Elegy on 'prantor' of the bygone days    

The word 'prantor' in Bangla is unique to the language. Many would go further. The term means a topographical shape in Bengal, or in today's Bangladesh. Its connotation has no parallel in any other languages. The English 'pasture', 'meadow', 'prairie' etc are nowhere near 'prantor'. Prantors, the vast expanses with no habitats or vegetation, was once an integral part of the Bangladesh landscape. It comprised of physical features that remained unchanged for long. Today's overpopulation was once in the furthest recesses of popular imagination. As man began encroaching on the idyllic rural areas, the 'prantors' fell on bad times. Concrete structures, roads, bridges etc gobbled up the seemingly endless expanses.  'Prantor' --- 'tepantor' in folk belief and fairy tales, eventually went through its various phases of disappearance.

In today's rural Bangladesh few grazing lands or sprawling crop fields are found unstained by strong human presence. Eerily devoid of humans, 'prantors' --- the barren lands, have long vanished. Their lodging in child fantasy is also under threat. Old grandfathers and grandmothers still love to tell their grandchildren tales of horse-riding princes crossing 'tepantor' to rescue princesses interned in enemy kingdoms. The Spiderman-generation children do not feel interested. The horned demons and witches seem so banal these days!

While 'prantor' carries little significance to the 21st century children, the young villagers turn incredulous about this particular type of land mass. But the country was once full of field-like expanses. Even fifty years ago, there were few villages which did not have its own 'prantors'. In course of time, these geo-physical features of the country have started disappearing. Thanks to the increase in crop fields owing to the emergence of a new class of land-owning farmers, the vast land masses underwent a metamorphosis: turning into croplands. The newly designed fields began to be cultivated by their respective owners. On the other hand, in a couple of generations these agricultural plots were fragmented into smaller fields. Apart from agricultural activities, a lot of the massive swathes of the barren 'prantors' witnessed the setting up of human habitats. It did not take long for these isolated human colonies to eventually emerge as bustling villages. In the following periods, different types of infrastructural development contributed to some basic changes in the character of the newly-created village clusters. These changes gathered pace after the independence of Bangladesh. This phase of the essentially agro-based country was characterised by a hectic development spree in many rural areas.

In a country constrained by limited plots of land constantly under population pressure, leaving its vast areas uninhabited and uncultivated is veritably a costly luxury. It had been set to smack of a gross lack of pragmatism. Thankfully, it did not happen. 'Prantors' began attracting the attention of successive governments. The acquiring of fallow lands for human settlements coupled with scores of land reforms at one stage expedited the vanishing of the 'meadows of Bengal'. However, 'prantors' continued to exist in the mid-river 'charlands' (shoals). Few government authorities bothered to bring these largely isolated expanses under administrative jurisdictions. Unlike these days, the remote chars in the not-too-distant past remained awfully dreaded. The scenario has changed drastically. The 'char prantors' are no longer deserted, and unspoiled by human presence. The footprints of displaced people have greatly detracted from their age-old beauty. Due to the massive size of some African countries, especially in the Sahel region, they can accommodate 'prantor'-like expanses. High population is yet to be a great problem in Africa, which has resulted in turning of vast lands into safari parks in its many countries. On the contrary, it is sheer human needs that led to the complete disappearance of the fabled tracts from Bangladesh.

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