The Modern Jajabor

The road chooses the jajabor; the jajabor chooses not the road.

A meeting of jajabors while on the road is a surprisingly uncommon event.  Many days may pass without hint of another, and in settled periods the absence of even evidence leads one to wonder if others at all exist.  Yet there are the travel websites, with postings like ‘I left home three years ago on a three-month trip.  I’m never going back.’  The jajabor’s footprints may be light but they step, nonetheless.

When one jajabor does meet another, in my experience it’s a happy event, a meeting without formality and no more constraint to it than the hopping about of a sparrow on a windowsill.  There’s calmness in not needing to explain or greatly elaborate; to without effort pursue simple talk of adventure, with travel tales consumed as readily as rice.  Jajabors don’t ask the questions settled people do.  They don’t need to.

Of course it’s jajabors of the modern variety of which I write, the ones who use passports and planes; but I should explain first about using the Bangla word, jajabor, which is something similar to the English word, nomad.  It came about by accident.

In Dhaka people speak of the Bedey.  I’m not sure if it’s the Bedey who visit Hatiya Island, but in the winter months the nomads come, setting up their n-shaped tents in thatch and plastic sheeting on any patch of empty land. 

I’ve heard the Hatiyalas say the ones who live on boats can drink brackish, delta water; that they barely set foot on land.  I’m not sure how much is true.  Like nomads or semi-nomads in many countries they have a reputation for trickery and fortune telling.  It may well be undeserved.  Still, as in other parts of the country, when the nomads visit Hatiya they camp wherever they find ground and are for the most part left undisturbed.

Yet it wasn’t the presence of the traditional nomads in Hatiya that led me to learn the word surprisingly early.  I don’t suppose ‘jajabor’ is usually considered basic Bangla.  It was because of the Assamese singer Bhupen Hazarika, who sings that famous Bangla tune Ami Ek Jajabor, I am a nomad.  Unlike in the lyrics I didn’t reach the Mississippi, but I did like the idea of the song.

Learning about his thoughts is a way to understand our own.

Modern jajabors face shared problems and chief among them is explaining to non-travellers about travel.  People ask, why travel or why travel there?  The reasons are many and to account for them properly would require a conversation of some length.  It’s not always called for, especially as the result is likely to be disappointing.  Non-travellers usually have other priorities and a differing world view.  They don’t understand.

For example, one jajabor I know, an Italian Mexican-born one currently ‘pausing’ in Bulgaria, said that when asked why he lives in Bulgaria he just says the girls are pretty.  The Bulgarians are content with that and it circumvents the need to elaborate.  A more sophisticated reason might be that since he was young he was fascinated with Eastern Europe and one thing led to another.

It’s funny: I taught him the word ‘jajabor’ and he discovered its opposite, the term for people who prefer a life in one place.  He called them: ‘sedentarians.’

When it comes to explanations, I have similar troubles.  When Australians asked why I was moving to Ukraine some years ago, I said, ‘I’ve always wanted to live in a country that begins with a ‘U’.’  It started people listing: Uruguay, Uganda, Uzbekistan… it was so much easier, it didn’t take hours.

In Hatiya, when I used to visit almost annually from Sydney, the circumstances were even more difficult when a Hatiyala would ask, very occasionally, why.  My Bangla was still very basic and more than that, I simply did not know how to speak of the inspiration of travel.  I could not explain how much there is to learn from other cultures or properly clarify how much enjoyment I took from their company, that in even the basic elements of their daily lives, which they take for granted, I found new wisdom and, often, hope.  How could I say that I wanted to understand their life experiences and way of thinking in order to better comprehend mine?  What is universally human, what is cultural and what is the individual?  I would’ve liked to have explained such ponderings, but I had no ability.

So instead I simply pointed to the tents by the road and said, ‘Ami ek jajabor’.  The answer made Hatiyalas laugh.  It was a simple statement, but it made me start to wonder…

The last modern jajabor I met was probably that British-born one in Kolkata a few years ago.  His name was something plain like Ken or Mike and we met in the queue at the Bangladeshi Consulate while organising visas.  He also didn’t have a pen.  Besides that there was little about him to suggest he was a jajabor.  It was when we started talking that I could imagine it.

The jajabor consumes travel stories like rice.

The first sign was that his travel plans sounded complicated and evolving.  He was down from Korea, had been to Bangladesh, was in India on a detour due to a wedding invitation that had surfaced and wished to return to Bangladesh en route back to Korea.  He taught English, he said, which is not atypical for a jajabor.  I started to consider… maybe, yes maybe…

And the sedentarians wonder what the jajabor is searching for; and it makes the jajabor laugh.

