Diabula Did It

It must’ve taken a measure of bravery for the Portuguese to first set out on their voyages of discovery in the fifteenth century.  With the weight of the unknown, the myths of sea monsters and risk of falling off the edge of a flat world they nonetheless set forth.  By the following century they’d made it as far as the Bay of Bengal where ultimately they established a port in Chittagong and a settlement on nearby Sandwip Island.  But did they ever get lost along the way?  From time to time they must have.  And when they got lost, could it be that the Portuguese turned their sails around while at the same time cursing the very devil for having deceived them?

Kashem Bhai of Rahania village in modern-day Hatiya is not Portuguese and he certainly has little in common with Henry the Navigator or Vasco Da Gama.  Unlike any Portuguese explorer indeed, it is with considerable care that Kashem Bhai contemplates his actions, and the actions of others.  He’s someone who finds no delight in risk-taking. 

In the night sky over Hatiya, every few minutes there are the lights of planes, transcontinental, small and very high.  We’ve considered it might be the Hong Kong to Dubai route.  While watching the planes, Kashem Bhai has been known to remark, ‘How risky!  Do people really need to do that?  Why do they take such risks?’  He’s rehearsed a rather nice sound of a plane falling from the sky: durrrumm!  It’s safe to assume he belongs to my grandmother’s school of thought, that if people were meant to fly they’d have grown wings.  And it’s not the only risky behaviour Kashem Bhai has noticed among his fellow humans.

There’s also the important matter of ceiling fans.  Kashem Bhai wonders how it is that people can sleep under them, what should happen if during the night the fan were to fall.  ‘How risky!’ he says, ‘Why do people trust their lives to a single, small screw!’ He means the one holding the fan in place.  ‘Is it really necessary?’  Living in Rahania, Kashem Bhai is lucky not to have to face the threat of ceiling fans often.  On any island electricity is not a straightforward matter and what electricity there is in Hatiya seems to have got lost somewhere along the way to Kashem’s village.

It comes as a surprise, therefore, to hear of the occasion when Kashem Bhai’s careful planning and risk avoidance considerations failed him.  It was on a day that started like any other.  As with many a villager, Kashem’s hours are normally consumed with chores and duties, household this and marketing that.  But on that day Kashem Bhai decided he was in need of rest, and as he lives by the Hatiyan coastline it was little trouble to gather a few friends and propose several hours of adda at the beach.  There’s usually a welcome breeze blowing in from the Bay of Bengal there, he knew, and it’s not a place where the day’s duties could track him down.

Getting there presents few problems.  It’s simple enough to follow path-and-aisle between the rice fields and to negotiate the muddy crossings of the tidal channels in the open land they call ‘The Garden.’ Nor is it overly challenging to zigzag through gaps in the coastal shawl of the mangroves beyond.  There’s usually a patch of dry sand or a grassy clearing nearby; the local fishermen can advise as to the best place for adda on any day, in accordance with the Bay of Bengal’s latest artistry. 

But it’s also a simple scientific fact that adda is not restricted by daylight or tides, and it was well into the afternoon the small party of conversationalists thought to return.  The best way back changes as tides come in and in the darkness it’s not as simple to watch out for cobras; nor are there too many paths to choose from due to the channels and the rice fields.  But as that afternoon wore on there arose an even more pressing problem: society and that peculiar disadvantage of being a respectable member of it.

Unfortunately, on the very day Kashem Bhai determined to go to the beach was also scheduled an important shalish, a public mediation.  Even from the beach Kashem could see the distant bazaar was crowded with onlookers and participants, ready for the event.  Kashem Bhai considered his reputation: what would people think if they saw his little group of friends returning from the beach at a late hour?  Would word of their wasting time on adda reach their wives?  So they waited.

Unfortunately the mediation was a land dispute that had generated a good deal of interest.  There was much to be said and technicalities to be considered.  It’s a simple scientific fact that village mediations are not restricted by daylight or tides.  As the path to the bazaar started fading towards darkness and the water started coming in, it seemed as though the shalish would never end. 

Eventually the group could wait no longer; but if perhaps they walked apart they might yet be able to reach their homes inconspicuously.  At any rate they’d need to try.  One by one they set off: through the mangroves, jumping over muddy channels and weaving a way through The Garden.

