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A View of Kazir Dewry

MOHIT UL ALAM
KAZIR Dewry is one of the most crowded neighbourhoods of Chittagong. It is basically a Mahalla which has got its name from the Kazi family that once possessed all the lands in the area.. Kazi Bari, the family's homestead is on the southern side of the Shahid Saifuddin Khaled Sarak. There is a big mosque in front of the house along with a graveyard in which is buried the famous litterateur Abul Fazal who was son-in-law of the Kazi family by his first marriage. The mosque, of which Abu Fazal's father was a Pesh Imam or head priest for over thirty years, stands on the bank of a big pond which today unfortunately is almost dried up expect for a little pool of water used by people for ablution and bathing.
The Shahid Saifuddin Khaled Sarak starts at Lal Khan Bazar in the west and runs through Kazir Dewry dividing it to two clear sections and ends at Jamal Khan Sarak in the east. The southern section of Kazir Dewry is square-shaped with Kazi Bari at one corner and the Bangla Hotel on the other. Tha Bangla Hotel is owned by Kazi Shahjahan, the son of Kazi Enamul Haq who truly bore the image of a representative of the landed gentry of the bygone days. Kazi Enamul Haq was both an admirer and friend of Abul Fazal, and when in later years both Abul Fazal's fathers-in-law, the famous litterateur Mahbub Ul Alam, and his brother poet Wahid Ul Alam, got settled in Kazir Dewry, he became their friend too. Kazi
Shahjahan is now a BSD (Bangladesher Samajtantric Dal) leader and run on a party ticket the national election of 2001 from Chittagong 9 constituency. Abul Fazal was a close friend of poet Didarul Alam, the younger brother of Mahbub Ul Alam, but Didar having been dead in 1929, Abul Fazal's relationship continued with Alam family after he lost his second wife too, having married Umratul, Mahbubul Alam's eldest daughter. In the meantime Abul Fazal got a plot of land at Kazir Dewry as endowment from the Kazi family and built a house there called the Shahitya Niketan, a big two-storied house on the Haji Nur Ahmed Sarak. After his death in 1983 his children have added two more floors to it and the house stands proudly bearing the litterateur's memory. Abul Fazal might have influenced Wahid Ul Alam, his uncle-in-law, to buy a piece of land at Kazir Dewry on the southern side of the Shahid Saifuddin Khaled Sarak. Wahid Ul Alam, in his turn, induced his elder brother Mahbub Ul Alam also to buy a plot at Kazir Dewry, who by 1954 having retired from the government service was planning to return to Chittagong finally. Mahbub Ul Alam chose his plot deep inside the Kazir Dewry 2nd lane, and it so happened that by mid-1950s three prominent literary figures Mahbub Ul Alam, Abul Fazal and Wahid Ul Alam- started living in the same mahalla. Today Kazir Dewry, 2nd lane is eponymously renamed as Shahityik Mahbub Ul Alam Sarak, but young Kazir
Dewrians having no clue whatsoever wonder who he was.
Anybody entering Kazir Dewry 2nd lane for the first time will be daunted by the sheer number of puzzling bends of the lane. The lane branches off from the Shahid Saifuddin Khaled Sarak near Kazir Dewry vegetable market and then zigzags like a Bangla alphabet 'da' until it meets the Battery Goli at the other end. This is a melting pot of people high and low. While the former VC of Chittagong University, Prof Abdul Mannan has his paternal residence here, most of the inhabitants by profession are attached with the nearby Chittagong Club either as waiters or as keepers. Two merchant families, those of Pyear Mohammad Sowdagor and Sher Mohammad Sowdagor, had been dominant in the area by tradition and riches, but after the death of the respective Sowdagors they have lost their hold and new groups of merchants have emerged. Pyear Mohammad Sowdagor was a very enterprising old man and did many good things for the community. He died as an octogenarian, as did Mahbub, Fazal and Wahid, for whom at one time it looked like that old people at Kazir Dewry never died.
Shahid Saifuddin Khaled Sarak was named after Saifuddin Khaled who was killed by the Pakistani soldiers in 1971 at a frontal battle while defending a barricade. Saifuddin Khaled was the son of late Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury, who was an Awami League minister in the first cabinet. The Shahid
Saifuddin Khaled Sarak was previously called the Empress Road, so named after a visit by Queen Elizabeth to Chittagong in 1961. The Queen briefly stayed in the old Circuit House and attended a reception in her honour by the people of Chittagong.
The Circuit House afterwards became the very house in which president Zia was brutally killed on May 30 in 1981. It was then converted into Zia Museum and beside it there was erected another guest house, a modern two-storied luxury building, also called the Circuit House and is mainly used by the government officials on tour in Chittagong.
Kazir Dewry has hugely changed since the time when Mahbub Ul Alam bought his plot there in 1956. At the Kazir Dewry Square the 4-storied Appolo Shopping Centre commands an imposing view, and beside it the massive Tower House a multi-purpose apartment complex is rising taller and taller dwarfing even the railway hills a furlong away. The MA Aziz Stadium (previous called Neaz Stadium), recently upgraded as the 82nd test venue, is also at Kazir Dewry. There is a big field in between the Stadium and Haji Nur Ahmad Sarak which is a playing ground for young men from adjacent localities, and which is used as the venue for Muktijuddher Bijoy Mela every year.
Mohit Ul Alam is a professor of Department of English, Chittagong University.