Chaaler Pithey

Happiness is a steamed ground rice pithey,

Steaming softness of ground rice cakes embedded with

Broken bits of oozing cane jaggery.

Happiness is sold all around the winter smog petrified city,

On the pavement, in the parks, by the lake and river ghats and

By an alleyway near my basha,

Happiness is sold by a skinny, short man with twinkling watchful and mischievous eyes,

Like a hawk- never missing a potential customer, a missing payment, a pretty girl,

Like a puppy when calling out for customers and cracking or laughing at lewd jokes,

On cold December evenings, made doubly cold by exposure and starvation, the happiness vendor

Parks his wheelbarrow, rattling with a kerosene stove, by a dark side street in Banani, and he     

Sells happiness- 10 takas a pithey- to students, lovers,

Men returning from work,

Men looking for work,

Scoops out ground rice pitheys from a pot, sculpts them with his grimy fingers,

Impregnates the white softness with brittle jaggery and

Steams them on top of another metal pot bubbling with boiling water, 15 seconds

And a pithey is born, he sprinkles some coconut shavings and hands you the melted plastic plate.

You can ask for a tiny fork or spoon or you can tear at happiness with your fingers and wolf it down

Even as it burns your fingertips and mouth.

The side street is immersed in winter darkness, infused with firewood smoke and the

Smell of burning rubber,

To stay warm, cook and repel dengue carrying mosquitoes.

A flickering candle on the pithey wheelbarrow is the only light

On the street,

In the world.

Otherwise you can tell who is where by the glowing cigarette ends

Of sullen men who huddle around

In the middle of the street and eat pithey and smoke and talk

Of politics, the plunging stock market, ‘bajey’ bad women and cricket,

And you can navigate down the street by the mad optimism of students from private colleges,

Kicking at each other, learning how to smoke, falling in love, chalking out their plans.

Management school, join a MNC or manage a garments factory, go abroad to work and live and

Fuck many white girls and marry a ‘bhalo’ good girl chosen by their parents and

Achieve COMPLETE SUCCESS,

Mission accomplished.

And return in middle-age only to get richer and own and run several companies and some NGOs and

Retire and live the good life- they have it all chalked out and they believe that

Everything will work out fine, just fine.

 Sprinkled among the male pithey eaters are a few girls,

Either accompanied by a man or in twos or threes,

The girls eat and talk and laugh and occasionally slap away the sneaking hands of their boyfriends,

Trying to touch them in public to make it clear who belongs to whom,

The girls munch jaggery and slap away male hands,

Like waving away giant five-proboscis fitted mosquitoes

Some women even dare to glare back at the men who are drinking tea on the pavement and leering

And licking their lips and playing out rapes in their heads, planning acid attacks,

The women return their dirty looks but only if they are in small groups and are warmed up by

The sweet pithey and feeling invincible with so much happiness being dished out.

But rest assured, there will be no violence tonight except for the

Everyday violence of Dhaka life,

There will be only more plans hatched, more meaningless street talk,

More women courted and hated,

More lonely men who will come to the pithey wheelbarrow and

Will not be alone,

There will be more winter chill and smoke and complaints about the cold-wave and there will be

More happiness, sculpted out of rice powder and date jaggery and steamed till it’s formed and

Oozing, sprinkled with coconut and you have to eat it quickly even as it’s steaming

In case the happiness vendor

Forgets how to make them.

A Family

She looks eighty but could well be in her late fifties. Poverty and starvation have aged her, drained her, hollowed her out and left her in a crumpled, twisted shell of decaying bones and dead skin. She begs outside a sweetshop in Banani, next to the Kabaristan- the cemetery of the rich and powerful in Dhaka. She begs but she doesn’t accept any money, instead she points at the sickly sweet, syrup soaked sweetmeats- yellow, maroon, green- behind the cracked glass counter.

“Give me a paraa Bhai. I’ve forgotten what paraas taste like”

After solemnly receiving her paraa, she puts it away somewhere in the folds of her grey Sari and invites me to have a cup of tea at her grandsons’ tea stall at the end of a blind alley next to the graveyard. I’m thirsty after eating a Langchaa and groggy from the Friday morning dust suspended, winter sunlight- bathed, sparrow fluttering tranquillity, so I join the old lady for tea and listen to her complain about her family problems.

