Journey home made terrible

People rushing for homes to celebrate Eid feel the pinch of inadequate transport and road capacity as well the poorly manned traffic at some points of their journey but for Masud Rana the trip was horrible all through right from the beginning.

A four-hour journey from Dhaka to Natore ended after 15 hours with indescribable miseries all the way. But that was not the reason for his agony. He was traveling with his wife and that too on a truck sardined with passengers.

“We boarded a truck at about 4:00pm Thursday as we could not managed tickets,” said Masud, a worker of at Logos Apparel at Konabari of Gazipur.
Within minutes he and his wife, Beauty Begum, who also worked as a co-worker in the same factory, got on board the truck packed with passengers.

Among them were a dozen of women and children who were all standing.

“As the truck started moving towards Channdra, we saw congestion ahead of us and that was just the beginning,” said Masud talking to The Daily Star online over telephone.

Also READ: Home-goers suffer on Dhaka-Tangail highway

“We thought the congestion will be over at some stage but it didn’t. It fact, we were at the tail of a long developing tailback throughout the Chandra-Tangail road,” an exhausted Masud said.

“The journey turned into a hell even before reaching Chandra intersection which only 15-km away,” he said, adding that it took them three hours to cross the small patch of road.

Amid congestion, he said the truck was inching towards Elenga which was 65-km away from Chandra. “At one point, we remained stuck for one-and-a-half hours. All the vehicles on either side of the narrow-road was stranded, stading with their engines switched off,” he said.

It was in this situation that it started raining, multiplying our miseries. The triple hovering on their head hardly saved them from rain.

Some of them fell sick standing for hours while few women began to vomit but none of the 50 passengers on the truck had other alternatives but to remain there.

“I have been travelling on this route frequently for six years but I have never gone through pains like I had this time,” said Masud, who could not sit down for a moment but managed a space for his sick wife.

Also READ: Home-goers face less trouble

“It was a dreadful… never-ending journey. At one point, it seemed by legs would be paralyzed,” said Beauty Begum.

They said the road was clear after crossing the Bangabandhu Bridge.

“As we reached at Sirajganj Road we were suddenly awaken with Azan of Fazr prayer. Most of us were fasting and could not take Sehri,” he said, adding that despite request, the truck did not stop for Sehri.

“We had both Iftar and Sehri time on the truck and that is a unique example for us.”

Masud and his wife reached Natore at about 7am on Friday and their Bagbaria village within half-an-hour. 

When The Daily Star Natore correspondent visited them at their house in the evening, Beauty was busy preparing for Eid, there was no sign of pain on her face at all.

She was happy to reach home and see her only son whom she missed for several months.

Kawser Mahmud, who was traveling on a Hanif Paribahan bus, had the similar painful journey too. He got on board at 7:30pm Thursday night from Koliyanpur and had no problem before being stuck in congestion first at Savar EPZ and finally on the Tangail road.

“We had our Sehri on the road,” Hawser who hailed from Natore also said, “Many did not bring Sehri as they thought they would reach home well before the Sehri time.

Usually it takes four hours to reach Natore from Dhaka.

“When we were crossing the Jamuna Bridge it was sunny day. We reached Natore at 9:45am,” he told The Daily Star online over telephone in the evening.

Like Mausd and his wife, Kawser also said he suffered a lot in the journey but all were gone once he reached home and met his family members.

However, one thing irritated Kawser a lot. Prior to boarding the bus, he and other passengers were sitting in the Hanif counter. “I watched the roads and bridges minister on a television channel at 7pm saying that people were going home hassle-free and that there was no crisis of vehicles.”

The story of Masud and Kawser is the tip of the iceberg of what the home-goers face during mad rush ahead of every Eid.