Picturing Pahela Baishakh

I Love the festivals of Bangladesh. Most of all, I look forward to Pahela Baishakh, the Bengali New Year. It is a festival of pure fun, without any baggage, accompanied by a spirit of happiness that fills the air.

For this one day, Bengalis from all walks of life shake off the troubles of their everyday existence- the daily grind of earning a living, along with 160 million others, from this tiny land- and celebrate being themselves. It is as if they look in the mirror in the morning and say, “Yes! It feels really good to be Bengali.”Exploring the milieu around Shahbag, I realise that while I was growing older abroad, Pahela Baishakh grew up too. The low-key festivities, singing and small-scale functions of my school days have metamorphosed into a gigantic,world-class party with its own colour code, music, cuisine and all-round good cheer.Everyone wears beautiful clothes. Parents have gone through great lengths to dress up their children. Flowers grace the hair of every woman I see. Faces are painted and masks are worn.Taking pictures, I am drawn irresistibly to the people, their dresses, and their interactions. I wander the grounds, searching for moments that may reveal a little more than the ordinary, and click away.The camera becomes an extension of my hungry eyes. I stare intently and without embarrassment, absorbing everything voraciously. Having spent most of my life abroad, I am making up for lost time. The shutter's click becomes my way of highlighting anything or anyone that catches my eye.Most people cooperate happily with me. Some turn away. A child looks up to see my large camera pointing at her: she unexpectedly bursts into tears and I kick myself.Some moments tell stories. Under a banyan, a woman holds open her compact mirror for her husband to inspect his freshly painted face. A daughter rides high on daddy's shoulders while holding a red ektara, both wearing matching green and red. A young man tenderly wraps a jasmine garland around the khopa of his sweetheart. A tired vendor woman, her own child sleeping next to her on the traffic island, sells miniature dhols to children of the well-to-do.Other moments hold suggestions of deeper meanings. Inside the park, a young man stands alone, a few feet apart from the crowd. He is wearing a mask which, strangely, accentuates his loneliness. A graceful middle-aged couple poses among the offerings of a flower shop, the experience of their shared years compressed into their faces.Back home, I eagerly look through the photographs. Through experience I have found that just because I enjoyed myself does not mean good pictures will follow, and so I am prepared for disappointments. Sure enough, detached from their exuberant reality, most photos look banal, like hundreds I have seen before, here and there. But today I am lucky, because, in addition to the wonderful memories, I also caught a few moments worth preserving