|
Wild elephants of Whykong forest
Nehal Adil
In the past three months 15 people have been killed by wild elephants in
Bandarban and Rangamati districts. It has drawn nobody's attention except in some mofussil news in national dailies. It is said that the wild elephants have come from Burma or they are our own. The government has a primary responsibility according to the Constitution to provide security of life for the citizens. It does not matter if those citizens are urban dwellers or from the remote regions.
The forest rangers, the police, the BDR etc. has the responsibility to provide that security. But when elephants run amok and nobody bothers to care for it, we go back to the stories of Jim Corbett's Man-eaters of Kumayun. Jim Corbett (1875 -1955) was an Indian-born Irish hunter, conservationist and naturalist, famous for his writings on the hunting of man-eating tigers and leopards. As Corbett's appreciation for tigers and leopards grew, he resolved never to shoot them unless they turned man-eater or posed a threat to cattle. Between 1907 and 1938, he tracked and slayed at least a dozen man-eaters as they killed over 1,500 people.
To save people of Nainital, the British Government took extraordinary measures. That was the days of the British Raj.
The news reached the newspapers of London quoting from the native reporters of the vernacular newspapers. We have travelled nearly a century after that. But the same administrative structure persists. We are yet to know who would protect people from those wild elephants.
In ancient time the elephants constituted the tank corps of today. Hannibal marched over the Alps with his elephants on his invasion to Rome. In our country the number of elephants were the symbols of a country's might. After Babar used his cannon (the Tope) in the first battle of Panipat and the frightened elephants fled, the use of elephants was minimised but not eliminated in the armed forces. Even in the first phase of the British rule elephants were used to carry cannons.
Even today elephants are used in our neighbouring South East Asian countries, specially in Burma and Thailand for military purposes. Burmese Army is reported to have trained elephant battalions. Some of them are sent unmanned to rebel territories. In Vietnam the Vietkong used their elephants to outwit the C30 transport planes. And with this low-tech weaponry they defeated the high-tech American solders.
Now the Americans have entered the super-tech stage but the low-tech elephants remain our best friends. In Barisal after the Sidr an elephants were used to remove fallen trees from the road. I heard a few available elephants did impossible task which the expected hyper-tech US amphibious ships possible could not accomplish. The American troops came a week later and then abruptly left, some Sidr-affected people told me. They complained after their dramatic departure they have not seen any high-ups there except on the TV screen receiving money for Sidre aid.
Would not it be better if we had an elephant corps and a cavalry contingent to help us if mechanised transport fails after a natural catastrophe.
I heard from the Thais that the Elephants have served traditionally as an early warning system for Tsunami. When they would abruptly start moving to the highland, people would think tsunami was approaching. They did it during the last Tsunami and many lives were saved.
In South Asia- India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan the elephants do survive, because they are honoured as Gods. Zamindars or land lords used to maintain elephants as symbols of their power. Even during the Pakistani regime we used to see elephants moving on the street. We had the historic Hatirpool, the elephant bridge. We have steel Elephant Bridge at the heart of Dhaka.
Before in the Whykong forest the elephants would be trapped by khad. But it is no more used as Nurul Islam, secretary of the Cox's Bazar Press club told me on the phone. I think the animal lovers and the bird lovers, a new breed of liberals, would not like it. But would it not be better to trap them and preserve them?
I agree that it is expensive to maintain a pet elephant. Even the richest man can not afford. So many of us believe let God provide them in the forest.
But if they go amok and kill people, just blame God. But someone disagreed. He said the elephants could be part of foreign elephant corps to destabilise and create psychological panic.
If foreign elephants come to our land and start killing people, then we must ask whose responsibility it is to prevent it. Border guards must look into the state of the elephants in the Whykong forest.
 ^ TOP OF THIS PAGE ^ MAIN PAGE
The Bengal Club: Club of clubs-I
Raana Haider
"According to Lowell Thomas, 'Calcutta is regarded to be one of the most 'cliquey' places in India...They dislike the society of foreigners, adventurers, upstarts and natives. You must convince Calcutta that you don't belong to any one of the undesirable classes (unless very eminent in them, of course)' (he is too generous there) 'before you can cross the threshold of the Bengal Club even as a guest.'
Old Time Taverns in India, Major H. Hobbs, 1943.
Lowell Thomas, the intrepid World War I war correspondent counted the Bengal Club as one of the best in the world. So too does its reputation remain intact close to a century later. Yet times have changed. We crossed the threshold innumerable times as resident guests at the Bengal Club. At our room on the second floor, the door opens to an entrance foyer lined on the left side with all-white painted cupboards, tabletop and a mini-fridge - a service pantry utility area reminiscent of an earlier era. On this tabletop were our 'bed-tea' (routine accompaniment banana and biscuit), hefty breakfast and any room-service orders placed by 'bearers' (a fast-disappearing vocabulary). The high ceiling, cavernous room has furnishings that have seen better days. The bathroom en suite, also spacious, had a sprawling 'Shanks' wash-basin as its mainstay. A set of French windows opens onto an enclosed balcony of fairly large proportion overlooking the back lawns of the Bengal Club. Shade is provided by traditional 'chiks.' White-painted rattan chairs offer seating arrangements. Behind a massive screen dividing the large balcony in half, I found a semi-storeroom - the equivalent of an attic. Stocked were cast-aside oil paintings, broken chairs and damaged 'chik' screens. Well, times have changed."
The Bengal Club in Calcutta ranks as the oldest club set up by the British in India. It was founded in 1827. Its formidable rivals are the Madras Club (1831); The Byculla Club (1833) and the Western India Turf Club were established in Bombay in 1837 - the latter being the showpiece of the city - the 'Urbs prima in Indies.' In the capital of the British empire, the leading clubs in London - the Athenaeum was founded in 1824, the Oxford and Cambridge in 1830, the Garrick in 1831, the Carlton (1832) and the Reform in 1837 - all were pretty much founded within the decade of the founding of the Bengal Club in Calcutta.
While earlier social centers were principally off-shoots of coffee-houses in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, clubs came into being in the nineteenth century. The club evolved into the unique venue for social interaction of like-minded men. The British club culture that was transported to their overseas empire remains one of the long legacies intact to this day. Both the Bengal Club and the Madras Club maintained reciprocal membership ties with the Shanghai Club. What the café is to France, the beer-garden to Germany - the club fulfilled that role in Britain and in its colonies. While the British colonial spirit is a matter of the past, its imprint remains. Clubs remain an oasis in terms of membership and activities. In contemporary society, clubs remain bastions of separateness. While everyone laments the passing of the quality of clubs in the Sub-Continent vis-à-vis 'olden and golden days,' the notion of selectivity (however defined) is inherent in the structure of clubs - even today.
The notion of a club in Calcutta was discussed at a meeting at the Calcutta Town Hall in the Esplanade in 1826. Lt. Col. The Hon. J. Finch, C.B., called the meeting of the Bengal Club or the Calcutta United Service Club - as it was first christened. The proposed club would confer on the resident in Calcutta and in the Mofussil certain advantages. Finch in the long-winded and effusive writing style of its day suggested: "...in Calcutta, where nothing like a respectable hotel or coffee-house has ever existed...the want of some such place is sensibly felt whilst those who constitute the society of Calcutta have no place where they can spend an idle half hour agreeably, those who are occasionally visitants only too often find themselves utter strangers and forlorn of both classes, therefore, some one building which shall be always open to them, which they may securely and pleasurably visit, where on reasonable terms, they may procure the accommodation they require, and where they may have a chance of meeting with old friends and acquaintances without the trouble of searching for them perhaps in vain, and where formality of interchanging cards may be substituted for more cordial greeting, will, I conceive, be an arrangement of such obvious advantage to be successful it needs only to be known."
Further justification for the presence of a club in Calcutta was to fulfill certain needs of the resident and visiting British. We are frankly told in The Bengal Club: 1827-1970 that "In the tropical possessions of the British Crown the idea of the club makes a special appeal to the large number of men, who are compelled by circumstances to be separated from their wives and families for longer or shorter periods. To these clubs afford some consolation for the pains of exile and loneliness, while at the same time they offer a welcome solution of a difficult problem, to the many bachelors with distaste for housekeeping."
