This city was pulsating at an immeasurable pace on January 29 night. This was no more the city one has known for all of one's life. A carnival city it was with no shows on. For the people, more women than men. moving about till very late in the night in a situation of everything made immobile except selling and buying, were a show unto themselves. An unprecedented show. It was both elevating and frustrating.

Then Dhaka continued for long three days to be as it never was except for the days of continuous hartals. This was an ideal Dhaka coming into its, own. The right population size. The right traffic situation. The right amount of carbon compounds in the air.

No one except the trader-manufacturer seems to have prepared for this great festivals. The trafficwallahs. no. The water and road transport operators. no. The retail shopkeepers' tale is the weirdest. The bankers' story is hardly any better. The blissful fact that no big accidents took place or any loss of life due to the Eid rush to the shops and to the interior is yet to be reported, doesn't set right the inefficacies and incompetence involved in the breakdown. These only accumulate and some day will take a terrible toll. And this is beside what the pains the pre-Eid collapse of systems caused to the people — the first of which is the unethical price spurt.

The retailers did well to stock even beyond their capacity. Some of these feel that the income from the two Eids can sustain them throughout the rest of the year — in ease and comfort. But where do they sell their wares? In shopping centres which cannot be called either malls or arcades. At Mouchak and Gausia you have four-storied structures rented out to thousands of retailers doing business from cubicles overflowing with merchandise. During the Eid shopping frenzy the structures are mobbed by at least ten thousand buyers at a time. Each breathes in the others' breath. Many fall sick. The structures are not built to take such load and there is hardly any firefighting arrangement. Selected open spaces can be used to hold Eid Bazars by traders of all size.

This three-day breather should be best used by traffic authorities and planners to think up ways of how not to revert the city to the usual traffic anarchy which got absolutely out of control on the eve of the Eid. It boggles the mind to think that a day or two from now the Dhaka sky will again be all lead and carbon. The government of Sheikh Hasina has done next to nothing to lesson their lethal danger. And environment minister Sajeda Chowdhury may exert to cleanse Dhaka atmosphere at least to the Eid holiday level.