“They are beggars- all my sons-in-law are beggars and my daughters are whores. One son I had who was a golden boy, Insh Allah. He always came first in class. He always came first in everything he did. But he had gone to play cricket with his school friends and they got into a fight over the score and they killed him with the cricket bat. Such is my fate.”

I realised that she inhabited a world where time was immaterial and memories flew around her like dusty sparrows. Her son’s death may have happened half a century ago but for her it could’ve been yesterday. Her migration from the village to Dhaka, her life in the city, her misery, love, anger, laughter, tears, agony, pleasure- could’ve taken place a hundred years ago or perhaps she was anticipating them as things which would take place in the distant future. Time was meaningless for her and she was ageless.

Her two grandsons run the tea stall, which consists of a stove, a kettle, a can of condensed milk, a scraped clump of root ginger, glass cups, a flimsy tin counter loaded with glass jars filled with biscuits and stale sweet breads and dead flies. Two bamboo poles, embedded in dirt, stand on either side of the counter and a third pole hangs above from which bunches of ripe bananas dangle and a rusted mirror oscillates in a graveyard breeze. The grandsons hand me a cup of steaming Rong-Cha- black tea with ginger and after the grandmother has croaked various insults at them they reluctantly give her half a cup of milky tea as well.  

“Beggars. Whores and beggars, every one of them,” grandmother sighs and waves at the family ruckus raging on, on the street, next to the tea stall and a garbage dump.  

Several fully and partially disabled men in homemade wheelchairs are arguing fiercely with a girl- probably no older than fifteen- in a sequin glittering green dress. Several women in rag-like Saris have surrounded the girl and pull her by the hair to scream into her face. Naked potbellied toddlers run around the girl, dodge slaps from their screaming mothers and disabled fathers. The children try to protect the girl in the sequinned green dress. The children are both thrilled and amused at the mock violence of their mothers and slightly terrified at the silence of their fathers.

“My daughters and sons-in-laws”, grandmother explains and sips her tea. “And my grandchildren. That whore in the twinkling dress is my favourite granddaughter. Her parents and brothers dragged her into whoring and now they beat her because they have run out of tears.”

The brothers at the tea-stall don’t intervene in the family fight and they continue combing their oiled hair and trimmed moustaches, transfixed by their closely shaved, thin lipped faces in the mirror dangling from the bamboo pole. Other pedestrians, including a policeman, come and go, drink tea and smoke cigarettes. Nobody pays any attention to the screaming women, men in wheelchairs circling around in furious circles, dancing children and the girl in green, who is squatting on the street now- head shoved down between her legs to protect her hair and face, her black tresses rolling in the dust.

Then out of the blue a toddler in a pair of tattered shorts, runs out of the sweetshop to save his sister with a bucket of dirty water. He throws the water over his family, soaks everybody- there is more screaming and swearing, the women and children give chase, the boy throws away the bucket, slips into the graveyard through a break in the boundary wall and runs away. He is quite a sprinter and a clever kid. The girl in green disappears into one of the bamboo-tarpaulin shacks on the other side of the blind alley. Nobody seems interested in her anymore. The women have started arguing about the boy with the bucket, his mother is defending him. The children have slipped into the graveyard and given chase. The fathers angrily wheel themselves towards Banani mosque, where they will wait for the worshippers to come out after the Jumma Namaaz. The brothers continue selling tea, lighting cigarettes and combing their hair. The water splashes form a transient map on the dusty road; continents fast evaporating in the sun. 

“They won’t let me stay with them anymore,” grandmother complains and puts down her empty cup. “They say I eat too much. But I only eat this much”. She shows me a tiny amount with her right hand. “I can’t eat too much. I’m going to die in a few days time anyway, I’m sure of that. Still they won’t let me stay in my home, my home for the last...the last many years.” She gestures towards the shacks where her granddaughter is hiding.

“I told them I won’t eat from their beggars’ and whores’ earnings. I told them I will beg for sweets instead. I prefer sweets to rice anyway.”

An imported car slides out of a driveway and roars down the blind alley. One of the brothers jumps to his feet, scurries out of the stall to stop all traffic so that the car can turn into the main road. The car turns. The brother salutes the invisible backseat occupants, behind the black filmed windows.

