Dhaka, city of mosques (increasing) and canals (decreasing), at one point, boasted a flat landscape that allowed the horizon to stretch. One’s horizon, as it stands right now, is no more than Bartleby’s brick wall: Allegory for a very real imprisonment.
My childhood, while it does not stretch as far back that it would not remember the first high-rise building which littered the city’s landscape, still remembers street cricket and verdure patches of grass on which my feet tread. My childhood, though recent, remembers a somewhat open world.
A world closing
I can speak mostly for Dhanmondi, but growing up I had access to three fields within my vicinity: On Road 8 in Kalabagan, Road 4, and Road 12/A (that is, Abahani maath).
Dependent on time and access and people, we would, if not throughout the week, but at least on the weekends, find ourselves giving up sleep and sweat, thumping stumps into the not-so-well-kempt, muddy ground or hitting footballs over the fence and asking compassionate bystanders to throw the ball back to us.
These little common scenarios, pieces of intangible heritage, I have inherited in memory, but not in practice. Throughout my 20s, I saw as, one by one, each of these fields was shut down: First went down Road 4, which was, if I recall correctly, always rather private, and only for residents in the immediate vicinity. Then went Road 8. And last, Abahani.
Some of these fields now boast names which sound unfamiliar to my ear, foreign to my tongue. Sheikh Kamal Krira Complex, for example, which has been the new official name for Abahani for a while (though no one calls it such, much like many of Dhaka’s inherited nuances, and Dhanmondi’s “new” road numbers), and will host the Bengal Classical Fest this year.
The lack of fields and access to open playgrounds has, in many ways, fortified the death of childhood in our capital
While I enjoy fests as much as the next person, and am glad that the Bengal Classical Fest is being held, the news shifted a long-held perception of Abahani maath: From where children and young adults would go to run and play to an almost privately owned enclosure -- reserved, expensive, exclusionary.
All those children: Where will they go now?
The price of progress
The unfathomable urbanisation and subsequent expansion of Dhaka sees its victims not only coughing for fresh air and karate chopping dust waves, but also cocooned inside beautifully furnished apartment buildings (if there was ever a Bangladeshi dream, a part of it was to own a nice apartment in Dhanmondi, Gulshan, or Banani), staring at a tiny LED screen, out into the world.
I am not technologically uninclined. I find great pleasure in the myriad conveniences it has afforded me. Frustrated by the constant bargaining with CNG drivers, I have almost exclusively moved to using the ride-sharing services for commute. Too tired to go out for dinner, I have ordered food online to have it delivered right to my doorstep. Inconvenienced by the search for a new torrent with which I could download (illegally) my favourite TV show, I now happily (and legally) subscribe to Netflix.
But the price we have paid for progress is steep. A child confined within four walls is merely the apparition of one. A child protected by a locked door and an SUV has missed out on the myriad experiences which befit running in the semi-wild: The bruises and scrapes and arguments and exercise and lasting friendships and temporary enmities -- a world in its own right.
When Iceland realised that its teenage drug and alcohol problem had gone out of control, one of the areas where they invested heavily was in extracurricular activities. Not only is the access to an open field pleasurable, it ensures that our children’s minds are occupied in nourishing initiatives. It ensures health and friendship, it provides them with invaluable life lessons, it keeps them, in more ways than one, happy.
The lack of fields and access to open playgrounds has, in many ways, fortified the death of childhood in our capital.
Pining for glory, we have reached into the sky with our hands outstretched, forgetting the ground beneath us. Obsessed over vertical infrastructural prowess, we have forgotten the horizontal, and have laid the groundwork for a generation of children who may well never set foot on grass.
SN Rasul is an Editorial Assistant in the Dhaka Tribune. Follow him on Twitter @snrasul.