Feature

Now I know how life is like without her since she left us on 11th August 2008. It was hard for me to believe that I will not see her anymore. I took it for granted that she'll be there till eternity, maybe because of my dadi's immense resilience after several deadly occasions. Even several days after her death the sudden realization of her absence was perforating the tranquil corner of my life. I burst into tears when recalled the memories of so many years with her...sweet and sour memories...memories of getting mad at her for constant nagging and relentless complains, of her being my sole room-mate, her soft soggy arms I used to love hugging while sleeping, cutting her medicine into halves, mashing her favourite betel leaves and the list goes on…I miss it badly. I feel something constricting my heart but now those drizzling tears don't come now and then like before...

After her death I knew Eid will never be the same!! But today on Eid day amidst all the warm exchanges and common jokes which was once done with dadi around was only a little different! Her absence will always be there like the old banyan tree-perpetual- but maybe God has given us the resilience to get over our grief and move on in our life. That is why everyone decided to continue our tradition of family get together which would keep us connected. Just like early parties we had fun, had food, ventured in an ice cream parlour at night, came back and chatted for a while! My cousin showed the ten taka note which dadi gave everyone last Eid, everyone was quiet for a while then. That was the only time she was mentioned on that day...late at night I found myself crying for some abstract reason which took me a while to figure out. I found life, people, this whole world and even myself superficial, selfish and cruel. But I later I thought was it very cruel and insensitive of us to have fun without dadi or not talking about her? Maybe it was not. That's how God has created humans, to forget the excruciating pain, not to dwell on the past memories because that's what holds us back from moving forward and also prolongs our misery…in case of my dadi I recollect a lot of things and know for sure I will treasure those memories forever (so will everyone in the family) instead of shedding perpetual tears or relentlessly regretting the loss and one day the feeling will be similar towards my parents without whom now I cannot think of passing a day. But no matter how cruel it is, let us say as the French phrase says “c'est la vie”- that's life!

(Dept of English, East West University)

Bangladesh is a country which needs to focus on utilizing this energy technology. There have been hundreds of books related to it. Hundreds have appreciated it and almost an equal number have said that solar energy projects are not suitable for Bangladesh because of the cost involved.

What I believe now is that if Bangladesh utilizes the energy in one of its industries, there is no doubt its going to benefit us! After all we have scorching sunlight almost 10 of 12 months in a year!

I was checking out this other telecommunication site! Something cool came out of India Today, aimed at Africans and Bangladesh. A solar powered base station, which will be cheaper than the diesel powered ones, used in some places. A base station is basically the tall antenna stations that you see from the rooftops these basically allow mobile users to connect to one another. We will get into the technical details in some other article, this article is purely for solar and for pinching the minds of Bangladesh's future leaders!

VNL is the company which came out with this cool solution and the key to this business strategy is to tackle the cost base of Africa's mobile operators in a number of different ways. It will produce a solar-powered base station that will function at a lower cost than its diesel-powered equivalent. It has types of base stations, all of which are considerably cheaper than existing base stations.

This is mainly because the base stations would run on solar power, which is free. The only cost to begin with, would be to buy the stuff needed, which costs as much if not less than existing base stations. This is because the cut the size from lets say the 2TRX which is for a hub site: it costs US$15,000 which with US$5,000 for civil works, produces a base station for US$20,000.

The cost-benefit analysis is immense! Instead of diesel generators and power bases, we can actually have cheap, emissionless power from the bright sun! Now why didn't anyone in Bangladesh think about this beforehand?

The difference is in a way substantial, a technological leap as it were. The only thing is that will this technology be implemented? As with everything aimed for Bangladesh, its not mostly that the technology is not there, but the fact no one actually works to make it happen. I am talking to the telecom companies! Make it happen- make a change for a better more positive, technologically advanced Bangladesh, rather than just installing innumerable networks with no previous thoughts on network sharing! Sounds harsh? So be it.