Dhaka limps back to normal amid echoes of protests

Dhaka: With the metro resuming services, buses and taxis plying regularly and university students enjoying carefree evening strolls in the gardens of the historic Curzon Hall - life seems to be returning to normal in Dhaka.

Businesses have resumed but it’s not business as usual in the capital city of Bangladesh.

Till three weeks ago, the streets of the capital were flooded with anti-government protesters, many public squares choked by the agitating masses reaching a dramatic climax on August 5 -- the fall of the Sheikh Hasina-led government and her fleeing to India.

The wave of the resistance has subsided and an interim government has been in place since August 8, but the streaks of rebellion remain in many streets of Dhaka.

In the past few days, several government employees have held protests in groups at the government secretariat while some demonstrators have marched in streets near the famous Ahsan Manzil and other areas to put forth their demands.

Many Dhaka University students are raising their voices regularly at the Raju Memorial Site opposite the Teacher Student Centre (TSC) for holding students’ union elections at the varsity and demanding “no political interference” on the campus.

The anti-government protests have initiated a churn in Bangladesh and while education goes on, so do protests to achieve a more equitable society “free of discrimination and corruption”.

Ibrahim Mahmud, a student of public administration who took part in a varsity protest earlier this week, alleged that members of Chhatra League, the student wing of the ousted Awami League, used to “harass” several fellow students in the campus.

“We have achieved our ‘second independence’, this time from the high-handedness of the Awami League and its bad influence,” he told PTI on the sidelines of the protest held at the Raju Memorial site opposite TSC.

The Dhaka Metro line near the university—a major lifeline for students and a means to beat city traffic—was shut for over a month.

While the passenger services resumed on Sunday morning, two of its stations Mirpur-10 and Kazipara will remain shut.

These two stations were vandalised during the anti-government protests.

Students of Dhaka University and other institutions heaved a sigh of relief as the metro services resumed after a gap of over 35 days.

Abdur Rahman, a first-year undergraduate student in the English Department of the 103-year-old Dhaka University, said the last time he had used the city metro was about 40-50 days ago. “Life is slowly getting back on track,” he said.

Near to the Dhaka Metro station is the historic Curzon Hall housing the science faculty of the university. Students and general visitors go there every evening for strolls while others take selfies or make reels for social media platforms.

Walls of its main lobby still carry the slogans “No quota” and “Only Merit” spray-painted during the agitation.

However, not everything has returned to normal in this historic city of Dhaka—both the political and financial capital of Bangladesh.

On Friday, a holiday in Bangladesh, visitors from Dhaka and other districts of Bangladesh who had come to see the iconic Ahsan Manzil and its museum in Old Dhaka, were “turned away” from the main gate, with security staff telling them it had been “closed indefinitely”.

No official reason was cited, though it is learnt that it is a “contingency measure”.

The recent protests that rocked Bangladesh for over a month have hit the hospitality sector hard in Dhaka with the majority of rooms at several luxury and economy hotels here going empty in the aftermath of the unrest.

A front office staff at a luxury hotel, running here since 2007 and operated by an international hotel chain, told PTI: "The situation in the hospitality sector is not good due to the impact of the unrest the country has seen recently” and “heavy financial losses have been incurred”.

Abdul Moyeen Khan, a top BNP leader and a former Cabinet minister of Bangladesh, who lives in the plush Gulshan area, however, feels the city “largely went back to routine life” soon after August 5.

“The current situation is quite clear. It is amazing how the country is settling back after such a big upheaval. People are trying to get back to their normal day-to-day life, the (interim) government is trying to normalise everything, and they are up to their main mandate which is the transition from autocracy to democracy,” Khan told PTI on Thursday.

Ask any autorickshaw driver or a rickshaw-puller on the streets of Dhaka, and they respond mutely. “Even we don’t know what lies ahead. We just need to go through the struggle of our daily lives,” said Mohd Alam, a rickshaw puller.

The rickshaws of Dhaka are one of the defining images of the city. Keychains, fridge magnets and other merchandise at tourism department stores at the Dhaka airport celebrate this ubiquitous three-wheeler.

Even as Bangladesh’s wait for the next elections and the next government gets longer, many have decided to go out and explore the world.

Sariul Islam, a businessman who lives in the Mirpur area of Dhaka, took a flight to India on Saturday night and said: “I got a visa this month only”.

“I am going to Delhi for work and will also visit Kashmir for sightseeing. Hope and pray that things will get better for Bangladesh hereon,” he said in Dhaka.