“That’s all they are good for- these fools- licking boots. They know how to lick boots.” Grandmother snorts. “That Sahib in the car has just come back from Pakistan. He has two wives, very fat wives.” She puffs up her hollow cheeks to show me how fat.

“One day I saw him at the sweetshop and asked for a laddoo- just a small laddoo. He cursed me and threw a coin at my feet. The Haramzada. Acts as if I asked for the world. All I’m asking for is to die in my own home.”

I get up to leave but grandmother continues snatching at her memories and desires, fluttering around her like dust-bathed sparrows.

“I live in that shack for forty years. I sleep with my husband in that shack. I give birth to six children in that shack. All I’m asking for now is to die in that shack. Afterwards, they can bury me in the garbage dump for all I care, they can eat my carcass for all I care. I just want to die, surrounded by those whom I have lived for.”

Street Exchanges

Me and my friend are in a rickshaw, chirping and dancing its way from Dhaka university through a traffic choked street towards Vashundhara when a silver imported car swerves its way in front of us, nearly crushing our rickshaw’s front wheel and our rickshaw-wallah’s legs. The rickshaw next to us is being pedalled by a man with no feet. He pedals using the stumps that he was left with after an accident perhaps, after being run over by one of these SUVs, driven by the power crazed chauffeur of one of the city elite perhaps. The stumps are of different sizes and the right stump doesn’t reach the pedal, so he’s pedalling with one stump with enough strength and skill to manoeuvre his rickshaw through the impossible traffic chaos- rickshaws, cars, vans, trucks, carts pulled by men laden with bamboos, hawkers, beggars, pedestrians and amateur traffic wardens. He’s able to generate enough power with his left stump, which ends a few inches below his kneecap to carry passengers of all shapes and sizes, 14 hours a day. The rickshaw-wallahs of Dhaka are the greatest athletes in the world.

So this fat bastard, armed with an i-phone gets out of the backseat of the silver car and starts yelling abuse at the rickshaw-wallahs.

I-phone wallah- You sons of pigs. You illiterate swines. Choking the road with your fucking junk rickshaws. You fuckers can’t read and write and can’t even cycle a rickshaw properly. Get the fuck out of this street, you illiterate swines.

Our rickshaw-wallah-    Why are you abusing us? You nearly hit me. What the hell are you on about?

I-phone wallah- You illiterate pigs. How dare you argue with me? You chhoto-loks (small people). You fools choking up the road with your slow cycling. Look at that idiot. He doesn’t even have any feet? You idiots are stealing people’s money when you don’t even have a foot? How dare you cycle a rickshaw without a foot?

Rickshaw-wallah without feet- What can I do sir? It was an accident last year. Why are you abusing me now sir? I wasn’t even in your way?

I-phone wallah- You swine trying to argue as well. You illiterate fool, you crippled swine, you small people, you...

Our rickshaw-wallah- Shut your dirty mouth, you Haramzada. You think you can abuse us just because you have money and you have a car. You don’t have any manners. You bastard. Get the hell out of here before we smash your windshield.

By now many rickshaw-wallahs have chirped and danced their way around the silver car. I’ve started abusing the I-phone wallah in my English. My friend is terrified of a fight breaking out in front of us, a class-war- silver diesel alligator vs flock of multicoloured rickshaws. I-phone wallah sees he’s outnumbered and his insults have been drowned in a torrent of imaginative abuse in English and different dialects of Bengali. He puts his I-phone into his pocket and locks himself in his car, rolls up the black filmed windows.

The traffic starts moving again. Our rickshaw starts dancing again. The man with no feet pedals on with his left stump.

Me (to our rickshaw-wallah)- Bhai, why was that idiot getting out of his car to yell abuse?

Our rickshaw-wallah- Because his AC stopped working. He had to come out for fresh air and wanted to show us how educated he is, wanted to show how his words have made him one of the Big People.

