Mass exodus begins from urban Bangladesh as Eid day nears

With merely one day remaining for the holy Eid-ul-Azha, millions of Bangladeshis have been flocking to village homes to celebrate one of the biggest religious festivals with their dear ones. Thousands of Dhaka dwellers have started leaving the capital city for Eid-ul-Azha, also known as the festival of animal sacrifice, celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Prophet Ibrahim to sacrifice his son Prophet Ismael as an act of obedience to Allah. Every Muslim who has the financial means need to sacrifice animal and distribute the meat to family and the poor. Millions of poor people in Bangladesh, who cannot afford to buy meat even once in a year, get the chance of eating meat this time every year. Like previous years, the hustling and bustling Dhaka is showing signs of tranquillity in the coming days as people, with or even without seat-ensuring tickets, are gathering at the city's ferry terminals, railway and bus stations to join relatives in their village homes. "I need to go back to my village home at any cost to celebrate the festival with my parents," said Abdur Rahim, who was trying to climb up a train's roof at Dhaka's central Kamalapur Railway Station on Thursday morning to reach his village home. Like Rahim many home-goers were also seen to climb on the roof of a ferry which has already been packed with passengers at the city's Sadarghat terminal in the afternoon. Millions of people of the capital city, braving every conceivable discomfort on creaky and congested transport, are estimated to head out of the city each year for celebrating the Eid. Both the government and the media are keeping close watch on the ferries during this holiday season. Authorities said they had strictly enforced control on the overloading of ferries, which were identified as a main reason for many deadly crashes during the previous Eid occasions. On Thursday, photographs of several ferries, trains and buses were published in newspapers, which showed lots of people clinging on the bodies of the ferries and trains risking their lives. Sufferings of home-goers reportedly worsened with long tailbacks on all highways connecting Dhaka because of a heavy rush of outbound buses and inbound trucks carrying sacrificial animals and shortage of ferries. State-owned transport bodies have started special Eid services to ply on different inter-district routes in addition to the regular services to meet the demand of the home-bound city dwellers. To make the travel of the home-bound passengers easy, officials said additional forces have been deployed in Dhaka streets. Bangladeshi Police have announced that it will take a three- tier security measures in the capital Dhaka to check any unpleasant incident as more people leave Dhaka for village homes. Dhaka's usually busy streets saw less traffic Thursday evening though approach roads to dozens of cattle markets, shopping malls and terminals were clogged by vehicles. To shore up security on the day of Eid-ul-Azha in major cities, additional law enforcers have been guarding all strategic points including commercial hubs and main Eid congregation grounds. The authorities have completed ground work to prepare the main Eid congregation in Dhaka where the president, many ministers and senior government officials of the country are expected to offer Eid prayer with people before sacrificing animals like cattle, goat, camel and buffalo. According to officials, the national flag will be hoisted atop government and non-government offices on the Eid day while most of the streets and road islands are being decorated with flags reading Eid Mubarak in Bengali and Arabic.