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Across the country

A dream lost in a mirage

By Nazim Mahtpud
He was no artist by professton. With a brush In hand he never sat in a studio before a canvas against an easel
But fits canvas was as wide and as long as the small town of Khulna half a century back. To build the town into a modern. neat and healthy place like a painting on a wall was his dream. It was his life. He also thought of the hygienic treatment of drinking waler and the supply of electricity for the dwellers of his town.
This Prometheus of Khulna brought electric light to the town and the office of Ihe Bengal Electric Company was set up in the northern block on the ground floor of his own big residence on Sarada Babu Road (now called Ahsan Ahmed Road).
For the supply of pure drinking waler a tank with a multi-purpose scheme was excavated tn ihe heart of the town. It was In fact a reservoir of river waler for meclianlcal treatment before Its house-to-house supply through a network of pipelines.
On the western side of the tank a park was planned with fixed benches strewn all about it and an emergency shed was built In the middle, on the roof-lop of which a public radio-speaker was Installed for listeners thronging the place In the evening, since a few could have personal radio sets In those days.
The heaps of the earth dug out of the tank soon got the Eleasant shape of an artificial Block on the eastern side. Stone boulders were landscaped over the hillock and water pipe was fitted tn a way to give the took of a stream overflowing.
On the hlltock-top a circular pucca bench was built with a round dome-like canopy overhead. This place was called Ladles Park . Like the mole on the face of the beloved for which Poet Hafiz could barter away cities like Samarkand and Bukhara, this park was the beauty spot of the town.
All strangers fell in love with tt at the first sight. The park was Indeed a bright testimony to the refined taste of the city father.
In the late forties the subcontinent fell asunder. The artist, the architect, the lather of modernlsaUon of the town of Khulna, the Zemindar of Rupsa-Nalhatl. Roy Bahadur Mahendra Kumar Ghosh who headed the municipality for two decades without a break, was unseated through a sinister clique and was forced to leave the country.
The Calcutta Corporation, however, was keen to get him as an adviser for building new townships for handling the influx of population from across the eastern border. On the other hand, what an Irony here indeed! No road, no park, not even a culvert in Khulna bears the name of the ordinary looking man with such extraordinary Imagination and refinement — the man who dreamt of this town and realised it too.
Soon after Pakistan came into existence, this beauty spot of Khulna was wantonly desar-tlfled State Bank Buildings were erected within the precincts In close proximity. No longer the park was an open-to-all place for leisurely tryst with nature. For all these constructions around, the artificial hillock now looks like an ugly summer boil behind the Bangladesh Bank.
The architects behind all the constructions spoiling such a heavenly spot would have been hanged in the event of a similar construction anywhere in the civilised world.
But here nothing happened at all It needs no explanation why.