Equations of Value from Dhaka

Me thinks these equations of value are interesting:

2 hr recital of Tagore (by Sharmila Tagore and Soumitra Chatterjee) and music by Calcutta Orchestra in 5 star hotel in Dhaka (being considered great value for money by Dhaka elite) = 2,500 Takas per ticket

Monthly salary of women Community Health worker, servicing 500 households a month and working over 200 hrs a month = 5,000 Takas a month

Monthly salary of garment worker, making clothes for the biggest clothes brands (GAP, Dolce Gabbana, H&M...) in the world (negotiated after years of protests, strikes, employer abuse and police firings) = 2,800 Takas a month

Monthly salary of women, working full-time as housemaids, being subjected to all sorts of abuse and sending money to their villages to support their families = 1,500 Takas a month

Monthly salary of children (age 5-7 in some cases), working full time in most shops and businesses in Dhaka, being denied an education and a childhood = 500- 1,000 Takas a month

Best of luck to Soumitra, Sharmila and the Calcutta Orchestra! Art is priceless after all! 

Me thinks the system is fucked

Half a diamond for Rio de Janeiro, City of:

Lovers,

Killers,

Juice bars,

Favela wars,

Banyan tree lined,

Beaches which blind,

Red orchid entwined,

All night funk party,

Samba bands rehearsing jollity,

Corcovada pilgrims boasting humility.

Plastic surgery sculpted goddesses,

Lapa Jazz bar excesses,

Coconut pulp stained faces,

Urchins brandishing guns,

Nocturnal beachside runs,

Meat filled buns,

Football worship,

Prostitutes’ hardship,

Hustling,

Lusting.

Amma- Ode to a friend's mother

When I was five in 1971, Abba fell

From a coconut tree and cracked open his skull,

Like a ceremonial coconut.

The village elders informed Amma that he was fermenting coconut toddy in the sun,

Hidden in the highest fronds, he was drinking his devil’s drink and the Almighty hurled him down.

Like squashing a cockroach, they told my mother

He will burn in Hell-Jahannam forever, they told my mother

And it’s all her fault, for she had the evil eye

They told my mother.

Amma had green eyes and they might have sparkled like marbles once

But after Abba’s death, mother sold her jewels to bury Abba and pay for our food, our schooling,

She threw away whatever was left in her life

For the sake of our stomachs and our heads.

I think after Abba died, she also threw away

Her green eyes.

We were four brothers and five sisters and selfishly, we all needed to grow up at the same time.

Our childhoods must’ve been a nightmare for Amma.

Our upbringings like nine desert crossings, nine crucifixions, nine agonising dry deaths.

Yet she threw away the rest of her life for us and she continued living the nightmare,

As if that was the only thing she could ever dream of doing.

I remember Amma as tired and humourless as an old woman, while still in her twenties,

I remember her working three jobs at once just to keep us alive,

With a demon’s or a mad woman’s tenacity.

She worked as a daily labourer and carried sand and sowed paddy waist deep in mud and

Fished river crabs and foraged wild spinach and

Even in the worst famines, she miraculously cooked something for us, even if it was

Boiled muddy water.

We didn’t care cause we ate or imagined we were eating something

And we knew Amma

Would serve us one meal a day, even if she had to cook

Her own flesh.

She was a demon, our Amma.

During the war of independence, she smuggled guns, carried messages and she gave shelter

To a Mukti Bahini guerrilla soldier.

A man, whose face I’ve forgotten, whose name we never knew, who never said a word to us and visited our hut late every night, ate rice in pitch darkness,

Said his Namaaz and slept somewhere inside the hut, although none of us nine brothers and sisters

Can imagine where exactly he found the place to sleep.

Amma never said a word to him either but one afternoon, on returning early from school,

I found her cleaning the freedom fighter’s rifle

With a strange smile on her face and I realised

That she had found her green eyes again.

Then in the most obscure days of my childhood, Pakistani soldiers entered our village

And shot all the men and many male children.

We didn’t ask what they did to the womenfolk but we knew,

Even my youngest brother- 1 and a half years old-

Knew exactly what was happening.

Amma told us to hide in the Mango forest and remained in the hut, waiting

For the freedom fighter to return.

She was a mad woman, our Amma

We hid in the forest for 2 days and nights and when we returned,

 Amma was broken and bleeding and nearly dead and the freedom fighter’s body

Had been hacked and shot into many small pieces

And scattered around the bloodied village pond.

Vultures and foxes were fighting over his innards.

But I must’ve imagined a lot of what happened then for as I say,

It was the most obscure time in my childhood.

