It's amazing how dull my internal panic button has become here. I know my mom will read this and get mad at me and say I should be more cautious - and then my dad will tell me to stop using rickshaws and wear a hardhat at all times, but the fact of the matter is that you have to numb your fear senses to be able to circumnavigate this city. Traffic lights, for example, are an endangered technology, and I'm not sure if there is a 'right of way'. I think the only "right" belongs to the biggest vehicle on the road. And this is no different than most megacities in the global south. When you turn on to a major road for example, the rickshaw driver doesn't really slow down, but just plows through and stares down the oncoming vehicle. And rings his bell. Yes, because that's how you get the SUV heading straight at you to slow down. If riding at night, the only vehicles on the road with headlights are motorized vehicles, but remember, there are a whole lot of un-motorized, passenger-carrying contraptions out on the road (namely, the one I'm riding on). I'm banking on the fact that the bigger vehicle that's headed toward me has lights, so they can see me. Good logic right? And vehicles that back-up on a major road, they may or may not check to see if they might run over a pedestrian or oncoming rickshaw. It's just assumed that everyone is alert and will give way if they have to.
And so, when my rickshaw makes a quick turn onto oncoming traffic, I no longer take in a sharp breath and clutch my seat. When a car makes a quick turn into the path I'm walking along, I don't scream in shock. So although I numb my knee jerk reaction to near-misses, I certainly have amped up my sense to dodge, and when appropriate, shout at the oncoming swerving car to slow down a touch. I have climbed over rickshaw wheels as necessary and smacked a CNG or two. Constant vigilance people. (And yes, I finally finished re-reading Harry Potter. I'm so ready for the last movie).
There is this one particular road in this one particular neighbourhood (on the way to Niketon off of Mohakali…) - it has the most remarkably porous path. No, porous doesn't do it justice - you'd think you were traversing the moon's surface. But on a rickshaw, and with a very acute awareness of gravity. I am convinced every time I'm on that road, particularly after an afternoon deluge, that my rickshaw will in fact, topple over or throw me out at the point where 2 out of the 3 wheels are launched mid-air at 45 degree converse angles. It hasn't happened yet, but I've got another 2-3 weeks here.
So, I know this blog post is not particularly well-thought out, but perhaps entertaining, with shades of snarky sarcasm. Interestingly, a friend just sent me an email: "wow. no sarcasm in that e-mail at all...you feeling ok?". And that's the thing - sarcasm does not translate well here, so I've had to really keep it on the down low. Or even my sparkling wit. The other day, I was taking photos of a friend's football/soccer team - all B-deshis+ an American. For the team photo, instead of saying to the guys, "1, 2, 3…cheese!" I said: "1, 2, 3…paneer!!". Get it? Get it? I got it. They did not, in fact, get it.
My comic genius is stifled.
But I'm not complaining. I must say, Dhaka has grown on me. There are little gold nuggets I'm discovering in the city and its people. And the many worlds that are smashed up together in this city. So allow me to go on one last tangential path. One of my favourite Margaret Atwood novels is Cat's Eye, mostly because of her prologue (and because it's not really about cats..):
But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another. You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.
The many worlds that live in parallel or on top of each other are amplified in a city like Dhaka. My Dhaka is so very different from the Dhaka of a Program Officer from a large international NGO, or my rickshaw driver, or the middle/upper-class young Bangladeshi, or the woman who lives in the neighbouring slum. And in a city where everyone and everything is so densely packed, it's easy to put on blinders to the world that is brushing past your shoulders. But on occasion (if I may be so bold to borrow Ms Atwood's beautiful analogy of time) the different worlds bubble up and if you're lucky or if you choose to take off your blinders, you can catch a glimpse of another world.
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