The Bangladesh people in the capital Dhaka and elsewhere in the country on Monday celebrated the Bengali New Year 1432 with colorful rallies, traditional delicious food and gorgeous cultural and musical events.

Celebrations of the Bengali New Year began at the sunrise when people wearing new dresses gathered in several major venues around Dhaka University, featuring musical events, rural games and clay dolls, jute crafts and handmade items.

With the day's first rays of the sun visible at dawn, Chhayanaut, an institution devoted to Bengali culture, started staging musical performance in presence of thousands of people to welcome the new year.

In Dhaka, thousands of people wearing masks and traditional dresses, mostly students of colleges and universities joined a colorful procession to welcome the new year with good spirits on Monday morning.

As always they carried large symbolic figures of birds and animals all made of bamboo during the procession, ushering in the Bengali New Year which is now a symbol of cultural unity in Bangladesh without distinction between class or religious affiliations.

The procession for the first time featured people of 28 ethnic groups, different government and private educational institutions, and social and cultural organizations, alongside foreigners in the celebration rally.

In Bangladesh, Pohela Boishakh, or the first day of the New Year, is a national holiday.

During the New Year, Bengalis usually start the day with the traditional simple breakfast of panta-bhat (leftover rice soaked in water) and fried hilsa fish.

Dhaka's fashion houses and boutiques were abuzz with shoppers who bought traditional dresses not only for their families but also for their relatives and friends, a traditional activity during the celebrations of the new year.

Boishakhi Fairs are organized in many parts of Dhaka and elsewhere in the country. The lifestyle of rural Bengal is showcased in almost all these fairs which also stage traditional folk songs and plays.