Binoy Kumar Sur makes papier maché masks for dance theatre troupes and religious parades mostly. There was a time when business was better, now it’s dwindling. He inherited this shop in Shankhari Bazaar, old Dhaka, from his father. It’s more than 80 years old. It takes him about 5 days to make 10 leopard masks, but the Kali goddesses take at least double that much time. He was most gracious to us, perhaps happy to have an interested audience. (more…)
The 860ish year-old Dhakeshwari Temple whose goddess lends her name to the capital city of Bangladesh on the delta of some 700 estuaries. The temple architecture is, of course, not that old — it’s been torn down, rebuilt, repaired many hundred times but it’s famous for two things. (more…)
As part of a solutions story for the BBC World Service, I visited a factory where an incredible scheme has been rolled out to give workers the benefits of health insurance as an add-on to their monthly grocery shopping. Over the course of two days we talked to workers in the ready-made garment export industry and saw for ourselves that the conditions were really good. In 2013 a garment factory collapse killed more than 1,000 people and since then, (more…)
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