The Fisherman

Bangladeshis have a greater awareness of local geography than they used to. Years ago it was not uncommon in Dhaka, when I’d say I was headed for Hatiya, for people to reply, ‘Hatiya – Sandwip’, not fully appreciating the two islands are distinct and quite far from each other, notwithstanding that many Hatiyans have Sandwipian ancestry. Years ago in Dhaka my travel plans met with trepidation: people from the islands faced cyclones, those areas were remote. People from the islands were tough and brave.

In Hatiya’s case it might be more accurate to use ‘open-hearted’ in place of ‘tough’, but it’s not altogether incorrect to speak of bravery. Think for a moment of the island’s fishermen.

Imagine spending up to ten days at sea at a time in small locally-constructed wooden trawlers, hoping the wood is strong enough to withstand the pounding of the waves when things get rough; hoping the fuel and supplies have been judged to last. Imagine being mindful of the meagre economic reward that, with luck, the nets will bring: needed to sustain the family. Think of facing waves as high as mountains, with deep valleys between them, so the fishermen describe: when all to be seen ahead is a vast wall of water. The Bay of Bengal is not always kind.

It’s quite an experience to sit in the tea shops along the Hatiyan coast and listen to the sea tales that bring the place such life. There’s a Hemmingway in each of those fishermen, if truth be told; in their daily duties.

In one such tea shop last Eid I was bickering as it happened with the shopkeeper over the size of the cups. He was using those tiny ceramic ones when any condensed-milk-tea connoisseur knows to prefer the glasses with the convenient larger handles. Indeed, the shop had only five cups and as the customers were many we were obliged to take turns: but that’s another matter.

I was explaining to the shopkeeper that while I liked his shop, I’d have to bring along a really good-sized cup to properly enjoy my tea, referencing the several-litre plastic water container nearby. ‘It should be at least that size,’ I said. All the customers laughed, the shopkeeper included, probably thinking it might take half the tea in Sylhet to make the proposed cup of tea.

There was a fisherman among us, Siddique. He’s an ordinary looking villager with nothing about his appearance to distinguish him. What was far from ordinary, at least outside the Bangladeshi coastal fishing communities, was the experience he relayed.

Siddique had been out at sea on one occasion, he told, when, as happens all too regularly in the waters of the Bay, his vessel was attacked by pirates. The problem was they didn’t just steal the catch but the trawler as well. Siddique found himself along with his crew mates thrown overboard into the sea. He was lucky. While most of the others drowned, Siddique along with two of his friends managed to find a bamboo pole that the pirates had discarded from the trawler. The three of them clung onto it as a buoy, somewhere far from the shore.

Day turned into night and still they hung on, facing down each and every wave that came by. Night turned into day, and again to night… for six days it lasted, the floating and not knowing if anyone would ever come. For six days they’d had nought but their belief in Allah to sustain them; for six days only each other to give encouragement. It was then a boat, perchance, spotted them in the water. They were transported to the safety of the Chittagong port.

In the west there is sometimes a misconception that the poor are out to get every penny they can, which comes about from trying to imagine but not having experienced that level of need. In Bangladesh it is commonly understood that more often it’s the reverse: that it’s the least financially well-endowed that can harbour extraordinary generosity towards their fellow man. The crew of the random rescue trawler, hardly rich themselves, fed Siddique and his friends. They donated the fares for the ship ride home to Hatiya. They set them right to rejoin their families.

Siddique was fortunate. He returned, that time. And then in the course of life, but of course, he set about finding a new trawler to take him back to sea to face again the mountain-waves and valley-troughs, the strenuous labour and possibly pirates. In Australia someone who’d survived such an ordeal would be championed in the newspapers. In Bangladesh newspapers could feature a ‘Siddique’ story every day for a year and not be done with the fishermen of Hatiya. And then there’s Bholans and Sandwipians and Monpurans; all the fishing districts along the entire Bangladeshi coast. In Australia people have been called ‘heroes’ for surviving such things; in Hatiya it’s that usual bravery of necessity the islanders call ‘life’.

Then I come in, in the tea shop, with all the stupid questions only somebody who hasn’t any experience with such matters could conjure. ‘Weren’t you scared?’ I asked: the answer obvious. ‘Were there sharks?’ and ‘What did you do for water?’ I was thinking in particular that drinking salt water can dehydrate and lead to an earlier death. Siddique didn’t know how to respond; they’d been surrounded by water, and I understood from his facial expression that I’d missed a point somewhere. I didn’t know what made the question redundant.

The next day I understood. I was wandering outside the embankment that lines the Hatiyan coast, in the area the locals refer to as ‘the garden’. There I saw rice fields, the most common element to the local scenery and unremarkable; but suddenly I realised, quite incredibly, that those rice plants were growing in the tidal zone. They were being watered by the sea!

Though the southern shore of the island faces the Bay of Bengal, Hatiya sits at the mouth of the Meghna Mega-River, and incredibly, the amount of water discharged during the monsoon period overwhelms the immediate vicinity of the Bay to the point where the level of salt in the solution is diminished enough to grow rice, but only of the rajashail rice variety so I learnt, and only in the monsoon months. It was the answer to the question: for water Siddique had needed only to open his mouth.

