Dhaka ranks one of the highest in the air pollution index. A moment’s peace is rare in the city of dust and traffic. That’s why I crave for a little bit of greeneries and trees everywhere I go. Until 2018, I had been working in the city for ten years at a stretch. It was before I started out as a local guide. It was the same drab routine of laboring through the insane traffic, falling asleep at the passenger seat and on and on it went. Finally I got transferred to the Ansar & VDP Academy at Savar, Dhaka. That’s where I had started out as a government official in the 1990s. Ansar Academy is a huge training facility for Ansar soldiers of Bangladesh. It’s almost 160 acres of land and full of picturesque buildings and monuments. I spend my weekdays surrounded by myriad species of plants and trees. Having studied agriculture myself, living at the Academy in the suburbs now seems like a fantasy. On weekends I return to the city and it is then I continue to look for a breath of fresh air for myself and my family. I love to play golf myself and take a walk at the park on weekends. I know there are countless people like me who are exhausted by the mundane life in the city where we barely get time to take breather. The summers here are extremely long and warm, the tropical heat is unbearable. That’s why I love to share information about green spots in the city such as the Ramna Park, Baldha Garden, Savar Golf Club, Kurmitola Golf Club, Gulshan Park and Hatirjheel. Even when we go on vacations, in nature I always find solace. I once shared a picture of flying herons at Victoria Memorial, Kolkata, India. That picture eventually got 98,000 views. I only recently came to see that, but in the meantime, I kept looking for a little shot of green in this incredibly dusty city of ours and that has taken me on a more fascinating journey than I ever thought was possible.
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