Pastures new....

Time is racing on apace in Dhaka and the seasons are definitely on the move.  It started with impressive thunderstorms, preceded by fierce winds stripping leaves and branches off trees.  The rain cools things down nicely, but it’s not long before the heat is back, the humid air making the temperature seem higher than it actually is.  Just after the rain has stopped its beautiful, like a summer morning in Greece.  The TV warned of the threat of tornadoes, and walking to the supermarket the other day, out of nowhere, the wind whipped up, clogging every pore with Dhaka dust and collecting rubbish and debris, flinging it high in the air in disconcerting circles.  And there is a lot of rubbish to fling. After about 5 minutes the wind suddenly dropped, and that was that.

It’s hard enough to cross the road in Dhaka without bits of rubbish being flung at your face like washing on a line.  The traffic is bad, but that is no news.  There is a lane for traffic going one way, and a lane for traffic going the other way, but this rule is seldom observed. Central reservations are at least eighteen inches in height, and punctuated by large uncovered holes leading down into steep drains, or in some cases, lined with crude barbed wire fences.  But before you can negotiate all that, there’s the constant stream of hawkers who descend as you’re waiting to cross the road, usually kids selling stickers or plastic windmills, or men laden with kitchen accessories in their heads.  Once they’ve been fended off and there is break in the traffic, inevitably a rickshaw or tuc tuc will stop dead in front of you plying their trade and before you can weave around them the next wave of traffic is bearing down.  It’s best not to be in a hurry.

Talking of rickshaws I took the plunge with my first rickshaw ride and now I’m hooked. I’d been subjected to constant warnings against taking them, not only are you a sitting target for any thief who fancies helping themselves to your phone or wallet, but the complete disregard of drivers for even the most rudimentary traffic laws males you rather vulnerable sitting atop a little open wooden carriage.  Throwing caution to the wind I decided to take part in a rickshaw treasure hunt – clues dotted around Dhaka that needed to be found.  The first clue was easy as frankly we just followed everyone else but the second clue was where we came unstuck.  It should have been easy; all we needed to do was find Road 46.  Now, the roads in Dhaka are arranged in a grid system, and numbered in a sequence which for the most part is logical.  For the most part.  Our rickshaw driver, an extremely wiry not so young chap, as it turned out had no idea where Road 46 was but didn’t choose to share this with us and instead pedalled off in the oaddirection of the roads in the 50’s – not unreasonably I suppose, but in the opposite direction to everyone else. When rickshaw drivers pedal they pedal fast and get quite a speed up, bouncing over potholes with passengers clinging on to – well, there’s nothing to cling on to – and shooting out of side turnings into main roads without slowing.  We sailed around for a bit before realising we’d gone down the same road more than once, at which our driver started to slow down and perspire, and finally to start asking passersby where the hell was Road 46.  We eventually found it no thanks to him after almost an hour of bouncing round Dhaka’s backstreets.  Rickshaw man was not happy with the fare we gave him, but I pointed out sanctimoniously that if he’d admitted from the off that he had no idea where he was going, no doubt we could have sought advice earlier and the whole trip would have been shorter. Sadly since my rant was delivered in English as my Bangla is not up to scratch it was largely lost on him.

The rickshaw drivers are generally a hopeful lot.  I walk a lot in Dhaka and usually walk purposefully, head down. It doesn’t stop the rickshaw drivers cycling up alongside, hopefully stating ‘rickshaw madam?’ in case for some reason the idea hadn’t occurred to me and I hadn’t in any case seen the one thousand other rickshaws that had just passed me asking the very same question.

I’ve discovered a new route into town which  involves a pleasant walk along the very polluted but not too smelly Banani lake.  The whole area is full of large gleaming apartment blocks or apartment blocks being built, but in between these and the banks of the river people have set up home.  They live in tin shacks, cultivating tiny plots of land, keeping chickens, ducks and goats, which appear to thrive.  They wash in the filthy lake and their children play in it.  They smile as I walk past. It’s a strange dichotomy of rural life bang-smack in the middle of the city.

The walk along the lake brings one to Banani market which is a good place to buy fruit and vegetables, although the majority of it is knobbly, unfamiliar and exotic so I wouldn’t know whether to eat it or display it as a piece of modern art. Banani market is covered which makes it at least a million degrees inside and a Mecca for bluebottles.  Apart from the fruit and vegetable section there is a fish section – Bangladesh has amazing fresh fish and seafood, rather offputtingly much of it was so very fresh it was still alive, one grinning man putting on an impromptu sideshow by whacking an unfortunate fish on the head with a wooden mallet as I passed.  Further on is the meat section, where all manner of meat can be butchered to order.  Trying to avert my gaze from the hapless scrawny chooks in cages my eyes alighted on the rictus grin adorning a goat’s head, one of a row displayed on a bench, dripping blood onto the concrete floor on which I stood, unwisely shod in open-toed sandals.  Although one could argue that the average Bangladeshi is great deal more in touch with what they are eating than the average westerner with their prepacked joints of meat, and that is a whole huge moral kettle of live fish.

Wherever you go in Dhaka there is some sort of movie being filmed.  Some lighting rigs, a couple of silver reflective umbrellas and an interested crowd, and off they go.  Just outside my flat the other day a scene was being filmed in which the hero – a stereotypical polished male with sleek black hair and oversized mirrored sunglasses, had to repeatedly appear out of the sunroof of a shiny black tinted-window Mercedes, brandishing a large rifle.  If you look closely in the background of that particular scene you will no doubt spot a small white woman fending off a score of rickshaw drivers.

So finally to the title of my blog. Sadly I’m to leave my little apartment tomorrow.  I’ll be moving closer to work which is a good thing, and away from the vast mosque being built next door, which amazingly does not wake me at 5am any longer.  But I’ll also be leaving my favourite haunts like the fruit and veg man, the Nordic Club, Bellagio’s with the best coffee and pastries in Asia, and Banani market and its headless goats.  I shall miss the park with its curious birds – noisy cuckoos, woodpeckers and parrots; and huge butterflies that emerge at dusk, as well as flowers of all shapes, sizes and hues and the curious fruit such as the ugly slightly obscene-looking jackfruit.  I shall miss the guard and his cheery assalamu alaikum, and the lady who takes the money at the public toilets who has progressed from shyly looking through me as I walk past to greeting me with a smile that lights up her face.  I shall miss the beautifully tended nursery at the end of the park, with the slightly familiar-looking spindly-leafed plant in the corner.  I shall miss the oldest beggar in the world who loiters at the park entrance, a miniscule woman with manic eyes and absolutely no teeth.  I shall miss the old folk who sit in a circle in the cool of the evening, one circle for men, one circle for women, and drink tea, and talk about life, one assumes.

Onwards, ever onwards.