BANGLADESH

Amid rains and flower petals, writer Humayun Ahmed was laid to eternal rest at his favourite retreat at Nuhash Palli in Gazipur on Tuesday.

Thousands of people including his fans, relatives and friends thronged Nuhash Palli to say goodbye to the popular writer who captivated them for nearly four decades.

Rain, which had fascinated the writer most in his lifetime, poured down incessantly during the burial.

"Humayun Ahmed liked rain. His janaza and burial took place in the rain. In New York it also rained during his janaza," brother Muhammad Zafar Iqbal told reporters.

Humayun's elder son Nuhash led the pallbearers who gave shoulder and placed Humayun in the grave. Nuhash was wearing a Panjabi of blue colour, the colour his father related with rainy season in many of his fictions.

Humayun's daughters Sheela and Nova, second wife Meher Afroz Shaon and her sons Nishad and Ninit along with the writer's two brothers, Zafar Iqbal and Ahsan Habib, and two sisters attended the burial.

Following the family's decision in the early hours of Tuesday to bury Humayun at Nuhash Palli, the ambulance carrying his remains left BIRDEM mortuary and reached Nuhash Palli at 12:05pm. Police restricted traffic at various points of the Highway.

A sculptor at Nuhash Palli, Asaduzzaman Khan, told bdnews24.com they had been taking preparations for the burial since morning.

The local administration remained alert to avoid any unpleasant incidents at the burial. Police provided tight security to the ambulance once it entered Gazipur.

Thousands of fans lined the streets from Uttara to Gazipur to get a last glimpse of Humayun. They waved to him as the coffin passed and some threw flowers at the convoy.

People began gathering at Nuhash Palli from morning, ignoring the intermittent showers. At one point people filled the road up to one-kilometre outside Pirujali village. Gazipur's Deputy Commissioner, acting Superintendent of Police and local MPs were also present.

Thousands attended Humayun's third funeral, held at 1:30pm at Nuhash Palli. Immediately afterwards, he was laid to rest at Lichu Tola.

Zafar Iqbal thanked the local administration for their help with the burial.

On choosing the burial spot Ahsan Habib told bdnews24.com: "He often used to make fun of death. Once he went to the Litchi orchard [at Nuhash Palli] and said he would like the place to be his grave. Again he went near a tamarind tree and said 'please bury me here, I have liked it too."

In the last few days, family members were divided on the issue of Humayun's burial site. Shaon claimed Humayun's last wish was to be buried at Nuhash Palli while the writer's children with his first wife wanted their father to be buried at a place in Dhaka easily accessible to all.

At at 2:30 am Tuesday, after long negotiations, Zafar Iqbal told the media they had decided to bury his brother at Nuhash Palli, adding that they did not want to get the burial delayed anymore.

Ahsan Habib said Humayun's first wife Gultekin Ahmed and her younger daughter Bipasha Ahmed were supposed come to Bangladesh from the United States on Tuesday.

Humayun died on July 19 at a New York hospital after battling with cancer for about nine months. His first janaza was held there.

Thousands of people, fans, colleagues, political leaders, top government officials descended on the Central Shaheed Minar to pay their last respects to Humayun after a flight carrying the remains landed at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport on Monday morning.

Humayun's body was taken to the BIRDEM Hospital mortuary after the second namaz-e-janaza at the the National Eidgah ground.

Nuhash, Sheela and Nova reached Nuhash Palli before the ambulance came.

Fans started to converge there as soon as the first light of the day appeared and about a kilometre of road stretching from Nuhash Palli to Pirujali village was filled with people.

All of them took part in the writer's last funeral.