Vanishing bamboo

Few of us know that bamboo belongs to the family of grass. However, it is well known that the rice we eat as a staple comes from a plant, which is a distant relative of the wild grass family. This fact is palatable. But imagining tall, hard bamboos as grass requires stretching of the imagination to a great extent. But they are. The fact is elucidated in a vast bamboo garden in Sholoshahar in Chittagong. It's a kind of botanical garden under the government's forest department.

A total of 32 kinds of bamboos are grown in the garden. The presence of almost all types of this unique grass grown in Bangladesh, and many from elsewhere in the world, makes the garden an attractive place worth visiting. The common types of bamboos grown in the country are Muli, Borak, Tolla etc. This unique grass, a gift from nature, has been used as the chief material for making dwellings for ages. Although these houses are fast being replaced by corrugated tin-made ones, 'berar ghor' still is a common spectacle in many rural areas. Bamboos are required during the construction of buildings and other brick structures. Moreover they have multifarious uses in both rural and urban areas.

The village scenes once remained incomplete in absence of bamboo groves. These clusters at the rear of homesteads are vanishing fast.

With the bamboos making an exit, Bengali folktale of ghosts, who once would inhabit the dark and dense bamboo groves, are also disappearing. In the age of blood-sucking vampires and underworld demons, the mischief-making 'bhoots' and 'petnis' have little appeal to today's children.

Haripada Saha

Dhamrai, Dhaka