In Bogura, the air smells of spice and smoke — biryani simmering in giant pots, sizzling kebabs on iron griddles, the promise of comfort in every street corner. It is a city that knows its food, celebrates it, thrives on it. Yet, when night falls and the kitchens close, that same abundance curdles into tragedy.
Every single night, more than two tonnes of perfectly good food — rice, meat, lentils, curries still steaming — vanish into dustbins, drains, and pits across the city. That’s enough to feed 1,500 hungry people.
But it doesn’t.
Instead, it feeds the rats.
A city of plenty and of hunger
Bogura is no stranger to contradiction. The same streets that smell of mutton curry and garlic naan by dusk reek of rotting leftovers by dawn.
Behind the bustling restaurants of Satmatha, a man in a torn municipal vest sorts through a mountain of waste. His name is Akram Mia, a sanitation worker who knows Bogra’s appetite better than any chef.
“At least sixty, seventy per cent of what we collect from restaurants is food,” he says, his face glistening with sweat. “In summer, it rots by morning. The smell sticks to your clothes. You can’t wash it off.”
His words aren’t exaggeration.
Each restaurant discards between 5 and 20 kilograms of cooked food a day. Weddings and community feasts pile on hundreds more. Add it all up, and two thousand kilograms of edible food vanish every 24 hours — enough to fill a truck, or to feed half the city’s homeless.
But the tragedy isn’t measured in kilos. It’s measured in irony.
Waste of water, work, and worth
“It takes three litres of water to cook a kilo of rice,” says Mehedi Hasan, from the District Consumer Rights Protection Department. “Multiply that by two tonnes — you’re wasting thousands of litres, gas, labour, everything.”
He pauses, as if measuring something heavier than arithmetic.
“We’re not just wasting food. We’re wasting dignity. And we’re doing it every night.”
Every pot of rice represents a farmer who rose before dawn to plant it, a woman who bargained in the market to buy it, a cook who stood for hours over the heat to prepare it. And then — one decision, one shrug — and it’s gone.
A city that prides itself on generosity has, somehow, normalised waste.
The restaurants’ dilemma
Talk to the hotel owners, and you’ll hear the same refrain — a mix of helplessness and guilt.
“We have to cook in bulk,” says Abbas Ali, who runs a mid-tier eatery near the railway station. “If we undercook, customers complain. If we overcook, it goes to waste. There’s no winning.”
Across town, Shukkur Ali watches a worker drag a dustbin full of leftover rice to the back alley. “Fifteen kilos, gone,” he mutters. “We can’t serve it again. People would notice. They’d stop coming.”
Even those who want to donate say it’s near impossible. “We finish late,” explains one owner, who asks not to be named. “There’s no one to collect it, no cold storage. By morning, it’s spoiled.”
In a city without proper refrigeration systems or safe transport for cooked food, goodwill alone can’t bridge the gap between abundance and hunger.
A vision stirring in the waste
And yet, amid the rot, hope stirs.
Motiur Rahman, a college teacher and social activist, dreams of a Bogura Food Bank Network — a simple, elegant solution. “Hotels hand over surplus meals at closing time,” he says. “Volunteers collect them, store them safely, and deliver them to shelters before midnight. It’s already working in Dhaka. Why not here?”
Environmental expert Masud Rana backs him up. “Rotting food releases methane — a greenhouse gas twenty-five times more potent than carbon dioxide. This isn’t just moral waste, it’s environmental sabotage.”
And KGM Farooq, from the Campaign for Good Governance, outlines a practical fix: “Separate edible leftovers from spoiled scraps. Feed the people first, compost the rest. It’s not difficult — it’s just decency.”
Bogra Municipality says it’s ready to pilot the scheme. “All we need is cooperation,” an official confirms. “But people must care enough to act.”
A hunger deeper than the stomach
When Abdul Halim, an NGO worker, talks about the waste, his voice trembles.
“You walk past a child sleeping under a flyover,” he says. “Then, fifty yards away, you see a wedding hall dumping untouched food into the drain. That’s not poverty. That’s cruelty.”
He’s right. Bogra’s problem isn’t lack of food — it’s lack of connection. Between the hands that cook and the mouths that starve, there lies a gulf of convenience and neglect.
Every wasted plate is a small surrender — to habit, to apathy, to the comfort of not seeing.
What would it take to care?
In Bogura, food is identity — but also indifference. It’s a city that can cook a feast for a thousand but feed none of its hungry.
Yet the fix isn’t grand or impossible. With a few cold rooms, a handful of volunteers, and the courage to change how the night ends, two tonnes of waste could become two tonnes of grace.
Because the question isn’t about logistics anymore.
It’s about conscience.
And one day, when we look back, the real shame won’t be that people went hungry.
It will be that the food was right there — and we chose not to share it.