BRICK LANE FESTIVAL
ISSUE 1
I
Home is here
I shall return to the banks of the Dhanshiri River, I shall return, not as a man maybe, but as a river gull or chuckling mynah bird, or as a crow that greets the dawn with raucous cries.
Swirling in autumn mist as rice fields turn to gold, I shall return to haunt the shady groves of home.
Slipping away from Brick Lane’s solid walls of masonry and stone, my mind flits far, far away. It escapes through the bolted windows to rise through the air and soar in the vast sky of reflections, throughout which are scattered numberless memories of days gone by.
Once more a child reeling my kite up into the blue, I roam through the past. I chase after butterflies over a waving sea of grain. Hand in hand with a loved one I stride through dew sparkling grass early one morning.
In drowsy twilight I sit with friends lulled by the rhythmic chant of nursery rhymes:
Swing, swing, palanquin, A comb for your raven hair. Your man will soon be coming in To take you to his lair.
The past is ground down and reformed to make the present. But still above Brick Lane’s solid walls of masonry and stone, high in the night sky, a thousand stars from the past continue to twinkle brightly. They light the way for your mind to creep back, back along old, familiar paths, to the place of beginnings, the land of Bangladesh, our Bangladesh! And there in the quiet realms of your inner self you can once more smell her fertile soil and sink your toes into her rich and pungent mud. What better balm could there be for a human soul?
I shall return to the banks of the Dhanshiri River. Perchance I shall be a duck kept by a girl, with jingle bells on pretty rose-red feet; all day I shall swim amid fragrant waterweeds.
I shall return to my land of Bengal, to her rivers and pastures and fields. I shall return, my love for her verdant groves and summer floods shall never wane.
Brick Lane Festival is the first edition of a new immersive magazine, setting the scene for conversations, storytelling and festivities for the Bangladeshi diaspora to celebrate with everyone.
This area, with a long history of different immigrant groups, is now itself losing its cultural authenticity to gentrification. Its heritage lives now through post-nostalgia of when we first experienced the UK, holding onto memories of back home.
The metaverse is a platform where I can express and create this whole as greater than the sum of the parts, serving it up like a cocktail to friends and adventurers.
Special Thanks to David McMahon, Sustainable Data Finance for collaborating and support in the initial phases of development.
All Poetry by Priti Karim.
Dedicated to my Mum, Rehana Begum Sarker.
What an honour to launch our new immersive magazine about creative diaspora, at the fantastic event organised by Hope N Mic, hosting Bangladeshi creative acts in tribute to 50 years of Bangladeshi independence #Bangladesh50 as part of the BanglaVerse Film Festival, at the Brady Arts Centre near Brick Lane, East London. All proceeds went to "The Birangona women of Bangladesh (the women who survived rape, torture, and genocide, during the war of liberation)". I also had the opportunity to demo Sunset, a Virtual Reality AI dance poetry experience interactive with ankle bells, set in the Bangladesh countryside, about sitting by the lake at sunset, daydreaming about being by the sea.
Community Charities
https://www.oitijjo.org/
https://bricklanecircle.org/
http://www.streetsofgrowth.org/
http://www.heba.org.uk/
https://www.swadhinata.org.uk/
@nijjormanush