The Secret of Prionkor's Tea

Prionkor in Saha Kaka's shop, 1999

The constellations rearranged themselves at a faster rate; with us, the four friends, the nocturnal hours managed far less.  A slight altering, from one sitting position to another, the lifting of a leg, the turn of an arm: a marginally larger movement achieved only in those gaps given to napping when we’d fully recline on the long wooden benches of the tea shop, avoiding any random protruding nails, and close our eyes.

After some minutes we’d stir and ask my Saha Kaka’s son Prionkor to re-ignite the fire and re-make the tea.  He’d start over, many times.  There were nights in their entireties that watched these simple rituals, the life of that shack on the corner by the main road at the place called By-the-Big-Bridge.

Saha Kaka or Saha Uncle, yes the name has a failing: being Hindu he should be Saha Dada to follow the usual nomenclature, but ultimately the universe is not easily arranged into neat categories; and in Noakhali things that really aren’t, often are.  His ‘Kaka’ has no less respect to it than his ‘Dada’ would.

My Saha Kaka, thin as a stick, is an immeasurably kind man.  I’ll never forget in his house, which was small even by Hatiyan standards, when he’d lifted the worn-out pillow on the bed in the front room to reveal underneath two tiny, almost newborn, kittens.  ‘I let them sleep there,’ he’d said, ‘so the rats don’t get them.’ 

If that’s where Prionkor picked up his generosity I don’t know, but he never bothered to close the shop, didn’t tell us to go even though it was ridiculous to spend the whole night there.  Usually around ten or eleven he’d start closing some of the windows so that if the police passed on one of their hardly-ever patrols our loitering would remain undetected. 

It made no economic sense: tea was just one taka per cup then and nothing to lose sleep over.  And for us it was nothing to do with the tea: that’s for sure.  Of all the variations of the brown liquid available in By-the-Big-Bridge, Prionkor’s wishy-washy concoction was indisputably the worst.  We never told him.  Sometimes we’d privately laugh to see each other drink it, to witness the grimaces it gave rise to.

It was the adda, or chatting, not less, that would enchant us to stay until the eastern sky grew pale.

Things change: Alauddin took that job in Noakhali and went missing for a few years; Alamgir left in search of a plot of free land on the north side of the river and Prionkor after his marriage moved to India.  Nobody knew where he was for sure; even his family were sketchy on detail.  But we missed him.

It was Saiful who told me that the big bridge at By-the-Big-Bridge has a large, invisible magnet under it with the power to pull people back.  It was the magnet, he said, that returned him at regular intervals from his Chittagong job.  He said it pulled me too, almost annually, from Sydney.  It can be, because Alauddin gave up his mainland jobs; and Alamgir didn’t bother with the north side land in the end.  He left the river’s new creation to others.  It can be, because in Noakhali things that really aren’t, often are.  Perhaps only Prionkor was resistant to that magnet’s powers.

After several years I met his brother in Chittagong and he said he had Prionkor’s phone number.  So I rang.

Like so many Bangladeshi Hindus, Prionkor had settled on the outskirts of Kolkata.  There are whole communities around the City of Joy populated almost exclusively by Bangladeshi migrants.  I once heard it said that one in three West Bengalis had Bangladeshi origins, which, with a population of about ninety million for the state would put around thirty million in the previously-Bangladeshi community.  Even if such figures aren’t accurate, there are many millions who made the westward migration over the decades; just as others came east.

Last year I went to Kolkata for a few days.  It was a bit ad hoc: I was just at Benapole and my mobile phone range about to end.  ‘Today I’ll come,’ I sent as a text message, in Bangla but using western script.  I wasn’t convinced he could decipher it.

I took the train to his station, a bustling neighbourhood of colour and noise, and found one of those quaint phone shops that are the mobile-refill-shop equivalent on the other side.  Prionkor said he was on his way.  I was expected after all.  He sounded excited, or was that me?