What I know for a fact is that when we, all four brothers

Were going to school together,

Amma managed to magically procure one egg a day (she must’ve stolen it from somewhere or the neighbours may have taken pity on the madwoman who once had the evil eye)

And she boiled the egg

And she broke it with her finger into four pieces and fed the four of us the meal of the day,

A quarter egg and a fistful of rice each.

Somedays she would slip us 10 paise pocket money, most days she didn’t have such great wealth.

And she would apologise to us, us fucking spoilt brats.

We grew up and killed Amma in the process.

35 years she never left the village except when it was to visit her sister in the

Neighbouring village.

Then when we had all grown up and abandoned the village and her and led our nonsensical lives.

Only then did she let herself die.

Something terrible was tearing apart her insides, she was coughing up blood in the hut.

Only my sisters, my youngest brother and I bothered to turn up at her side as she lay dying

The Kazi asked her for any last requests from the All Mighty,

Who had hurled her husband from the coconut tree four decades ago.

She croaked out her request.

She wanted to be denied heaven- Jannat,

She did not desire the paradise to which she was surely entitled.

She wanted to go to Jahannam- to burn in hell

Why? The Kazi shrieked and we were afraid he was about to pass out from such blasphemy

“To be with my man”, croaked Amma and even as

The Kazi picked up his umbrella, cursed the mad woman who once had green marble like evil eyes and pronounced her a Damned whore,

Even as my religious brother wept and my sisters blushed,

I knew that Amma was going to hunt down that wife-beating, coconut toddy drunkard- our Abba,

That lout who was lucky enough to marry the most beautiful girl in the village,

Who gave him nine children, who was so lucky that he just had to throw it all away and drink

Till he dropped and sentence Amma

To four decades in hell- that fucking idiot,

No matter which brimstone in hell he is he is hiding under, I know Amma will find

Her irresponsible, abusive, heartless lover and once she finds him,

 I cannot imagine

What she is going to do to him.

An Education

9 yr old boy (looks more like 3 due to malnutrition) runs into the bamboo-tin hut, Imran and I are surveying, clutching a handful of Class 2 school text books. His father owns a teashop but business is bad and ever since the silk factories laid-off half a village, his customers can’t afford a cup of tea and a ripe banana every day. His mother brings us tea and refuses our money. We are guests in their home, their basha. Mother shouts and laughs at her son’s mischief. Father takes a break from answering our questions about his healthcare needs and his dwindling income and his dying youngest daughter. The times are bad.  

Mother- He’s at it again. He’s trying to sell his school books.

Boy- I’ll sell them. I’ll sell everyone of them.

Father- You rascal! Have some respect for our guests.

Boy- I’ll sell them.

Imran- You should never sell your books. Why are you trying to sell them?

Boy- They have stopped teaching these lessons. They have closed down the school.

Imran and I flip through the books. Instead of a price tag they have the UNICEF logo at the back. Donor funded books, which are of little use where the schools disappear like rain puddles in the sun.

Me- Don’t sell them. Don’t be foolish. You can use them later. You can give them to somebody who needs them.

Mother- They are in good condition. He can earn some money if he sells them.

Imran- He can earn much much more money if he studies them.

Mother- That will take many years and many more books. At the end of which he may not earn more than a fisherman.

Imran (getting very angry)- Knowledge should be respected. Knowledge is powerful Inshallah. Rajshahi is the city of universities and knowledge. Some of the best universities in the world are in Rajshahi and you have no respect for that.  

Boy- But I can get 8 taka per textbook and 5 taka per note book.

Imran- What will you do with that money?

Boy- I’ll eat.

Imran- What will you eat? What will you eat?

Mother- He likes to eat grapefruit at the Padma ghat and lots of other junk.

Father- Leave that rascal. He will not learn anything anyway, even if the school reopens. Have another banana.

Boy- Forget about 8 taka. I’ll sell these for 10 taka. Not less than 10 taka.

Imran- Don’t be stupid. You should eat the knowledge contained in these books and many many other books over many years. Only then will you be somebody.

Boy- I don’t want to eat knowledge. I don't want to be anybody. I want to eat real food. Right Now.

street carom match

Fifty boys and old men gather around a carom board in the middle of a lane in Badda-para. The rat-a-tat epic carom battle rages on- rat-a-tat, tat-a-tat. Fistful of chalk dust is scattered on the board and the wooden counters slide across the slippery-as- ice board and crash with a deafening roar from the crowd applauding an impressive shot and hooting at bad misses. The street carom champion with a sniper’s aim is a shaking, bearded old man with bony lightning fingers and cataract grey eyes; his hands and face clouded with chalk dust and his face smeared with a child’s toothless grin.