What’d been most startling about Siddique’s account was the way he’d delivered it. Like the other fishermen I’ve heard speak of such events, and though it was clear his experience was significant to him, there was far much too much normality about his narration. Then too he thought of others: he told of an occasion when his crew had come across a woman floating in the Bay. She’d been washed out to sea during a cyclone and, Siddique made a point of this, ‘she’d been out there for eight days.’ It was almost as though his six wasn’t enough. Worse things have happened…

Imagine that lady, probably busying herself these days, quietly back at home, making roti, cutting vegetables, feeding straw into her clay oven to cook rice … common activities of many a Hatiyan lady’s life. Sometimes, now and then, she’d probably remember the eight days she floated on the sea; but mostly she’d be attending the daily chores. She’d be leading a straightforward life, thinking of others.

A few days later I returned to the tea shop; I sat with my friends as usual and ordered tea. The shopkeeper went about making it, as usual, and soon put in front of my friends the regular offering. Then he returned with mine. Guess what, he’d found the largest cup available, the plastic lid of his thermos flask, and filled it almost to the brim with piping tea. It took a good half an hour to wade through it; like a bowl it was, hard to lift. Everybody took humour from my wish fulfilled.

Note to self: remember Siddique the fisherman’s survival when clinging onto the bamboo pole that in one of its innumerable forms presents itself to all of us at some time in life. Note to self: it’s best to take Hatiyan tea cups as they come.


Need a little update on Siddique the fisherman?

Here's a bit more village life and something else about tea.

This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: Braving the Waters

Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh

The Estonian Incident

Angla Windmills

It’s fair to say I never left Estonia, at least not technically. According to whatever records there are I’m still there, continuously since 1997. It’s not really a problem as such, and Estonia is certainly a pleasant enough country to be in, except that when it comes right down to it, when it comes to the actual being there, I’m clearly not.

In northern Europe and the smallest of the Baltic States, with a population not much beyond 1.3 million, Estonia is mostly flat, with pine forests, bogs, fields and numerous lakes to satisfy the eye; not to mention the rustic islands along its rocky Baltic Sea coastline. In winter it’s considerably cold but in that part of the world one of the joys is the changing seasons: the longer days, the shorter days, the noticeable difference every day. By summer, when I was there, the country is green, warm and all that is hospitable.

Photo: Liina Guiter

Estonia used to be a part of the Soviet Union until the bloodless Singing Revolution led to independence in 1991. The country joined the European Union in 2004.

There was certainly no plan to remain in Estonia. Rather I was to spend a week’s holiday before continuing south for a second week in Latvia; then home to Australia. Circumstances took over: blame it on the friendly relations between Estonia and Latvia, blame it on that Latvian cowboy or the Swedish pensioners’ bus; there was little opportunity for a graceful exit.

It was easy to assume Estonia a safe country, since a common means of getting around was to hitch-hike, standing along the road somewhere waving down passing traffic. Even single girls did it so it can’t have been entirely dangerous.

In the short week of my Estonian tour, I’d gotten a lift from the ‘Master-Road-Builder’ of the island of Saaremaa; several times with a brother and sister from Finland who happened to be plotting a roughly similar vacation chart to mine, and even though their car had a suspension problem which meant if I sat in the back it occasionally scraped along the road; I’d once found myself in a plush Mercedes with a driver who looked slightly like a Russian mafia don; and there were those lovely Lithuanian lawyers who’d required my Australian Driver’s Licence as evidence that it was really possible someone could be from somewhere so far away. Meeting many people, it was a good way to get around.

On the day of the incident I was heading to the Latvian border at Valga, with hopes of reaching the Latvian capital of Riga by day’s end. The Baltic States are small, so even though Riga is in the centre of Latvia, more or less, it’s still only a few hours’ drive south of the Estonian border.

Farmhouse

The car that’d stopped was a nondescript Eastern European model; in it were a couple: he was Russian and she Estonian. As neither spoke English all I could communicate was ‘Latvia’ which meant ‘please if you wouldn’t mind dropping me somewhere by the border I’d be most appreciative.’ They seemed to understand. I was laughing to myself that there were three people in the car with three languages when we stopped to pick up the fourth language: Latvian.

I can’t say it’s ever been on my life’s priority list to meet a Latvian acoustic folk guitarist, but I’m glad I did. Equipped with guitar, a small bag for luggage and a straw hat in the cowboy mould, he was on his way home to Riga from a folk festival in Finland. His hair was straggling; it matched the straw of his hat.

Anyway the guitarist gentleman had stood on the verge of the road as I had done, and waved down the same car. From that point on there was speech: he could not only speak Estonian, since his wife was Estonian too, but also a little Russian and a little English. I was able to make the couple in the front understand I was from Sydney with the help of his translation.

Better still, he organised for us to be dropped off closer to the border rather than in the town, and since from where we did get out there was no border in sight, he was able to ask directions. It was countryside without much sign that a new country was nearby. I relied on Latvian assistance as my new friend chatted with farmers, took directions from old ladies and confirmed them with kids on bikes. He did all the talking.

