Pahela Agrahayan: Our National Agriculture Day
Sunday, 16 November 2008
Maswood Alam Khan
WE Bangladeshis would have very much enjoyed starting our Bangla New Year on Pahela Agrahayan, the month when our farmers are all smiles, the month when our people are all agog with expectations of reaping a good harvest from their fields. Pahela Agrahayan heralds the dawn of winter, the advent of the sweetest Bangla season Hemanta, a festive season of fulfilling promises sworn to wives and children---and also to friends, relations, and moneylenders.
In our rural homes it is in Agrahayan when the master of the house buys his wife a sought-after 'nilambori sharee' (a deep blue lady's costume in a single long piece of cotton clothe) and a 'naakfool' (a nose ornament of gold ring for wearing on pierced nostril wall), to cite only two examples of prizes family members wait for a year to receive. This month brings smiles on the children's faces when they get their gifts of new shirts, frocks and shoes they all had been nagging for at their parents throughout the year. Because, this is the seasonal time when our farming brothers and sisters reap and sell the harvest of their 'aman' rice, the traditionally primary cash crop of Bangladesh, and get substantial cash in hand to dispose to fulfill their promissory commitments and to splurge on hobbies and creature comforts.
This is the time when like many other mothers my mother also used to prepare our family for winter. Under her personal supervision all our woolen garments, 'leps' (comforters) and blankets would have been out of the trunk and spread out in the sun to get rid of the yearlong naphthalene smell.
This is exactly the time when I, as a kid, used to get hugely excited at the thought of snuggling down under the comfort of a blanket at night. A calming fragrance from trees and shrubs spreads out at twilight reminding you of the arrival of a new season. Suddenly, to your surprise, an afternoon at 5 PM looks and feels like 6 in the evening. Agrahayan morphs your mind magically to a pleasant frame of mood!
Our heartiest congratulations to the present caretaker government for their decision to declare Pahela Agrahayan as our national agriculture day! It is indeed a historical declaration recognising the existence of our bread providers who had never earlier been honoured as an esteemed community of professionals and whose vocation has always been looked down as lowly. From now on, at least on the auspicious day of Pahela Agrahayan we would take a pause from the humdrum of our non-agricultural activities, bow our heads down in honour of our farmers and entrepreneurs involved in agriculture, and reflect on their contributions in sustaining our very life and our economy. This day will remind us of how fortunate we are that the sweats of our farmers' brows have ensured our achieving autarky in food. This day should also prod us to reckon how cruel we have all along been in depriving them of their dues.
Pahela Agrahayan has rightly been chosen as our national agriculture day. In fact Agrahayan (a Bangla word meaning the forerunner of a phase or a year) had to be the first month of our Bangla calendar if our indigenous cropping pattern were considered with a view to collecting maximum amount of revenue at the initial month of a year. But, with a view to glorifying Mughal emperor Akbar's reign in India, the first day of Bangla year, Pahela Baishakh, had to be coincided with the date 14 April, 1556, the day Akbar ascended to the throne and the day Bangla calendar was officially introduced. Based on solar calendar our Bangla calendar, which in fact was originally designed to be a harvest calendar, is always behind English Georgian calendar by 594 days.
Nevertheless, our farmers await the arrival of Agrahayan with fervour, enthusiasm, and expectations. At the very beginning of Agrahayan our village people tidy up their homes. They clean the weeds, and unnecessary growths in and around their homesteads, seal up holes and burrows to ferret out mice and other burrowing animals and insects.
Ladies paste walls and floors with layers of gluey mud blended with cow dung. The home granaries are repaired and refurbished. The front yard where paddies are to be thrashed by walking cows upon the sheaves and dried in the sun before husking is made impeccably labeled, washed and trimmed.
