The Panam City

Sonargaon is the ancient capital of Isa Khan’s kingdom in East-Bengal. At present it lies 17 miles north-east to Dhaka near the city of Narayanganj. It was one of the best mint-towns of the independent Sultans of Bengal.

Panam City was the center of the upper-middle-class people of Sonargaon in 19th century. Mainly Hindu cloth merchants lived here.

Panam city is one of the most enticing historical places near Dhaka city. I paid visit to Panam City several times and each time I entered the narrow street of Panam City, it made me feel to enter a place of history, it made me feel to go back to the past.
Last time, about three months ago, I paid a visit to Panam City with some of my friends who wanted to take photographs and enjoy the site of ancient structures and history. We took rickshaws to go there from the main road of Sonargaon. As we were going through the village streets, from far distance one of the ancient buildings could be seen that caught my eyes. We started taking photographs and when the rickshaw stopped in front of the building we were very astonished finding a sign board of a poultry farm there on the wall of that building !!!!

As we started walking through the narrow street of the Panam City enjoying the architecture of structures, we found that due to flood or some other phenomenon some structures were severely damaged and there were cracks on many walls.

All of a sudden my friend saw some cloths hanging in the veranda of one building. Being curious we entered the building and found beds, cloths, groceries inside there. When we entered another room we found some children playing there. Talking to them, we came to know that they live in the building. We found the same in some other buildings.

The Panam City is a place of historical significance. Being a Bangladeshi I really feel proud to have such a heritage site in my country. But the archaeological department of government seems to be extremely careless of its maintenance. People are surely making inaccurate use of the place and showing disgrace to its significance.
And this once city of glory is now about to ruin…

©[2008] by [Tahmina Khan Tithi]

Know more about Panam City at Wikipedia: Sonargaon