After a short while we left the main road, on instruction, and walked down a dirt lane which can’t have been more than a few hundred metres in length. Although the area was rural there were a few cottages on that road with well-kept gardens. About halfway along I noticed a small barbed-wire fence, no higher than the knee and almost decorative if barbed-wire can ever be considered so; and conveniently was a little purpose-built gap road centre, person-sized, so we were able to continue along the road on the other side. ‘It’s a short-cut,’ he’d told me. ‘That fence wasn’t by any chance the border was it?’ I asked. ‘Welcome to Latvia,’ he said.

Photo: Jaanus Järva

Now what do you do when you’ve just crossed a border technically illegally? The problem: I needed my Latvian visa stamped or there would be problems at Riga Airport for the flight home. I explained the matter and my interpreter said not to worry. We came to another main road and about fifty metres to the right was the Latvian entry post; even if we approached it from the wrong side.

Now speaking his mother tongue, Latvian, he explained the situation and the border guards were obliging: they stamped me in. It left me technically still in Estonia with no exit stamp, but to exit properly I now would have had to leave Latvia, re-enter Estonia, re-leave and re-enter; which would have meant the cancellation of my Latvian visa since it allowed only a single entry. More pressing, we were in the countryside without transport.

‘Try that bus over there,’ the border guard had told my guitarist friend. There was a lone tourist bus, as it turned out, stocked with a Swedish pensioners’ group. We found the tour leader, a middle-aged lady, and my Latvian friend proceeded to ask for a ride in Latvian, of which she understood not a single word. I’d been feeling linguistically useless all afternoon. I tapped my friend on the shoulder, ‘now it’s my turn,’ I said.

I could have asked in English, but having spent a year in Norway I can speak reasonable Norwegian, which is mutually-intelligible with Swedish. ‘Can we possibly get a lift to Riga?’ I asked. ‘Are you Swedish?’ she said excitedly. ‘No, I’m Australian and I’m speaking Norwegian!’ Sure enough we had our ride.

And so in a single moment I chose both to stay in Estonia eternally and take the Swedish bus to Riga immediately, if you get my drift.

Photo: Lembit Michelson

On the way to Riga two things happened: the Swedish tour leader explained that her daughter was a week away from departing for Australia for a year. Amazingly, she was to stay in a suburb of Sydney about five minutes drive from my family home. Within the month, in Sydney, there was a phone call. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘we’ve never met but I believe I met your mother on the Latvian border.’ There’s a sentence I’ll never use again! Within the month my very accommodating mother was fussing over what to make for dinner for our new Swedish guest. ‘What do the Swedish eat?’

The second thing was that my Latvian guitarist friend mentioned to me that since him and his wife lived in a Soviet-built apartment block, and since those apartments are small, he’d bought a second one. ‘Whenever you are in Riga it’s yours,’ he’d said. So on my first night in Latvia I had my own apartment, and I could well have stayed there subsequently, had I not perchance met my Latvian friends the following day.

Photo: Sven Zacek

I don’t suppose the Estonians really mind that their paperwork says I am still there. On the one hand, all the Estonians I met were nice enough not to fuss over such a thing, and on the other, that border post is no longer even there: as of 1 January 2009 crossing points were removed between the two countries in line with the European Union standard.

Photos courtesy of http://www.visitestonia.com/

Photo: Sven Zacek

You could also read what happened the day after the Estonian incident or just more generally travel south to Latvia, perhaps to find out if they have wolves there.

This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: The Estonian Incident

The Comings and Goings of Hong Kong

Bamboo and Glass, Hong Kong

Work, shop, eat and sleep Hong Kong. I met you like a distant cousin, a little standoffish but polite, busy with your life and unwilling to entangle in mine; and I didn’t want it either. The first time I said no: I didn’t want to meet you. I was a little scared to see your streets through nothing you were responsible for, so I stood at your edge and turned my back: there were other things to do and you said nothing.

You’re the world’s transit lounge, Hong Kong, the city in the middle, the place of comings and goings, so you could wait. It’s not that you don’t have your own character, but I had to look for it, and let it settle like a custard tart. Why shouldn’t you be part of my life? I took time to think that through. Things have their proper time, don’t they?

The second time I was terrified; alone. For the first time, even with the fortune of many homes I had none. I walked Mongkok and learnt a few Chinese characters, scribbled on a placemat from that waitress at my favourite place. I contemplated a life of noodles. With the waitress I barely talked and yet she was about the only contact you gave. Everyone else seemed busy, and though I liked your bustle and the neon mish-mash of your streets; though I saw the Peak and wandered the waterfront: I was thinking too much, distracted by far away places and wondering how safe I was in your arms.

You wondered too: how safe you were with me in your arms.

