When Gold Turns to Ash

Sitting beside my window I was thinking of the beauty of the spring time. How nice and romantic it is. Flowers are there – colorful n more colorful than a rainbow. Birds are there – how happy they are! Their little hearts are getting overflowed with happiness. And this happiness is getting transformed into all sweet, sharp, melodious notes. They are chirping and singing all the time. They are sharing their joys with us – joys of spring. New shoots have come out from the tress. The tender green leaves are shining brightly in the golden afternoon. Dusty leaves are there also, waiting for a shower to get fresh again. May be the nature starts getting ready for a nor’-wester, or at least for a drizzle. The golden afternoon was getting mystic and mysterious to me. Sitting beside my window I was thinking how beautiful can the nature be, how marvelous is Bangladesh with all these gifts of nature. I was thinking all these things. I was feeling my mother nature’s hand when the gentle breezes were blowing over me. I was just submerged into the beauty of the nature. I was getting overwhelmed by its color. By its music. By its breezes. By its fragrances!
      
FRAGRANCES?!!! FRAGRANCES??! But no! It is the burning smell I am getting now! It is the smoke around me! My eyes are no more getting magical with nature’s beauty! They are burning! What happened? Why there are smokes in the air? I searched the source of smoke here and there. I clasped my window grill. Last day I saw our next door neighbor was burning something on the rooftop. Last day there was smoke because of him. But what about today? He is not there! Not either any man! No fire is anywhere as far as I can see! So where from the smoke is coming?  The answer came with the bell of the fire truck. I jumped out of my bed. I went out to corridor, n I found the smoke. On the other side of our house, a building caught fire. I ran up to rooftop. It is just opposite to Cheragi hill. May be the hotels caught fire. Curious people made a huge crowd there. The sun gets hidden not by the nor’-wester clouds but by the huge coil of smokes. My golden afternoon gets ashy within a few minutes. My bird’s tune gets buried with the alarm of the fire truck, and with the panic stricken voices. Breezes are no more gentle. It is getting wilder because of the fire. I felt so bad. I wished I could have gone there and helped the fire trapped people. I wished but I could not go there. I just prayed to my God … O God! Please save the people who are now fire trapped.

TRAPPED!!! Yes, we are trapped! We are trapped with the unawareness about fire, we are trapped with negligence, we are trapped with inadequate facilities, and last but not the least we are trapped within a lot of political and administrative assurances. First of all, people still have not enough consciousness about using fire, or what to do at the very primary stage of catching fire. Moreover, we are filling up all the natural receptacles of water. Thus, we are neglecting our emergency basis needs and preparations and cautionary factors and trapping ourselves. Now I can remember a recent incident … the fire on Bashundhara City in Dhaka. I saw on TV how flames are getting out of control in each moment. The spokesmen from the fire brigade, from government, and the general people also were telling that fire brigade has not the adequate and modern fire extinguishing equipments with them. They cannot reach over any 14 storied building. They have such limitations. At that time, we got assured that the brigade will be modernized with necessary equipments.

We thought, at least, the buildings not over 14 storied will not be in that much risk. But what I saw today that is totally depressing though our fire fighters fought with the fire very bravely and I do admit that they extinguished the fire very very quickly too. Truly saying, it is not the problem with our fire fighters but with our equipments.

The fire hose that are used, some of them have several licks. Whereas there is the crisis of the natural receptacles of water in town, the water of the fire truck is also getting wasted in this way. A fireman wanted to stop those licks. But no tape or nothing he had with him to stop the licking of water. And what he did at last he just covered one of the licks with his helmet. So, no matter how many storied the buildings are, or how many equipments we have, if we continue wasting our energies in this way, especially during a crisis, it will affect us badly in this way or that way.  I do not know why the authority never notices these things, why we are using all those old things in case of emergency, why we are wasting our energies like water which is very much needed in case of emergency like extinguishing fire.

My that golden afternoon turned to ash. Sitting beside my window I was thinking how marvelous my Bangladesh is with all these gifts of nature! All the natural resources of Bangladesh are gold to us. But only because of our negligence and unawareness all these gold are turning to ashes. I am afraid … is my golden Bangladesh turning to ash?! Are we turning our gold to ash? 

Mushfiqua Fatima
8th Semester
Department Of English Language & Literature
Premier University, Chittagong