The first thumping sound on the yard while unloading bales of fresh-cut paddies from bullock carts rings in ears as the sweetest music in our rural abodes where farmers and their family members most passionately wait for this bijou moment. The whole village is enraptured with the sweet aroma of ripen paddies. A sleepless month sets in for farmers and their assistants to carry on cutting paddies at daytime and thrashing paddies at night-time. Lest workers engaged at night overseeing the jobs of thrashing paddies sleep or feel drowsy night-long festive functions of 'Jaari Gaan' (folk songs) and 'Puthi Path' (storytelling from old manuscripts on myths) are arranged around the paddy-thrashing-yards. Interesting legends like "Gazi Kalu Champabati", "Jarina Shundari", "Rupban", "Faisal Muluk o Badiuz Zamal", "Hanifa's Kahini", "Karbalar Kahini", "Chand Showdagarer Kahini", "Gunai Bibi", and many more are loudly read and recited in rhymes around the yards and throughout the night and punctuated by folk songs and stick dances---all with a twin view to preventing the workers from sleeping and to keeping family members bubbling over with merriments. A new festivity full of sounds and hues intoxicate the whole landscape of rural Bangladesh in the month of Agrahayan!
An 'out of this world' 'payesh', an indigenous dessert made of 'aatap' rice (sunned rice), milk, bananas, coconut, and molasses, and a variety of cakes are offered to all and sundry whoever visit a farmer's house on the day of husking rice from dried up paddies as a mark of gratitude to the Providence. Hindu ladies religiously draw geometrical and floral figures and sketches on their walls and floors in white paints made out of liquid pigment of sunned rice-powder.
We celebrate our Eids and Pujas with religious fervour and enthusiasm. We also observe our other national anniversaries like Bijoy Dibash and Ekushey February with appropriate measures of gaiety or sobriety. But we will observe our new 'national agriculture day' altogether differently from other festivities. It is a day only for joys, songs, meals, and merriments!
On this day our government should declare who was the best farmer in the yesteryear. This is the best day to hand national awards to the national heroes who contributed to our agriculture.
We must not pass the day in the concrete jungles of our towns and cities. On our national agriculture day we must be present around the front yards where fresh-cut paddies will land with thumping sounds of music. On the night of this day we must burn the midnight oil till the break of the next day listening to rhymes and music of our folk poems and songs at our village homes. On this day we have to sweeten our tongues and teeth with 'payesh' made of newly reaped sunned rice-powder. So, we need a public holiday on Pahela Agrahayan to make the day really attractive and meaningful.
The writer is a banker. He can be reached at email:
maswood@hotmail.com
WE Bangladeshis would have very much enjoyed starting our Bangla New Year on Pahela Agrahayan, the month when our farmers are all smiles, the month when our people are all agog with expectations of reaping a good harvest from their fields. Pahela Agrahayan heralds the dawn of winter, the advent of the sweetest Bangla season Hemanta, a festive season of fulfilling promises sworn to wives and children---and also to friends, relations, and moneylenders.
In our rural homes it is in Agrahayan when the master of the house buys his wife a sought-after 'nilambori sharee' (a deep blue lady's costume in a single long piece of cotton clothe) and a 'naakfool' (a nose ornament of gold ring for wearing on pierced nostril wall), to cite only two examples of prizes family members wait for a year to receive. This month brings smiles on the children's faces when they get their gifts of new shirts, frocks and shoes they all had been nagging for at their parents throughout the year. Because, this is the seasonal time when our farming brothers and sisters reap and sell the harvest of their 'aman' rice, the traditionally primary cash crop of Bangladesh, and get substantial cash in hand to dispose to fulfill their promissory commitments and to splurge on hobbies and creature comforts.
This is the time when like many other mothers my mother also used to prepare our family for winter. Under her personal supervision all our woolen garments, 'leps' (comforters) and blankets would have been out of the trunk and spread out in the sun to get rid of the yearlong naphthalene smell.
This is exactly the time when I, as a kid, used to get hugely excited at the thought of snuggling down under the comfort of a blanket at night. A calming fragrance from trees and shrubs spreads out at twilight reminding you of the arrival of a new season. Suddenly, to your surprise, an afternoon at 5 PM looks and feels like 6 in the evening. Agrahayan morphs your mind magically to a pleasant frame of mood!