He had arrived on his cycle-van, the way he’d found to make a living over there.  Thank goodness he wasn’t making tea!  He was unchanged.  I sat on the back of his van as he pedalled off towards his house; our catching up interrupted by people trying to get a lift.  Modes of transport are more often shared in India, on the basis of that West Bengali ‘why rent a whole one?’ logic that contrasts so pleasantly with the ‘why not rent a whole one?’ on this side of the line.  Prionkor told them today his van was a private service.

We stopped for tea and Indian sweets which to my unrefined palate are the same as those in Dhaka except smaller.  Prionkor said he’d been eight years in India and really liked it.  His children attended school.  His wife was happy.  And the Indian authorities never made problems; if they wished they could take to task that entire town for not really having, technically, the right papers, exactly.  They demonstrate tolerance.

I was impressed: the Australian authorities are in the habit of imprisoning even small children who arrive by boat without the right papers, often for years, though the numbers are a trickle.  The number of Bangladeshis in West Bengal could be greater than the entire population of Australia.  Somehow India makes room; somehow Australia requires a solid amount of human suffering before most of those asylum seekers, ninety-five percent, are allowed to stay. 

Prionkor’s house was one of those informal West Bengali structures, two rooms of brick separated by a thin makeshift wall, and in place of the tin to be found this side it had a neatly tiled roof, the norm on that side.  Despite its small size his place was pleasant.  It’s at the end of a circular road, an enclosed neighbourhood gathered amongst a few farm fields.  We sat in his small garden, featuring a mango tree and views across patches of still-open land.  We remembered things while his wife made lunch.  I confess I finally told him the secret of his tea.

‘In eight years,’ he said, ‘you are the first Hatiyan I’ve seen.’ 

The Indians were doing a census that day; the census collectors moved about, house to house.  Years ago, before the caretaker government’s efforts, a voter list was being made in Bangladesh.  I remember the guy entered the tea shop and for a joke I asked why I wasn’t on the list yet.  Everyone in the tea shop agreed with me.  The list-writer apologised and was on the verge of handing me his pen when his companion came in and set things right.

This time the Indians: I admired the way they skipped over the non-citizen households, politely chatting and moving on without fuss to find countable people.  Those towns must have very small populations if you only count the countables.  And of course the ones that have become countable often didn’t start out that way.




Also countable: one hundred pigeons, twenty glasses of papaya juice, six hideous jumpers, two big wheels and one international border, accidentally crossed.


This article also published in Star Magazine, here: The Secret of Prionkor's Tea

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Where the World is Most Definitely Flat

Iguazu Falls

Two days later and morning started too early, some time before eight we were walking through the national park gates on our way to Iguazu Falls. By some miracle the sun was shining, the perfect day for rain to end. The we was the European couple I’d ignored at the mission but met in San Ignacio regardless, due to my need for caffeine first thing a.m., a cup of coffee that thirty seconds missed the bus for me, while Giulia and Igor turned up ten minutes later at the stretch of footpath doubling as bus stop. They’d dared breakfast. Suddenly we had about an hour and a half to solve the world, an activity befitting the final leg of their round world journey from and to London.

‘No, it’s not genes,’ Igor was saying, ‘Tahitians are fat because France subsidises the price of baguettes. An English-style loaf costs ten times as much in Tahiti.’

‘It’s not just the baguettes,’ said Giulia.

‘Two points, there’s the paté too – goose liver, French, full of fat and subsidised.’

Igor had this curious habit of awarding points for what people said. Within minutes I’d raced ahead of Giulia, who’d only managed six to my ten, unless it was one of those games where the more points you earn the worse you’re doing. Not knowing the rules my game plan had no strategy.

‘How did you like Australia?’ I asked.

‘Ten points, it was brilliant,’ he said.

‘There are few truly jaw-dropping moments in this world,’ Giulia said, ‘but Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef both made my jaw drop.’

‘Another two points,’ Igor said, ‘The people are great. Australians can fix any problem calmly and professionally, like that problem with our plane ticket. The company where I work in London would fall apart without them.’

