Shaheen Mollah

With its sun-kissed stretches of sand, shimmering blue and jagged coastlines battered by white breakers -- Cox’s Bazar sea beach never gets old.

Twenty-year-old Shahadat Hossain Shyamol sits on the floor on the space between the elevators and stairs of the fourth floor of Dhaka Medical College Hospital’s burn unit, a gunshot-wound in his foot and police cuffs on his hand, and two police personnel keeping watch.

A politically-affiliated murderer may just be planning his big comeback. At least that is what the locals in his area believe. For them, it is a nightmare come true.

In a perfect juxtaposition of poverty and progress, a rail-track beneath the Bijoy Sarani-Tejgaon flyover slithers its way past rows of shanties and a makeshift bazar where a few hundred vendors offer what appear to be everyday groceries.

Despite a government promise that price of essentials would not rise before Ramadan, a section of unscrupulous wholesalers and retailers have yet again begun charging people more for those.

Md Yusuf and his three brothers have no other means to earn their livelihood after they have lost all their six shops in a fire that ripped through the Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) kitchen market in the capital's Gulshan-1 and gutted over 200 tin-shed shops on March 30.

He dodged death miraculously despite falling from the 19th floor of the Banani high-rise FR Tower while escaping Thursday's devastating fire that claimed at least 25 lives and left scores injured.

Rumki Akhter and Maksudur Rahman had fallen in love while working at a travel agency. Eventually, they got married three years ago and dreamt of owning a flat. With their savings, they bought a flat in the city's Gendaria, which was almost ready. They were scheduled to shift there within next two months.

It was lunchtime on Thursday and Polly Begum's phone was ringing. It was her husband Atiqur Rahman.

Exhausted and terrified, Saifur Rahman, employee of Amraa network office on the 17th floor of the 22-storey Faruk Rupayan Tower in the capital's Kamal Ataturk Avenue, sat on the pavement near the building.

The scene at a slum in Bhasantek area of Mirpur in Dhaka resembles that of a ravaged wasteland in a dystopic world, with hundreds of lives stranded under the sky, two days after a fire engulfed the slum.

Nothing can console Rupa Begum. She lost her two-and-a-half year old son in a fire at Bhasantek slum in Dhaka's Mirpur area early yesterday. Her only child drowned in a ditch inside the slum when the occupants were fleeing from the flames.

Amidst a hail of flaming cans and other flammable objects, courageous locals emerged as first responders to Wednesday's devastating fire which engulfed the four-storey Haji Wahed Mansion in Chawkbazar's Churihatta.

After coming to Dhaka from Noakhali when he was only 10 years old, Abdul Mannan engaged himself in many an odd job -- from working at restaurants to construction sites -- to save money for himself. He was able to save Tk 10 lakhs, with which he opened up a stationary shop 16 years ago.

Their family was a happy one -- mother and father with their two healthy children. On Wednesday night, the brutal fire that blazed through Chawkbazar reduced their perfect family of four to just one, while the rest looked on from behind a photo frame that managed to survive the hellish flames.

After an inferno claimed 124 lives in Old Dhaka's Nimtoli in 2010, a monument was built at that place. The structure, named “Nimtoli Tragedy”, bears many inscriptions. One of them says it was built to raise awareness on fire and the dangers of storing chemicals in residential buildings.

With dazed eyes on a blank face, five-year-old Sanin lay nestled in the arms of her father Suman, who was standing just yards off the Dhaka Medical College morgue yesterday.

Rashidul Islam, a tea-stall employee in Hatirpool, his wife and their two sons were on a rickshaw and passing through the lane of Chawkbazar where the fire broke out last night.

Barely a day after his birth, he found himself in the midst of rumbling bulldozers destroying the little world around him. The next day, the baby, who was yet to be named, and his mother Tanjila Begum, 24, were homeless.

Shaila, 14, came out of the garment factory she works for in the capital's Mohammadpur Beri Bandh area and saw her ex-boyfriend Billal, employed at the same RMG unit, waiting outside.