I often catch myself, almost involuntarily, looking towards the spot where Shishu Park once stood whenever I pass through Shahbagh. It doesn’t matter whether I am heading to the university, Pathak Samabesh, or simply cutting through Suhrawardy Udyan. Somehow, my eyes still expect to find the familiar entrance gate waiting there.

I know the gates are gone. I know the little train no longer whistles its way around the park. There are no impatient children bargaining with exhausted parents for “just one more ride.”

The metallic horses no longer go round and round to the endlessly cheerful “Amader deshta shopnopuri...” --a song that, despite the best efforts of adulthood, still lurks somewhere in the back of our minds.

For many of us who grew up in Dhaka in the late nineties or early 2000s, back when childhood was still blissfully screenless, the gates of Shishu Park marked the address of happiness.

Behaved well on your exams? Shishu Park. Relatives visiting from outside Dhaka and insisting on “seeing the city”? Shishu Park. Eid holidays? Shishu Park. A winter evening walk through Ramna with your father? Shishu Park.

Pahela Baishakh? Pahela Falgun? A book-hunting day at the Ekushey Book Fair that somehow ended with the promise of “just one ride?” Definitely Shishu Park!

Looking back, the destination almost didn’t matter. The day could begin anywhere -- in Shahbagh, Ramna, or the Book Fair grounds. But somehow, it found its way to those familiar gates.

Sometimes, you did not even need an occasion. A lazy Friday afternoon with nowhere particular to be was reason enough.

It did not matter which part of Dhaka you came from: Mirpur or Mohammadpur, Dhanmondi or Jatrabari, Uttara or Old Dhaka. Inside those gates, every child wanted the same things -- to sit in the front compartment of the toy train, to wave from the top of the Ferris wheel, and to convince their parents that one more ride token would surely be enough. Which, again, was never enough!

Now, I don’t think those of us who were children then were particularly fascinated by the rides themselves. Even by the standards of that time, they were modest. The paint peeled. The rides creaked. The little train probably travelled slower than a peddle rickshaw.

But none of that mattered.

A Tk 10 ticket was never just a ticket there. And those painted horses were never merely pieces of metal bolted to a merry-go-round. On some days, they were royal stallions galloping through enchanted kingdoms. On others, they carried us into battles that existed only in our heads.

Long before screens learnt to entertain us, Shishu Park quietly taught us how to entertain ourselves. All it took was a handful of tickets and an imagination willing to do the rest.

And then there was that one day every week when the park opened its gates to street children. Looking back, I doubt any of us understood the significance of that day. We only noticed that the queues were longer, the laughter was louder, and the toy train somehow looked more eager, carrying every child who climbed aboard.

And that, perhaps, was Shishu Park’s greatest achievement. It belonged to everyone.

But we have perhaps lost it! And the strange thing about cities is that they rarely stop to mourn what they lose.

Even without Shishu Park, Shahbagh continues its familiar routine. The flower stalls still splash colour across the pavements. The National Museum still welcomes curious visitors. Dhaka University still spills students, slogans, festivals, and traffic onto the streets. Every February, the Ekushey Book Fair returns faithfully.

Everything seems to find its way back to Shahbagh.

Except the one place where a child’s joy was never measured by where they came from.