Perhaps because I know Kolkata I did something unusual for a jajabor, I asked Ken or Mike if he wanted to go for a meal when our visa work was done.  I write unusual because jajabors rarely team up.  They follow their own journeys and despite having much in common, say goodbye as easily as hello.

So we chatted more, somewhere up on Park Street. I heard about his circles in the sand, his plan to see South America for at least a year before teaching again and then setting out for African wanderings.  He never wanted to return to the U.K .Naturally I spoke of Bangladesh and the pull of the Meghna River; and he said he had liked Bangladesh. 

Even in the distant sunset the jajabor can find himself

But what I remember most fondly about Ken, or Mike, is when I asked what he would do when all the travelling was done.  I wanted to see if his answer was the same as mine. 

‘I guess I’ll decide which country I like the best,’ he said, ‘and I’ll stay there.’

‘You’re lucky,’ he continued, ‘You’ve found yours.’

More recently I sat in a party in Dhaka, with shondesh and delicious home cooked savoury items on a plate and I confessed to a Bangladeshi who lives in Sydney that I’m actually a bit of a jajabor.  His eyes lit up at the idea and he said eagerly, ‘Well, I moved to Sydney so perhaps I’m a jajabor too?’  And maybe it’s true.  It can be that the scope of jajabor-minded public is far broader than I was used to thinking.  When I consider it, in many Bangladeshis there are certain signs: curiosity, adaptability, a sense of humour and love for going places, even if that means not further than visiting relatives in another district, as far as opportunity allows.

Yet this jajabor may have progressed to being an ex-jajabor.  His jajabor life may be done.  Or could it simply be that from around-the-world-and-back-again he found himself perfectly content within the most jajabor-minded majority culture of all?

In many Bangladeshis are signs: curiosity, adaptability, a love of going places...

Weighing up the options

Which road chooses you?

A. the mountain road, to Bolivia?

B. the camino del sur, to Argentina, Chile & Uruguay?

C. the delta road, to Bangladesh?

D. the spiritual road, to India?

E. none of the above.










This article is also published in the Star, here: The Modern Jajabor

Not Bengali, but Love Lungi

Link to my article on BDNews24.com about me, Baridhara and the humble lungi....

Not Bengali, But Love Lungi

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

Sunspots

According to astronomers the red ball sun is only medium-sized. Among stars it is unimpressive yet to our planet it brings life.

It’s a standard arrangement, in Hatiya, in Bangladeshi villages, the central courtyard area of dirt surrounded by several modest houses of wood and tin or thatch. There are the mud verandas the women have patiently patted into place at the front of each house, where the roofs overhang the building; and the small windows of carpenter’s hands with frames that aren’t entirely square and shutters that don’t absolutely meet. There are trees including coconut palms and bananas in the patch of ground carved out away from the road amongst the rice fields. It’s typical, the household where Nobir and his extended family live.

In the evenings when the hurricanes are turned down in each courtyard house only the family members inside notice the illumination dim.

During winter when the rice fields are suitable for football and shortcuts it’s easy to cross from the road to the household even before reaching the canal bridge and turning to the left before it to find the main entrance. But when the rains come the short way is out of the question unless one wishes to give one’s lower legs to the mud and water, which Nobir and his relatives sometimes do. Even the longer way is difficult then for although the men try to maintain a raised aisle from household to the road it’s usually missing a patch or two and requires a tricky jump or a delicate step to the side to avoid deeper holes of mud.

Beyond the neighbourhood there are few to witness how the changes of season are marked in the access to that household.

Soleiman and Nobir, Rubban the daughter who decided to flout convention and bring her husband Selim to her home rather than settle in his, with the many cousins and descendants make a raucous crowd for visitors. They conduct themselves with noticeable freedom and more impressively, it must be said, inhabit an environment of familial love. It’s not an easy thing to describe how all household members are resolutely appreciated for who they are: how they care for each other; how close are their family bonds; and how that nurtures in them self-confidence, at least when at home. For despite the problem of poverty and the lack of opportunity in education and until more recently, employment, it’s by and large a good family.

Beyond the neighbourhood there are few to tell of that mini-republic where the tradition of respect for one’s elders mingles quite effortlessly with everybody having a voice, where in accordance with that most usual Bengali recipe each formality is tempered by love. 