‘New Zealanders were more interested in money,’ she said.

‘Two points again. It’s because of the Americans who drop by New Zealand for two weeks and take helicopter rides to mountain tops. They’re too obese to walk and it makes New Zealand expensive for everyone.’

‘He hasn’t been the same since they bombed Belgrade,’ Giulia explained.

Giulia and Igor fit together like Christmas-in-July, unlikely but compatible, he dogmatic, she diplomatic, he emotional and she frank. Mid-thirties Giulia was fashionably casual in that Italian way while I was just sloppy. Her tightly curled hair was blond-African attractive and as tall as she was, Igor was taller, probably star basketball player for Serbia. That’s why when the bus finally arrived, ten points to the bus company, he hit his head on the roof while trying to sit, minus five. I’d graduated to awarding points of my own and it felt good.

‘You think the rain might stop?’ I said to Igor, ‘five points.’ He looked at me suspiciously, assessing the appropriateness of my new point-awarder post, but after some contemplation seemed to accept my efforts, perhaps because he’d always awarded points and never actually earned any. Water leaked through the bus roof (no bingo this time) as the scenery rattled by, rolling red dirt hills, small wooden farmhouses, scrawny chickens and hints of jungle, towards Argentina’s end.

When we arrived in sleepy Puerto Iguazu we settled into a hostel carefully chosen via the random method and wandered to the tri-border where the Parana and Iguazu rivers met, over the one Paraguay, the other Brazil. Puerto Iguazu was relaxing, good for pretending you were on the Amazon verges as despite being a major tourist hub it had a frontier feel. Our discussion continued over dinner, pizza and beer. ‘It’s not that all Americans are bad,’ Igor said, ‘but remember that lady in Peru?’ He looked to Giulia for affirmation, ‘she was running around Lima looking for a First Boston bank. ‘I only bank with First Boston!’ she was yelling. She had no concept she was standing in sodding Peru!’

‘Did you make it to Bolivia?’ I asked hopefully.

‘We spent a couple of weeks there,’ Giulia said.

‘How was it?’ I held my breath.

‘We missed the worst of the strikes,’ she said, ‘but others had to knock on boarded-up restaurants to get dinner. They pretend to be closed, might be attacked if they openly break the strike, but inside they were open. They sneak you in.’ I liked the idea of knocking on boarded-up buildings for a meal, people who sneak you in, are open on the inside.

‘Bolivia has great desserts, people were really friendly,’ Igor said, spilling his beer in the process. I had to deduct six points.

Judging by Iguazu National Park, Argentines manage to keep major tourist attractions relative pristine, raw and refined: like a tango turn. There were a few ugly buildings but mostly it was tasteful and like the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney it did well considering how many people go there. The falls sit right on the Brazil border, both sides have an airport and fancy hotels, so Americans can jet in for a day and say they’ve been to South America according to Igor.

Within metres of the entrance we (we meaning mostly me) stood captivated by a group of rat looking creatures on spindly legs in the bushes by the track. They were like smaller, jungle capybaras and I asked around. ‘I know the animals you mean,’ locals said, ‘but not their name.’ A great start to the day, animals sufficiently useless as to be virtually nameless.  I’ve always had a soft spot for useless animals.

Giulia preferred the butterflies in azure blues, oranges, purples, yellows and patterned whites. ‘It’s as if each butterfly has to submit an application on the extent of its uniqueness before being allowed permission to enter the park,’ Igor said.

‘I really prefer moths,’ I couldn’t help saying.

As for the falls themselves I was a sceptic, waterfalls are generally nice but I had doubts how much they could impress even if big. That all changed when we first saw them. ‘It’s another jaw dropping moment for me,’ Giulia said. There were hundreds of large falls including one directly beneath the platform where we stood, the smallest of which would be an important tourist site in most countries, but here just entrée to the colossal liquid horseshoe in the distance that blended jungle, spray and sky into the horizon hills of far Brazil. ‘That’s the Devil’s Throat, it’s two kilometres across,’ Giulia said, ‘let’s go there last.’

