Documentary Project By: Mohammad Moniruzzaman
This is a story of intertwined fates. A saga of the inseparable bond between a river and its people.
You have heard about the vastness of Amazon and rich history of Nile. But there is a river that hides an epic of human civilization in herself. The waves that have been flowing for hundreds of years weaved the story of a city, which have taken the present form through ages of metamorphosis. We call her “Buriganga”, the old river. Yes, old she is, older than the oldest tree or building you’ve ever known. This river has witnessed the rise and fall of empires since the beginning of the empires.
Buriganga is a river that flows beside Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Buriganga silently sustains twenty million people living in this city. It connects people of the two banks, handing thousands of homebound people over the bigger rivers and bringing the trade into the city from all over the country.
As humans, our nature is to kill someone who loves us. After sustaining a community for four hundred years, the river is dying now. It is dying because dumping tons of toxic industrial wastes and occupying vital parts of the river to erect buildings surely do not keep it alive. While everyone talks about saving the river, nobody points out that death of a river means the death of a community. What will happen to the man who crosses Buriganga everyday for the sake of livelihood, or to the boatman who carries him? What about the child whose playground is this very water? We have already forgotten that our existence depends on the life of this lifeline. The city must die if this river becomes a constricted and poisonous artery.
Every boat that scribbles through the heart of Buriganga writes a story. Every kid plunging into the waves leaves an unforgettable impression. This is an epic tale hundreds of years in writing.
It’s too soon to write the last page of the story.
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Copyrights:
All the pictures in this post are copyrighted to Mohammad Moniruzzaman. Their reproduction, even in part, is forbidden without the explicit approval of the rightful owners.
