Stars of Bangla New Year
by
Michele Nardelli
For anyone over 40, memories of Bangladesh are memories of a nation
in crisis. Famine in Bangladesh ignited the 1972 equivalent of Sir Bob
Geldoff's Live Aid, when Beatles legends, George Harrison and Ringo
Starr, joined forces with Ravi Shankar to rock New York's Madison Square
Garden and bring attention to millions of starving people.
Today the people of Bangladesh are working to build a new image.
While still a nation marked by poverty, in Bangladesh there are important new agendas – tourism, cultural engagement, and education.
And when Adelaide's Bangladeshi community celebrated its New Year or “Pahela Boishak” last month, headlining the entertainment – dancers, singers and instrumentalists – were UniSA international students.
Music, poetry and dance are still enormously important in the cultural life of Bangladesh and the Bangla language is spoken by 300 million people around the world.
UniSA electrical and information engineering senior lecturer and SA
Bangladeshi Community Association vice president Dr Mahfuz Aziz believes at
least one of those students has the potential to become a national singing
sensation in Bangladesh.
In fact singer Eresh Sarwar, who is studying for his Bachelor of Engineering at
Mawson Lakes campus, has already performed on Bangladesh national TV and other
Bangladeshi satellite channels.
Another shining talent is tabla player Babu Ignetious Gomes, who is completing his Master of Engineering. The principal percussion instrument in Indian and Bangladeshi classical music, the tabla takes years to master and Gomes is well on the way.
Amid the vivid colour and sounds of the celebrations, the themes of the songs and poems were nature and its forces – hard drought, monsoon, storms and tempest – and regeneration and personal transformation through the allegory of nature.
Antara Debnath, an information systems Master student, recited poetry from Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore and Hillol Das, Bachelor of Business/Bachelor of Commerce student, performed a traditional dance celebrating nature and the divine.
Dr Aziz said the fact that the students could take part in the Pahela Boishak celebrations when they were such a long way from home was wonderful.
“It is great to be able to come together as a community to celebrate our New Year,” he said.
“We bring together people from all walks of life so that the students feel a part of something familiar.”
And Dr Aziz’s own family members were not shy of the stage. Son Maruf Aziz,
now in grade five, performed a duet dance with another little girl and his
daughter Syeda Sadia Mahfuz, in Year 10, was one of the announcers throughout
the evening. Dr Shamsul Khan, senior lecturer in international studies at UniSA,
coordinated the cultural program for the Bangla New Year celebration.