The crowd proved to be a blessing, with each of Kashem’s friends able to enter the market from the sea side unhindered and without remark.  It was dark by then.  But unfortunately, just as Kashem Bhai’s feet found the start of the bazaar he was spotted.  ‘Kashem Miah, where have you been?’ Abdullah Member asked.

Kashem Bhai didn’t know what to say.  But fortune favoured him because after a moment a convenient skerrick of local folklore came to mind: the legendary Diabula.

Kashem embarked upon a carefully crafted tale, about how he had been walking home from the bazaar to his house as he usually might, when for some reason he found himself walking and walking, still walking, and still not seeming to cover the short distance to his home.  Finding his situation odd, Kashem Bhai explained, he started to think it was Diabula’s work. 

In Hatiya, Diabula is an invisible spirit but not a jinn or a bhoot of the ordinary sort.  Diabula has the particular trick of snatching people’s sense of direction and leading them astray; and people are at greatest risk of attack when they walk alone.

Kashem Bhai told Abdullah Member that he stopped walking and on suspicions of Diabula thought to turn his lungee upside down.  This action is the commonly understood remedy for Diabula’s handiwork.  And when he did so, just about half an hour earlier, Kashem Bhai continued, he was shocked to find himself, quite inexplicably, at the beach!

Having enjoyed the little tale, Abdullah Member could have no further questions.

It’s strange to think that the Portuguese journeys of several hundred years ago may have assisted Kashem Bhai as he entered the bazaar that day.  It’s just a theory, but is it impossible to imagine that the islanders’ Diabula was long ago derived from the Portuguese diabo, the word for the devil? 

Hatiya Island didn’t exist when the Portuguese came to the Bay of Bengal, it’s a much younger island; but many Hatiyalas have an ancestry from the older Sandwip, far to the east.  And when I mentioned Diabula to a Sandwipian friend he knew what it was immediately; he also knew to turn his lungee upside down in the case of a Diabula attack.  Meanwhile those few people I asked from inland districts of Bangladesh had never heard of Diabula.

Why not stay a while longer on Hatiya Island or in Bangladesh, go west for Paschimbangan mangoes or east for Thai buffaloes, whiteboards and refrigerators?


This article also published in Star Magazine, here: Diabula Did It







Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh
 

Prothom Alo Article: My Bangladesh

English translation below.

Prothom Alo Article... My Bangladesh (link to Prothom Alo) 

English Translation:

My Bangladesh

I’ve been given the world’s most difficult task: to write just one thousand words about our Bangladesh, or my Bangladesh, the one that has been in my life for the past sixteen years.  How to choose which morsels of information to include?  I would not attempt such a task except that the request comes from a newspaper of renown, Prothom Alo, to contribute to their anniversary edition no less, so I have no choice but to try.

‘Why do you live in Bangladesh?’  It’s hardly an uncommon question.  CNG drivers laugh.  ‘Bangladeshis go to Australia,’ they say, ‘and you are coming the other way?’  Hospital staff once admonished my friend, saying, ‘Tell him not to waste his life here!’  If I say that I like living in Bangladesh, local reaction ranges from puzzled bemusement to perplexed wonder.  And that in itself is reason to admire Bangladesh.

I’d like to say it’s different in Australia, but it’s only different in the sense that while Bangladeshi thought stems in general from humility and lack of international experience, Australian reaction stems from prejudice and lack of international experience.  My sister said once, disparagingly, ‘But it’s a developing country.’  Apart from a few hours in Mexico I don’t believe she’s been to a developing country so she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.  My oldest brother meanwhile commented that Bangladesh was Hindu: to his mind some version or other of India.  Bangladesh remains a country that is less well-known.

To the CNG drivers I say, ‘Okay, but in Bangladesh the hardest part is work.  If you have a reasonable income then it’s a fantastic place to live.’ 

