Colourful city Street and Avenue scenes, both Old and New

A Vendor, with his puffed-rice, in search of buyers and reaching out for the big tree shades in the heat of the day!

THe bright coloured big tree summer blossoms not only beautify the streets, they also provide shades for passer-bys and a smooth breeze under the scorching summer heat. 

A rickshaw van, it does take passengers!

Rickshaws are a common means of transport.

A busy bus stop

A large rickshaw stand

This is the season of summer heat and rain, as I mentioned before, it is also a season filled with colours and flavours of fruits and flowers even alongside busy streets and avenues, I cannot but wait to share this batch of pictures and thoughts!! Thus, the street scenes end up being very bright, simply lively! When you follow the street scene one is amazed by the colours of the different types of vehicles, from rickshaws, auto-rickshaws, to vans, open trucks, cycles to cycle vans. The street vendors, make it lively and interesting too, from flowers to puffed rice to mixed nuts flavours! Then, ofcourse the mangoes cannot be missed along the avenue trees. Mouth-watering green mangoes to ripe ones are the most popular summer fruits after lichis and jackfruits and stand as a treasure for us as there ar e used in many recipes here in summer as 'olives' are in Italy.  They are practically used in everything, from appetizers to meals to fruit drinks, not to forget their daily use in lentil dals, to chutneys and sweet and sour pickles.

The flower vendor hidden behind his bouquets

The Mahakhali flyover that the city connections began with....

The newer modern look comes from the addition of flyovers at intersections, or for dividing routes in the inter city highways hoping to reduce the traffic load and build faster network of communication between cities and to easily spread out the traffic in different directions with the city. One of them recently opened, divides the airport traffic load, while the other one diverts traffic to newer connections and they spread out to the portions on either side of the airport on the norther part of the city. While the southern parts are also being connected by flyovers with intercity southern links. Hopefully all of this will reduce the city traffic jams and will lead to better communication networks, for exit and entry of traffic both from the southern and northern parts of the busy metropolis and the rest of the country. Let us hope for the best and wait and as the demand becomes higher and higher each day.

The recently finished and opened to public, the airport flyover!

The newer northern link, expanding, Dhaka metropolis

As we rise high, at times we do risk it too, without realizing, sometimes in a fun-loving way, so truly we need to abide by all rules. 

The newer flyover links on the northern part of the city

The concentrated bill boards and vehicles all add to the colours and jams on our roads and highways.

The changing city as it grows 'Under the sun and rain'

Watch the city grow taller.....

The landscape changes.....

As the cityscape becomes beautiful, preserving the green and maintaining organized growth becomes the key factor. Also, shown are sleek, previews of modern high rise offices.

The wonderful big tree summer blossoms within the green

As beauty and planned taller architecture go in side by side

Do we really want to sacrifice this lush green or sometimes is there a choice? Then comes the advent of roof-top gardens seen below.

Now, this is the biggest challenge of our favourite capital city, "its growth' against saving its beauty and providing true space as the city turns into a mega-city in course of the next few years reaching 2020 with high influx of people into the city. As the load of the country moves into the capital more and more now, then ever before and for quick growth to happen, it grows rapildly, moving from a controlled to an uncontrolled quick pace, and in the course loosing its green, and the regular, natural orchards and groves. The common being, the mangoe, coconut and jackfruit trees seen around providing shades and food for the birds along with so many varieties of the small to big, blossoming, spring and summer trees. Many a avenues and neighborhoods were shaded by them as sheets of green and vivid colours of their blossoms. Now, many have been chopped down to make space for concrete conglomerates or 'high rise' which are growing at a rapid pace to accomodat ethe city gowing population, some organized, others having no time for organization to meet the challenges of the city's growth. Besides some of their faulty development being a major factor for human disaster as experienced by Dhaka's largest building collapse of the Garments factory at Savar which met with the tragic deaths of more than a thousand. Of those more than two thousand were recovered with care and dedication, many of them yet, would require continuous rehabilitation, as they cannot go back to work with the type of injury they had been so tragically met with. So unorganized growth not only has displaced beautiful Dhaka's ecosytem and made it into a city loosing its breathing spaces, some have tore down families displacing their economic growth and potentials in such manmade disasters of fast track city growth. Thanks to people's voluntary efforts rushing into the recovery along with the hard work of army, fire-fighters and other local regulatory authorities of the govt., and the valiant local people that unified into the unforgettable recovery efforts made to remember for a very long time.  So, now alteast after this major shake up, and with time our realizations have started to function with utmost caution and along with the town

planners of private and gov't institutions, awareness of citizens and activists to do the needful, to shape the city into a moderately organized one to cope with the pressure.  Activists had for some time been talking about going back to 'saving green' and normal citizens simply made efforts to have roof top gardens or parks re-shaped to breathe some fresh air. As we also know, If we do not treat nature with respect, who but we from this cyclone and calamity prone area know best about how angrily nature can lash back at us. This year we are having more summer rains proir to the monsoons. And luckily too, the recent cyclone "Mahasen' passed by with less disaster and with only heavy winds in some areas, destrying property and coming down as torrential rain and becoming weaker after hitting the coastal islands, but not with the harshness as the foretimes, as we remember from the memories of the cyclone SIDR, that hit the coastal banks Nov 2007, bringing death tolls of more than 5000. Not to forget either, that we also fall in the earthquake faults zones, and are frequently visitied by them and always hoping their richter scales will be below 4-5, and hoping against hope that the building codes have been properly managed, and the city can sustain the pressure of nature'scalamities, cracks and faults and the unexpected human load! Watch the wonderful green under the sun and rain saved in some parts and lost at others, amidst concentrated building growth and how the rooftop greens and in between the saving of 'Greens" have kept us going. 

Preserving the green

As we loose the green

Growing in line with the green...

 

The lush green from summer rains

As the rain comes pouring down....

As the wind lashes with speed bringing down torrential rain on ripening mangoes...

Rain-washed sky with more clouds continuing to fill through out  the day....

Floating rain clouds

As we are having more rains this year, at this time prior to monsoons, more clouds fill the sky the entire day bringing heavy downpour from the moisture laden strong winds, sometimes from cyclones forming in the 
Bay of Bengal.