The newly formed Bengal Club moved from its location on Tank Square to its present premises in 1845. Kaliprasanna Sinha was the owner of the land and a wealthy 'zamindari' resident of Calcutta who won the gratitude of his countrymen for his Bengali translation of the Mahabharata. On this piece of land was the residence of Thomas Babington Macaulay, then Legal Member of the Governor-General's Council in the years 1834-1838 and the originator of the controversial 'Macaulay Minutes' on Indian Education. He favoured English as the medium of instruction in India rather than Persian and Sanskrit. Lord Macaulay argued: 'Our aim should be to create a class of persons Indian in colour and blood, but English in tastes, in opinion, in morals, and in intellect...who may be interpreters between us and the millions we govern.' Governor-General of the Bengal Presidency, Lord Bentinck duly accepted the proposal in 1835. Macaulay also prepared the first draft of the Indian Penal Code in 1837.
[To be continued]
Raana Haider researches and writes on global cultural heritage.
^ TOP OF THIS PAGE ^ MAIN PAGE
Biman no hope of recovery
A Correspondent in UK
I recommended a friend of mine, against his wish, to travel by Biman to and from Dhaka during his vacation. Accordingly he returned to London by BG 015/ on 30th January. But on arrival he was furious and full of complaints one after the other and blamed me for everything.
I pursued him out of my own feelings for Biman, the National Flag Carrier, though many of our VIPs and Government high-ups --- while traveling at the state's cost --- avoid Biman. So high is their patriotism and loyalty! My friend vowed never to travel home by Biman again. I could not dispute his decision for the following reasons and felt guilty of myself.
20kgs & empty seats
My friend traveled with 40 kgs of baggage, but on return journey they did not allow him more than 20kgs on return trip. While going out he was allowed. What an inconsistent and unjustified policy of Biman! When in flight service of Biman has been reduced to almost nil except good meals (credit goes to the incumbent chef at Dhaka kitchen). This is one area (baggage allowance) where Biman should be liberal and make passengers feel happy. Other carriers do provide baggage incentives to their Europe-bound passengers. In fact, this 20kgs of baggage allowance should be outdated on international flights by now.
The flight was delayed by more than 6 hours due to shortage of serviceable aircraft, but the cabin crew announced that the flight was delayed due to fog. Though the flight was over booked up to Dubai but 3 to 5 seats were still empty in economy class (nothing new in Biman). Other carriers adjust their over-booked passengers move up to first/executive class to make sure each and every available seat is utilised. Biman traffic officials should be given this discretion when use this facility.
Lone toilet on board!
On board the aircraft only one out of four toilets was made available for the full load of flight in economy class. How could the maintenance release the aircraft from the base station in such a state? Do they really care for the safety and comfort of the passengers? It is unthinkable on any other carrier. Fortunately not a single foreigner was on board.
Just prior to landing at Dubai an in-flight announcement was made that none of the 92 London-bound transit passengers would be allowed to disembark due to local restrictions. The passengers were furious particularly the smokers and those who were too disgusted at the thought of using the only one functioning toilet onboard and others who all wanted to visit the world renowned duty-free shop at Dubai airport.
From health and safety point of view also passengers should have been allowed to disembark. There was a pandemonium as passengers were shouting and abusing Biman. The joining cabin crew, but not the ground staff boldly and calmly faced the agitated passengers and did their best to pacify them.
Later on it was revealed that though the flight with an expected arrival time of 2000z at London had good 3 and a half hrs of turn-round time at London but being apprehensive of falling into jet ban period at London (starts at 2330z), it was planned not to allow disembarkation of transit passengers at Dubai to save ground time. The aircraft was on ground for one hour and parked at a distance requiring disembarking passengers to go to the terminal building by coach. Supposing one of these days if the airport authority or some smart travelers find out Biman misquoting the airport authority to hide their own folly what may happen to the ailing Airline? No wonder Biman loosing their customers day by day by treating them in such a callous manner.
What we understand from abroad is that one of the tragedies of the National Airline is frequent change of the CEO most of whom are either from civil service or army background but without any airline experience like the incumbent CEO. Then he proudly announces retirement of experienced employees including senior managers by declaring them surplus but again re-employing most of them on contract. He has caused more harm than good to this airline and made a mess of it. His decision to withdraw a simple piece of bread and butter from the main meal menu of economy class passengers to economise the operating cost is so ridiculous that one can only laugh about it.
Biman is the National flag carrier and today is at the fag end of falling flat on its nose. No one seems to be concerned. This is most unfortunate and looks like a conspiracy hatched by a vested quarter.
^ TOP OF THIS PAGE ^ MAIN PAGE
|