To my sister there’s nothing to say.  Her views are immutably negative.  It was with bewilderment in her voice that she told me over the phone how much Mum and Dad enjoyed their visit last year, to Dhaka and the village in Hatiya.  Bangladeshis meanwhile were delighted to see the village photos on Facebook, of Mum in a sari and Dad in lungee.  Those clothing items were gifts from my Bengali family, the one who by neither blood nor marriage became my Bengali family over the course of sixteen years, for more or less no reason than because it happened.  There’s a particularly nice photo of all the parents together: Mum, Dad and Amma.  My Abba passed away before I met him.

Bangladesh: how to explain?  I could do worse than start with this afternoon, when I was on the phone to Dinajpur to my Bua’s mother.  After a belated Eid greeting it came: the dawat.  I know it’s a cliché, the tremendous hospitality of Bengalis, but I am forced to mention it because it’s true.  ‘If a Bengali has five taka in their pocket,’ a Dhakaite friend said, ‘they’ll spend ten buying tea for their friends.’  Although I never seem to have the opportunity to take up most of these dawats they arrive almost daily; and while some of it has to do with being a foreigner, I’ve seen how liberal and hospitable Bengalis are to my friends also, fellow Bengalis.  So it isn’t only because I am a westerner, at least not all the time, and in Hatiya it never is, not anymore.

Of course hospitality and thoughtfulness are culturally specific.  I saw that on the day Mum and Dad travelled on Hatiya’s rough dirt roads by motorised tom tom to Rahmat Bazaar on the coast, near the beach where I once played kabbadi with Nashir and his cousins.  It was a slightly brave journey because those roads aren’t in good condition and the tom tom nearly fell through a hole in one of the small concrete bridges. 

Mum and Dad are in their seventies and at Rahmat Bazaar they were tired, although my mother was actually tempted to take up Pankaj’s offer of a haircut in his tin shed saloon.  Instead he cut mine.  But we couldn’t leave because Arif the tom tom driver had to take his children home from their school examination and we had to wait for him.  We took rest at a nearby house on hastily arranged chairs in the shady yard. 

Well, there was a bit of a fuss: the householder tried very hard to make us stay for lunch, although I don’t know him as such, and even though we declined he secretly sent for supplies from the bazaar in order to start cooking.  To him it was unthinkable people could walk into his yard and not be fed more than tea and biscuits.   

Well, there was a bit of a fuss: my mother was greatly concerned because, in her Australian thinking, we’d intruded.  ‘Are you sure they don’t mind us sitting in their yard?’ she kept asking.  It reminded me of how I was when I first came to Bangladesh.  In Australia thoughtfulness sometimes centres on privacy.  When the tom tom returned my mother, in English, warmly thanked our host for letting us sit there, which he had no hope of comprehending, not meaning the language but because thanking a Hatiyala for sitting in their yard is a bit like thanking the air for letting us breathe it.  In any case the householder was still frantically negotiating: if he couldn’t feed all of us then maybe just my friend’s children who were with us?  He should be feeding someone!

‘Do you know him?’ my mother quizzed me later.

‘Anybody would do that.’

Cultures grant us new ways to think.  Just as my mother’s thoughts were totally logical and obvious, so were the Bangladeshi thoughts of hospitality.  It is just one tiny example of how things differ.  Why Bangladesh? It’s because there’s so much to learn here, so many qualities to admire and welcome experiences to have.  It’s because Bengali ways have become as natural and obvious as the Australian ways I was born into. 

And it’s odd that feeling that used to be, when I would visit Bangladesh annually: on leaving Sydney by plane with the predictable ‘going away’ thoughts going on, only for the plane to descend twelve hours later into Dhaka, with an undeniable but technically incorrect ‘coming home’ happiness welling up inside.  Australians would over analyse that last sentence, seeking to rationalise and capture it.  And in this instance the Australians would be wrong: it’s the more poetic and spiritual, easy acceptance of things that Bangladeshis demonstrate which gives the answer here.  Sometimes things just are.

Andrew Eagle is an Australian citizen who has been a regular visitor to Hatiya, Noakhali, for the past sixteen years and considers Hatiya, where his friend Reja Ali Mobarak (Situ) is from, also to be his gramer bari.  For the past four years he has lived continuously in Dhaka and he contributes regular articles to Star Magazine of the Daily Star, Prothom Alo’s English language sister concern.

Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh