A television logo, a childhood, and the collective memory of a generation

Ali Kodar Polash

There are some images we remember with our eyes.

And there are some we remember with the heart.

The old red-and-green logo of Bangladesh Television belongs to the second kind.

It does not return to me as a design.

It returns as an evening.

As a sound.

As a small town called Chuadanga.

As a group of children running across a field before darkness settles.

As a flickering 14-inch black-and-white television in front of the municipal office.

As Thursday night.

As Chhayachhanda.

As anticipation.

As wonder.

And sometimes, as an ache.

I grew up in Puraton Hospital Para in Chuadanga. There was a time when our neighbourhood did not have a single television set.

It is difficult to explain that world to a child growing up today, a child who can hold almost the whole world inside a phone.

Our world was smaller then.

And perhaps because it was smaller, wonder was larger.

My friend Zakir’s father brought home the first television in our neighbourhood. Their house was known to everyone as the Zamindar Bari.

The arrival of that television was not merely an event for one family. It was an event for the neighbourhood.

In those days, even a television set required a licence.

A television was not simply an appliance. It was a wonder.

We children went in groups to watch it.

We waited.

We stared.

We forgot time.

A 14-inch window to the world
Then Chuadanga Municipality brought a television for public viewing.

There was a vast open field in front of the municipal office. Somewhere in that open space sat a 14-inch black-and-white television.

The picture was never quite still.

It flickered.

It shimmered beneath waves of static.

Sometimes the faces on the screen almost disappeared into the snowy haze.

None of that mattered to us.

Thursday nights were special.

There would be Chhayachhanda, with songs from Bengali films.

We children would go in groups to the municipal field to watch.

I can still see us.

A small crowd of children under the evening sky.

No mobile phones.

No remote controls.

No high-definition screen.

Only a tiny flickering television, a handful of songs and a happiness too large to measure.

Today, screens are enormous. Pictures are sharper than the eye sometimes needs them to be. Entertainment follows us everywhere.

Yet I wonder whether all those millions of pixels can recreate the joy we found in that hazy 14-inch black-and-white screen.

Perhaps technology can improve an image.

It cannot improve a memory.

The window we could not resist
Then television came closer to our home.

Moni Chacha bought one.

His full name was Advocate Moniruzzaman. He had returned home after studying law in Russia and lived next to us.

On our way to play in the field in the afternoon, we would stop outside his house and peek through the window.

Sometimes an English serial would be playing.

How much did we understand?

Probably very little.

But childhood does not always need to understand.

Sometimes wonder is enough.

The moving pictures themselves seemed to open a window into another world.

Moni Chacha’s father would sit on the veranda in an easy chair. We called him Dada.

Whenever Dada caught us peeping through the window, he would scold us.

We would run.

A little later, we would return.

Another face at the window.

Another scolding.

Another escape.

And then we would come back again.

Today I cannot remember the words of Dada’s scolding.

I remember something else.

I remember the tenderness of having once been young enough not to care.

Even the rebukes of childhood become precious when the people, places and afternoons around them begin to disappear.

And then came that music
But there was one feeling stronger than all the others.

I would be sitting at home with a schoolbook open before me.

I would be reading.

Or at least trying to.

Then somehow I would know that BTV transmission was about to begin.

Before I even saw a television, the image would appear in my mind.

The green frame.

The rising red sun.

The artistic lettering of Bangladesh Television.

And that familiar music.

That was enough.

The book remained open.

But my heart was no longer there.

Something inside me would become restless.

I wanted to close the book, get up and run.

Run to a television.

Run to wherever that logo was appearing on a screen.

How do you explain such a feeling to someone who has never waited for television to begin?

How do you explain the excitement of a broadcast in an age when nothing on our screens ever really ends and nothing truly begins?

We waited for BTV.

And the waiting itself was part of the magic.

When that logo appeared, it did not merely announce the beginning of a programme.

It announced an evening.

It announced a gathering.

For a little while, it seemed to announce that a country was about to watch together.

More than a logo
That is why I hesitate even to call it a logo.

A logo belongs to a brand.

This belongs to memory.

Its history is intertwined with the cultural history of independent Bangladesh.

After independence, the country’s national television needed an identity of its own. The creation and development of that identity involved some of the finest names in Bangladeshi art, including Shilpacharya Zainul Abedin, Quamrul Hassan, Mustafa Monwar and Imdad Hossain.

Look at the symbol again.

A television-shaped green frame.

Within it, a rising red sun.

The colours inevitably evoke the flag of Bangladesh.

And beneath it, Bangladesh Television written not in the anonymity of an ordinary typeface, but with an artistic character that itself became inseparable from the identity of the broadcaster.

When BTV entered the era of colour broadcasting in 1980, the familiar emblem was adapted to the new technological age.

It evolved.

But it did not lose its soul.

That distinction matters today.

When a country watched together
For our generation, BTV was never merely a television channel.

It was part of the family.

Part of the neighbourhood.

Part of the rhythm of an evening.

Today five people in one family may sit in the same room looking at five different screens.

We came from a Bangladesh where five families could gather around one.

Someone sat on a chair.

Someone on the floor.