Water, water everywhere as the track wound its way right to the edge of several falls. Looking down, the world was simply spray rising hundreds of metres, raincoat country despite sunshine. There in a tree was our first wild toucan!

‘Everything’s Italian here,’ Giulia said referring to Argentina not the falls, ‘when Argentines hear I’m Italian they launch into it themselves, even speak Spanish with an Italian accent.’

‘Does that explain the zh sound?’ I said, ‘from what I’ve heard Argentines want to transform every consonant into zh.’

‘Two points and they probably can,’ Igor agreed.

We wound our way around the bottom, platforms perched close enough beside the falls that you could stick your arm under however many tonnes of water if you felt it worthwhile. Standing there meant being drenched in five seconds from spray. A squirrel sat on the railing further back, jumping and flit-flitting its bushy tail.

‘Argentina has style,’ Igor proclaimed in the direction of the squirrel, ‘in Buenos Aires I saw a bidet in a public toilet.’

‘You were impressed by that bidet weren’t you?’ said Giulia.

‘It would never happen in Chile,’ he retorted, ‘all money, no class. They serve instant coffee in little packets and think that’s European.’

The forest was bird noises, rustling bushes and another troop of those unnamed rat creatures. We encountered fuzzy-faced cai monkeys, a troop of thirty or more, grooming each other, carrying babies through the canopy. The whole troop made this giant leap, one by one, across a canopy gap.

Middle Age seers thought the world flat, which would have been understandable had not the Greeks many centuries earlier known it round – knowledge discovered and discarded, returned to jungle, moss and strangler fig. It would have been understandable had they thought it while standing atop the Devil’s Throat. Two kilometres of planet seem to disappear suddenly downwards into mist-void and modern science might be tempted to vote for flatness here.

     From deep-green jungle chocolate channels emerge, rush and swirl to abyss and perhaps beyond, flow southeast to solidify into the Pampas like liquid chocolate cooling. The channels vine-twist like the weave and weft of events, places, moments and faces, tri-colour deep-green, brown and toasted orange sky. The patterns are absurd, chance meetings, confusion and laughter that humans alone could never create, the patterns of journey.

     That channel there, it’s when at twenty-three I found myself in an Iranian university lecture, barely-decipherable biology in Farsi, tomatoes and potatoes with black clad women partitioned in rows on the left. Where it meets that small stream, that must be the lecturer who somehow went to Adelaide, knew to discuss cricket before moving onto legumes.

     We walk on water, Giulia, Igor and I, like Central American Jesus Christ lizards, across aluminium bridges, island hopping one kilometre out to the Earth-yawn. The islands are stubborn, fixated with stasis, thinking they can avoid change and defy the river, but on the downside they constantly lose soil and have to grab every passing grain upside to maintain an unchanging illusion. It takes energy to stand still.

    

     ‘It’s relatively easy for westerners to let go and be free of their daily dramas,’ Giulia said, ‘but so few do. Fear holds them back, somehow they like their dramas; it gives comfort.’

     The channel beyond, that was the little village in Rajasthan where at twenty I was called into the school, taught an impromptu English class and drank tea with all the teachers in the headmaster’s office. They’d slurped so loudly in tea-appreciation and I’d tried to copy but burst out laughing at what in Australia was rude. We culture-shared the why and they laughed at my laughter.

     The water, thing of beauty and life-shapes, carries sticks, leaves, anything that comes to it, has a rhythmic flow that felt good watching. The water brought together, united in a vast liquid plain, was a gathering audience for the great horseshoe plummet.

