The wrecked microbus, which was turned into an artwork and installed on the Dhaka University campus as a memorial to noted personalities Tareque Masud and Mishuk Munier, will be opened to public today.
Vice-Chancellor of the university Professor Dr AAMS Arefin Siddique will unveil the memorial.
Dhali Al Mamoon, an accomplished artist who survived the crash that killed Tareque and Mishuk, made the artwork with the objective that it would encourage people to play a role in preventing road accidents.
Apart from Tareque, a famed filmmaker, and Mishuk, a media personality, the 2011 crash in Manikganj killed three others while putting Mamoon in a near-death experience. The accident took place when a bus coming from the opposite direction rammed into the microbus.
Painted white, the wrecked vehicle is placed under the shades of trees near Shamsunnahar Hall.
In the aftermath of the tragic accident, friends and family members of the deceased decided to preserve the wreckage of the vehicle, thinking that they might use it for building a memorial.
“The microbus was in the garage for long but we decided to turn it into an artwork. It was our decision to install the memorial on Dhaka University campus for two reasons - both Tareque and Mishuk were students here and the university is one of the biggest institutions where youths come to learn,” said Catherine Masud, Tareque’s wife and chairperson of Tareque Masud Memorial Trust which initiated the project.
Catherine said the idea behind the memorial was to use the sad event, symbolised by the wrecked vehicle, as a means of raising public awareness of road safety issues. She hoped the memorial would become a part of a greater movement for reforms at the legal, infrastructural and policy level to bring down the rate of road accidents in the country.
“The memorial was installed near the road. People will come here, watch it and think about road accidents. It will create a feeling in the mind of every visitor that there is something he can do on his part to prevent road accidents,” said Catherine.
After deciding to turn the wrecked vehicle into an artwork, Mamoon began working on it while a landscape design for where it would be placed was drawn architect Salauddin Ahmed.
In June this year, construction at the site began in full swing in order to complete the memorial before the third anniversary of the accident.
“It was difficult for me to come out of the memory of the crash while working on it. I was often devastated with grief,” Mamoon, who conceived the idea and installed the memorial, said.
“It is our hope that just the way we turned the tragedy into art, the object will raise public consciousness about road crashes for many years to come,” he said.
“We have used the wrecked car to build the memorial. This is because people will understand the artwork easily and the vehicle will raise a question in their mind - why this is here and how it became wrecked,” added the artist.
Dhaka University will preserve the site of the memorial while Bengal Foundation, Berger Paints Ltd, cultural figure Nasiruddin Yousuff and noted activist Khushi Kabir extended their support for the project.
Road crash, the scourge of Bangladesh
According to government statistics, eight people die every day in road crashes on an average but the World Bank put the number at 30 and the World Health Organisation at 48.
The country has witnessed many tragic road accidents in recent years and the majority of those happened because of reckless driving.
On July 11, 2011, 41 schoolchildren and two college students were killed in an accident at Mirsharai in Chittagong. On February 15 this year, seven schoolchildren drowned when a bus carrying them and plunged into a pond in Chaugachha upazila of Jessore.
A total of 49,847 road accidents took place in the country in the last 15 years, killing 42,526 people and injuring around 39,000, says a report of the Accident Research Institute at Buet. The report was prepared on the basis of police records and the actual numbers are believed to be much higher as many accidents go unreported.
The highest punishment for reckless driving was three years’ imprisonment since October 10, 1985 but on 20 November this year, the High Court raised it to seven years’ imprisonment.
