Guest Column

Dhaka Memories
Supreeta Singh

It's been a little more than five months since I have been back from Dhaka and with the passage of time Bangladesh is ceasing to be a place, a geographical location, a physical reality which I can point in the map and exclaim “I have been here,” because I am no longer sure any more whether I have really been there. Feeling like a deserted lover, Bangladesh haunts me, creeps upon me when I least expect it, in the most unlikely of ways in the reflection of a woman's sunglass, in the tinkle of a certain laughter, in the rear view of a car, in the folds of a billowing shalwar, in the act of crossing roads, or in the columns of cigarette smoke. Abruptly out of nowhere bits and parts of experience rise in front of me, like sudden flashes of déjà vu, mingle with the sense, smell, din, traffic roar, twittering bird, thuk-thuk of keyboard keys, television volume, suffuse with the teeny-tiny particles floating in the air and play out its course. I pause, and become a mute witness, while deep, very deep in my heart something stirs. As one of the participants of an exchange program between South Asian countries, I was posted in Dhaka at Drik Bangladesh, a new media agency, for a period of ten months from November 2006 to August 2007. However, it was not a smooth sailing when the first obstacle came in the form of my parents' objection and the second, more potent, in the form of getting a long-term visa. While I knew that I could win over my parents over time, there was nothing I, or my colleagues at Drik India, could do about bureaucratic red tape. Finally, after long meetings with Bangladesh High Commission officials, I was handed a three-month multiple entry visa on 24 November. On the morning of 5 December 2006 I arrived in Bangladesh. Influenced by one-sided media reports, I carried a whole baggage of preconceived ideas about my host country. To begin with, there was the legendary poverty of Bangladesh. Then there was the horrible fundamentalist threat lurking everywhere, and thirdly, the need for caution in an extremely conservative society. I was warned, and given sermons on how to conduct myself in Bangladesh by my near and dear ones. And if truth be told, even though I was much more excited than apprehensive, I packed my bags with a year's supply of soaps, moisturizers, perfumes, clothes, books, pens and pencils, among many things, fearing it would be difficult to find anything in a poor country. I had inquired whether I would find any beauty parlor. From Zia International Airport I was first taken to Drik and then to Pathshala, the South Asian Institute of Photography, which was to be my home for the coming months. Besides me, three more participants, Tulika from India, and Navraj and Balkrishna from Nepal were there too. Tulika and Balkrishna would be working with an NGO and Navraj and I were to work in Drik. The first few things that struck me about Dhaka, where I landed first, were the wide open roads, the innumerable universities, malls as well as hospitals, the splendid multicolored and festooned rickshaws and the traffic. Coming from Kolkata, I am used to all these in my home city, but the differences were in degree. Dhaka is a smaller city than Kolkata with almost all places connected by rickshaws. Unlike Kolkata, there seemed to be a surplus of malls and hospitals, and the traffic moved at a snail's pace. Also, the sudden appearances of fancy-looking apartments and houses, their structure and design overblown as if bursting out of the architect's drafting boards, looked far from poverty stricken. My notion of a poor country began to lose water. The ideas of an extremely rigid society also began to get jolts. There were less burqa clad women in Dhaka than in Kolkata, many young women were dressed in jeans, there were quite a few cafes, like Mango, Kozmo and Coffee World for lounging and meeting people, lovers were holding hands in the open and sitting huddled together in Dhanmondi Lake, and most of the people were friendly (which my friends informed me was because of my gender!). However, certain restrictions did apply. Wearing jeans meant a long kurta, and no short top, with a dupatta thrown on the shoulders. And one of the few frustrating things was being started at by curious eyes and gaping mouths whenever and almost wherever I walked. Men passed remarks. Although harassment of women is also a common feature in Kolkata too, the constant gaping and commenting was very unnerving in the beginning at least. In Kolkata things are comparatively better and I know how to handle them, but in Dhaka I was at a loss. After some time, however, I could ignore it easily. It helped very much that I was working in a communication project at Drik since it meant meeting a lot of photographers from not only in Bangladesh, but all over the globe. Some of my colleagues took me along with them for socializing after work, and many of them have now become my good friends too. Interestingly, many people I came across in Bangladesh had fairy tale ideas of Kolkata, that it was a magical city of art, culture, books and Sunil Gangopadhyay. Even if I sometimes detected some suppressed hostility towards India, Kolkata was seen differently. They were fascinated with the city. In the many moods of Bangladesh, I woke up to old signs in new postures. If Dhaka took me meandering to cramped by-lanes in rickshaws donning a burst of colors, bells and strings, then the backwaters of Chandpur cradled me in her formidable, resistant yet soft green rolls of wave and wisps of yellow mustard strands. If in Dhaka I felt immersed into the hectic wheel of everyday urban life between cups of tea and coffee, in Sunderbans I lapped up the luxuriousness of being in raptures at the sight of brilliant stars shining so palpably that I felt I could pick them out like pebbles and store them in my mind's vision. If in Dhaka I daily crossed the footbridge over a trickling river on my way to work, in Gaibandha I gently glided on the immense Brahmaputra, with the wind chafing my face and the buoyancy nurturing my soul. The places I frequented most were Old Dhaka and New Market. In Old Dhaka I would go to Dhakhineshwar temple, Ramkrishna temple, and visit a family I had become friends with on my way there. Tulika would sometimes accompany me to New Market and we would do window shopping, and occasionally came back with our hands full. Sometimes I would tag along with Drik personnel and we would buy all kinds of groceries, and treat ourselves to fuchkas. Food, though, was a difficult challenge. Being a vegetarian here was not easy. The very concept of a pure vegetarian was non-existent, where a “veg” soup would invariably consist of chicken! Only an eatery called Escape from Shanghai where I hung out with my friends came up with purely vegetarian sandwiches. Not even at Cooper's or King's Confectionary could I find a vegetarian patty. The only things I could eat when I was out were pizza and ice cream. And it began to show! On a personal level, looking back I remember Bangladesh mostly as a private adventure where I experienced the best feeling of all that of liberation. I had chalked out a life of my own, with my work, colleagues, friends, where I carved out an identity for myself without any prior belonging or attachment. I forged new ties and made abiding relationships that told me a lot of things about my character and nature I only hoped that I have. In the end all I can say is I had no inkling whatsoever that in the short span of ten months I would build such an enduring relationship with Bangladesh. I would never be able to do justice in writing about how I feel about the country because there is so much to her. And that says a lot. Supreeta Singh currently lives in Kolkata.