     Maybe it’s the collusion and deception of sunshine and spray, together creating permanent rainbows far below which lure like sirens water to the edge. Maybe they conspire with the unseeable rocks at the bottom to hit and split water so violently the whole place roars in pain. I can’t hear Giulia speak so I just nod. But when the worst happens sustenance arrives in the most peculiar packages, that small Iranian girl travelling on the bus with her grandmother, who uninvited rechristened me Farid because she couldn’t say my name, and together we’d discovered and sang that Salam Ebdasam, Salam Farid song most of the way to Bandar Buhshehr. How did she know I’d been robbed and needed distraction? Just when all seems lost water regroups, altered and replenished – and sometimes by chance it’s you who drop unexpected into someone’s far away life with something to offer, an opportunity to be useful in some modest probably unknown way. Sometimes you’re the Ebdasam, the water that pushes in a broad sweep down valley away from crisis.

     The river disappears in the direction of Paraguay fed by challenge, knowledge and inspiration, stronger and more together, to some final destination the indignant islands will never see. Might it be the chaotic enchantment of Buenos Aires? Or the land of the delta?





Memories also filed under Estonia,  packaged in the Himalayas and risen from the dead in Cyprus.

A shorter version of this article is published in Star Magazine, here: Where the World is Flat

Note: This was first written in 2005 and redrafted in 2007.  It follows on from the post ‘The Mission’.  The names are changed and it’s not one hundred percent fact, but close to it.  It was when I was on my way to Bolivia for the first time to take up a teaching job.

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City Food

Who's the goat now then, eh?

The unworldly villager, the ‘Mofiz’, easily taken advantage of and not altogether at ease with modernity: a ubiquitous someone to be blamed for a haphazardly driven rickshaw, a lack of knowledge of Dhaka’s geography or that ultimately unavoidable wrong step taken on the city’s overcrowded streets.  In the village of course there never was a bigger ‘Mofiz’ than me.

Watch my attempts at the washing-mud-off-your-feet-without-using-hands manoeuvre, at a tube well, in that way villagers do with ease, without even grabbing onto someone standing nearby for balance, with algae underfoot making the concrete slab slippery.  It must be amusing to the villagers, my uncoordinated efforts, but they’re very polite about it.  Come to think of it, like most westerners I can’t even properly squat. Watch my attempts to cast a fishing-net in that slightly circular slinging fashion, across a Hatiyan pond, and anyone would recognise that if I had to rely on that for food I’d surely starve. 

Leku mends net

In fact, in fifteen years there was only one occasion I returned to the village house with freshly caught fish.  They were tied with line to a stick, whatever fish they were; of reasonable size.  I was shirtless and had tucked up my lungee like shorts, just as the villagers do when they go fishing the ponds.  I’d wandered into the yard as casually as possible, as though it was routine, and announced to my Bengali brothers we’d be eating fish that day.  They roared with laughter, appreciating that I looked pretty much the part, the average pond-fishing villager but for one critical detail.

‘You’re not even wet!’ one of them said.  Okay, so some of the neighbours had been fishing their pond and Hatiya being as it is I hadn’t been allowed to not take a couple home.

So I write about the city in that light: that it’s normal when in unfamiliar surroundings there are things to negotiate we’ve not seen before or, in the case of my fishing, have no skill to achieve.  I think of a Hatiyan neighbour, when he came to visit my Dhaka apartment, taking off his shoes before stepping into the lift on the ground floor.  It was basic Hatiyan courtesy at work and his first ever encounter with a lift.  It made me smile though.

It’s probably fair to say that amongst Bangladeshis, Hatiyans are more attached to their district than average; perhaps because it’s an island-culture.  While you’ll find Hatiyan communities in Chittagong riding rickshaws or doing construction work, while in Dhaka there are well-educated Hatiyans in business or service, what’s common regardless of individual circumstances is that for most Hatiyans on the mainland there’ll be a look of slight disappointment in their faces.  Their eyes will light up if there’s a trip home planned and you’ll hear wistfulness in their voices if they’ve just come back.  Even the lucrative promise of labour migration to the Middle East came late to Hatiya.  Hardly anybody really wants to leave.