Wonderful Week

Winding down from a thrilling week of work in Dhaka. Working from early morning till evening every day on how to provide community health services to those who live on Chars- tidal riverine marshy islands, which are precipitated out of demonic river currents and are inhabited by thousands of people in tin and wood shacks built on bamboo stilts, inhabited till the islands are reclaimed by the river and dissolve away. Also been working on protecting herders from the loss of their livestock and cattle and a facility for giving out stipends to promising school students in the slums. Huge challenges but a wonderful team of locals to work with and extremely stimulating and satisfying work. Feel like I've done something worthwhile at the end of the day.
Oh and a fantastic home cooked Bangla lunch at work- best lunches I've had for years and years! Been flat-hunting, making friends and feasting on street food in the nights. Tomorrow's a holiday- so I'll work for a few hours in the morning then move to a cheaper place and explore old Dhaka (Adi-Dhaka) for the first time. Durga Puja fever seems to be spreading now. Will see the Puja after years and years...     

Tales from the USA exile

It was somewhere around this time a few years back when I chose to set out on my exile. I remember making fun of my friends when they cried a river before leaving their near and dear ones. Not manly enough I said...real men never cry!! Yet I felt an overwhelming sadness choking me when I said goodbye to my city for the last time. Glanced at the bed I had been sleeping on for a considerable number of years and accepted the fact that I would never return to it anytime soon.

Shortly after boarding my flight I fought that grief by closing my eyes only to wake up to a new land. Soon the sadness was pushed back to being discussed after a few rounds of drinks with fellow countrymen who were as drunk.

Everything has a bright side and soon I saw the bright side of my journey. Not long back I would stare at the sky and wonder what it would be to fly a plane instead of being a passenger in it, look at rapids raging in its full glory and want to jump in them , put on my headphones while playing Need for Speed on my computer to make me believe I was actually driving that car in real life. Today those dreams are no longer dreams and I have fulfilled them all.

Yet today as my roommate vacated all his stuff leaving a huge empty house to myself that lost grief finds its way out of the murky depths where it was lost .

The morbid rooms and empty spaces glare at the lone figure typing away while sitting on the lifeless carpet. The lone person who was once surrounded by near and dear ones whom he could see without the aid of technology ....near and dear ones that are far far away now...

Streetscapes 1

A street in Moukhali- buzzing with Friday afternoon goodwill,
ringing with singing songbird bells
of speeding butterfly red-blue-green rickshaws.
Rickshaws adorned like new brides
with gold-silver paper, sparkles and film stars and saints and shrines and blessings
ringing their way down labyrinthine lanes and cataract blind alleyways
like electrified brides in love
pulling along
their puzzled, perspiring cycling rickshaw-wallahs,
their men.

A kid with a broken leg in grey plaster lies on a roadside bench
Waiting for a bus or a mother or a meal; he eyes
A special battalion commando soldier in camouflage uniform who shares his bench
But doesn’t share his snack, which he bites and chews with un-camouflaged pleasure-
A sliced green mango with diced green chillies and rock-salt, eyes screwed up
In the sensuality of the sour mango- burning chilly- crunching salt inside his mouth.
The lame kid watches the soldier’s guilty delights and the automatic rifle,
Which lies across the soldier’s lap
Like a giant catapult.

Dhaka Landing

From the plunging window of the twisted metal bubble of your aeroplane, you realise that
Dhaka is a life crammed city and a flotilla
of a thousand floodswept villages
scattered on the eroding clay fingers and mud flats of the largest delta in humanity.
The delta city of brown giant python like rivers and serpentine estuaries,
baby snake rivulets and tapeworm canals and
the shimmering blue green of the Bay of Bengal.
The delta city of coconut forests, concrete chaos,
marooned hamlets on riverine islands,
fleets of fishing boats and ferries and
the most beautiful rickshaws in the world.
The delta city which lives, dies and shimmers
at the mangled mouths of sweet rivers
of life and destruction,
a city planning to break out
into the sea.