Where Blue Birds Fly

I was born in the ’90s in a joint family. We shared the red old building and there was a place that was our favorite, the rooftop. When we were little we used to go to the rooftop every evening. The times there was a power cut at night Maa would put Shitol-pati(an eastern rug) for us to rest on and count the stars. When it rained, it was a ritual for us to climb the stairs and get soaked under the sky. The trees that baba and Mejhomama (maternal-uncle) planted over the years used to be our climbing spot. That’s where I first learned about trees having life and possibly emotions. The times the wind blew we flew our kites, when we ran out of kites we tied polybags and flew our handmade parachutes. It feels like I spent a lifetime on that old rooftop of ours. It was inseparable from our apartments as if it was a part of the home. I realized I wasn’t the only child on the chest of Dhaka growing up on a rooftop! On my project, I discovered traces of stories almost on every rooftop. I relived a new childhood, a new memory. The buildings of the city carry this space where you could just be. Watch the sunset perhaps, as the city starts to slow down. A place that is a part of the home, that gives you the room to breathe in one of the most populated cities of the world. Under the tinted blue sky, you could watch the pigeons taking their last round before return. Every rooftop keeps a journal, I wanted to know how many stories still remained on the rooftops of Dhaka.