Surprised by Dhaka

OK, so my last couple of weeks in Delhi are sadly absent from my blog, so I‘m afraid you won’t be treated to an account of my fabulous culinary tour of old Delhi’s food markets, scoffing all manner of goodies, seeing the old ornate haveli houses, now sadly crumbling, and climbing up onto the rooftops for a sneak peek at the fascinating Kabootar Baaz pigeon games.  I can’t tell you about my first Hindi wedding, the bride and groom elaborately dressed finally tying the knot just before midnight, and where my salwar kameez trousers very nearly fell down -  I can’t even relate the story of the Indian band’s cover version of Wham’s White Christmas – minus the correct words -  at a dodgy bar in Delhi.  All this became rather overshadowed as after spending five months in India relatively unscathed, I finally succumbed to Delhi belly.  And how.

Still, after a few months at home I was ready and almost raring to go on my next posting.  I knew a little of what to expect, having spent a week in Dhaka in Novemeber, but now having been here a further ten days I can say it really has been a revelation.  Dhaka has the dubious distinction of being named the worst city in the world in which to live and is home to 7 million people and there is poverty everywhere, with a yawning gap between rich and poor.  I’m lucky enough to be living in what can be loosely described as the Diplomatic Zone, which is relatively hassle-free and home to a number of expat hangouts which usually comprise a bar, pool, eating area and various activities like tennis or yoga.  There seems to be plenty going on so I won’t be bored.

For the duration of this posting I’ll be living in an apartment, for the moment I’m sharing with two other ladies, they are very nice but this particular grumpy old woman is way past her days of flat sharing, so I will be glad when I get the place to myself. Situated right opposite a pleasant park so I can even get my walking in, which those who know me well will also know is one of my favourite things in life to do (apart from drinking coffee, chatting and drinking prosecco!)  The park has two lakes, the water level in both being quite low at the moment but I suspect this will change once the rainy season kicks in.  There are six seasons in Bangladesh of two months duration each, and daytime temperatures at the moment are around 38-40 degrees, night-time it is around 28, but it actually doesn’t seem as hot as all that as usually there’s a slight breeze and on top of that it’s not too humid.  Dhaka is surprisingly green and full of trees and the park despite being bang slap in the centre of the city is home to a variety of exotic-sounding birdlife – cuckoos, swifts, mynah birds, egrets, parrots and a black bird with am enormous long tail. I tend to see the same people lapping the park each evening, including an old gent in a neck brace catching the evening air as he shuffles along.  Stay after dusk and the fruit bats emerge, flapping lazily off.  This is also mozzie time and unfortunately the repellent I brought from the UK is about as effective as slapping on cold tea. I am a walking talking mosquito banquet.

As for food, there are a couple of lunch options including the local canteen and I had the bright idea of buying an egg bhuna and taking it back to the apartment with me to eat over the weekend.  Unfortunately the little foil box it was in came in a string bag type thing and as I was carrying it out of the office it started dripping bright green sauce all down the corridor (and very nearly all down my leg). I had no other bag to put it in and it was making a right mess so I’m afraid my bhuna never made it home with me….Instead that evening I decided to try the marvellous website hungrynaki.  For a modest delivery fee there are a whole range of restaurant items available at the click of a mouse. I opted for a roasted veg pizza from the splendidly named Pizza Guy – what a revelation. Unlike Indian pizzas which generally suffer from strange cheese and excessive chilli, this was the real deal.  And there you have it.  Since most of the food here is imported, it’s actually way easier to obtain familiar food items than it is in India, although it comes at a price. Halloumi at £7 a packet seems a bit steep unless I get severe withdrawal symptoms.  However I’m also getting to know the best places to buy ingredients including the splendid vegetable man at the Nordic Club where I bought a bag of unfeasibly long beans for 30p.  Curiously, when I arrived at the flat the office had, unbidden, ordered a huge box of food items to be delivered from the local expat shop: how nice I thought until I realised they had also delivered the £75 bill. Now its no secret I’m a terrible food snob and the food parcel was full of item’s I’d never eat – white bread, sugar, instant coffee, sweet cereals, spaghetti hoops – so I loaded up my bags promptly, and took it back to the shop – knees buckling as I staggered round there in the afternoon heat.  Halfway there I became aware of a commotion behind me and cries of ‘madame! madame!’ Assuming it to be a rickshaw driver touting for business I ignored it but the cries became louder and more insistent and were followed by running feet when a breathless Benglai chap presented me with an enormous lump of cheddar cheese that had dropped out of my bag onto the dusty road.

This weekend I decided to try out the local hash – a running/walking club around various locations in Dhaka. The river Fatki runs through Dhaka and naturally it is surrounded by marshes, mudflats and inlets, no doubt a haven for wildlife.  A huge construction company has started a programme of filling in these marshes with river sand, draining the land, creating first a sandy desert and then prime building land.  It was this area that we walked around.  Each plot over this vast area has been pre-sold at a cost of $70,000US and in a few years the area will be unrecognisable, just another part of the high-rise urban sprawl of Dhaka. With an estimated staggering 44% of the population of Dhaka homeless, obviously something must be done, but it seems to me to be an environmental catastrophe.  For the moment it’s magical, we walked across sandy dunes, then marshes to cultivated plots with locals old and young working the land; women with bright sarees and huge loads upon their strong shoulders, and finally along to villages cleverly built above flood level.  It was a real slice of Bangladeshi village life, and naturally we were the subject of much amusement and excitement, and the entire village turned out to watch.  As the sun set as a huge red ball and I cracked open the first cold beer I felt privileged to have seen this place before it is inevitably swallowed up in the building site that is Dhaka.