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Sreyash, a nearly three-year child, came with her parents in the chilly morning of Friday to attend the Hatekhari festival, a traditional Bengali rite marking the initiation of tiny tots into formal learning.
   Like Sreyash, a large number of children, along with their parents, joined the festival on the premises of Kachikanchar Mela at Segun Bagicha in the Dhaka city.
   Hatekhari Jatiya Parshad, a national committee to celebrate the festival, arranged the programme.
   Language Movement veteran Abdul Matin, cultural personality Kamal Lohani, artists Emdad Hossain and Hashem Khan, and Professor Maahfuza Khanam were present as guests and helped the children in writing Bangla letters at the festival.
   Both the guardians and guests appreciated the programme, saying formerly the parents used to arrange special programmes at their respective houses for the children’s formal starting of reading and writing. They regretted that the tradition is no more maintained.
   ‘The arrangement of this festival will help revive the traditional culture of the nation and the people who live in the cities will know about their roots through this sort of programme,’ said Abdul Matin.
   To create festivity, the organisers also arranged soirees and recitations from poems. Younger members of cultural organisations, including Kachikanchar Mela, Khelaghar, Bishwabina, Swaraj, took part in the soirees.
   Among the popular singers, Anima Mukti and Safiul Alam Raja also sang at the programme. Among others, Shahriar Salam, joint convenor of the organising committee, recited poem in the cultural part of the festival.
   The convener of the festival, Zahidul Haque Dipu, in his welcome speech said the Hatekhari rite has been observed in this region over centuries, mostly by the affluent families of society.
   ‘We want to revive the tradition so that the urban people can learn about it,’ he added.
   ‘It is really an opportunity for my daughter to learn how to write from noted persons of the country in a festival. I hope that the children, like my daughter, will preserve the papers on which they wrote as memoirs,’ said Soma Ahmed.
   The organisers declared that they would arrange the festival every year on the first day of February to commemorate the historic Language Movement.

Oscar-winning actor George Clooney has officially been appointed a United Nations peace envoy in New York.
   The film star, who will promote the UN’s peacekeeping missions around the world, arrived in the city from a trip to the Darfur region of Sudan.
   Clooney told the BBC he hoped to be able to help the people he met there who had suffered in the conflict. Among the eight other peace messengers are actor Michael Douglas and Israeli classical musician Daniel Barenboim.
   Clooney, who is Oscar-nominated for his performance in thriller Michael Clayton, briefly posed for photographs as he entered New York’s UN headquarters.