Contribution short abstract:

Brickfields mark urbanization and the devastation of the environment and health. Ramzan, a fictional character, is in a dilemma of working in a brickfield to live and the pain of watching the abolishment of waterbodies. He looks for a way to combat it.

Contribution long abstract:

Brickfields mark urbanization, simultaneously by their physical existence, visual representation, and narratives across the literary genres. More so in the Bangladeshi situation where urbanization took abrupt turns and resulted in unanticipated consequences, compared to the European cities and towns, during and since the colonial period. Brickfields in Bangladesh are a space of environmental manipulation and severe air pollution. Further, these have no security or health measures for the workers, a very underpaid category even by Bangladeshi standards. Workers often face stern health hazards and accidents that result in death or lifelong paralyzed conditions that leave them unemployed. They suffer from fatigue and depression as well. My fictional presentation, however, concerns a different but serious aspect of the brickfields. Brickfields often emerge in some public domain (khas land) or abolishing seasonal water bodies or marshland (haor in local terms). Manipulating the state laws, and having been blessed by some corrupt governance system, the owners of these brickfields get a ‘lease’ of these lands that eventually eat up the water bodies forever. The protagonist of my fictional story, Ramzan, finds himself in a dilemma of working in a brickfield for his and his wife’s mere living and feeling the pain of watching the abolishment of these waterbodies that used to be part of his/their life. A distressed and superstitious Ramzan looks for a way to combat it. The presentation will be based on a fictional work I did years back in the local language.