"A cowshed full of cattle, a pond full of fish and a gola full of paddy," the old saying went. But the traditional paddy granary, the gola, is now disappearing from Madaripur. It is rarely found any more, many of the new generation do not recognise it, and many do not even know its name.

Once, almost every home in Madaripur's villages had a gola for storing paddy. It was made of bamboo and cane, carefully shaped into a round form, and kept in a corner of the house to store paddy. Farmers once needed it badly, but with changing times it is vanishing.

Ayub Ali Munshi, 90, of Purba Maijpara village in Kalkini upazila, said that in the old days, when a groom's family came to arrange a marriage, they counted how many paddy golas the bride's house had. The more golas a household had, the more respect it enjoyed. These traditional golas are no longer seen, he said.

Farmer Mofiz Hossain said paddy is now stored in brick, sand and cement warehouses. Paddy is also being hoarded by a class of dishonest, profit-hungry middlemen (foria) and wholesalers, and farmers are losing their tradition as a result.

Anwar Hossain, a teacher in the Dasar area of Kalkini, said the paddy gola will become a memory for the coming generation. Perhaps it will end up in a museum, and children will go there to see one.

Al Mamun, a member of the Madaripur environmental group Friends of Nature, said the traditional gola is disappearing not only from Madaripur but from rural Bengal as a whole. Everyone should come forward to protect this heritage so that the gola returns anew to every home in the villages, he said.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.