The Peak Tram, Hong Kong

You gave that snake, the one with a frog in its mouth. It swung out onto the bushy path on the walk down from the Peak, and dropped its catch at the surprise of finding me there. The frog, lucky, hopped away to the side: it survived. Perhaps I could too. The snake went in the other direction and the three lives that’d suddenly and briefly converged in transit, were once again, each to their own. That’s your story, Hong Kong, and I wondered of the snake and the frog, about your Cantonese culture and what such an event might mean. Was it my fortune to have saved a frog or me disturbing you: the nature of your frog and snake, leaving the snake hungry?

‘I saw a snake, is it poisonous?’ I’d asked, but your people didn’t understand. ‘It’s delicious,’ they said.

I waited, trying to find a new start. You let me stay for that while, and became my door to the next part. I was entirely ungrateful. ‘Hong Kong is boring,’ I thought and said and wrote. Then you waited too.

Finally from a homeless lifeless pause, terrified and terrorised, I found my way south to a new beginning in China: into somebody else’s dream. Of course China on my own terms, though, would have been okay.

The third time I was worried but less than before. I’d come seven hours to post a letter and settle my Chinese visa. Still an ungrateful guest, I didn’t stay, barely wanting to say hello. I came by boat and left the same day. There was that stranger you gave, who encouraged me to stay and know you better. ‘Hong Kong is not boring,’ they’d said. But with my bits and bobs of business done, a communiqué bound homeward to a new management; fingers crossed and slight hope where there was none, I turned my back again and left by boat. It was but a few hours and yet something had changed: I like Hong Kong, I’d thought.

To the Peak, Hong Kong

On the fourth occasion I held my breath for Bangladesh. I learnt your waterfront and the dodgy, pokey innards of Kowloon that for me gave you a history. I got used to the tailoring-hawkers and being offered fake watches at each crossroad, often by Bangalees. I saw the multicoloured faces of the wider community, though being Australian I am only supposed to like the white ones. I heard the complete orchestra of your accents, which are supposed to repel.

I lived up a dingy stairwell then, in a room not big enough for a full-sized bed, and I liked that you were not entirely shiny. You sent messages from east and west, the world’s then tallest apartment building, on Australia’s Gold Coast, and a thatched hut village in India where people hunted cobras; okay, on a TV set, but a fitting gesture for a crossroad city of the world and in life.

Bauhinia Flower, the symbol of Hong Kong

You told my fortune by a metro station entrance. I pushed my palms together in Taoist prayer.

And did you send those bodyguards or assassins, in that Jackie Chan scene in which I found myself quite incidentally, in that South Asian restaurant tucked away at the back of one of those dilapidated rabbit’s warren complexes you call mansions? I didn’t know whether I should be scared again; but I wasn’t. I had to laugh as the Middle Eastern guy you put beside me ordered soup and watched in disgust as I ate with my hands: South Asia he took no comfort in. Be they benign or sinister, I saw in the eyes of the Indian with the deep facial scars a glint of respect. It must have been, since he sat opposite and not with his friends who’d invited him as he’d walked in. It made me laugh because the tricky sinister Bangladesh at the centre of so many things has always been a sanctuary. Those who don’t know are many; they don’t want to know. I was encouraged to wait but did not.

It was probably nothing. Everything is nothing for Australians.

View of Hong Kong from the Peak

I found your San Francisco-steep island streets so full of character I finally wanted to stay. Your streets of urchins and incense and Chinese screens are enchanting. I discovered your splintery ferries that said you had charm and a reminiscent sentiment beneath the skyscrapers in glass.

You filled my stomach and made ready my dream of again-Bangladesh, cleared after all too many days of nagging suspense. I left for a better future, another turn, and you watched that too.

On the fifth and final occasion, I stole to you secretly from China, telling none but the Chinese Red Army apparently.

Already I knew your shortcuts and something of your ways. You were easier with me, and I with you. Just one among your millions, and a visitor at that, others still busy with their own struggles: but I knew your convenience and cosmopolitan collage. I was the guide then, meeting my father after around a year. He was surprised how much I could show in just a few hours: but you made it straightforward. We saw the urchins and fake watch sellers and efficiently navigated your metro, cut from Kowloon to Island and back again; ventured further too. I knew where to eat, Knutsford-style. I had a little work, easily completed while my father finished his shopping.

Don’t worry Hong Kong, with the worst of everything insh’allah far from us now; I have the rickshaw wisdom, in the city that breathes a tabla and car horn beat, so be content. I have too something of you: for you aren’t afraid to be yourself and it’s a quality that’s rare indeed.

Work, shop, eat and sleep Hong Kong. Wave me on my way again some time, for you’ve seen bits, snippets of a process driven by the utter worst and best of humanity, in me from without. And I’ve seen snippets of you. These little moments can only connect, Hong Kong. You’re alright by me.



Feel like heading into mainland China?  Would you prefer Taiwan?  Or totally different, like out of Africa?


This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: The Comings and Goings of Hong Kong

Hong Kong suburbs from the Peak

The Life in Traffic Jams

Dhaka traffic (photo: Star Magazine)

Dhaka street, 1999

The other day in my English class I asked the students to tell me what was bad about living in Dhaka. At the top of the list was traffic jams. One particular evening, when on my way to dinner, I found myself sitting in a rickshaw in the midst of the turmoil of a jam on Satmasjid Road and I thought, "yes, there really is a lot of traffic to complain about." But strangely enough, I like it.

