Into the greens : Mymensingh
With a boiling pain just above the right ankle with a sprain you just got days back, what can take over? Love and respect of the couple who wants to have the clicks in your hand, a caring team to work with and to meet the greenary away from the tiring city life. The desire to click again and again into the newer pastures have always endured over any other agenda.
Mymensingh have been a personal favorite from the first time I’ve visited 12 years back. A city of amazing hospitality, food that tastes finger licking good, greeneries all over the Agricultural University campus, heritage like the “Shoshi Lodge” situated at the heart of the city, a sweet like no other “Malaikari” and what not. Mymensingh have a different feel than any other cities in Bangladesh.
As always we had to start earlier for intercity travel, beating the traffics. A heavy breakfast followed by on and off sleep we reached by 12. A series of two meals set us full tummy by the afternoon and we were ready to shoot the couple portraits on a chilly golden hour just at the dusk of winter season.
A Brief about the ancient place where we chose to shoot the first round just before their colorful holud event. Shoshi Lodge (শশী লজ) is located at the center of Mymensingh city which is also known as the Residential Palace of Moharaja Shoshi Kanto Acharya (মহারাজা শশীকান্ত আচার্য).According to the history, most of the rulers from Zamindar family have adopted babies in different era and those adopted child ruled the area later. For example Gourikanta(গৌরীকান্ত) was adopted by Roghunondon(রঘুনন্দন). Son of Gourikanta was Shashikanta(শশীকান্ত) and his wife adopted Surjokanta (সূর্য্যকান্ত) as she was childless. Later, Surjokanto became the prominent Zamindar of Mymensingh district. People used to call him as Moharaja(মহারাজা). Moharaja Surjokanto Acharya was the Zamindar in Mymensingh region for long 41 years. During the reign of his Zamindari he did so many work for social welfare and made a remarkable change in infrastructural development. He started to build an unique two storied building on an area of nine acre at the end of nineteenth century. Childless Zamindar Surjokanto named after this building in the name of his adopted son Shoshi Kanto Acharya. After completion of construction this building was extensively damaged by a destructive earth quake on the year 1897. Zamindar Surjokanto was immensely worried at this great loss. Later Zamindar Shoshi Kanto Acharya re-built this building with many additional features in the year 1905 and did more renovation work in 1911.
[Source : http://offroadbangladesh.com/places/shoshi-lodge/]
Fast forward to the next day, the goal was to capture the greenery of the infamous Bangladesh Agricultural University keeping the couple at the heart of it in their contemporary wedding attire. As day events in the Jummah day are always frantic but photos first method helped us to tick the necessary boxes. The attire of the bride was from Khan Brothers [https://www.facebook.com/KB1952/] & the groom’s one was from Sartorial [shorturl.at/bJKPV]. Check out their pages for the amazing collection.
Apart from all the hustles, a big thanks to the ever helpful Ajwad & Jeba, the young and energetic Architect couple, venting their anger out to each other in some points (Oops!) but their bold chemistry sharpened the overall look in all the photographs. The colossal portraits marked that 40 hour visit to the riverine Mymensingh a memorable one.
© M Aminur Rahman
January / 2020
Mymensingh
All the photographs are copyrighted to Checkmate Events (R)