Since Nobir’s father died several years ago his mother has been the matriarch.  It is her territory. A humble woman with enough shyness about her, she also has tremendous curiosity. She laughs readily and offers visitors such a heartfelt smile; her family’s interactions amongst themselves and with the visitors are her entertainment and her pride. There’s always been so much life in her.

Beyond Bangladesh it’s not perhaps just anyone who will properly comprehend when I say the energy of her motherly love infuses into the surrounding fields and roads beyond the household limits.

Nobir in Alauddin's tea shop

A visit to Nobir’s house is not a matter to be taken lightly since there’ll be food and lengthy discussion about the need to drink only one cup of tea since various household branches will vie to provide it and be disappointed if they can’t.  Everybody has a voice. Although there have been many visits over the years, with thoughts of not burdening the family there were many more occasions of passing along the road and not calling in; although if spotted there were always strong entreaties. Nobir’s mother has never been averse to running across the nearest rice field towards the road to extend an invitation.  And when there was nothing much available for visitors, Situ recalled, Nobir’s family would bring him a glass of water flavoured with a lemon from one of their trees.

There aren’t many people who saw that mynah bird the household adopted hopping about in anticipation of food.

I don’t suppose I’ve ever known her well in the traditional sense, Nobir’s mother, since for most of the years there were barely Bangla words within me; but the limits of vocabulary did nothing to inhibit feeling and even when passing along the road it is impossible to deny a calmness and happiness arising from the knowledge of her presence just beyond, in their island of trees. On the very few occasions I arrived at their house feeling quite horrendously for whatever reason I am very conscious of having left in awe at how with simple hospitality they’d altered my spirits so powerfully for the better. Just to think of Nobir’s mother is to feel joy.

Nobir's mother (centre) with grandchildren

There are few who can really appreciate that phenomenon, although in Bangladesh it is not entirely uncommon to know someone of a similar type.

I recall Soleiman’s words, relayed to me by Situ when I was in Sydney. They’d sat together in a tea shop in Azizia and I became the conversation subject.  Soleiman set about describing my character.  He said I was unlike many of the better-to-do locals because I never wanted anything from them. Even the politicians hoped for a vote, he said. He said a few other things too.  It was kind enough for him to offer compliments but what really impressed me was that despite our different languages and never having spoken on such topics with Soleiman he understood how I think. There was the knowledge of friends between us.

I recall when their grandmother passed away, how they cried at the graveside. I’d barely met her for in her old age she mostly stayed indoors but from seeing them so distraught it was not unexpected their tears would transfer to my eyes. And I know why. It’s in all the years. It’s in the discussions about needing only one cup of tea. It’s in Nobir’s mother’s smile.

Beyond the neighbourhood there are few to know how utterly terrible is last week’s news that Nobir’s mother died.

With several sons scattered as far as the Middle East pursuing employment, her longstanding illness took her. This time I was in Dhaka and I wasn’t there to attend the funeral. I didn’t see Nobir cry.

Everyday the sun will rise as it always has over those rice fields, the neighbourhood, Nobir’s family home. In its brilliance it will look unchanged; but the sun is never unchanged, not really.

Despite their size, up to 80,000 kilometres in diameter, it’s not common to take note of sunspots. Apart from astronomers people don’t normally mark the altering in the photosphere of the sun, when a section of surface cools and darkens and gradually moves out of sight. Events of such magnitude go largely unnoticed from our Earthly distance.

You can also visit the village cinema, go for a rickshaw ride in Dhaka or attend an exorcism, perhaps?




Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh

Ladies' Night

In Hatiyan villages, cinema-going is even rarer.

My friend Situ isn’t patient with cinema. While he is quite keen on some of the more thoughtful Tollywood or Dhallywood films and he’ll easily devote time to more meaningful offerings from the west, he has a low tolerance threshold for films of the more pointedly commercial variety. It’s quite remarkable since in every other way his patience is extraordinary and something I’ve always tried to learn from.

As a result of his lack of enthusiasm for production-line style films his wife Lovely is denied any regularity to her cinema-going, a pastime she adores. I suppose it was meddling but several years ago while we were staying at Lovely’s family home in Bogra I proposed a trip to the cinema largely on her behalf. Situ wasn’t keen but ultimately he had no choice in the matter.

The evening came and the cinema-going party came to include a few of her sisters, her younger brother and the children of the house. From the head of the laneway we took rickshaws the short distance into town. Finding seats somewhere about the middle of the crowded hall, there was the excitement of anticipation for everybody except Situ. That it was a film they’d seen before did little to dampen the enthusiasm as it was a favourite. The film had barely started before Situ was standing, finding his way up the stairs by the light of the screen, on his way outside to find something of more interest on the street: a tea shop and adda.

