Jotugriho

BotTala Production-4 Jotugriho Script: Samina Luthfa Nitra Director: Mohammad Ali Haider (Opening show: 14 March 2013) Storyline: On the outskirts of Dhaka, in the quiet industrial suburb of Ashulia’s Nischintapur, stood the Tazreen Fashions Ltd. factory — until that tragic night of November 24, 2012, when fire consumed it. Within moments, flames turned a nine-story building into a blazing tomb. Over a hundred garment workers were burned alive; many others, desperate to escape the inferno, leapt from the upper floors to their deaths. From the ashes of that horror, BotTala brought forth its fourth production, Jatugriha — The Lac House — premiering on March 16, 2013. In Jatugriha, the dead speak. They reach out to the living, pointing unflinching fingers toward the truth: their deaths were not fate, not accident — but murder. The play refuses to let the memory of their terror fade. It stands as a torch against forgetfulness. In the ancient epic, those trapped in the fiery lac house carved a tunnel and fled to freedom. But our garment workers had no escape route. Their bodies burned like bees in a hive, nameless, numberless — their humanity reduced to ID cards and DNA samples. Be it Tazreen, Ha-Meem, or Smart — to the world, the workers remain mere statistics. Yet from behind the locked doors that sealed their fate, their spirits still cry out: “We will not accept this prison. We will not submit to these chains.” Just a week after Jatugriha first appeared on stage, another catastrophe struck — the collapse of Rana Plaza. As the nation mourned, members of BotTala joined the rescue efforts, standing shoulder to shoulder with the trapped and the grieving. Amid the rubble, they performed this very play — transforming the site of devastation into a stage of remembrance and resistance.