Having somewhat got over my frustration at being in a luxury hotel (oh happy frustration, some might well say), my Bangladeshi homies took me for a ride last night. It crossed my mind that after some of the less than generous things I had said about their fine country, they planned to batter me insensible with a coconut and leave me floating face-down in a jacuzzi; but in fact they wanted to show me some of the real Bangladesh. And a far nicer place it looks close-up than from behind a hotel compound wall.
It is quite uncannily reminiscent of the Indonesia of the 90s - incomes are rising, leading to more cars on the road without more roads necessarily being built; above street level there are mind-boggling tangles of wires carrying cable TV and broadband Internet access into the apartments of the rising middle classes, old houses are beng replaced at a rapid rate by new apartment blocks to squeeze more accomodation into the city. Occasional power brownouts are the result, above all, of so many people being able to afford fridges, AC units, TVs and computers. These are all signs of a country on its way somewhere; as is the laudable development of grameen banking - a Bangladeshi invention.
There are still some beggars about; many of them congregate around the hotels in the hope of tapping the sentimental guilt of suckers like me, of course - the equivalent of walking out of a posh London hotel to be accosted with the words "Big Issue?"; but also the streets are safer than you may imagine. I fussed about leaving my bag in the car when we arrived at a cafe and parked in the street. "Leave it there, it'll be quite safe" my colleague told me. So I did, and it was. That's not something I'd like to try in Reading. Complete strangers make eye contact, and smile, and greet you politely - again a marked improvement on Reading.
I am reminded, re-reading my last posting, of the 'Goodness Gracious Me' sketch in which Dave Lamb played a British reporter with a repertoire of cliches; standing with grim-faced concern talking about "the grinding poverty" and similar while happy Indians clustered around him, beaming broadly and saying "Mark Tully! Mark Tully!"
Furthermore, a story that has gathered much media comment is about an elderly woman abandoned by her successful, professional children to live on her own, which the papers are lamenting as an introduction of "Western values".
As the Bible should have said "Before removing a mote from another chap's eye, remove the plank from your own eye - then you'll have a plank handy to hit the blighter round the head with if he makes a fuss."
I would very much like to come back for longer, learn a modicum of emergency Bengali (perhaps from a colonial era language book, just for entertainment value. I could stride around in pith helmet and khaki shorts bellowing "Tell the men not to clean their rifles with sandpaper" or "Look here! I'm going to ask you six questions..." while Boyo stands by with dustpan, brush and valuers guide to Gypsy teeth). It would be nice to get out of Dhaka - to see Tagore's compound, or the world's longest unbroken beach at Cox's Bazaar. It would also be nice to stay somewhere more in touch with the country around it, to stop me being such a wuss about things.
Showing posts with label Bangladesh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bangladesh. Show all posts
Friday, 20 February 2009
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
"All Bengalis are poets"
Some of my more literary acquaintances have recently mused about the reasons we all write. It strikes me that in one sense the task of the writer is to chase down the thoughts that flitter, moth-like, among the thickets of the subconscious and collect them for display to the world. We are the unacknowledged entomologists of the imagination.
"Ooh! Get you!" my less literary acquaintances are probably saying to themselves by now. In my defence, I shall quote the title of this posting - said drunkenly and tearfully by someone at an office leaving party I once attended in India - and point out that this week I find myself in highly literary Bangladesh, among the highly-literary Bengalis who produced Rabindranath Tagore to name but one. (OK, so Tagore was from West Bengal, now in India; but that hasn't stopped Bangladesh adopting one of his poems as a national anthem).
Permit me to direct you to the highly literary blog of my Dhaka-based friend and colleague, the highly-literary Mr Amaro'to Kotha-chhilo by way of evidence.
Among the less poetic elements of the country, I should point out by way of balance, are the airport baggage carousel and the free-form scrum that formed around it (an hour and a fricking half to retrieve one bag! I ask you...); and the fact that the office is only a short walk from the hotel, but across eight lanes of homicidal traffic. Having lived in Indonesia, I feel quite at home. I have readopted my erstwhile tactic of adding myself to a large group of locals to get across, reasoning that while a driver may be tempted by the target of a lone westerner, they're less likely to mow down a dozen of their own. Although tragically, pedestrians in many parts of Asia seem to be regarded as an expendable commodity.
