🎊Pohela Boishakh (Bengali New Year)

About Pohela Boishakh (Bengali New Year)

Pohela Boishakh is the first day of the Bengali calendar and the biggest secular celebration in Bangladesh, observed on April 14 as a national holiday. Bengalis in West Bengal, Tripura and across the diaspora mark it too, on April 14 or 15 depending on the almanac. The countdown above tracks the days until the next Bengali New Year.

In Dhaka the day begins at dawn under the banyan tree at Ramna Park, where singers greet the first sunrise of the year with Tagore's "Esho he Boishakh". A few hours later the Mangal Shobhajatra — a procession of giant papier-mâché birds, tigers and masks made by art students at Dhaka University — moves through the city. UNESCO inscribed it on the intangible cultural heritage list in 2016 as a procession for peace and the driving out of evil.

Shops open halkhata, the new account book, settling old debts and offering sweets to customers. People dress in white and red, women with flowers in their hair, and eat panta bhat — rice soaked overnight in water — with fried hilsa, green chilli and onion. Fairs, kite flying, wrestling bouts and music run through the day in towns across the delta.