Even three weeks ago, the calm neighbourhood in Chouddopai of Rajshahi city used to be intoxicated with the cadence of Baul music every now and then.
On Wednesday and Thursday evenings, the rented one-storey house turned into a pilgrimage for university teachers, students and everyone else who loved the Bangla Sufi folk tradition.
A death has changed everything, and everything means literally everything.
The house has remained locked since Rajshahi University sociology Professor Shafiul Islam was killed by assailants on November 15.
It was one of only three houses along the muddy alley leading from the Dhaka-Rajshahi Highway near Chouddopai. Prof Shafiul shifted to this sleepy little house with a garden on the outside less than a year ago, in January.
Shamsuddin, a teacher of marketing at RU, first told him about the house. Shamsuddin’s sister owns the house.
Before entering the quiet alley, there is the headquarters of the local Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and then is a fruit research centre. Shafiul’s house is situated at the end of the earthen road.
Two ominous looking locks – one hanging on the main gate and another inside – seem to be telling everyone that something has changed forever in this house which used to be open for everyone who loved music.
There is a papaya tree and a small vegetable plantation on the small yard in front of the house. Visible from the road is also a balcony that had some flower vases.
“My father was a nature lover. He loved songs that sang of nature. That was why he decided to shift from our campus residence to this house, right in the middle of nature,” said Soumin Shahrid Javin, Shafiul’s only son.
“Recently, my father had become a vegetarian. That was why he cultivated vegetable on the yard,” Soumin said.
The plant had several ripe papaya but nobody other than some birds are there to eat them; not that Shafiul would have really objected if he saw the guests with the wings.
“A few days before the incident, I came to visit him. He told me that there was a snake inside the storeroom. When I asked him why he was not killing it, he told me that no animal harmed any other animal unless it felt pain,” the son said with tear drops in his eyes.
Some vegetables in the yard have got rotten and the flower plants on the balcony looked weary from lack of care. Police have not allowed anybody in the house since the murder.
“A couple of days after he was killed, we took away all the musical instruments to our village home,” said Soumin.
“His colleagues, students, university employees came to our house to enjoy music and discuss Baul philosophy. Sometimes, some of them used to stay over for the night. There was one such musical evening just the day before he was killed,” he said.
There were lots of trees and greenery in the neighbourhood. Far from the maddening rattle of the city, the once clam and peaceful neighbourhood now looks gloomy.
Motiur Rahman, a businessman by profession, lives in the first house in the mouth of the road.
“Sir [Prof Shafiul] used to come back home in his motorbike around 10:30-11pm every night. There used to be musical programmes in house. That kind of gave a life to the place. Now everything is deadly quiet,” Motiur said.
Nazmul Haque, assistant professor of sociology at RU, was very close to Shafiul. He lived on the top floor of the house next door to Shafiul. He left the area only two days after the murder.
“I am very scared. That was why I left. Shafiul Bhai brought me here in May,” Nazmul said.
RU official Akhteruzzaman lives on the ground floor of the building that Nazmul used to live in. He told the Dhaka Tribune: “Shafiul Sir is gone. Now Nazmul Sir is gone too. Nothing is like before.”
Akhteruzzaman, who lives with a daughter, a son and daughter-in-law, said: “The entire area has become silent. At night we feel scared. I do not know, I may also shift to some other place.”
Shamsuddin, brother of the owner of the house, said they had not yet decided what to do with the house. “The place still has some things inside that Sir used.”
More than two weeks have passed since the gruesome murder but law enforcers are still not anywhere near pinpointing the motive behind the killing, let alone solving the mystery.