Meanwhile the family members became engrossed in the well-liked but predictable plot of the families-don’t-agree-to-the-match-but-it-happens-anyway variety. Every now and then Situ would momentarily re-appear, fidgety and bored, until eventually I had to go with him outside where he complained about the wasted time and wished to go home. I stalled for time on the family’s behalf and we went for tea together as a means to distract him. But alas, despite my best efforts, his cinematic impatience eventually proved too strong and with the film in its dying minutes, with the ending just beginning, with most of the ladies teary from the tense moments just prior to the match happening anyway, he could bear it no more. 

‘Let them see the end!’ I told Situ.

‘They’ve seen it before,’ he said, ‘They know how it ends.’

‘But maybe they want to see the end again?’

His was the first family to leave that cinema hall, with Lovely, her sisters, younger brother and the children walking almost backwards up those stairs as he tried to hurry them along, while they tried to catch every last glimpse of the screen until there were no more steps to climb. But despite the rather hasty conclusion to the evening the film was enjoyed by the majority and as rickshaws drove us home the mood was a jovial one.

Unfortunately for Situ I didn’t learn my lesson.

Some years later the experience was repeated in Hatiya. The island had only one cinema hall that’s since been demolished, and it was in the main town, Ochkhali, about ten kilometres north of our village. As a result cinema attending was even rarer than in Bogra. It wasn’t for Lovely that I’d thought to manage Situ once more, but for the wife of a friend of mine who’d died of tuberculosis. I suppose it was meddling but she’d been left alone to manage her six children and I thought if she agreed, in her husband’s honour she and her family should have an evening out. 

Within mere hours the invitation was well-known, cordially self-extended and widely self-accepted. By sunset as we were preparing to leave Lovely was of course ready to go, as were Situ’s children, as were the ladies from the neighbouring houses, as were several of the female cousins and their children. There were only two men who joined us, whose enjoyment of the cinema was sufficiently strong to overcome the embarrassment of having neighbours seeing them setting off with Situ, me and a large group of ladies. I remember those two gents wrapping themselves tightly in their chadors, it being the winter season. It wasn’t the chill in the air that made them do so however, but the wish to conceal their faces in order to avoid potential ridicule later.

Before leaving I’d negotiated: Situ didn’t have to watch a single minute of the film and I’d also stay outside to keep him company. Simply we’d be sharing a usual evening of chat in Ochkhali. We could even make travel plans!

With the initial small list of invitees having blossomed into the small crowd assembled at the roadside the idea of travelling into town slowly by rickshaw had become impractical. We needed to hire a motorised van. It took time but eventually we found one by the market and with Situ and I squashed inside beside the driver the back came alive with ladies’ chatter, apart from the two chador-cloaked patches of silence.

I don’t know if the Ochkhali cinema hall was used to a van full of women and children showing up several minutes before the session was due to commence. I don’t know if they’d often heard someone at the ticket counter say ‘I’ll have twenty-one tickets please.’ Situ made twenty-two in the party: he had insisted on not having a ticket and mine, I reassured him, was only to go in and see them settled.

The cinema management fiddled about finding the keys to the Ladies’ Waiting Room which looked like a long forgotten attic in a medieval castle. The air inside it was likely of historical value. There was some confusion as to whether the two gentlemen would be allowed in to wait but as everybody knew each other there was no objection from the ladies.

With the film soon underway and our party had proved to be the bulk of the audience that evening, I left them to find Situ pacing around outside. He was in better spirits for not having entered and witnessed the film’s beginning. 

And so it went: we drank tea and walked about the town and sat and chatted, periodically returning to the cinema hall, as they experienced the highs and lows, the tears and laughter, the music and dancing of the film. I didn’t see much of that film, but I noticed towards the end there was a twist. It seemed that the formerly subdued heroine had become a gangster and a bikie, riding her motorbike around assassinating those that stood in the way of her families-don’t-agree-to-the-match-but-it-happens-anyway happy ending.

I don’t think it was a twist that was appreciated; the film was unfortunately considered something of a B-grade by our group of reviewers. That’s what I gathered from the ladies’ chatter with the two chador-cloaked patches of silence coming from the back of the van on the way home again.

Hatiyan scenery

But as nice as the Lucky Talkies was, Hatiyan hospitality is better, as the the big sea stories of the fishermen are more entertaining than a movie, and with all as it is, the Bengali island too easily feels like home.