Someone stood near the door.

Children squeezed into whatever space they could find.

Someone might even watch through a window.

And then the drama began.

The room became quiet.

What dramas they were.

Shokal Shondha.

Ei Shob Din Ratri.

Later came Bohubrihi, Ayomoy, Kothao Keu Nei and so many others.

They were not simply television productions.

They became part of our language.

Part of our conversations.

Part of our lives.

BTV drama once meant something the whole family could enjoy together.

Father watched.

Mother watched.

Children watched.

Grandparents watched.

A room full of people laughed at the same line.

Fell silent at the same moment.

Sometimes wiped away tears together.

And the following day, the story travelled beyond the television.

To school.

To the office.

To the market.

To the tea stall.

A drama became a conversation shared by a nation.

That was the extraordinary power of BTV at its best.

It did not merely broadcast programmes into people’s homes.

It created shared memories.

Modernise BTV, by all means
BTV needs to change.

There should be no hesitation about that.

Modernise it.

Make its programmes better.

Make its news more credible.

Bring back the strength of its drama.

Produce documentaries worthy of its history.

Preserve and digitise its extraordinary archives.

Change the studios.

Change the graphics.

Change the technology.

Change the way it speaks to its audience.

Find a language that can reach a generation raised on smartphones, streaming platforms and social media.

Change whatever time has made old.

BTV authorities have said that no final decision has yet been taken to replace the historic logo. They say the call for designs is intended to gather ideas and understand what different sections of society, particularly younger people, think.

That is reassuring.

Because modernisation and erasure are not the same thing.

Historic institutions around the world refresh their visual identities. They simplify designs for digital platforms. They adjust colours. They refine typography. They create versions suitable for mobile screens.

BTV can do all of that.

Clean the lines if necessary.

Make the logo work beautifully on a smartphone.

Adapt it for the digital age.

Let a new generation discover it in a new way.

But why must the red sun disappear?

Why must the green frame disappear?

Why should the touch of the artists who helped shape the cultural identity of a newly independent Bangladesh be erased?

Not everything old needs to be replaced.

Some things need to be carried forward.

Because a nation has a childhood too
A country does not live by its future alone.

A country has memories.

A nation has a childhood too.

BTV is part of ours.

Even now, as I write these words, I can see that open field in front of Chuadanga Municipality.

A 14-inch television.

A flickering black-and-white picture.

Thursday night.

Chhayachhanda.

And a group of children running through the evening to get there in time.

Then another image comes.

Moni Chacha’s house.

The window.

We are peeping inside.

Dada is sitting in his easy chair.

He sees us.

He scolds us.

We run.

And a little later, we return.

Then I see my study table.

A book lies open before me.

I am supposed to be reading.

But somewhere in the town, BTV is beginning.

In my imagination, I can already hear the music.

The green appears.

The red sun rises.

Bangladesh Television comes onto the screen.

And somewhere inside me, a little boy starts running.

I know that boy is not mine alone.

Ask those who grew up in Bangladesh in the 1970s and 1980s.

The names will change.

The towns will change.

For someone it will be Chuadanga.

For someone, Barishal.

Rangpur.

Noakhali.

Dhaka.

Or a distant village whose name most of us have never heard.

Perhaps the television was at the chairman’s house.

Perhaps at a neighbour’s.

Perhaps in a shop in the bazaar.

Perhaps in a municipal field.

But the story will often be strangely similar.

One television.

Many people.

One logo.

One piece of music.

And the anticipation of something wonderful about to begin.

How many people of that generation have no such memory?

Before you change it, close your eyes
So I have one request for those who will decide the future of BTV’s identity.

Please do not look at that logo merely as a design file on a computer screen.

Close your eyes for a moment.

Think of the millions of eyes that have looked at it.

Think of the children who ran when its music began.

Think of the families that gathered around a single television.

Think of the mothers and fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers who sat beside us.

Many of them are no longer here.

But sometimes an old image brings a vanished evening back.

A logo can do that.

A piece of music can do that.

Suddenly the room returns.

The people return.

For one impossible second, childhood returns.

A new logo can be designed in a few days.

A gifted designer may create something beautiful in a few hours.

Artificial intelligence can generate hundreds of polished designs in seconds.

But how long does it take to create half a century of human attachment?

How long does it take for a symbol to become a memory?

Fifty years?

Sixty?

Or the lifetime of a generation?

No software can calculate that.

No design competition can recreate it.

Time created it.

People gave it meaning.

Memory made it priceless.

So modernise BTV.

Change the studios.

Change the technology.

Change the programmes.

Change the screen.

Change whatever needs changing.

Make BTV so good that a new generation once again feels there is something worth waiting for.

But please,

don’t erase that red and green.

Because when I look at it, I do not see a logo.

I see a field in Chuadanga.

I see children running through the evening.

I see a flickering television.

I hear Dada scolding us from his easy chair.

I see a schoolbook lying open and unread.

I hear that familiar music begin.

And somewhere inside me,

a little boy is still running towards the television.

That boy is not mine alone.

He belongs to a generation.

And perhaps, in some quiet corner of our collective memory,

he belongs to Bangladesh too.