-yr.ATO dur giya maurdo rawana hollo — the hero yV set off after ambling some distance, so goes a mischievous line of a narration in one of our punthis. Bangladesh is surely moving economically but only towards a starting 4lne celebrated by Rostow a/ the take-off point. The best performance in Bangladesh's lackadaisical economic performance has so far been in the building and construction sector — in the former rather than in the latter part of the activity, to be precise. Ruling governments and realtors — who doesn't know governments in Bangladesh can and Indeed have been great real estate operators — would want to parade this fact as an Indicator to economic progress. But there is no shortage of knowledgeable people who think that exactly the opposite is true in national economic situations, yet to reach the take-off point. There seems to be a realisation rather very late in the day on the part of World Bank that their mighty help to the Third Wolrd nation's development - of economic infrastructure had gone down the drain. This together with the doles thrown in by the developed nations had capitally lined pockets a already rich in money gotten from speculation. graft, bribery and outright swindle often known by the name of 'business.' If all foreign Injections of wealth were tallied with local cash generation and concentration, die figures could be staggering. Like astronomical numbers they would come rounded off to eight, nine, ten and more zeroes preceded by who cares what.

Where does all this money go? A hefty part goes to realise an agrarian people's dream for owning land and a home all to one’s own — a dream lately bloating into owning acres of urban land and blocks of high rise mansions not so much for owning but for' generating unending cycles of cash supply which in their turn make the environs of Dhaka or Chittagong into fresh Jungles of concrete. How much money is going into building urban residences in a land where at least one third of the population. 40 million Isn't It? — have no shelter to live in. No one

can now be cruel enough to shout the direst threat of all of the old days — bhitey ghughu chaurabo — your homestead shall be reduced to a thriving colony for doves — to these people while a very big chunk of our national wealth goes into urban housing — of cash come from very lively gushes of sweat and blood.

More buildings are rising than becomes the overall picture of the nation : its literacy and its health, its employment situation and its investmentmanagement profile. This could very well have led to a competitive ambience tinging the whole spectrum of investors and builders and designers — a competition for quality and efficiency. This could have been an ideal ground for architects to flourish. In reality, theirs is a community — still somewhat professional. at least more thap the doctors and teachers by miles and still falling far short of what would please our dear friend and guru — Moju Bhai. the celebrated Mazharui Islam. As the investments in the building sector go on swamping the nation often with grossest visual vulgarities and inept living and working accommodation and unending structures brimming with risks to life and the viability of the collective called city life, the architects are progressively made to crawl on all four and become accessories to this 'nefarious game' selling even our future.

This I observe with a deep sense of pain, being an admirer of the architects as the brightest bunch of our people, mostly young and full of promise.— skilled-, often enough innovative, generally imaginative, and of course, knowing very well what their business is about. This is a time of a harrowing famine sapping the vitals of our nation — a famine of capable, educated and cultivated talents-ready to take on the challanges In their respective areas. I feel like worshipping the young hopefuls among the architects for all the possibilities they have worked up to. But then, the hopes and promises wllh most disappointingly under a relentless pressure of un-scrupulous investors and their stooges.

This could, of course, have

been channelled to a healthier course, if not righted altogether. The government continues to be the biggest builder in the nation. If the government so wanted. Bangladesh could have become at least as interesting architecturally as to attract discriminating people from all over the globe.

The colonial masters of Pakistan, in their urge to douse the spreading bushfire of Bengalee impatience and unrest started calling a part of Dhaka as the second capital of Pakistan and to make that appear plausible built some edifice. by way of no better than ordinary bribe. They did not spend in that any significant part of what it cost to transform a provincial Karachi Into a metropolitan capital and that done, again to metamorphose less than a district town into what became Islamabad. What did the trick of landing the present Parliament House of Bangladesh in architectural text-books of the world was the hiring of Louis Kahn to do the Job — his Jewish stock not standing in the way of orthodox Sunni professions of the Pakistani ruling clique.

Was the newly carved state of Bangladesh required to stretch its capacity when they decided to build a national memorial to the martyrs of the Libeatlon War and choosing by fair competition a design by a completely unknown young man? And. Io, there stands the best architectural work done by a Bengali in the recent decades — a grand and very very fitting celebration of our all Jn war and saga of supreme sacrifice.