Our heartiest congratulations to the present caretaker government for their decision to declare Pahela Agrahayan as our national agriculture day! It is indeed a historical declaration recognising the existence of our bread providers who had never earlier been honoured as an esteemed community of professionals and whose vocation has always been looked down as lowly. From now on, at least on the auspicious day of Pahela Agrahayan we would take a pause from the humdrum of our non-agricultural activities, bow our heads down in honour of our farmers and entrepreneurs involved in agriculture, and reflect on their contributions in sustaining our very life and our economy. This day will remind us of how fortunate we are that the sweats of our farmers' brows have ensured our achieving autarky in food. This day should also prod us to reckon how cruel we have all along been in depriving them of their dues.
Pahela Agrahayan has rightly been chosen as our national agriculture day. In fact Agrahayan (a Bangla word meaning the forerunner of a phase or a year) had to be the first month of our Bangla calendar if our indigenous cropping pattern were considered with a view to collecting maximum amount of revenue at the initial month of a year. But, with a view to glorifying Mughal emperor Akbar's reign in India, the first day of Bangla year, Pahela Baishakh, had to be coincided with the date 14 April, 1556, the day Akbar ascended to the throne and the day Bangla calendar was officially introduced. Based on solar calendar our Bangla calendar, which in fact was originally designed to be a harvest calendar, is always behind English Georgian calendar by 594 days.
Nevertheless, our farmers await the arrival of Agrahayan with fervour, enthusiasm, and expectations. At the very beginning of Agrahayan our village people tidy up their homes. They clean the weeds, and unnecessary growths in and around their homesteads, seal up holes and burrows to ferret out mice and other burrowing animals and insects.
Ladies paste walls and floors with layers of gluey mud blended with cow dung. The home granaries are repaired and refurbished. The front yard where paddies are to be thrashed by walking cows upon the sheaves and dried in the sun before husking is made impeccably labeled, washed and trimmed.
The first thumping sound on the yard while unloading bales of fresh-cut paddies from bullock carts rings in ears as the sweetest music in our rural abodes where farmers and their family members most passionately wait for this bijou moment. The whole village is enraptured with the sweet aroma of ripen paddies. A sleepless month sets in for farmers and their assistants to carry on cutting paddies at daytime and thrashing paddies at night-time. Lest workers engaged at night overseeing the jobs of thrashing paddies sleep or feel drowsy night-long festive functions of 'Jaari Gaan' (folk songs) and 'Puthi Path' (storytelling from old manuscripts on myths) are arranged around the paddy-thrashing-yards. Interesting legends like "Gazi Kalu Champabati", "Jarina Shundari", "Rupban", "Faisal Muluk o Badiuz Zamal", "Hanifa's Kahini", "Karbalar Kahini", "Chand Showdagarer Kahini", "Gunai Bibi", and many more are loudly read and recited in rhymes around the yards and throughout the night and punctuated by folk songs and stick dances---all with a twin view to preventing the workers from sleeping and to keeping family members bubbling over with merriments. A new festivity full of sounds and hues intoxicate the whole landscape of rural Bangladesh in the month of Agrahayan!
An 'out of this world' 'payesh', an indigenous dessert made of 'aatap' rice (sunned rice), milk, bananas, coconut, and molasses, and a variety of cakes are offered to all and sundry whoever visit a farmer's house on the day of husking rice from dried up paddies as a mark of gratitude to the Providence. Hindu ladies religiously draw geometrical and floral figures and sketches on their walls and floors in white paints made out of liquid pigment of sunned rice-powder.
We celebrate our Eids and Pujas with religious fervour and enthusiasm. We also observe our other national anniversaries like Bijoy Dibash and Ekushey February with appropriate measures of gaiety or sobriety. But we will observe our new 'national agriculture day' altogether differently from other festivities. It is a day only for joys, songs, meals, and merriments!
On this day our government should declare who was the best farmer in the yesteryear. This is the best day to hand national awards to the national heroes who contributed to our agriculture.
We must not pass the day in the concrete jungles of our towns and cities. On our national agriculture day we must be present around the front yards where fresh-cut paddies will land with thumping sounds of music. On the night of this day we must burn the midnight oil till the break of the next day listening to rhymes and music of our folk poems and songs at our village homes. On this day we have to sweeten our tongues and teeth with 'payesh' made of newly reaped sunned rice-powder. So, we need a public holiday on Pahela Agrahayan to make the day really attractive and meaningful.
The writer is a banker. He can be reached at email:
maswood@hotmail.com