tell you how happy that made me. After a while everyone took their seats and we were told that there might not be room for all, so those of us not on the Red Data List side should go down to the Korobi Conference Hall. That was when I understood that after the opening session the seminar would split in two, and nobody could be in both. Nothing to be done, so down we went.
Projectors in the Korobi Hall and the network back home
In the Korobi Hall my first thought was that the country really has gone digital. The arrangement was not bad at all: three projectors facing three ways across the hall, and everything happening upstairs was being shown live over Zoom. It went well at first, but soon the sound system started acting up. The variety of strange noises it produced cannot be described to anyone who was not in the room. Then the sound was fixed and a new problem began. Network unstable, the screen kept saying, stopping and starting.
During the pandemic, when I was at our village home taking classes on Zoom, I lost count of how many times I got disconnected in a one-hour class. It used to leave me very frustrated. Today all those months of frustration came to an end. If a government building with every modern facility cannot keep a broadband connection steady between an upstairs room and a downstairs one, then what was there for me to feel bad about, sitting in a village?
We were rescued from all this when an official came and said, those of you down here, come on up, there are a few scattered seats left. I was up in one jump and ran to the Hoimonti Auditorium on the first floor. There I found the Forest Minister along with the Deputy Minister, the head of the National Herbarium and many others. The opening session began. Several of them spoke on various matters, describing the present state of the country and discussing what kind of plans there might be for the future. Time passed before we knew it and that part of the programme was over.
The real programme and a five-hundred-taka surprise
At the tea break we picked up our snacks and went back to the Korobi Conference Hall. Now the real programme began. Which plants are invasive, on what basis they can be identified as harmful, which plants are alien and how they can be recognised: I learnt a lot. One professor said something that surprised me. The people who first brought in eucalyptus (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) and akashmoni (Acacia auriculiformis) as useful trees and encouraged everyone to plant them are the same people now urging us not to plant them. So you cannot say the moment a new plant goes into the ground if it will do good or harm; that only shows some time later. And another thing: a plant that is useful in another country may not be useful in ours.
Something else struck me. I assume the best plant scientists in the country were at this seminar, but there seemed to be a lack of communication among them. Perhaps there are only one or two seminars like this a year, and those two and a half or three hours are the only time they come together. Several issues were left without any resolution; the time ran out and the questions stayed unsettled. Who knows when they will be decided. Then again, I could be wrong.
Anyway, professors from one university after another presented their valuable ideas. In the middle of it a funny thing happened. I saw a register being passed from hand to hand, coming our way. A list of who was present, I thought. When it came closer my eyes popped. Next to the names there was a column for money. Fahad bhai was flipping back through the earlier pages to see what people had paid. Everyone had put down 500 taka. Robin bhai did the same. I asked the official sitting in front of us and he said the same thing. What could I do; I wrote my name and 500 taka and passed it on, working out in my head that I had just paid 500 taka to attend a seminar. I felt a little regret too; had I known beforehand I might not have come. Then I thought, money goes in so many directions, let this go for a seminar as informative and well run as this one.
A little later an official went round handing an envelope to each of us. What a surprise that was. I pulled out what looked like a slip of paper and it was a crisp 500-taka note. I laughed until I could not stop.
The lunch bag and a bilimbi tree
We did not have to sit much longer. The seminar ended soon after and the lunch bags arrived. I opened mine and found the bowls of food arranged like a stage set. The sight took me straight back to meals at our department. Only Allah knows how much longer the department will stay closed. After a long time I finished lunch sitting with the older brothers, chatting away. All I could think was how long it had been since we all ate lunch sitting on the grass at Zahir’s canteen.
After a short rest it was time to say goodbye to Bon Bhaban. We were strolling out through the gate when a bilimbi tree (Averrhoa bilimbi) caught my eye. Being a small person I could not reach the fruit. Dipon helped me pick a few. Then Robin bhai and Dipon went off in two directions, and Fahad bhai, Samrat bhai and I set out to find a CNG home.
The hunt for an empty CNG
The three of us stood in front of the IDB Bhaban and there was not a CNG to be had. After waiting a while we crossed the road to the other side. Every one we had seen on this side was full; not one was empty. We waited there too, and then Samrat bhai said, let’s take a rickshaw to Farmgate, we will find a CNG there. On the way to Farmgate we saw so many CNGs that for some reason we got down at Bijoy Sarani. That was a foolish move. Countless CNGs went past and not one was empty. We stood there a while longer and, seeing no other way, started walking. Through mud and water we walked to the link road just before Farmgate. The same story again: no empty CNG anywhere.
This time Samrat bhai simply sat down. He called an Uber and the first one cancelled; a second accepted and then, for whatever reason, cancelled too. Suddenly he spotted an empty CNG and shouted. As we reached it another empty one pulled up right there, which seemed a piece of luck. The first driver asked too much, so bhai refused and let him go, counting on the second. When we told the second one where we were going he said he would not go, and left. We would even have paid what the first one had asked, but he did not look back. Gone was gone. We were completely deflated. In the end a CNG was somehow managed and we got home.
It was a good day, and it will stay with me. Finally, my thanks to Jashim Uddin sir. It is because he gave us the chance to attend such a fine seminar that I learnt so much today.
A few weeks later we set off for Rema-Kalenga. Those days have their own story in the Days in Rema-Kalenga series.
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