Sher Shah, the most colourful conqueror of Humayun, ruled only for four years from the traditional capital of Delhi over possibly less than half of what Akbar came to amass Into the greatest Indian empire in about 17 hundred years. Nevertheless. Sher Shah not only completed a royal highway from Peshawar to Chittagong during that wink of an Imperial spell, he built the sub-continent's grandest edifice second only to the Taj

— his own tomb at Sasaram — and a bevy of other remarkable buildings including the mausoleum of his chief architect. How did Sher Shah do these without the help of Aladins Lamp? He had (he will, he chose his men wisely and supported them ungrudug-ingly — that was his way to immortality.

Even in as bad a time as Ershad's own share of dictatorship — a dictatorship first established and then underwritten by the military, that Is — an interesting structure started going up in a most unlikely place — the unhealthy milieu of the yard seemed to have been abandoned by the Railway at Phulbaria, for the benefit of the floating dross ofthe society. It was interesting primarily because of its massiveness. No tall building in Dhaka has such lavishly sprawling base. Soon enough it was evident that It would be as high as it was broad and deep. The Nagar Bhavan was a 111 gift to the first genuinely elected Dhaka Mayor and symbolised victory of democracy. Commissioned, the building came to be the third most spectacular architectural work in Dhaka after the Jaliya Sangsad Bhaban and the Jaliya Smrlti-Soudha. beating in its stride the controversially lavish Hare Road mammoth.

Once an eyeful of measure of It has been taken in the time the rickshaw takes to cross the road in front — from one end of the edifice to the other — and you have been thoroughly Impressed by some of the many things put on it to Impress, not the least of which is a kind of a grandiose picture of balance and harmony, you start looking for space — open space, landscape to be precise — that should house such a thing, ft was too close to the road that was not laid out to run by such a modern-day palace.

My unease, disquiet you can say. was somewhat laid to rest by one of the two architects doing this fine Job. Please treat the Secretariat, the Osmany

Gardens and the Nagar Bhaban as a kind of whole and you will get your landscape. He argued convincingly and I had three-quarters of a mind to agree with him. But the road kept blocking even an imaginary Integration of Osmany Udyan with Nagar Bhaban. Well, how about balancing the anterior with the posterior — which seems not to have even been attempted, although the two elevations were of mirror-image sameness?

ft was a sad sad tale that came out in reply. And the tale, as it unfolded, tugged at my heartstrings- with excruciating pain. For. I too. had my dreams about how to utilise the vast space left open by the shifting of the railway station and the yard to Kamalapur. My Interest lay wholly in using It in a way that would have a liberating influence on the suffocated minds of the residents of Old Dhaka. I thought of a cultural complex — theatres, art galleries, libraries, cine-complex of the Calcutta Nandan type — with tens of acres garden space thrown in. This could be a wonderful way of elevating life in Old Dhaka and at the same time offering people living in fringes of New Dhaka in conditions for worse a perpetually blowing southerly breeze of rejuvenating culture. Imamuddin. the man who designed and built with architect Lailun Nahar the Nagar' Bhavan. was now expounding to me the substance of my dreams of thirty years — which 1 have known to be as good as shattered and had long resigned to the fact of one more chance of redeeming the damnation that is living in this city. Why. this Jason-faced construction has been designed to. contribute to making Dhaka into one wholesome city Instead of the present contrary pictures of pampering and neglect. Provisions were there to balance the Osmany with another generous garden on the other side. And then the Mahmudul Hasan streak struck the authroitiies. A six-storey shopping complex would rake in for the DCC tens of crores of much needed cash which the gardens would deny them out went the gardens. The clock-tower would have a near-Big Ben thing, one of Its two faces turned to old Dhaka and the other to the

new. The ponderous shopping arcade would bar Old Dhaka not only from the view of the whole of the Nagar Bhaban but also the clock. The shops have already gone up to two storeys and has been made to stop there uncertainly as a matter of a very temporary reprieve. Without wrecking down the present two-storey monstrosity. already spewing In profusion the unculture of the Phulbaria area, the gardens cannot be had and Old Dhaka would again be consigned to the uninhabitable hell it has been growing Into with the speed of light. Short of blowing this up. the conceptual basis of the Nagar Bhavan will be mauled irreparably and the Bhaban will be shorn of meaning it was designed to convey.

I have no pretensions to be evaluating the architecture of the Nagar Bhaban — 1 am not qualified for that. My idea in writing this poor piece is to show a part of the architect's predicament — if not at all on the plane of Henrik Ibsen's "The Master Builder". Private real estate investors and speculators would take long time to come of age in this new Ijne of business which will for many days to come border on the loot. It is the government and the corporate business houses who can set healthy example and save us from a looming architectural inferno in Dhaka.