In the city of my birth, Sydney, things are much more orderly. There are sometimes traffic jams too but cars wait, for the most part patiently, in long neat queues demarcated by lane lines. People obey traffic lights there.

The contrast with Satmasjid Road couldn't be greater: rickshaws squeezed like citrus fruit filling every tiny crevice of roadway, weaving slowly amongst the battered buses and cars, turning left from the right side of the road or right from the left and sometimes trundling along in the wrong direction altogether. It's a familiar scene.



Dhaka jam in 1999 (now is worse)

 There was a street kid who must have done something mischievous because a young man had caught him by the arm and in the middle of the vehicle clutter he was busily uttering harsh words, the detail of which could not be heard over the sound of car horns. Some passengers in a tempo got out to mediate, or to find out what the kid had done for all important adda purposes, while all the rickshaw passengers and drivers around watched with interest. The young man raised his hand as if to hit the street kid, but the street kid knew it was never going to happen. The mediators from the tempo and the spectators on the other rickshaws knew it was never going to happen too. It was not a serious situation.

The little life scene concluded a few minutes later with the street kid pulling his earlobes and repeatedly squatting as a form of apology, which to western eyes looks so unusual. And then he was on his way. The young man wandered off, the not-required mediators got back into their tempo and the several rickshaw passengers switched their attention to something else as we all inched forward slightly along the road. It's the sort of life encounter that's so commonplace in this city, but for a Sydneysider there's something remarkable about it: to see a young man censure a street kid as though he was his older brother; to see strangers act a little like family members. Bangladeshis, I think, take it for granted.

The news from Sydney the other day included a gruesome story about a woman who'd died alone in her apartment and hadn't been discovered for a number of weeks. The news story reported her neighbours had noticed the stench of rotting flesh but had not called the police because they did not want to be involved. In Australia it happens that sometimes people lay dead for weeks or even months in their homes unnoticed, because they live alone and nobody comes to visit. It's difficult to imagine such a situation occurring here.

A few minutes later my rickshaw nearly scraped the bumper of a nearby car. The driver yelled a few words as my rickshaw driver kept silent, but it was the car which was parked askew from the curb. Evidence of scrapes and bumps is to be seen on any car or bus in this city that has spent more than a day out of the showroom, and what has always impressed me is even when such situations get heated, the drivers of each vehicle are usually able to sort it out themselves and get on their way without too much delay. It seems assumed that a car in Dhaka will have a few dents on it. In Sydney where such scrapes are much rarer, drivers usually swap insurance details, fill in claim forms for compensation and sometimes even small incidents involve the police or a court case.

Dhaka tailback (photo: Star Magazine)

Another few metres and a good ten minutes further along, I noticed a rickshaw driver at road's edge resting with his feet up on the handlebars. Having given up the hope of moving anywhere, he was playing a bamboo flute instead. It was the very definition of playing in the traffic. Undoubtedly he was somewhere far away, entirely oblivious to the hubbub of the road drowning out his song; I imagined in his village sitting on a setu, or little bridge, somewhere among the rice fields, relaxing in the tranquility of the countryside, enjoying a breeze. Every single commuter stuck there in the jam must have wanted to join him. I know I did.

It's inevitable that sometimes when stuck in a jam, when it takes three times longer to arrive somewhere than it should, we curse this city. It's an easy matter to long for a few more freeways, orderly traffic flow and convenience. And while I must confess I am saved the worst of it for I live close enough to work to walk, I think that as well as being annoyed about Dhaka's traffic jams it's worthwhile to keep aside a small smile for those intimate, personal moments in other people's lives that traffic jams make us witness to, what makes a Dhaka traffic jam an organism of humanity and an expression of this city's life, while in Sydney, when jams occur, they're just a row of cars.

And if you still doubt you can enjoy Dhaka's traffic then think of this: when we complain of the huge number of rickshaws that add to the congestion we make ourselves, most of us, hypocrites, for we're never including the one we're sitting on.

You can learn a lot on a rickshaw too, especially if you've got a driver from the north.  Or, you can just chill out in the 'hood!


This article was also published in Star Magazine, here: Another Way of Looking at Jams and in Rising Stars supplement, here: Dhaka Jams from a Different Perspective





Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh

The Meaning of Seeing Things

Sydney, Australia.
When you’re at school in Sydney it’s quite a thing to wear glasses. They can be a beacon for bullying; inviting all sorts of taunts from immature minds unimpressed by what was sometimes called ‘facial furniture.’ It must be quite a challenge to self-esteem; one can only imagine. I couldn’t say for sure since I’ve always been blessed with twenty-twenty vision.

Hatiya, Bangladesh.

It was just another moment in the tea shop, years ago; the usual one in Hatiya, Noakhali. Late afternoon was giving in to early evening. The tea was sickly, the conversation as the breeze, without strength and waning. In such moments there’s little to do but gaze across the strip of road that gives way to the bridge over the canal, and ponder what merit there is in breathing-away an afternoon in such fashion. My village friend Situ was there, similarly waiting for some conversational front to arrive and stir the place to humour or interest. That’s when the pair of glasses came in the uneven doorway of the shop.

They belonged to a university student, hair carefully combed, shirt tucked in; neat, respectable and typical. He sat a bench or two behind us.

‘Those glasses aren’t real,’ Situ said. ‘What?’ I asked, slightly smiling at the unexpectedness of the statement. ‘They’re not real. They have plain glass,’ he said, ‘Young people wear them to look smart.’

I suppose it’s not surprising, given people pump toxins like Botox into their faces to enhance their looks, but in the village it was amusing. Why indeed if it was a matter of fashion he could not have chosen sunglasses like everybody else? ‘You’re not serious?’ I said to Situ. I had to be sure.

‘Excuse me?’ I said to the guy, ‘I need to borrow your glasses.’ He took them off in that unquestioning, nonchalant way villagers do; in the village things generally run their course unchallenged, everybody wanting to see, without a hint of prediction or inquiry, what will happen next.

It was uneventful. Sure enough, they were fitted with plain glass.

A few moments later the glasses were gone, off towards the bridge over the canal and their home. Situ and I took amusement from the absurdity of human beings, playing with others’ perceptions in such a futile way; what is there to do about vanity?

La Paz, Bolivia.

The trouble with South America is it’s a long way from Hatiya. I used to feel that when I lived there; why I’d made my English class study Tagore, so at least we could talk about Bengal. You won’t find him on any syllabus.

The Bolivian capital is an unlikely city, clawed out of an Andean valley three thousand six hundred metres above sea level. It’s the world’s highest capital. In La Paz, the sunset is one of shadows rather than light, as the rim of the high plateau sends a gradual line of darkness across the bowl of the city. The temperature drops a few degrees at the shadow-line; noticeable enough to want to stay sun-side for as long as possible.

It was at that time, as late afternoon was giving way to early evening, that I’d met my student Bernie by the witches’ market. A thirty-something-year-old secretary, she’d asked to meet because she wanted to buy me a farewell gift, for I was set to start a new job in Nicaragua. She wanted to present me with a traditional Aymara coat, in black and red with pre-Columbian style embroidery across the front and sleeves; easy to find in the souvenir shops in that part of town; shops that competed for space with those selling the supplies of ritual offerings: potions, twigs, coca leaves and dried llama foetuses, used by local ‘priests’ in sacrifice to Pachamama, the mother-spirit of the Andes. Pre-Columbian religions live on in Bolivia.

It must’ve been because I was leaving La Paz, a city that had become familiar and full of friends. It’s probably why I remembered Hatiya, the village I’d also regularly left, and funnily enough those glasses came to mind.

Wearing my new coat I let Bernie lead me down past the grandeur of San Francisco Church and across the square to where there were yet more stalls of clothes and trinkets. In more or less an unbroken row were the sellers of glasses' frames, which came with plain glass in them when you purchased them. I’d told Bernie the story; we’d decided it might be amusing if I wore plain-glass glasses to my farewell party, where I would be able to take ‘glass-wearing’ photos to send to Situ. He’d laugh when he opened the attachments on a computer in Dhaka.

There was the usual bargaining with sellers, and we’d laugh as they offered discounts at the optometrist’s to have the prescription lenses fitted. Eventually I settled on a black steel-rimmed pair Bernie said suited.

The following afternoon, the last of several farewells, since Bolivians were rather social people, I sat at a touchingly long table on the lawn of a restaurant in the fashionable Zona Sur district of the city. Zona Sur is at a lower altitude, and thus warmer. Another student, a doctor called Fernando was there, as I waited for the other guests, for Bolivian time to reach the place. Bolivian time is somewhat later than Bangladeshi time. As we waited I played with my glasses.

As a prop they were great. With Fernando I’d practised the various postures: the pensive glasses hanging by one of the handles from the mouth; the confrontational looking over the rim whilst addressing people; the holding them in your hand for emphasis like a pointer; all the opportunities people who really wear glasses have.

I asked Fernando if they’d work in the classroom, and rehearsed ‘do your homework’ with glasses on and off, asking which was more compelling. ‘If you wear those people won’t talk to you,’ he joked. ‘Why not?’ ‘Because you look so intelligent they’ll be scared they might say something stupid!’

The guests arrived. ‘I didn’t know you wore glasses?’ everybody said. They’d known me for more than a year and never seen glasses before, and here’s an interesting thing; people are so unwilling to trust what they know. ‘Try them,’ I tempted, and one after another they put the things on. ‘Do you need them only for reading?’ some asked. ‘The prescription is very minimal,’ many said, being too polite or unsure to challenge me outright. There was only one student with enough courage to say it: ‘These are not real!’

Through lunch in the afternoon sun they heard of a rustic tea shop in Hatiya and the glasses became the source of much mirth. For me it was especially nice, since with them just sitting there on the table, it was as though in some way the village at the flatland mouth of the Meghna was sharing the enjoyment of the high-Andean gathering.

Granada, Nicaragua.

Glasses are quite annoying. I can understand why people take them off, how easy they are to lose; leaving them on a table or the arm of a chair. My little experiment taught me that, especially in Nicaragua.

I’d settled into one of those gorgeous colonial villas, Spanish-style, that make up the city of Granada. It belonged to an ageing couple who’d taken to renting rooms to travellers, mostly Americans.

There was an open courtyard in the middle of the house; the spacious tiled living room on the street side; and many bedrooms including mine, a little wooden add-on up a few stairs in the corner. The very Catholic household was shared with two kindly servants, a parrot, a cat, and two turtles in a bucket.

There were many guests, but it was an American girl, Christine, who I’d become friends with; and although there were always departures and arrivals, it wasn’t all the guests the Nicaraguan couple started calling ‘son’ and ‘daughter’ like they had with us. For me it was quite a feat since they spoke no English and my Spanish was worse than most of the guests.

When not teaching English, when Christine wasn’t helping at the orphanage, we used to steal across the street where there was a café specialising in iced coffee. It was a godsend in the Nicaraguan heat. I recall our Nicaraguan mother making incredibly tasty yet simple meals of beans and rice; father calling us to the table from across the street. I remember too how father, when we’d walk down the street, used to yell after us, ‘la sombre! La sombre!’ It means, ‘the shade! The shade!’ He wouldn’t let us walk on the hotter, sunny side of the road.

Christine was rather impressive; a literature graduate who wore glasses herself, and all kudos to her, as soon as she tried mine she declared them a fraud. I told the story of a Hatiyan tea shop and a La Paz restaurant.

There are photos of me around Granada wearing glasses. The house guest who’d accompanied me to take them thought it odd I only needed them for photos; so I told her the story too. When we got the prints back she’d said, ‘You know, you really do look better in glasses.’

It happened many times: my Nicaraguan mother or one of the servants had come across my glasses lying somewhere around the house. As caring as they were, they’d put them aside, warning as clearly as they could manage in Spanish, ‘You should look after your glasses. You’ll lose them.’ There was only Christine to provide the knowing, bemused look.

Meanwhile I’d loaded the Granada glasses photos onto the internet, typed the address for Dhaka and pressed ‘send’, to make Situ laugh.

Sydney, Australia.
These days those glasses live on a shelf somewhere in the Sydney house, a pair of innocent-looking respectable spectacles that cannot improve anybody’s vision but mine; for just to hold them is to conjoin the unwinding of a lazy Hatiyan afternoon, the communion of a La Paz farewell and a home in Granada with a parrot, a cat and two turtles in a bucket.

In Hatiya I don’t see that guy wearing the plain-glass glasses anymore. Fashions have moved on, and the latest, all the rage in Kolkata, would seem to be those jeans with random pleats in their legs so as to make them look perpetually unironed. Now why would anyone wear jeans like that?




Feel like getting Nicaragua noisy, knitting yourself silly in Bolivia or fishing and floating in the Bay of Bengal?

This article also published in Star Magazine, here: The Meaning of Seeing Things





At Home in Bolivia: Article Index for articles about Bolivia

Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh

In the Northern Room

Norwegian mountain road

From each of three red candles on a table, rises a sinewy line of smoke. Each smoke-line curves ever so slightly, in perfect unison with the other two, bending, turning slowly in a meditative dance choreographed by the opening of a cupboard door, a puff of wind, the slightest movement of people. The table is pine and polished, plain, and there’s a narrow linen runner of red squares down its centre. On it there’s a simple basket of red napkins ready for crumbs and spills, and a few plates with unfinished gingerbread and morsels of home-baked biscuits that dissolve with buttery sweetness on the tongue. There’s a plain sofa in cream, with a blanket folded lovingly over one arm, neat and ready for a nap or to cover cold. Later there’ll be coffee, in petite cups, for it will be filtered, strong and biting; later there’ll be chocolate, quietly removed from that small china dish which is mysteriously always full. The northern room is a little inviting, and warm.

The floor is timber, covered only with the odd rag-rug. The walls and ceiling are wooden too, tightly fitted to ensure insulation, with the miniature eddies and swirls of the elements of nature visible in the grain. There is a white fireplace, angular and straight, with a few logs stacked in formation waiting to be burnt; and the metal instruments of flame-stoking hang from a small iron stand, awaiting the delicate craft of a fire-surgeon. Yet even with the warmth of the fire, we need woollen socks on our feet and slippers: for the Norwegian mountains know the meaning of winter.

The warmth of winter

The fire, the candles on the table, smaller clusters of candles around the room and a few lampshades speak softly: painting the room in dull yellow, radiating shadow-patterns, flickering, fluttering in a conversation of light.

The many ornaments speak of a time before time. There’s that creature of legend the troll, tricky, malevolent and humanlike. Here, it’s a small statue hewn from wood: with a big belly and a foreboding brow, shaggy hair almost as a lion’s mane and oversized furry feet. The many types of troll belong to Norway. They are said to lurk on its hillsides, behind its waterfalls and in its caves: this one wears overalls with basic patches on each leg and a tiny hole at the back to accommodate its stocky fur-tipped tail. One wall is guarded by a witch, a hideous wart on her hideous nose. She sits on a broomstick, riding upwards, looking determined, and on another wall is a tapestry in white and brown, catching in its weave tempting shapes of ancient form.   

