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‘How is winter in the rural areas of Bangladesh? As I was thinking all this sitting in the air-conditioned room of a multi-story building, my mind went back to my childhood and summoned images of the shady courtyard of my village home. There, the smell of dried neem leaves comes out of the folds in winter. There, a wintry afternoon is all about burning green peas and smoking hot vapapitha (one kind of rice cake); the lunch and dinner menu is predominantly filled with gourd and fish curry; in a wintry evening, a flock of wild ducks flutters its wings in the still water. Rural winter speaks of a completely different world like poetry hemmed by fog and cold.

When the winter comes

Date Palm tree
Date sap is extracted from a Date Palm tree

As a child, I read a poem in a weekly magazine, written by Rafiqul Haque, better known as ‘Dadubhai’. In his poem he referred to winter as a trembling old lady.

So every time I had the opportunity to experience winter morning in the village in my childhood, I thought this bone-chilling winter is the work of an old lady! Unlike in the city, fog doesn’t fuse with smoke and creates hazy weather in rural areas. Rather, the village is wrapped in a blanket of a thick and fine coat of fog, making it difficult to see the sun. Dew falling in the tin-shaded-roof makes an amazing pattering sound. The water in the pond becomes very calm, it doesn’t freeze as it does in the Northern and Western countries, but those who have seen the calm pond on a winter morning know that this is the most unique element of rural winter.

The sun shines after nine or ten o’clock in the morning. The dew-drenched grass glitters in that light. Evening falls before the afternoon comes in the village. The day becomes short with the onset of winter, it is realized even more clearly sitting in the backyard of a village house. A different kind of beauty that lies in desolation is one of the aspects of winter in the village. In winter, the traditional green of nature vanishes. On the contrary, barren stalks in the trees and dried stalks and leaves gathered in the yard make winter look glorious. Perhaps realizing the unique beauty of winter, poets around the world have written so many beautiful verses.

But the omnipresent modernity of civic life has touched rural life. Yet when it is dawn in a rural town that is asleep in the cold, the foggy beauty of nature and the sound of falling leaves are remembered as our childhood memories of all the winter mornings that we left behind.

Surrounding the clay stove

চিতই

Winter means all the arrangement and activity surrounding the clay stove, the smell of fresh rice powder and freshly collected date juice that permeates the house yard. Mother’s handmade semai (vermicelli milk pudding) and nakshi pitha (rice cakes) make the entire thing even more enjoyable. I remember the grandmothers and grandparents sitting next to the clay stove in the winter morning and trying to pair the vapapitha with intense love! They would go to the kitchen in the morning, ignoring the severity of the winter, to soak the rice cake in the milk.

Not only Pithapuli (rice cake), but there are many arrangements of food surrounding winter. In the evening, the juice pot was hung on a Date Palm tree. Before the sun rose, a date sap collector would go up to collect it. Some people would go to Char or bar regions to catch foreign birds and wild ducks. The domestic goose was also one of the foods of winter. And the taste of winter vegetables including cauliflower, cabbage, turnips, squash, or small fish curry just multiply in winter.

Maybe no one cooks on a clay stove in the village. But compared to the city, in the village winter still means a lot of fresh food. Handmade semai or pot collectors may no longer be seen in the villages of Bengal, but you can still peek into the village kitchens. An eighty-year-old woman may be making Chitoi or puli pitha for her urban grandchildren with absolute compassion.

Invitation and hospitality

In rural Bengal, winter means ‘Nayor’ and ‘Kutumbakal’ or the season of hospitality. In winter, the bride went to her mother’s house for a holiday and the people living in the city returned to the village. This is when the best picture of hospitality is painted in the village.

The village yard, after a long time, becomes a melting pot of conversation. Winter vacation also becomes an opportunity for uncles, aunts, and cousins to get together. On those winter mornings, children would sit in rows on the verandah to eat rice cakes soaked in date juice. At noon, when the adults were busy taking naps, a group of teenagers would cover their face and nose with sweaters and hats and plan a feast. Two handfuls of rice from this house and two chickens from that house was enough for the feast. And cooking was done in the evening in a hand-made clay stove. Surrounded by the dim light of hurricanes and lamps, every child would sit in a circle centering the grandmother and indulge in ghost stories.

Along with our busy lives, we all have become more accustomed to modern life as well. So many of us do not have time to go to the village in groups. Even if we get a holiday, it ends up having a barbecue or a one-day picnic on the rooftop of the house. However, those who still get a chance to go to the village, avoiding the hustle and bustle of their mechanical lives, may get a taste of the winter feast and hearty hospitality, even if it is only for a while.

Harshness of winter

Without telling the brutality of winter and how it affects the rural areas, the entire picture of winter in the rural areas of Bangladesh will not be painted. There is no warmth of electric heaters or no coziness of woolen blankets in the rural areas. But the coldest and most severe form of winter actually affects these areas the most. Most people of these rural areas spend the winter in hand-woven shawls and mufflers. Not the scent of blankets and naphthalene, but the scent of simul cotton and the scent of neem leaves is the winter charioteer of the villagers. To ward off the cold, they warm their hands in the fire, place a lamp or pieces of burning coal in the corner of the house. Most of the rural people are working people, and since the prevalence of poverty is their constant companion, they have to run to the market, field, and ghat ignoring the severe cold. That is why the scene of a boatman or a fisherman walking along the farm aisle in the middle of the fog is all too familiar during winter in the rural areas of Bangladesh.

As mentioned before, rural Bengal is losing its charm due to the intensity of change. So now maybe in some well-to-do houses, the winter is prevented by blankets and winter clothes that are bought from the market. However, the poor people suffering in the frigid grip of winter is still more evident in the villages. Even today, they have to ignore the freezing cold and fight to survive. And in the foggy morning, they are running along the isle of the land with cracked feet.

Shamsur Rahman, one of the most celebrated poets in Bangladesh, called the winter of the village ‘Ascetic Sage’. The poet was right, the emptiness of winter and the stagnant nature reminds me of meditation. Many things have changed, many things have been lost in the abyss of time or in the name of modernity. Yet, the memories of childhood are scattered in the frigid wintry days that we spent in the village.

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