This article also published in Star Magazine, here: Ladies' Night




Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh

Et Fjell Er Nødvendig

Hatiyar te butikk

Unnskyldninger for feilene i den norske ... jeg gjorde som jeg kan!

er vakker. Morgenen tilhører til kingfisherer som, i strålende blå jakker, stuper å fange fisk fra kanalene; den dagen er for store øgler som rasler i buskene og mungoer som løper med hastverk over et landlig spor. Ettermiddagen er eierskapet av bøfler som velter seg halvt nedsenket i en dam, på frivakt fra plogen, og natten er domenet til jinns og bhuts og deres selskap, hyl av rever og smertelig gråter av villkatter.

Det er i de lange kveldene som ikke var så lenge siden opplyst av parafin lampe, i te butikkene, blant landsbyens menn sosialt samvær, der selv usannsynlig planlegger lyd grav. Situ er å klandre for min gramer bari eller landsby hus prøvelse, for ikke bare gjorde han donere sin familie og sitt nabolag å innrede mitt liv med gjestfrihet så rikelig som monsunregnet, men fordi han også har en reisende-sjel.

På kveldene, mellom chatter over prisen på grønnsaker, nyheten om en forestående ekteskap eller en nylig død, ville vi lage reiseplaner for underholdning, oversatt til å inkludere de andre landsbyboerne. Stort sett var de overdrevet: templer i Thailand, til Nord-Norge for å se på midnattssolen, eller den australske villmarka med sine endeløse strekninger av himmel. En gang han oppført et budsjett for en tur til Ukraina via Moskva. Jeg fortsatt le om tallene: $ 7.97 for en togbillett for å reise tretten eller noe timer, $ 5.61 for et hotellrom ... ja, det er overdrevet og jeg husker ikke nøyaktig, men prisene alle sammen var litt på den lave siden.

Du kan alltid fortelle en reisende. Det er ikke med antall stempler i passet sitt, men i deres øyne. Bare snakk om reisen og en reisendes øyne skal stå opp i påvente av umiddelbar avgang. Øynene mine har alltid forrådt meg på den måten og det gjorde hans også. Det var bare gjennom tilfeldigheten av våre ulike fødestedene at jeg hadde fått den luksus av å besøke mange land, mens Situ ikke hadde utforsket utover Bangladesh.

Jeg pleide å ta med når jeg kunne, reise bøker som listet over alle verdens land, de grunnleggende fakta og noen bilder. Han pleide å ringe meg i Sydney og si, “Jeg har nettopp lest om Malawi”.  Hans kone pleide å klage på at han ikke ville snu parafin lampen ned til svært sent fra drømme seg rundt i verden gjennom bøkene, og innen et år, fra perm til perm bøkene ville bli slitt etter å ha blitt lest så grundig. Det er all atferd som kan forventes fra en reisende.

Som det er mellom venner, er spottet forventet atferd mellom oss. Jeg pleide å liste de landene jeg hadde sett, telle dem i subkontinental måte ved hjelp av skrukker i fingrene, deretter begynne å liste landsbyene rundt omkring som var Situ sine reiser liste. Og jeg pleide å si: “du trenger å se et fjell. Du kan ikke ha et vellykket liv uten minst ett fjell i det.”

“Jeg har vært i Bandarban,” han alltid svarte.

“Hvis de er fjell, blir da hvorfor det kalles ‘Hill Tracts’ på engelsk? Nei, trenger du et stort ekte fjell, med klipper og snø.”

Med fleiper jeg kom til å vite at jeg ville ta ham et sted, at jeg skulle finne ham et fjell. Slike ting er viktig.

Selvfølgelig ville jeg ha nytte også, siden en første tur til et utenlandsk sted er en utrolig opplevelse som aldri kan gjentas, den neste beste ville være å vitne en annen reisendes første tur til utenlands.

Det skjedde i 2004. Det var ingen internasjonal telefonlinje til Hatiya i disse dager, så Situ brukte til å ta slitsomme turen over elva, tre timer, hvor han måtte overnatte, bare for å få noen minutter på telefonen til Sydney. Jeg hadde planer for den vanlige besøk til Hatiya, det som skjed nesten hvert år. Men den gangen sa jeg, “vi ses i Kolkata.” Man kan ikke se i gjennom telefonlinjer, men jeg visste hvordan Situs øynene så ut da han hørte det.