The windows each have two glass panes, for halfway up their length, outside, a wavy line of snow exhales silence. Beyond them, in the black thickness, you can just make out the scarred white trunks and scraggily stark fingers of a few bare birch trees. It feels as if the world is not yet born.

Among the birch trees

The room is small, with just enough space for a dining table and a sitting area, for the cabin it belongs to, what Norwegians call a hytte, is, by tradition, small. Hytter can have no electricity, a basic water supply and often feature a toilet that is just a hole in the ground with a seat built over it: but of course the bathroom is inside the building because of the winter cold. It’s not that Norwegians can’t afford conveniences – Norway indeed has one of the world’s highest living standards, but in their hytter they choose not to have them. Like Bangladeshis, Norwegians have it easy to remember tradition and the natural world around them: a touch of the essence of where they are from and who they are.

The small hours of night are filled with talk of northern things. There’s discussion of the day’s hiking or cross-country ski trip along the valleys, over the hills, across the frozen lake. Perhaps there were reindeer, or a shy fox. If it were autumn there could have been a brief pause to feast on a small bush of treasured cloudberries, those diminutive clusters of yellow delight. Such discussions are shaped in the undulating melody of the Norwegian language, with its many valleys and hills of accents, enough to rival even the variety found in Bangla. 

There’s a catalogue of life that’s spoken of: the incrementally always-changing seasons, the colour of autumn or the heat of summer; of dinners at the usual 4.30 p.m.; of careers and concerns and absent family members held dear. There’s talk of the world too, from a Nordic perspective, in peaceful mountains even the smallest daily annoyances can’t seem to scale. And of course, there’s always analysis of the weather: colder this year, more snow, less snow, the need to shovel snow off the roof in the morning, and the exact degrees-Celsius right now (minus the minus, which in winter need not be said). Outside the window hangs a thermometer for conversational precision in such matters.

Shades of light

It might sound strange, but even in the northern room it’s easy to remember the Bangladeshi south; it’s easy to think of other rooms back in the gram. For just as Bangladeshis travel to their gramer bari whenever there is time, Norwegians use their hytter in the mountains for memory making, storing family lore, for passing weekends and holidays and festivals, like Easter with its daffodils and decorated eggs, or the freshly cut pine trees and colourfully-wrapped presents of Christmas. For Norwegian families, hytter can create a necklace of tiny precious moments, reminiscent of the long histories of family and community you can find in the gram.

In the gram, conversations can be bright and bold and boisterous, like the Bangladeshi sun, with liveliness and expression to float across the sky, and in the Norwegian hytte, conversations can equally inspire with their subtlety and curiosity: the stillness of a snow blanket across the land.

The Norwegian language is a little overflowing with understatement: great things are ‘a little good’ and moments shared are ‘a bit fun’. For if everything was fantastic, how could it be expressed it if things got even better? Let fantastic hold its strength, a word for rare use, and for all the many good things, those quiet hytte-evenings, let’s keep it small. Hytte-talk is three red candles on a table. It’s a little illumination to turn the coldest night a bit cosy.

The northern room

Some of us are lucky, in the twenty-first century, for we can build a modern house, Bengali style, with the heart. It’s a type of home that rests not on walls of brick or tin or mud; it needs no mortgage or ownership certificate and has a value money cannot measure. With foundations that lie within us, and passports and planes to take us and bring us, the modern house can span continents; it has endless rooms waiting to be discovered and re-discovered. One of the finest rooms in the house, as I have yet found, is the northern room.

Of course there are people who don’t appreciate the modern house. There are those committed to impenetrable walls, who seek self-unity in others’ division. Sometimes they bear slogans like security and national interest, mantra like the ‘clash of civilisations’, but at the end of valid concern remains the usual, age-old intolerance. I suppose it’s a base fear of stepping into an unknown room. It’s a pity, for the beauty of the modern house (with its hole-in-the-ground northern toilet) is great, and it might be a better aim for the world to increase the number of people who can enjoy it.

Outside, if you brave the minuses, wrap yourself in soft jumper, thick jacket, striped scarf, waterproof gloves and woollen hat, if you step out of the hytte, the sky above can dazzle: fifty million stars gaze to Earth in wonder at our smallness. The crunch of snow beneath your feet sounds as a lorry in that place thick with silence, and sometimes the sky grants an added surprise: the aurora borealis, those sheets of Arctic light that curve and twist through the night, slipping away again without notice into the darkness at their desire.

With a dart of breath the candles are out and the hytte is dark. The bedroom windows are open, for the minuses to creep inside and grant sound sleep, under the warmest of blankets. And after the eyelids close, the mountain imagination is a little free to send small and pleasant dreams.

Winter sky

If you like north, see just how far north Norway goes.  Or perhaps a little more haste is in order, in a jaunt across Scandinavia?

This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: In the Northern Room







Norwegian Light: Article Index for articles about Norway