Bangladesh celebrates New Year with festivities, tradition

Apart from this, a lively procession featuring people from all walks of life, particularly students from colleges and universities, marched with large bamboo replicas of birds and animals. The first day of the Bengali New Year, known as Pohela Boishakh, is a national holiday in Bangladesh. Many Bengalis begin the day with a traditional breakfast of panta-bhat (leftover rice soaked in water) and fried hilsa fish. Fashion houses and boutiques in Dhaka saw brisk sales of traditional dresses, which people buy not only for their families but also for relatives and friends. Across Dhaka, and elsewhere in the country, Boishakhi fairs showcased rural Bengali life through folk songs, plays, and crafts such as clay dolls and jute items. In a national address on the eve of Pohela Boishakh, Prime Minister Tarique Rahman extended greetings to Bengali-speaking people worldwide, calling the festival a unique emblem of ethnicity and culture. He said the occasion inspires renewal and the casting off of old decay and gloom. The Bangla calendar and the celebration of Pohela Boishakh were introduced by Mughal Emperor Akbar, marking the advent of the Bengali New Year -- now an integral part of Bengalis' cultural heritage and tradition.