Editor's Note

Myth and Reality

One of the innumerable festivals concering the pantheon of Hindu gods is the festival of Trinath Thakur. The story of Trinath Thakur is described by Saymon Zakaria in our cover story. Like all myths, this stuff does not always make sense from a mortal viewpoint but works on some other elevated level. The other thing to keep in mind is that these stories are mostly just spoken by folks like Meghlal, who narrates the story of the festival. As a result, what follows is a loose and sometimes incoherent tale of gods and humans and the dialogue in between. The story doesn't have to make logical sense, the storyteller's words just have to flow, like a piece of music.

Another fascinating story concerns lemon production in and around the Sylhet-Moulvibazar area. Improvements in farming technology have led to stunning growths in output and farm incomes over the past decades. Even a study of a region as small as the Sylhet area can provide evidence that Malthus was wrong- with the right technology food supplies can grow faster than imagined. And yet, there's a lot more to be done. A lot more must be done, farmers claim, to protect their incomes from bumper harvests which cause prices to plummet. There is always something that can be made better, faster, a little more efficient.

Abak Hussain
From the Insight Desk

Copyright (R) thedailystar.net 2008