Yesterday's main English-language paper carried a surprisingly colonel-esque headline: "GUNBATTLE AT JU [Jahangirnagar University] AGAIN". It was the 'again' that caught my attention - as if one isolated inter-student gunbattle would barely be worth reporting. The article also contained the inescapably arresting detail that 50 had been injured in the shoot-out, "five of them with bullets". This says volumes about either a shortage of ammunition or a serious perception gap about what guns are actually for. (I think the university should introduce a short course taught by a retired colonel: "Firearms 101 - How to load the bally thing with bullets, point it at yer intended target and pull the trigger, you long-haired nicompoops!" or some such.)
The calls to prayer from the city's many mosques are, as always, hauntingly beautiful. When I lived in Indonesia the sound of 15 or 20 mosques within earshot all going off at once, as it were, was a constant delight; forming a kind of accidental found choral music of Messiaenic beauty. Here, the effect is marred not a little by the incessant honking of horns and whooping of 'VVIP' motorcade sirens. Not that anyone moves aside for them, of course. On the way into town from the airport, I saw the faintly pathetic sight of policemen in an escorting truck waving batons listlessly at the oblivious traffic, with the forlorn expressions of men who know full well that they're just going through the motions.
Tagore himself said of Indonesia when he visited it in the early 20th century "I see India everywhere but I do not recognise it." At the time, of course, Bangladesh was part of the India he meant. Looking at Bangladesh, I understand him perfectly.
"Ooh! Get you!" my less literary acquaintances are probably saying to themselves by now. In my defence, I shall quote the title of this posting - said drunkenly and tearfully by someone at an office leaving party I once attended in India - and point out that this week I find myself in highly literary Bangladesh, among the highly-literary Bengalis who produced Rabindranath Tagore to name but one. (OK, so Tagore was from West Bengal, now in India; but that hasn't stopped Bangladesh adopting one of his poems as a national anthem).
Permit me to direct you to the highly literary blog of my Dhaka-based friend and colleague, the highly-literary Mr Amaro'to Kotha-chhilo by way of evidence.
Among the less poetic elements of the country, I should point out by way of balance, are the airport baggage carousel and the free-form scrum that formed around it (an hour and a fricking half to retrieve one bag! I ask you...); and the fact that the office is only a short walk from the hotel, but across eight lanes of homicidal traffic. Having lived in Indonesia, I feel quite at home. I have readopted my erstwhile tactic of adding myself to a large group of locals to get across, reasoning that while a driver may be tempted by the target of a lone westerner, they're less likely to mow down a dozen of their own. Although tragically, pedestrians in many parts of Asia seem to be regarded as an expendable commodity.
Yesterday's main English-language paper carried a surprisingly colonel-esque headline: "GUNBATTLE AT JU [Jahangirnagar University] AGAIN". It was the 'again' that caught my attention - as if one isolated inter-student gunbattle would barely be worth reporting. The article also contained the inescapably arresting detail that 50 had been injured in the shoot-out, "five of them with bullets". This says volumes about either a shortage of ammunition or a serious perception gap about what guns are actually for. (I think the university should introduce a short course taught by a retired colonel: "Firearms 101 - How to load the bally thing with bullets, point it at yer intended target and pull the trigger, you long-haired nicompoops!" or some such.)
The calls to prayer from the city's many mosques are, as always, hauntingly beautiful. When I lived in Indonesia the sound of 15 or 20 mosques within earshot all going off at once, as it were, was a constant delight; forming a kind of accidental found choral music of Messiaenic beauty. Here, the effect is marred not a little by the incessant honking of horns and whooping of 'VVIP' motorcade sirens. Not that anyone moves aside for them, of course. On the way into town from the airport, I saw the faintly pathetic sight of policemen in an escorting truck waving batons listlessly at the oblivious traffic, with the forlorn expressions of men who know full well that they're just going through the motions.
Tagore himself said of Indonesia when he visited it in the early 20th century "I see India everywhere but I do not recognise it." At the time, of course, Bangladesh was part of the India he meant. Looking at Bangladesh, I understand him perfectly.
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