It was November, 2007 and we were at the Benapole side of the
India-Bangladesh border. After being harassed over my (lack of) Indian
residence papers and our possession of rupees, we had finally managed to
exit India
and walk into no-man's land.
Upon entering the crowded, ramshackle immigration office, I
experienced a great deal of relief when I was able to have my passport stamped
quickly and watched as the others struggled to explain why exactly they were coming to Bangladesh
- by bus - at this time of the year.
I lent against the peeling wall and observed the duty
guard casually flicking through a newspaper and chewing paan. He soon noticed
the members of our multi-national party and then looked me over
quizzically.
What followed was the usual interrogation:
"Are these your friends?"
"Yes."
"Where are you going?"
"Dhaka"
"How long will you be there for?"
"A couple of days."
"Where will you be staying?"
"With my parents."
Silence.
He furrowed his eyebrows and urgently rummaged through his
newspaper. Pointing a figure at a small map, he said:
"Have you seen this?"
It was, what looked like the contours of Bangladesh,
shrouded, almost entirely, by a dense, grayish-white spiral. The heading
merely stated what was obvious, "Bangladesh to be hit by a
cyclone". The guard looked at me and remarked: "Bad time for your
friends to visit. They say that this cyclone is larger than Bangladesh
itself!"
We boarded the bus to Dhaka (via
Jessore), more than a little bit perturbed by the knowledge that we would be
crossing a couple of rivers on our journey and may, in all likelihood, be on a
ferry when the cyclone hit the shore.
Inevitably, the rapidly worsening weather led to the extended
delay of one of our ferries and we rolled into a somnolent Dhaka,
with the rain lashing heavily on our windows, more than 4 hours behind
schedule.
As luck would have it, our transport had long ended his vigil at
the bus station and the station itself was deserted. While our fellow
passengers melted into the darkness, we realized that we had no phone and no
way of accessing one either. We contemplated spending the night on the
pavement, taking turns sleeping, as we had done in many a train station in India, but
right at that moment a doddery blue taxi appeared a few meters away from us. I
was gripped with paranoia and all the cautionary tales my mother and
grandmother had ever told me, about getting into a car with strange men, flooded my mind. We quickly weighed the pros and cons of getting into such
a taxi against sleeping on the pavement in a distant part of town. Without
further adieu we piled into the cab.
A jittery, 150 taka ride later, we were under the
"Sakalpa Dental Clinic" sign, at the gates of Gausnagar. My parents,
who had stayed up the entire night worrying about our arrival, greeted us
warmly; ensured we were dry and speedily dispatched us to our respective
sleeping quarters.
Dawn was about to break and the windows rattled ominously, as
record winds swept through Dhaka. It was not
long before power cables began to snap.
We awoke a few hours later to find that the power had long since
gone and the wind whistling through the gaps where there were once windowpanes. It
was not long before we became aware of the extent of the devastation that the
cyclone wrought in the south of the country: entire villages disappeared or were
lifted whole inland, the topography of the coast had changed entirely and it was uncertain how
many died, despite the early warning.
Of course, this national crisis left us in a bit of a dilemma viz. my friends' two day visit to Bangladesh. Would it
still be appropriate to go sightseeing in Dhaka
- and if so, how? This was the equation:
No electricity = no water from the pump = no/spoiled food + no CNG gas = no car .
On one evening, the air hanging heavy and humid, we found
ourselves sitting in my grandmother's veranda and swatting mosquitoes. My
mother suggested that, as we were out of water and there wasn't much food in
the house, we should try and find a place which had active back-up generators
and running water.
Unsurprisingly, the establishment closest to my house, the
Sheraton, was fully operational and was incandescent in the evening
gloom. After marveling at the working taps and commode in the restroom, we loafed about for a while in the lobby of the hotel, discussing places to get food in another, less expensive part of town.
As we departed, we observed the arrival of Elvis. Yes, Presley. Given the paunch,
it was more late 70s Elvis than 60s Elvis. He was quickly followed by
a gangling Austin Powers. And then another Austin Powers and a pink
sausage. They were accompanied by Cleopatra and Beyonce. One of the Powers
passed an ice-box through the security scanner before grinning to his
companions and heading towards the Bar. A few of them had already left the
lobby before we were even able to fully register what was going on: A Fancy
Dress Party hosted by the a foreign embassy.
Forget the coastal areas, the live electric cables that were still
electrocuting pedestrians in Dhaka-- here were a group of expats, seemingly oblivious and indifferent to it all.
The disconnect was both stark and startling. We soon left the Sheraton and
searched for food, but the impression that incident left on me has remained
till this day.
Today, 5 and a half years later, I was flipping through the autobiography
of the celebrated British-Goanese poet/journalist, Dom Moraes when this memory
resurfaced. My eyes latched onto the word "Patuakhali", somewhere to
the middle of the book. I went to the beginning of that particular chapter and
discovered that Moraes had been commissioned to write about the notorious 1970
cyclone in the former East Pakistan.
Among the paragraphs that he devoted to this topic, one, in
particular stood out for me. It captured a snippet of a conversation overheard
in the Bar of the very hotel that my friends and I were to briefly visit several years
later. It is worth quoting here:
"The bar was packed with correspondents and very young
people...The young people seemed to be the children of resident diplomats and
UN officials. A party of them occupied the table next to mine. A pretty
American nymphet said to the boy next to her, 'Jesus, I'm bored, All this
rain...and nothing to do.' The boy squeezed her thigh and said, 'Maybe we
could get rid of the gang and go for a picnic tomorrow?' She brightened up,
allowed his hand free play, then wilted once more, and pushed it away. 'No',
she said. 'All the nice places are way out of town, and Daddy says way out of
town is all full of corpses and stuff.' (Dom Moraes, "Never at Home",
Viking: India, 1992, pp.177-178)
Some things never change.
31.03.2013
Dhaka
