Shameema Binte Rahman
In a winter night, next to the India-Bangladesh border in Jaflong, Sylhet, story-tellers came to entertain a little marketplace dubbed as London Bazar. The majority of the audience, children, and adults are from a community of seasonal migrant laborers. The river Piyang and its gifted stone brought them here while providing the boost to city’s high-rise. Like fish from the high tide, stones travel from the Himalayan tracts to land on Bengal. There are no owners of stones but entrepreneurs with dredging machines and boats. By the river, a temporary community of miners has been built out of sacks. Workers provide the buzz in a bazar, imitating the capital of the late, and may be the lost empire, so the storyteller arrives. However, they face with uncomfortable question of authenticity of their truth claims.
