The story
Biju Festival Rangamati in Rangamati
Biju is the Chakma community's own name for its share of the Chittagong Hill Tracts new year, marked in Rangamati by flower-floating, river bathing, new clothes and the Pajon vegetable-and-dried-fish dish across three days. It sits alongside, but is distinct from, the Marma Sangrai and Tripura Bishu versions of the same broader season.
The Chakma community opens its three-day Biju new year with Phool Biju, when women in pinon-hadi wraps and men in dhoti-punjabi float flowers into Kaptai Lake and along the Karnaphuli's edge, a ritual meant to carry away the old year's troubles before the calendar turns.