Joshim and friends

Case in point: recently I was able to offer a position as a ‘darwan’ or doorman to a Hatiyan friend of mine; hardly an executive position but it does have a regular monthly salary, the duty is easy and there’s always possibility for a bit of Eid baksheesh from the building residents.  As he was working hard to support his family from the odd rickshaw trip or whatever labouring came his way, I really thought he’d jump at the income stability.

‘I’ll only do it,’ he told me, ‘if I can work on your building so I get to see you everyday.  Otherwise, who do I know in Dhaka?’  Point taken, my friend… it’s islander logic and it’s irrefutable.

So it’d taken some coaxing to convince Alamgir, back in 1999, to come to Dhaka, even for a few days.  I’d had some errands to do, so together with Situ and Alauddin we’d decided to go, the four of us; like a road trip. 

Rofiq's goes solar

The first problem was that Alamgir owned no trousers; trousers were not common in the village then, though the tradition was it was respectable to wear them if going to the main town of Ochkhali.  My Bengali mother used to find herself somewhere between laughter and a frown when I used to flout tradition and wear lungee to the town as well.

The first solution: to borrow a spare pair of trousers from Situ.  Easy.  The second problem was he had no belt and without one the pants were loose enough to fall down.  There was no spare belt either; so unfortunate Alamgir had no option but to tie them with a piece of rope.  It worked okay for the few days, with the shirt hanging over the top; nobody knew but us.

When we got to the city, Alamgir was a bit overwhelmed with the crowds and the buildings and the traffic.  I believe he too discovered his first lift then, at our hotel.  And well, I’d taken the trouble to explain to him how the shower worked; a bit like the villagers had once done for me with the tube well.  After his bath when I’d asked what he’d thought of showers, he’d sheepishly said it was good, which meant he’d opted for the more familiar bucket instead.

And about the food: shouldn’t take solace from another person’s vomiting but it made me feel better about my own struggling with some of the village food.  We’d ventured to a Chinese restaurant, and we enjoyed it, Situ, Alauddin and I; but it made Alamgir throw up.  The medicine was obvious: find the first local restaurant serving rice, preferably red, with some kind of Bengali-style fish dish.  He was happy.

Adapting to new surroundings takes time.  There’s Babul the crab-seller, who these days can swing by from Jatrabari to Uttara with the best of them.  It wasn’t always so.  On one of his first trips to Dhaka I’d taken him to a café in Dhanmondi and for fun mentioned on the way we were going to try something called ‘gorom kukur’ or hot dog.  He’d laughed at me, certain I was joking.  Nobody in Bangladesh eats dog.

Rahmat, Closed for Siesta

When the waiter came to our table I ordered in Bangla, ‘gorom kukur, two please,’ and the waiter to his credit smirked as he jotted down the order.  Babul was suddenly mortified.  I’d ordered dog and the waiter had agreed!  After that it’d taken quite some convincing to explain the name of the dish wasn’t literal.

It’s nice to have a joke between friends; friendship is often about making up for each other’s inadequacies and sometimes taking humour from them.  But you know, when I hear the city-folk complaining about the ‘Mofiz’, when it’s not a joke, I wonder how they’d go out in a rice field planting seeds all day; how they’d do pedalling a rickshaw for a living. 

When people complain about the ‘religiosity’ of the poor or the villagers, I think of the humility or the honesty their faith can motivate: attributes that are frankly impressive from an Australian perspective.  When it’s ‘illiteracy’ I think of the richness of the oral traditions in communicating, the similarities to story-telling in rural Australia; and when it’s ‘Bangladesh is not suited to democracy because the level of education is so low that people don’t know who to vote for’ I think, Australians make almost the same comment about an allegedly uninformed, public mass.  I imagine there’s not a democracy the world over where you cannot hear that said. 

I miss Hatiya.  I should try to learn to cast that net properly.

The locals at Lenga

After a bit of a bite, free the mountain imagination, hunt wild beasts, or sing across a city.  The world is at our feet!


This article also published in Star Magazine, here: City Food



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