Channel i to air Language Day special drama ‘Chithiwala’

To mark International Mother Language Day, Channel i will air the special television drama “Chithiwala” on February 21. Built around a single, unread letter, the play quietly probes memory, language, and the cost of cultural drift in an urban, upwardly mobile Bangladesh.
Written by Shafiqur Rahman Shantanu and scripted and directed by Rashid Harun, the drama is set inside a middle-class city home that sees itself as modern. Anik lives with his wife Shaily and their son Anindya, whom he sends to an English-medium school. He is busy, aspirational, and convinced that progress requires distance from the village, the past, and Bangla itself.
That certainty is disrupted when Hashem Chacha arrives from the village carrying a letter. It is meant for Anik. Daily life intervenes. The letter remains unopened. Yet Hashem Chacha’s presence begins to shift the emotional balance of the household, revealing quiet tensions Anik has long ignored.
When the letter is finally read, its impact is unmistakable. It was written by a language movement activist, a friend of Anik’s late father. Personal in tone but national in weight, the letter recalls the dream that drove people to die for Bangla and later to fight for independence. It then asks, without accusation, what became of that dream. The implied answer is unsettling. In the rush toward globalised modernity, forgetting came easily.
The drama suggests that sometimes a single letter is enough to realign a family’s moral bearings.
Veteran actor Mamunur Rashid plays Hashem Chacha with restraint and authority. A towering presence in Bangladeshi theatre, Rashid returned to the country on January 14 after an extended stay in the United States. He shot for “Chithiwala” on January 31 while juggling commitments related to the anniversary celebrations of his theatre troupe, Aranyak.
“After a long time, I’m back in the country and feeling much better,” Rashid said. “The story of ‘Chithiwala’ is genuinely beautiful. In between Aranyak’s programmes, I’ve been shooting, and it’s been a meaningful experience.”
Ahsan Habib Nasim plays Anik, the conflicted urban father, while Sushama Sarkar appears as Shaily. Nasim believes the play speaks far beyond a single commemorative date.
“This isn’t a story only for Language Day,” he said. “It can speak to audiences at any time. Those who think drifting with foreign cultures is the same as being modern may find themselves rethinking that idea.”
“Chithiwala” avoids slogans and sermonising. It lets a letter do the work, quietly and persistently, treating language as inheritance rather than nostalgia. In doing so, it poses a simple but unsettling question. What does progress cost, when memory is the price?