During the Eid days, the city of Dhaka simply looks so beautiful. It's not the colourful festoons and flags that make Dhaka look so nice. Thanks to the City Corporation though who has been performing with due diligent this great duty of decorating the streets on every national occasion (I just wish they could be equally diligent in clearing the wastes of sacrificed animals during Eid-ul-Azha, but that's a different story altogether). The reason why Dhaka looks so beautiful during the Eid days is because the streets are almost empty. There is hardly any traffic or people in the streets (for a very short period of time though)! Dhaka would be such a nice city to live in had Eid been there to celebrate throughout the year! But that is only a daydream of a selfish Dhakaite!

Just think of the situation in the streets of Dhaka during the days of Ramadan. Two kinds of people on the streets get almost hysterical. One group of people with their shopping spree, and the other group of working people who think it as part of their solemn duties as Muslims to reach home before iftar making the streets jam-packed.

The traffic chaos in Dhaka seems to be increasing every year and it reaches a monumental proportion in Ramadan, especially during the last few days before Eid. No wonder the joint forces of Army, BDR and the Police were not of much help this year against the insurmountable task of trying to bringing in discipline in the streets during the run-up to eid.

I spent almost my whole life in a house very near to the New Market. Only people like me know how painful it can be to live near a marketplace.

Despite the recent mushroom growth of modern shopping complexes in almost every corner of the city, the Elephant Road area still seems to attract the largest crowd of Eid shoppers making it almost inaccessible during Ramadan.

Talking about the modern shopping complexes, they certainly have added a new dimension to the city life. Now people having no work to do can spend good time strolling around the air-conditioned shopping complexes. The capsule lift or the escalators are added attractions.

They add to the beauty of the nightlife of Dhaka too with their magnificent lighting. This has been a rather new phenomenon. In the past, only the government buildings used to be decorated with lighting on national occasions like the Eid or the Independence Day. I remember when I was young, my father used to drive us around the city on such occasions to see the decorative lighting of government buildings.

Today, you don't have to drive around the city to see the decorative lighting. During the whole month of Ramadan, you can see it almost everywhere in the city (this testifies to the fact that shopping complexes have sprung up in almost every corner of the city). With such magnificent lighting of all the shopping complexes throughout the month of Ramadan, who would believe that we have short supply of electricity and that we experienced a nation-wide grid failure only a few days back?

I have been told that the shopping complexes are doing everything to attract crowd. In addition to the decorative lighting, they are offering raffle draws with attractive prizes like cars, TVs and what not. Surely, Dhaka is changing fast. It's a matter of contention though, whether the change is for better or for worse.

Coming back to the good old New Market area, you simply cannot get through the Elephant Road in any vehicle during the Ramadan days. For other people, it's a happy occasion of getting to shop in Gousia or New Market that gives them the enthusiasm to tolerate the unbearable jam. But for people like me, it's an innocent and normal desire to go back home from work.

I however charted my own strategy to get to my home avoiding the terrible traffic jam during the month of Ramadan. There is a short window of opportunity, which I always tried to avail on my way back to home from work. The opportunity comes during the time just before iftar. By that time, the Eid shoppers are all back to their homes preparing ifter for their families (and the men who do not have to worry about the kitchen are busy getting ready for breaking the fast in a grand way). The shopkeepers are more interested in getting ready for breaking their fast than doing business.

After all, the time just before iftar is considered to be sacred when the prayers of all the fasting people are believed to be heard by the Almighty. Who would want to miss such an opportunity of getting their prayers accepted?

With most of the people confined to their dwellings preparing iftar and making wishes, the streets become almost deserted. This is the time I would come out of work and reach home in unbelievably short time (I wonder even the maglev train that we are hearing of these days can take me home so fast!).

It's a wonderful strategy no doubt. Every day I succeeded in reaching home after a tiring day at work (in empty stomach) without getting caught in the terrible traffic jam, I would congratulate myself for my ingenious plan of identifying a window of opportunity and for the successful exploitation of such an opportunity!

The most fascinating thing is that all the crowd and traffic jam that have been driving the people almost crazy throughout the month of Ramadan, would disappear completely, almost like a magic, on Eid day. This is the Dhaka I love most.

I am sure if any foreign visitor had visited Dhaka for the first time on any Eid day, he or she would simply fall in love with the city. Dhaka looks simply so nice with almost empty streets!

When I was in Dhaka (not long before), I would occasionally lose temper and shout at a rickshaw-puller or a driver of a taxi cab or a three-wheeler or a private car (I don't know about others, but I never had the courage to shout at a bus driver). I would curse myself for having been to a place where traffic jam is so unbearable.

Even when I went back to Dhaka this June to spend the summer there, I got back my good old habit of shouting at other drivers while driving (and in the process getting shouted back from them, but who on Dhaka streets listen to what other people are saying).

Now sitting in the other part of Atlantic, some 8,000 miles away from home, whenever I visualise the streets of Dhaka, I realise that I really miss the crowd and noise of Dhaka!

I just wish I could go back there, drive on the crowded streets shouting at other drivers (with empty stomach, people are even more susceptible to loosing temper).

Surely I miss the usual Dhaka with its traffic jam. I equally miss the calm and peace of Dhaka on Eid day. If nothing else, I wish I could only spend the Eid in Dhaka.

I envy those who are spending their Eid in Dhaka. I am sure most of the people who are spending Eid in Dhaka do not really realise how fortunate they are, as I never realised it in the many Eids that I got to enjoy in Dhaka.

I just wish I could go back to Dhaka where the fun of Eid is unmatched by any other city in the world. It's like 'found only in Dhaka' (so as not to infringe upon any copyright law which is enforced rather strictly here in the US, I need to have a proper acknowledgement -- the original dialogue 'Found only in New York' was in a Hollywood movie 'The Out-of-Towners' starring Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn).

Wish everybody a very happy Eid.