The Bridge by the Turag
A silent participant. A renegade.
[Turag is a river from my country Bangladesh. It flows from another river called Bangshi in Tongi, Gazipur which is a major industrial area in the country, and meets the Buriganga river in Dhaka where I was born and hold the memories of growing up. Just a few hundred steps from my house, about five minutes away, there lies a bridge that skirts the river for around three miles. Whenever I feel down, and sometimes when I feel up, I do not miss the chance of taking a walk by it—sometimes alone, sometimes with a company. The sensation it brings me is unmatched with no matter where else I stay. One day it occurred to me that it would be a ‘war crime’, if I didn't write a poem about it. Well, although I may sound hyperbolic, I’m unapologetic about it. Here’s the poem along with some photos taken from the bridge.]
Once across the bank where a dirty puddle gathers gold from the dampened sun of the day-end, happens something, nothing out of ordinary— a steamer trudges through the treasure of gold embraced in the chest of the river Turag, breaks it open with the saw-edged ripples, steals the sun’s best glow and glory; and the concrete bridge standby witnesses it all like a handsome silent participant.
It serves with its concrete charisma the slightest taste of life before the Concrete God’s takeover; serves with the southern air reeking of factory chemicals recalling langor, with the river’s blissful cadence, and a smooth gliding of a cigarette pack floating away to meet The Buriganga.
Serves to those who lost it all, to those who gained it all, who are living, happily; who are living, only— the one to hear the worst over the phone, the one to hear the best, the believer to seek peace in faith, the non-believer to question, the father holding the daughter’s fingers, the mother holding the toddler in the lap, the lover feeling the lover’s body, and the clients the hookers’–puffing away, like the brick kiln belching out The languor of the day’s labor with its sombre smoke.
For their sake, the concrete bridge by the Turag stands as a renegade, the Spartacus born out of the white man's concrete leftover. With the same fate impending? Who knows?