Forresten Situ hadde alltid sagt at han ikke ønsket India, fordi “det er den samme som Bangladesh.” Men selvfølgelig er der ikke to land som er det samme, selv om de kan være grener av samme tre. India var lett overkommelig på en Sydney lønn og for ham visum ikke ville være mye oppstyr. Jeg visste at han ville nyte det. Jeg hadde alltid.

I hvert fall han organiserte pass og visum, det er noen historier i det men beste at han skulle fortelle det. I hvert fall han tok seg til Benapole, Indias grensen, med buss, og han nesten fanger lungebetennelse på sin første aircondition busstur, og deretter krysset han grensen alene.

Imens jeg ringte Kolkata, hvor heldigvis har jeg en venn også, Jayanta. Han har en særegen, veldig tørr humor, og han hadde nettopp blitt gift. Jeg var ennå å møte sin kone.

“Så din kone,” Jeg spurte, “er hun hyggelig?”

“Når du kommer til Kolkata,” sa han, “du kan observere og bestemme det selv.”

Jeg spurte om det ville være noe problem hvis jeg hadde en kamerat denne gangen, fra Bangladesh.

“Hindu eller muslim?” spurte han.

“Muslim”.

“Er han et godt menneske?”

Jeg sa at han var og Jayanta besluttet å stole på mine ord.

Slik var spenningen som magen min kom ikke ned til å lande på Dum Dum flyplassen sammen med flyet: Situ bør være der med noe hell. Jayanta bør være der med noe hell. Jeg møtte Situ først. Han hadde ventet hele dagen, nysing fra bussturen, og han hadde kjøpte påfølgende tre-timers billetter for å vente inne i terminalbygningen. Men han ventet og var nysing i India! Jayanta hadde brakt en venn med en ekstra motorsykkel, så det var ingen problemer med å dra til huset sitt hvor vi bodde et par dager, hvor de to ble kjent med hverandre.

Jayantas kone var deilig, jeg bestemte meg.

Det var mange nye opplevelser for Situ på hans reise: første masala dosa, et Sør Indiske rett, første iste og iskaffe, nå alt lett tilgjengelig i Dhaka.

Han hadde sett med forferdelse den historiske moské nær Pandua, West Bengal. Den ble delvis bygget fra ødelagte hinduistiske templer og du kan se ansiktene til hinduistiske guddommer i deler av murverket. Mer inspirerende var sameksistensen av hinduistiske hakekors som dekorert Mehraben, det sentrale punktet i moskeen. Situ sa i Bangladesh han hadde blitt undervist ankomsten av Islam i subkontinentet hadde vært fredelig. Pandua sier at det var ikke helt slik.

Det var varmt den dagen vi gikk for å finne hans fjellet, det var kokende. Med svetten velter ned ansiktene våre som en liten foss, ved Siliguri jeepen stativet og satte kursen for Darjeeling opp i fjell, foreslo jeg at vi trengte å ta ull genserer ut av ryggsekken min: Jeg hadde tatt to, siden Bangladesh vintrene er ikke fullt så kaldt som i Sydney og Situ ville trenge i de minst Sydney-styrke klær for hva som ville være utvilsomt den kaldeste dagen i livet hans. Han trodde jeg var gal, i varmen. Det var godt over tretti grader, og jeg ønsket en ull genser!

Jeg lager små vitser om jeep tur: Situ var så redd, mens vi rundet noen av de vertikale precipes langs veien, at han holdt på siden av jeepen så intenst at lagene av huden på hendene kom av. Sannheten var at, selv på min andre gang, jeg var litt nervøs også.

I Darjeeling, Situ brent seg mens han tok sin første varm dusj. Det er logisk egentlig, hva han mente, at det varme vannet fra springen ville komme ut på et sett, behagelig temperatur, en enklere system enn å måtte regulere den med kaldt som vi faktisk gjør. Det kunne har vært sånn. I Darjeeling så vi på i ærefrykt mens skyene fra under oss løftet i løpet av morgenen og fortsatte opp over oss mens vi spiste frokost, og i Darjeeling så vi den hvite horisonten frisyren av Kanchenjunga fjell, et navn Situ snart begynte å bruke til å kritisere min Sydney-størrelse buk.

Himalaya er hvor Hatiya kommer fra, ved Ganges, av Brahmaputra. Himalaya er Hatiyar mor.

Tilbake i tebutikker noen uker senere, hørte folk i undring som Situ beskrevet dem om “byen over skyene”.  Så han fikk sitt fjell på slutten.

Darjeeling by

India Will Decide: Article Index for articles about India

Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh