Ask anyone in Bangladesh who grew
up watching television before the mid-1990s, and there is a good chance they
will hum a few lines of it without needing a reminder. ‘Cigarette theke shuru,
sheshkale heroin’ was not a hit song in the commercial sense.
It was a public service message,
broadcast in the slots between programs on Bangladesh Television, BTV, the only
channel most households could receive at the time. Decades later it still shows
up in nostalgia posts, remix videos, and parody...