Shutter up Exhibition 2018

Trinidad has been the highlight of my trip to Cuba and it is one of the best experiences I have had during my travels. In this old city, I learnt and fell in love with the essence of Cuba.

I am a Master Of Improvisation. That is a title I have imposed upon myself alongside Masterchef and Coffee Bae. No one artfully sprinkles chocolate dust over coffee like I do. That is a how-to for another day.

We are a culture of stories, and for centuries, we have looked for occasions to speak of these tales. Be it the age-old geets about the romance between a soldier and a princess that are sung during weddings or the tales of sacrifice and martyrdom on which religious holidays are based, the people in this region have always been the best storytellers.

My introduction to war lore was an intimate one, removed from any political agenda—they were stories of fear, simplicity, and sheer resilience in the face of ultimate crisis.

Unbearable sticky sweaty subtropical hotness of August. Disgruntled and disgusted at the shocking turn of events following the popular “Quota” and “Safe Roads” movements.

As you enter one of the inner rooms of Shilpakala's Gallery-1, you notice a television with a tap attached to its screen.

A multitude of languages can be heard around the refugee camps in Cox's Bazar. There are the Rohingya refugees themselves who speak Rohingya; some also speak Burmese.

The last two years have witnessed thousands of Bangladeshi female workers, who were tortured, abused or cheated, return home from the Middle East with painful memories.

“[...] Think of the birangona not as the haunted spectre that would feed the imaginary of the nation but as one who has to make her life in the world in a mode of ordinary realism.” Veena Das, in her foreword to Nayanika Mookherjee's The Spectral Wound

We stand in the middle of Rohingya Camp No. 18. It is in the southwest of Kutupalong Rohingya camp cluster in Ukhia upazila of Cox's Bazar district. We are stunned.

A year ago, when tens of thousands of destitute Rohingya, fleeing systematic violence in Rakhine State, had arrived at the outskirts of the small tourist town of Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, locals had opened up their hearts and their homes to their “Muslim brothers and sisters” from neighbouring Myanmar.

They waded through creeks, thickets of vegetation, and hills in search of safety, fleeing what would later be described, by the United Nations, as a “textbook example” of ethnic cleansing.

At the edge of a winding uphill road, right next to a host of tea stalls busy selling cigarettes from Myanmar and entertaining Rohingya teenagers, lies Sufia's home.

Deep in the Kutupalong refugee camp is the headquarters of an organisation calling themselves the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights.

"How will you write my story? What is the use of writing my story? You can't understand my sufferings.

It's past noon at the Kutupalong Refugee Camp in Ukhia, Bangladesh, and 18-year-old Rahim* is enjoying a post-lunch smoke at a tea stall located near the camp's bazaar. Surrounded by other youngsters of the same age, he whiles away his time listening to songs on mobile phone speakers and drinking sweetened milk tea.

In terms of picturesque views, there are few areas in the camps which can produce a better sight than the one seen from the top of Camp No 3. It's a place that provides a bird's-eye view of the entire site.

Since 25 August 2017 extreme violence in Rakhine State, Myanmar has forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people from their homes and across the border into Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.

The Neeeds of the Rohingya