By Aysha Imtiaz 22 February 2021
In the highland hinterlands of subtropical Sylhet, a city in north-eastern Bangladesh known for its lush tea gardens, getting to school requires more than just waking up on time. I remember we used to cross a bridge and it got washed away every other year, said Dr Monjour Mourshed, professor of sustainable engineering at Cardiff University who grew up in Bangladesh. We [the village children] were used to it; we d just find a different path.
But what s more fascinating than the constantly altering school route is the calmness with which he acknowledged it. Mourshed s experience is the norm, not the exception, as Sylhet s geomorphology is subject to frequent change. A mound of land in the floodplain of the Surma River. Sylhet inhabits nature-on-the-move, writes Dr David Ludden, professor of history at New York University and former president of the Association for Asian Studies, in a 2003 paper that underscores the temporal nat