Inside the office, the smell of smoke still lingers. Guitars, tablas, dhols, khols, ektaras, amplifiers, chairs, tables, books, and files lie in heaps of blackened debris. Walls are stained with ash. Floors are layered with fragments of a long cultural journey.

Bangladesh Udichi Shilpigoshthi took to the streets of the capital this morning, staging a protest march and rally to condemn the arson attack on its central office—an assault that, the organisation says, has wiped out 55 years of cultural archives and struck at the heart of the country’s progressive movement.

Blaze brought under control half an hour later

In memory of Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam and Sukanta Bhattacharya, the three great bards of Bangla literature, a cultural function was held at Udichi auditorium recently.

Udichi held a musical evening at the Shawkat Osman auditorium of Central Public Library on March 30 evening.